火锅站 Hotpot Station-Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in Fatih

I was craving for some Chinese hotpot whilst on holiday in Istanbul so ended up at this restaurant after searching via Google review.

In my honest opinion, there's A LOT of room for improvement compared to the high quality of Hotpot restaurants we have back home in London.

Firstly, the restaurant was showing open at 12 pm (mid day) on Sunday but only found out they actually open at 1pm on the day when we got there, so we strolled around in the surrounding area; upon arrival, we ordered the hotpot as well as 2 noodle dishes. (One beef soup one, and one stir fried beef noodle)

Not till 13:35, we got the ingredients as well as the soup base for the hotpot. I'm guessing they were trying to defrost some of the ingredients. A few dishes were not available from the menu, both the hotpot section as well as the hot dishes section, perhaps might be because of Sunday?!

A self served sauce section costs 30 Lira per dish but not authentic at all, only the chili sauce/oil were delicious; no preserved tofu, chive sauce, nor coriander etc in the sauce section.

The ox tongues were somehow precooked as well as the tripes which were very unusual. The half and half soup base was average, and the spicy one was not near any spice whatsoever.

On the surprise side, the stir fried beef noodle dish was delicious but with not much beef at all but it was freshly cooked and delicious.

I am giving the restaurant 3 stars as it was okay if I called it the "hotpot" restaurant, then it's nice to have Chinese food whilst on holiday, and the lady was nice to check on us with our food.

Slightly down end, we picked the soft drink from the fridge as instructed to do so but no bottle opener was provided so we used the lighter to open the drink ourselves.

10% more on the bill if you do not pay with cash so be prepared to have cash ready if you don't want to get...

What’s good: Chicken based soup and that it’s hot pot in Turkey.

Why I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are craving hot pot in Turkey, it’s very pricey. It’s our most expensive meal here and that included a rooftop restaurant.

The menu is not very intuitive but we got the split soup with chicken and spicy soup base. We also ordered the lamb and beef, they don’t have the regular thinly sliced ones just the hand cut ones which makes the meat really tough because the cut is thicker. We also ordered Chinese cabbage and enoki mushrooms. Rice noodles, since they don’t have rice. And 2 regular Cokes that didn’t come until after we had asked for it after our meal had already came out. And they brought the wrong ones. When asked for the right one, instead of replacing it, they just brought another one, at least the right one.

They also don’t tell you where the sauce station was, we saw it when another customer who has been there longer had gotten it. Which triggers a lot of people after us to get it, which is very crowded, for a small space.

What I also find interesting is that most of the Turkish restaurants offered free tea and sometime bakalava, not this...

First of all, it’s a family owned hotpot place. Some reviewers complain about the service and lack of selections on the menu as compared to some big cities. LoL, it’s Old Town Istanbul. You are lucky that you can some soothing foods after a week of Turkish cuisines. We were the only customers around 6:30 pm on Thursday evening and few more came around 7 and 7:30. It’s low season here. We picked quite a few things from the menu for four of us. We liked to add more but the lady owner said that should be enough. The food came promptly. We had two different kinds of beef, beef tongue, chicken wings, four kinds of vegetables, chicken and tomato soup base as seen on the image. They are pretty good and vegetables are fresh. Please don’t compare this place to hotpot restaurants in Vancouver or HKG. The fresh hand-pulled noodles is the bomb and is homemade, a must try. Overall we were quite happy with the service and quality of food. Price is reasonable. Putting atmosphere aside, I recommend this restaurant and please check this place out next time you...