Where to Find Delicious Hot Pot Cuisine in Melbourne

If you’ve yet to try Japanese hotpot, you’ve been missing out. Shabu-shabu is Japan’s answer to warm broth and sliced meats. A large pot of boiling broth is placed on your table and the ingredients you order will be brought to you to be cooked tableside. Broth-wise, there are options with soy milk and miso, tonkatsu, Konbu (with citrusy notes), and soy sauce-based broth.

At Momo Sukiyaki and Shabu Shabu, you can order up plates of lamb, premium Wagyu beef scotch, oysters, and snow crab to cook in your soup. Top it up with vegetables, mushrooms, corn, tofu and carbs of your choice from steamed rice to fried rice. Dipping sauces for the tender meats make for the perfect finishing touch, and you’ve got the perfect premium hotpot experience.

Chinese flavours here make for the addictive factor, with traditional Sichuan ingredients paired with premium Australian-grown produce. What David’s hotpot nailed down to a science is their delectable soup base, with flavour choices from dried fish maw and chicken to their signature spicy beef tallow. Pick two soup bases and grab their seafood combo featuring squid, prawns and scallops to cook alongside their lamb and beef combo.

Theatrics makes for part of the appeal here and meats get served sitting atop adorable panda figurines and you’ll find a butter pig character melting into your soup base. Don’t miss out on their signature handmade noodles that are as good as they are fresh. For an added kick, grab their range of dipping sauces to eat with their deep-fried crispy pork belly set on fire tableside. Delicious and entertaining? We’re in.

The $36 Signature Spicy Beef Tallow Soup is our pick at David’s Hotpot hot spot!

Classic Thai soup has won over fans hearts at this CBD fan-favourite spot in the heart of Chinatown. Stop by for lunch and you’ll find an express lunch menu perfect for solo hotpotting with soup bases from their signature tom yum and creamy curry laksa to sour fish soup with proteins and carbs to round it off.

You’ll find all your favourite proteins here from truffle pork meatballs to lamb slices and luncheon meat, while their selection of carbs includes kuey teow and rice noodles, egg noodles, and Thai coconut rice. There are tons of other dishes available for when (and if) you ever need a respite from hotpot, and you can grab traditional Thai pad thai, and curry pineapple fried rice. Come to Jiyu with a whetted appetite and a thirst for umami-based broth.

The Panda Hotpot chain has about 400 outlets around the world and if that isn’t enough for you to believe that there’s something good going around here, maybe the first taste of their soup will.

Decked out with ornate finishings, a 1.5 tonne dragon sculpture hanging overhead and LED screens, Panda Hotpot is hotpot in the most luxe of surroundings. Their menu is completely customisable and filled with dipping sauces and over a hundred different premium dishes. Their Chef choices offer fried pork slices, homemade tofu, and prime snowflake beef slices perfect for cooking with a swish through their signature Sichuan spicy soup base.

The team at Jang Gun are purveyors of authentic Korean food, and while you’ll see a line snaking out of the entrance on any given day, only about half of them will be there for their signature dishes – the other half are there specifically for their Korean hotpot.

Korean fried chicken lovers, we get you – once the crispy chicken dish is on the menu, you pretty much don’t look at the stews, but it’d be remiss for you to miss out on their Army stew, a spicy umami bomb of pork belly, spam, sausage, kimchi and veges, and a beef bone stock served with steaming hot white rice. There’s nothing quite as satisfying and warming as the Korean army stew, and Jang Gun does theirs spectacularly with generous portions and rich flavours.