Sichuan Restaurant

A friend from overseas was visiting so a group of us went to eat hot pot, such is our traditional catch up meal. We went to Sichuan Restaurant on Carrington Road in Box Hill. This place offered an all you can eat type hot pot, much like many other hot pot houses like Little Lamb and Golden House.

We were seated in a small private room, which was good and bad. It was good because we were extremely loud and were isolated mostly from the noise outside. The bad part was that it was really really hard to attract the waitresses to get some service. Our first order of food arrived rather quickly. But the second order took an eternity, which left us just sitting there watching the pot of soup boil dry while being extremely hungry.

In regards to the actual food types available, the $23 all you can eat meal doesn't offer much. There was only a few choices of meats and simple vegetables. You also get to choose cold dishes. We chose some marinated beef, which we got. Then another plate came out and even though we started to eat it already, a waitress came and said it was for the wrong table and took it away. Seeing as it is all you can eat and we already started eating it, why would you take it away.

The service was pretty shocking. One waitress spilt two beers since she poured it so that there was so much froth, which meant the froth overflowed. So we lost a big part of the beer, which she didn't bother to replace. And like I said earlier, getting their attention to order more food was really really hard. Even when we did order it, we waited and waited. Only when we got sick of waiting did we find out that they had lost our order form.



This place offers nothing special. So for the same price as Little Lamb, the food is much worse with less variety and the service is terrible. Little Lamb, back when they had opened for less than 3 months, had really good service the 4 times I went. It could be that they were eager to please since they were newly opened. I haven't been back in a while so can't vouch for how the service is now. But the food is definitely better. You can even get dessert.

Overall Rating: 11/20, It's good value if compared to non all you can eat hot pot places. But for the same price, you can get better food and service at Little Lamb, about 200 metres down the road.

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.