Soupleaf Hot Pot — Restaurant in Austin

Soupleaf is such a great addition to this strip mall. We’ve been here plenty of times at this point and it never gets old. All the staff here are very nice and professional, and we always feel taken care of when dining here.

This place has limited reservations so if you can’t reserve a time, try to come before 4 p.m. to avoid a super long wait. This is a pretty popular place. The last time we were here, we arrived right before 5 p.m. and had a 20 - 30-minute wait for a table. It’s worth it though!

The restaurant is very large with tons of seating and different varieties of seating arrangements. For example, booth style, round tables, long rectangular tables, and bar seating. There’s also a private area in the back with two large tables that I believe is by reservation only. They make great use of all the space in this restaurant as this place is so popular. For example, I love that they have these table partitions so they can fit more groups in. Basically, it splits up a table that can seat six to one that can sit two separate groups of two where both parties have privacy even though they’re technically at the same table. So smart!

Anyways, if you’ve never been here before, you’ll be seated at a table with hot pot bowls. You control the heat of your bowl with a control pad that’s facing you on the table. The heat set at 3 - 4 is all I ever need. I don’t think I’ve ever needed to go up to 5. And I turn it down to 1 - 2 when I’m not cooking anything. Your server will ask you what broth you want. My favorite broth is the Tonkotsu. It’s got a great flavor profile and is a solid choice. I’ve also had the Shiitake broth and the Miso Dashi broth too. Both are very good, but I like the Miso Dashi just slightly better than the Shiitake. You can start with one type of broth and switch it out later if you want to try something else so there’s no pressure on what you start with. You can also request broth refills to top off your pot at any time. We usually only need it topped up once during our meal.

Once you get your broth, they’ll then ask you for what meat you’d like. If it’s just two of you, I suggest picking two meats each to start. There’s no limit to the amount of meat you can order, and your server will be by often to see if you want to order more so don’t worry about having to know exactly what you want right away. At this point, we’ve tried basically all the different meats but our favorites are: pork belly, brisket, round eye, pork shoulder, Angus brisket, eye of round, and sirloin tip. Some meats are only available during dinner time so just be aware of that. When it comes to cooking the meat, these are thin slices, so they only need to cook for 30 seconds to a minute at most. You’ll be able to tell when the meat is done cooking by its color. For example, with beef, when it goes from red to a nice brown color.

Everything besides the meat and broth is self-serve. Even the seafood is self-serve which is insane to me. The self-serve area is split up into different sections: seafood, vegetables, noodles, sauces, and desserts. They have an amazing selection of raw veggies, and I love their ramen noodles. They also have white rice next to the sauces.

Now, when it comes to hot pot, it’s all about the sauce. I love combining the following: soy sauce, sesame seed oil, house sauce, peanut sauce, hot chili oil, hoisin sauce, minced garlic, and chopped green onions. I don’t know what their house sauce is made of but it’s so good. They also have a sauce guide you can follow as well if you want to try one of their recommendations.

As far as drinks, I usually just stick to water but, on a recent visit, I tried their Mango Sticky Rice cocktail. It was so good! It literally tasted like the mango sticky rice dessert.

And if you have room for dessert, they have soft serve and some small cakes to enjoy.

All in all, if you love hot pot, you’ll love it here. And if you’ve never tried hot pot, this would be a great restaurant to try it out for...

We dined at Soupleaf Hot Pot during their soft opening. They are currently the only (partial) AYCE hotpot place in Austin to my knowledge, and do it well. The buffet had a wide selection of vegetables, sauces, condiments, and other hotpot staples like fish balls. The protein selection at Soupleaf is decent but also a la carte, which something to keep in mind as you dine to your heart and stomach's content. The interior had plenty of seating for different sized parties which is always appreciated for individual hotpot-style restaurants.

Overall, I had a great time dining at Soupleaf and could see myself coming back whenever I'm in the mood for hotpot. My only gripe was the cost, which realistically will always be high for hotpot and a la carte style restaurants.

For a more detailed review continue reading.

Upon entering Soupleaf I was impressed with the size of the establishment and how many seats they were able to fit inside. I appreciated that there were different sized tables for parties as small as 2 to as large as 8. Something I did notice was there were a few tables that were built too close to each other to comfortable sit two per table, and were most likely left to be a single-seat table after the fact.

There are five different soup bases you can choose from. My favorite was the tonkotsu due to it having the most depth of flavor. It was savory and had hints of ginger and other traditional Chinese hotpot spices. The vegetable broth had a strong mushroom-umami flavor while the miso dashi had a strong seafood broth flavor.

The pricing is as follows: you pay a flat price per person which gives you unlimited access to the buffet. You can then additionally purchase plates of thinly sliced meats and other seafood a la carte. This means depending on how you like to experience hotpot your final bill may vary drastically. I personally enjoy lots of meats with my hotpot, so in total we ordered about 9 plates of meat for 6 people.

The a la carte meat plates were roughly 5-6oz per portion which was a decent enough size for everyone in our party to try a few slices per plate. Out of all the meats my favorites were the lamb and the angus prime. There was some shredded cabbage underneath each plate which I suppose was for garnish's sake. In my opinion it felt unnecessary and could be removed entirely to reduce food waste.

The buffet section featured a wide selection of vegetables, noodles, condiments, and sauces. I was particularly impressed with the wide variety of leafy Asian greens provided. The sauce bar also has plenty of selection so you can truly customize your sauce experience. If you don't feel like experimenting yourself you could also opt for the house special sauce which I enjoyed. My other favorite was their lemon ponzu with added diced cilantro and green onion.

The dessert selection, unfortunately, was lacking. The only dessert available was a soft serve machine. At the time of our visit the machine was not available which meant there was nothing sweet to cap off an otherwise satisfying hotpot meal.

The service was friendly and kind, though I could tell there were a few kinks that were still being ironed out.

In my opinion Soupleaf is a solid hotpot restaurant in a city that otherwise lacks any other decent hotpot competitors. My only gripe was that our bill ended up being close roughly ~$45 per person even after the 25% soft-opening discount was applied. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of hotpot dining. I would personally prefer to pay a higher one-time cost per person for AYCE meats and the buffet bar, but I understand their reasoning for a la carte pricing and can't blame them due to the costs associated with running a hotpot establishment.

Overall, I was very satisfied with my dining experience at Soupleaf and could see myself coming back again...

I’ve visited soupleaf twice at this point and can say without a doubt this is my new favorite restaurant in town. Coming from Houston, the lack of accessible and authentic cuisine in Austin was a huge disappointment when I moved here almost a decade ago. So this revolution of authentic East Asian cuisine in the past two years has been anticipated- and Soupleaf in my opinion tops the charts. (South East Asian next pls?)

First off, the atmosphere and ambiance is great. The high ceilings allow it to not get overwhelmingly hot inside for guests and the lighting is warm and diffused- no harsh fluorescents. There’s definitely a large amount of hustle and bustle happening around you- both times I’ve visited it’s been absolutely packed- but it never seemed particularly loud or jarring. I also loved you could absolutely tell this is a family restaurant- uniform standards are lax but adhered to enough that you can tell who works there but the servers don’t look stuffy and are allowed to showcase their personality. Also super cute to see the owners teen sons (I’m assuming) running around and helping out. Makes me want to give them all my money.

Service is great, there was never really a point where I needed something and had to flag down my server. Both servers I’d had were kind and amicable and great to talk to when they had downtime. For this price point I don’t really expect top tier service but they exceeded expectations! Had to save the best for last but the food. Is. Amazing. 24$ gets you a soup base (mala is my favorite- and remember that the tonkotsu here isn’t the same rich tonkotsu you’re going to get in ramen) and access to the giant buffet of veggies, noodles, greens, and other extras like rice cake and dumplings and a few items that I had no idea what they were but we loved them. All of the veggies are fresh and delicious. There’s also the make your own sauce bar which has all the fixings I could want. They’re also kind enough to have a few suggested sauce recipes above it. It seems that the sauce bar items may rotate slightly- or that they’ve been so busy it’s been hard to keep up with demand. The meat selection is pretty standard but portions are fantastic for the price you pay. Every time we’ve only needed to get one plate of meat per person (about 7-8 each depending what you choose) and it’s exactly enough.

My only suggestion for the restaurant is to also give a slotted spoon with place settings for smaller items that get lost at the bottom of the broth- especially for those quests who aren’t quite as handy with chopsticks. It didn’t detract from anything as my friend and I are experienced in hotpot/shabu but I could see it being an issue for some.

I’ll stop after this but the manager was also very kind and slipped us some hair clips with a leaf on them after we gushed over the staff wearing them. It seemed like those were the last ones they had too 🥺 Can you tell I love this place? I’m determined to be a regular!

Update: been back 10+ times still a...