The best hot pot in London
35 places
Big Brother Hot Pot
££One of London's few double buffets - all-you-can-eat hot pot and all-you-can-eat grilled meat at the same table, on a Mongolian rather than Sichuan base.
Chilli Cool
££Two shopfronts on the same street: stir-fries on one side, a separate hot pot room on the other, plus boboji - meat and vegetables on skewers, cooked in mala oil and priced by the stick.
Named by five domains, the most of any independent in the topic, and by every Chinese-language source in the corpus.
Crystal China
££Dry hot pot, which is not hot pot at all in the broth sense - the ingredients are stir-fried in mala oil and arrive already cooked, so there is no simmering and no waiting.
Da Long Yi
£££Its signature broth is beef tallow, dried chillies, Sichuan peppercorns and more than twenty aromatics, and the Volcano Beef is marbled beef built into a cone over crushed ice with chilli oil poured down the middle.
Ordering is by tablet. Sauce station with printed recipe cards. Part of a group with more than 300 restaurants worldwide.
Dragon Inn Club
£££The dearest broths in the corpus: a fish maw and chicken soup base alongside coconut chicken, beef tallow red soup and tomato, served from a dragon's-head pot.
Feng Wei Shi Tang
££Copper pot upstairs, and the rest of the northern repertoire downstairs - grilled fish, rou jia mo, lamb spine. Clear water in a tall copper pot, and a mellow sesame dipping sauce.
Haidilao
£££The Sichuan chain that turned hot pot into theatre - an apron, a hair tie and a bag for your coat on arrival, a sauce bar with recipe cards, and noodles pulled at the table.
Its own booking page states that tables are always held back for walk-ins. Two London sites, Piccadilly Circus and The O2.
Haidilao
£££The quieter of the two London Haidilaos, inside The O2 next to Nike and Costa. Same aprons, sauce bar and table-pulled noodles as the Trocadero, with a fraction of the queue on a night with nothing on at the arena.
Restaurant opens 11.30am daily, kitchen from 11am. Walk-ins are taken by phone number - staff text you when the table is ready rather than making you wait at the door.
Han Restaurant
££The beef tallow arrives as a moulded bear that melts into the broth, and there is a Hainanese coconut chicken pot for anyone who wants sweetness rather than heat. Crab pot, barbecue and Dongbei dishes alongside.
Happy Lamb Hot Pot
££Mongolian rather than Sichuan: a clear herbal bone broth simmered for six hours with goji berries, jujubes and ginseng, and paper-thin marbled lamb that needs no dipping sauce.
Founded by the original team behind Little Sheep. Two London branches, Holborn and Bayswater.
Hotto Potto
££A beef tallow broth, a barbecue list alongside the pot, and a menu that prints a recommended cooking time against each ingredient - the single most useful thing a beginner can be handed.
Publishes a GBP 20 solo hot pot set - broth, meat, vegetables and rice or noodles for one, which almost nowhere else offers. Dedicated halal menu. Karaoke rooms downstairs.
Laoma
££A student canteen in the best sense: all-you-can-eat hot pot, free soft drinks and no service charge, in a room that fills with people from the surrounding streets.
Leong's Legend
££A Taiwanese snack house hung with Water Margin murals, where the all-you-can-eat hot pot runs around GBP 25 a head - among the cheapest sit-down pots in Chinatown.
Little Sichuan
££A Finchley Road parade Sichuanese that regulars from Sichuan vouch for - the mala base is the one to order, and the stir-fry menu runs alongside it.
Mailinda
££Old Beijing copper pot and charcoal skewers in the same sitting, plus chive boxes and guo bao rou - a neighbourhood canteen for the Isle of Dogs rather than a destination.
Mao Master Hotpot Noodle
£Maocai rather than malatang: the same one-bowl idea, and the broths run classic spicy, chicken and fresh tomato. Lotus root, Chinese yam, enoki, tofu puffs and bean curd rolls hold up best.
Mealtime Malatang
£Sliced lamb and beef, Chinese spam, tofu skin, potato, oyster mushrooms, kelp and greens, on a mala base that a Gansu food writer says is the only base worth having.
Mr Wang Hot Pot
£Malatang rather than shared hot pot: take a basket from a chilled counter, load it with beef rolls, tripe, lotus root, fish balls and frozen tofu, and it is weighed, priced and cooked into one bowl for you.
Aim for 400 to 500 grams of ingredients per person - the rule of thumb published by Broadsheet. The milky beef bone broth is the one to have.
Muyang Hot Pot & BBQ
££One pot per person rather than one for the table, which is the whole point if you want your own broth. Hand-made fish balls, black fungus, quail eggs, rice cake, and the offal end for those who want it.
Claims to be the first restaurant in London to serve individual mini hot pots.
Nan Hotpot
££Chongqing rather than generic Sichuan, with a half-and-half mushroom and tomato broth for people who want the format without the heat, and short rib rolls and prawn skewers on the order sheet.
The Infatuation says it runs to 3am - the latest-serving hot pot in Chinatown. HOURS NEED CONFIRMING against the venue's own site.
Ning's Fresh Beef Hotpot
££Grass-fed beef in a delicate soup base - the Cantonese-Teochew reading of hot pot, where the point is the meat and the broth is a poaching liquid rather than a sauce.
Niu Hot Pot
££Chaoshan beef, which means the broth stays out of the way and the menu is sorted by cut - sirloin, short rib, rump, omasum, ox aorta, hand-made beef balls. Charcoal skewers and a private karaoke room alongside.
Eight soup bases including a congee base served with two live crabs. A halal section on the menu.
Pot Pot Malatang
£A basket, a chilled counter and a set of scales, on the Newport Court side of Chinatown - the cheapest way into the format for one person.
Real Beijing
££A charcoal-fired copper pot with a chimney up the middle, a preserved cabbage broth and paper-thin lamb that cooks in seconds - instant-boiled lamb, the northern format, eaten with sesame sauce rather than chilli oil.
The clearest example in Chinatown of a tradition that has nothing to do with Sichuan.
Shan Shui Jian
££Yang xie zi - lamb spine stewed to falling apart, eaten with your hands, and the pot then topped up and used to cook everything else. Grilled fish and chicken stewed with mushrooms alongside.
A branch of a well-known Chinese lamb-spine chain; the owner stews the spines to his own recipe. Not to be confused with Shan Shui Social, a separate modern Chinese restaurant.
Shu La La
££A dry spicy hot pot in scarlet oil, heavy on Sichuan peppercorn - the numbing end of the format rather than the soupy end.
Shu Xiang Ge
£££The jiugongge, or nine-grid pot: one broth divided into nine compartments so tripe, aorta and duck intestine each cook in the grid that suits them. A yuanyang split pot is the way out for anyone who cannot take the mala.
Claims to be London's first dedicated Sichuan hot pot restaurant. Moved from New Oxford Street to Gerrard Street; a White City branch is also named in the 2023 poll.
Shujie Hotpot
££Duck intestine, pork brain and beef aorta on a broth its regulars describe as the most Sichuanese in London. A plain room that you leave smelling of - regulars say wear old clothes.
Third in Red Scarf's 2023 UK readers' poll once scoped to London.
Simmer Huang
££A simmer pot rather than a hot pot: the ingredients arrive already stacked in the pan and cook down dry, and once you have eaten the top layer the staff pour broth in and it becomes a hot pot for the second half.
Halal. The two-stage format is unusual enough that first-timers should expect the pot to change halfway through.
Super Three
££All-you-can-eat Sichuan hot pot on a spicy butter base with a Korean charcoal grill on the same table, so a group that cannot agree does not have to.
One of two long-standing hot pot restaurants a few doors apart on East India Dock Road; Han Restaurant is the other.
Teo Hot Pot
£££Built entirely on beef: hand-cut cuts cooked seconds at a time in a light broth, the Chaoshan way, where a mala pot would drown what you are paying for.
Tian Fu
££Buffet or a la carte, with the offal end of the menu taken seriously - intestine, tripe, blood tofu - and a Sichuan stir-fry list that regulars rate as highly as the pot.
Head chef Zhang Xiaozhong. NOTE: Hotto Potto's own site claims the same chef. Do not print the attribution for either until it is resolved.
Water House Restaurant
££Buffet hot pot with broths most places do not offer - old duck, old chicken and mutton alongside the usual mala and clear - plus chuanchuan skewers and a Hunanese menu.
Xiong Qi Hot Pot
££A group option a minute from Leicester Square, with suggested cooking times posted on the wall and staff who will tell a beginner what goes in when.
Sixth in Red Scarf's 2023 UK readers' poll, and the only London placing in that poll outside the four best-known names.
Yangguofu Malatang
£Over a hundred things to put in the basket - sliced meat, fish, tofu, ramen noodles, mini youtiao - then a broth, condiments and a dipping sauce. The herbal beef bone broth is creamy, lightly spiced and not oily.
Opened in the old Wing Wing site in summer 2025. Part of a group with over 7,000 restaurants worldwide; the only other UK branch is in Hammersmith.