Halloween is fast approaching, so this seems like an appropriate time to review this restaurant…read more Wait but why? This is just some hot pot place. Nah. Da Hong Pao Hot Pot in TST has literally the scariest bathrooms I've ever been in. No, it's not that it was dirty, but those bathrooms can pass for a haunted attraction at Ocean Park. If I wasn't drunk, I'd be terrified. Anyways, more on that later.
Da Hong Pao Hot Pot is one successful hot pot place. The TST branch is only one of its locations and I'm hoping more open up. When your method of cooking is literally dunking raw food in boiling water, you better be using the freshest ingredients. Da Hong Pao delivers and exceeds! Knowing this, they also serve sashimi along with hot pot.
As a girl from landlocked Toronto, I'm already amazed by the variety and quality of seafood. I've rarely had geoduck and it has definitely never tasted as sweet as it did here. The razor clams were so fresh and chewy, the fish balls were incredibly bouncy. On top of that, ingredients I am familiar with were just as great, like the beef and salmon. Now I haven't been to many hot pot places in HK, but I'm also gonna go out on a limb and say some items here are quite unique. Foie gras stuffed squid balls and black truffle wontons anyone?
They've got all your expected condiments and soup bases like mala spicy, satay, cilantro & thousand year egg, etc. But they've also got their specialty: "金屋藏嬌: The Beauty Hidden in the Golden House". It's basically a whole chicken sitting in a winter melon, which acts as both a dish and a subsequent soup base after you eat the chicken. Very nourishing and something I definitely haven't seen before.
Service is spectacular. Food and drink came promptly and there were easily 4-5 people serving us that night, despite the full house on a Thursday. The blonde man in charge was so fun, he felt like one of our own. At the end of night, he even helped us take photos and an Ellen DeGeneres style selfie.
Oh yeah, the bathrooms. Walk past the tables, the bar, the kitchen and down the isolated hallway. Open the door and you're greeted with a black-painted room, lit only with dim red lights. You can barely see your own face, but you can make out the outline of a hundred of your faces within the back-to-back mirrors. You can now do your business while you wonder if one of your reflections might turn around slowly to stare at you with demon eyes.
(76/100) - 2017