红馆 The Palace Hotpot Birmingham — Restaurant in Birmingham

This was a truly sad experience. The place is very well put together aesthetically and i appreciate small details like free sanitary items for women in the bathroom and it was overall a clean place. We were recommended this hotpot place by a friend and boy oh boy, were going to be having words with said friend.

The expense was NOWHERE near its worth. Yes, the hotpot was flavourful, it was NOT a buffet so this already goes against the grain of tradition, it was spicy spicy - burn your insides and your bum spicy. Literally ruined our day and night its so ridiculous.

The food portions were so so tiny but for some reason they must think the presentation was what we came for. It was stupidly priced: £5 for less than half a handful of enoki mushrooms, £5 for a small sliced potato, meats (beef and lamb) £10+ each but they were clean cuts ill give them that, salmon and sea bass £10+ each which were frozen still, not even defrosted so that took away a lot of the fresh feeling of eating hotpot, fried tofu £5 for a handful - what a joke, sweetcorn £5 for half a small cob! like literally sliced up into maybe 1-2cm slices - appalling, scanty behavior. You could tell all the foods were frozen and that was a let down on how much effort they put into the actual food here.

OH AND THE SAUCE AND FRUIT WERE NOT EVEN FREE. We were told we had to pay separately per person for this atop everything else anyway so we ordered just the 1 as we werent that bothered but they made it a point to say "No sharing" then they were constantly checking if we stayed true to our word - how flipping rude.

NEVER AGAIN FOR MY HEALTH'S SAKE AND FINANCIAL STATE'S SAKE. WE DO NOT RECOMMEND - GO TO HAPPY LAMB HOTPOT INSTEAD, THEY DO IT RIGHT, WE SHOULD HAVE TRUSTED OUR INSTINCTS.

This place sucks. Happy...

Extremely amateur customer service. I took my wife out on a date night yesterday evening. I had heard it can get busy so I called ahead at 1pm to make a booking for 7-8pm, but was told by the guy who answered that we could just walk in, with it being a Tuesday, no booking was required. So we arrived just before 7pm (and paid £3.50 for parking!) the restaurant wasn't particularly busy (I'd say 60% capacity) and we were shown to a table by a polite young lady.

There was just one Menu on the table so I asked for another... And whilst she went to get this Menu, another female member discussed something with our waitress who came back & asked if we had booked ahead.. I said I'd called earlier & been told there was no need to book tonight. She said we might need to go back outside and wait because of some booking issue.. Another discussion between the pair followed, with the second lady coming over holding the restaurant's mobile phone and asking me what time I'd called... I checked this on my phone and told her it was 1pm and provided the last 4 digits of my mobile number.. As if this wasn't enough, she asked me to find my number on her mobile (which I did, but it felt strange to have to explain myself like this when I'd already given sufficient information for her to be able to check) once this was confirmed, she said there's been some booking mistake and we'd need to go back to the foyer/entrance and wait 10-15mins for a table.

We got up, at which point I told my wife we'd be leaving & we left the restaurant to dine elsewhere. The initial waitress seemed surprised to see us walking past the window heading back to the car. Perhaps I should have explained to the pair the reasons we were leaving rather than just walking off, but I'm not the confrontational type so we...

From the start, even walking into the restaurant, the atmosphere was so nice even though the restaurant was mostly empty, the interior was so beautiful and cosy, it didn’t make much difference, but I can only imagine how lively the atmosphere would be on a busier day. The variety of food items on the menu was amazing, so much to choose from, including many vegetarian and vegan options which was great for me and my other friend, and they even offered to change the soup base for us which we weren’t even aware before was not vegetarian, which just highlights the care they put into the customers. The food came out within a couple of minuets and although that was stated on the menu i was hesitant to believe it, but when it actually did I was so impressed! The soup itself also didn’t take much time to start boiling either and the food itself was so yummy, nicely flavoured, fresh and authentic, everyone loved it. All throughout the staff were highly attentive to our needs, patient, kind and hospitable, which I applaud. Also another massive thing for me is cleanliness of a restaurant, and i’d have to say that this is probably the cleanest restaurant that i’ve ever been to, even the restrooms were up to a great standard. Although from first glance i was worried that it might’ve been a little pricy, when eating with a group of people, the bill isn’t intimidating at all, especially when taking into consideration the amazing food and service too! Would definitely come here again and...