Little Lamb

There is a yet another hot pot restaurant that just opened in Box Hill, Little Lamb. I had thought it was the same franchise as the one in Hong Kong, which I went to when I was there on holiday. It was excellent so I suggested that we go eat there. Dennis made the arrangements and Patrick, Kevin, Candy and I joined him for dinner there. It turned out Little Lamb is a franchise from China, rather than the Hong Kong one which is Little Sheep. I would have known they were different if we knew the English name originally, but we only knew the Chinese name, which was so similar. Little Lamb is xiao mei yang (little sheep tail) while Little Sheep is xiao fei yang (little fat sheep).

We walked into the restaurant on the corner of Station Street and Whitehorse Road, which used to be the New Shanghai Dumpling place. Once you step in, the smell of the hot pot soup hits you like a jab from Mohammed Ali. It was everywhere and took a while to get used to. I could smell though that this soup would be good already. The herbal medicines in the soup wasn't as strong as some places.

We were shown a table upstairs and seated at a table with a induction hot plate. This was a good sign already for a few reasons. Firstly, the pot would be boiling fast as induction hot plates are very efficient compared to the gas ones where we sit around waiting forever and need to get the gas changed constantly. I could go into the physics of induction but it would take up the whole post, so its better if you click on the link (if you're a geek and want to know) and read it at Wikipedia. You can then follow the link to induction cookers, or click here if you're too lazy. Second advantage of having an induction hot plate is that it was embedded into the table, meaning the actual pot itself was not too high and we could see what was inside it.

After ordering our drinks (the soy drink is very nice), we ticked as many boxes on the election like green sheet as we could. We ticked as many boxes above, below and around the line as we could. The dilemma with buffets is whether to grab as much as you can so you don't miss out on anything or be conservative and try a few things to see how big the serving sizes were. We went the order everything route as we were all starving and saw the serving sizes from other tables. Oh I forgot to mention that you can choose to have buffet ($20) or a la carte. Obviously we chose buffet. This would turn out to be a very wise move.

So here is the ying yang (mixed) soup that we chose. Don't worry, the hot soup looks more threatening than it is. It wasn't too hot, well for me anyway. Too hot is when my lips start to expand in size like I've had botox injections. The soup here was only mild and I didn't even need water to suppress the spiciness. The soup was very nice, with a good mixture of herbal medicine to provide flavour without making it too overpowering.


There was a lot of dishes you can order from. Our favourites were the beef, lamb, abalone mushroom, fish balls, rice sticks, squid and various vegetables. The various types of balls here are quite good. They're not your generice supermarket flour types. They acutally tasted like they were hand made and contained some ingredients of what they were labelled as. The fish and squid balls were definitely good. The beef balls were a bit mince like, which I didn't like but some others did. The beef and lamb slices were very good. We ordered 11 plates of beef and 5 of lamb all up.


They even had desserts, amazing. We had peanut and sesame dumplings and these taro and red bean Chinese pancakes. The dumplings were great, with the peanut one better in my opinion. These Chinese pancakes (guo bing) were extremely delicious. The taro one was better as the skin tasted nicer and the filling was beautifully sweet.


All up, I can definitely recommend this place. The service was very fast and accomodating. Either due to it still being new and hence trying to provide better service, or if the service really is that good, I don't know. The hot pot soup, almost the single most important thing in hot pot, is very nice. The second most important thing, the dishes, were also good. Unlimited servings of beef and lamb so we don't have to push one tiny plate around and say "I'm full, you eat it" anymore. We ate till we couldn't eat anymore. The hand made balls were nice. There was quite a few choices for various other things. Finally, the best thing was that they had these delicious desserts as part of the buffet as well.

I think the buffet option is definitely the way to go. There's slightly more choices in the a la carte section but having buffet does not limit you from ordering from the a la carte menu, so you can have the best of both worlds. We worked out that had we chose a la carte, we would each be looking at about $40 instead of $20. This is about right as at other hot pot places, we do spend about that much.

A last word of warning. Wear clothes that are easy to wash and you don't mind getting a bit oily and smelling like Chinese herbal medicine. Dennis and I were prepared from previous hot pot experiences and wore jumpers that we were ready to wash anyway. The steam from the hot pot gets into your clothes and skin really well. You don't smell it until you leave and then its everywhere. Even my camera smells of hot pot now.

Overall Rating: 14/20, Food and service is very good. Fantastic value for money if you get the buffet.

Scores: 1-9: Unacceptable, don't bother. 10-11: Just OK,some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13: Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: An outstanding experience. 19-20: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.