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Best Hotpot in London This Winter: Sichuan, Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Japanese and Korean Picks
Hotpot isn't one dish. A Chongqing pot arrives slick with beef tallow and dried chillies. A Hong Kong table is built around a mild broth and whatever looked best at the market that morning. Japanese shabu-shabu is so light you can taste the kombu. London has all of them, a lot of it within walking distance of Leicester Square, but plenty of hotpot restaurants aren't very good at the style on their sign.
Now that it's properly cold, here's the best hotpot in London this winter, sorted by style. Pick the broth you're in the mood for, then the place. Prices and hours change often, so check before you go, and book for Friday and Saturday nights.
Sichuan and Chongqing hotpot (麻辣火鍋)
The one most people picture: a red, numbing mala broth built on chilli and Sichuan peppercorn, and in Chongqing (where mala hotpot comes from) a thick layer of beef tallow. Most places offer a split yuanyang pot (鴛鴦鍋), half spicy and half mild, which is the sensible way in.
Nan Hotpot 楠火鍋
Chongqing-style hotpot in the middle of Chinatown, anchored by a beef tallow broth and a menu that goes well past sliced beef: ox tongue, offal and prawn paste for the committed. It's open until 3am Monday to Saturday, which makes it the late-night pick on this list. Not into heat? The half-mushroom, half-tomato pot is a good way to get the format without the burn.
📍 1 Leicester Place, WC2H 7BP | 🕣 Mon–Sat until 3am | 👉 @nanhotpotlondon
Photo: @liloanddish x @nanhotpotlondon on Instagram
Da Long Yi 大龍燚
A Chengdu hotpot chain founded in 2013, with over 300 restaurants and just one in the UK, tucked off Oxford Street. The broth is beef tallow and Sichuan peppercorn; order the Volcano Beef, and if there are two or three of you, a double or triple pot so everyone gets their own broth. Ordering is by tablet.
📍 5a Berners Street, Fitzrovia, W1T 3LA | 👉 @dalongyi.uk
Photo: @dalongyi.uk on Instagram
Taiwanese hotpot (台式火鍋)
Taiwan's hotpot culture leans towards personal pots and all-you-can-eat deals, with milder broths, plenty of fish balls and tofu, and sacha (沙茶) sauce for dipping. Dedicated Taiwanese hotpot is surprisingly hard to find in London. This is where to go.
Leong's Legend
A Taiwanese snack house on Gerrard Street, named after the Water Margin and hidden behind a door you have to knock on to get in. Hotpot sits alongside the Taiwanese menu, with an all-you-can-eat option (ring ahead to check the current price). The pot is simpler than the Sichuan rooms up the street, so treat it as half the meal and order from the Taiwanese side too: xiao long bao, braised pork rice, oyster omelette. On a cold night, add the ginger duck (薑母鴨), simmered in a sake rice wine soup. It's small and busy, so book.
📍 39 Gerrard Street, Chinatown, W1D 5QD | 📞 020 7434 0899 | 👉 @leongslegend
Photo: @leongslegend on Instagram
Hong Kong and Cantonese hotpot (打邊爐)
In Hong Kong it's 打邊爐 (da bin lou), and it's a winter ritual. The broth stays mild on purpose (pork bone, fish maw and chicken, or satay) so the ingredients carry the meal: hand-cut beef, fresh seafood, handmade balls, fried fish skin. Chaoshan beef hotpot, from the Teochew region of Guangdong, has become a Hong Kong favourite too, and London now has a couple of specialists.
Dragon Inn Club
The menu covers both Sichuan and Cantonese cooking, but for hotpot the reason to come is the fish maw and chicken broth, the house signature, with coconut chicken and tomato as gentler options. Hotpot happens downstairs, in a basement of booths and alcoves with hotplates set into the tables. Works as well for a date as for a group.
📍 16–18 Upper Tachbrook Street, Pimlico, SW1V 1SH | 👉 @dragoninn_club
Photo: @dragoninn_club on Instagram
Teo Hot Pot
Chaoshan-style hand-cut beef hotpot on Store Street, with British grass-fed beef and individual pots. The broth is light and the beef goes in for seconds rather than minutes, so this is where you taste the meat, not the chilli. Teochew tea is part of the meal.
📍 28 Store Street, Bloomsbury, WC1E 7BS | 🕣 Daily 11:30am–10:30pm | 👉 @teohotpot28
Photo: @teohotpot28 on Instagram
Japanese shabu-shabu and sukiyaki (しゃぶしゃぶ・すき焼き)
Shabu-shabu takes its name from the sound of thin slices of meat swished through a clear kombu broth, then dipped in ponzu or sesame sauce. Sukiyaki is the richer relative: beef simmered in sweet soy and dipped in raw egg.
Cocoro
A small Japanese-owned group (since 2007) with four London branches. For hotpot, go to the Bloomsbury one near the British Museum, which runs all-you-can-eat sukiyaki and shabu-shabu; check the current price when you book. Dip the beef in the raw egg as intended, and don't skip the glass noodles.
📍 25 Coptic Street, Bloomsbury, WC1A 1NT | 👉 @cocorolondon
Photo: @cocorolondon on Instagram
Eat Tokyo G2 Shabu-Shabu
The Eat Tokyo group's Golders Green outpost is built around shabu-shabu, with a choice of broths and a two-hour all-you-can-eat deal that also takes in sushi and cooked dishes. Golders Green is a trek from the centre, but this is a proper shabu-shabu specialist rather than a sushi place with a hotpot page.
📍 628 Finchley Road, Golders Green, NW11 7RR | 👉 @eattokyolondon
Photo: @eattokyolondon on Instagram
Korean jeongol (전골)
Jeongol is Korea's sharing hotpot, a bigger, table-cooked cousin of jjigae (stew). The famous one is budae jeongol, or army stew: Spam, sausages, kimchi, ramyeon and a slice of cheese, a dish that grew out of US army base supplies after the Korean War.
Kangnam Pocha
A small, plain Korean pub on Drury Lane, popular with Korean students, where nearly every table orders gamjatang (pork backbone and potato stew). Get the jeongol size, which feeds three or four, and it keeps bubbling on a burner at the table. Expect a queue.
📍 176 Drury Lane, Covent Garden, WC2B 5QF | 👉 @kangnam_pocha
Photo: @kangnam_pocha on Instagram
3KOBROS
Run by three Korean brothers on the Isle of Dogs, with a DIY jeongol section on the menu: budae jeongol, a halal bulgogi and mushroom jeongol, and a ramyeon jeongol, all with extra ingredients you can add as you go. Handy if you work in Canary Wharf, and one of the few Korean kitchens in London with halal options.
📍 240 Westferry Road, Isle of Dogs, E14 3RQ | 👉 @3kobros
Photo: @3kobros on Instagram
Also worth knowing
Haidilao is the name everyone knows, with branches off Piccadilly Circus and at The O2. Go for the service and the hand-pulled noodle show. Happy Lamb in Holborn does Mongolian hotpot: clear herbal bone broth and thinly sliced lamb. Eating alone? Yangguofu Malatang on Charing Cross Road is pay-by-weight, one bowl, no group needed.
First time? Three things to know
Order a split pot so the table isn't held hostage by the person who wants it hottest. Make your sauce before the broth boils (sesame paste plus garlic and coriander is a safe start, sacha if it's on offer). And save the noodles for the end, when the broth has picked up everything that's been cooked in it.
What's your hotpot order, and where do you go for it? Tell us below 👇
Enjoyed this? Check out More ESEA food → and this month's events →
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