Melbourne does not really have a hotpot season so much as a hotpot reflex, but June is when it fires hardest. The temperature drops, the broth goes on, and the queues in Carnegie, Glen Waverley, Clayton and Box Hill start spilling onto the footpath. One review on this list puts it plainly: cold weather equals hotpot season. This is the guide for that craving, refreshed for June 2026.
Two different things answer to the name here, and it helps to know which you want. There is the communal pot, a broth simmering at the centre of the table while you cook your own wagyu, lamb, tongue and prawns. And there is malatang, the self-serve cousin, where you load a basket from the fridge, choose a spice level, and it comes back as one steaming bowl. Both are below. A few much-loved Malaysian kitchens and a vegan pho specialist surface when you search this; they are worth your time, but they are not hotpot, so this list leaves them out.
The scores run close, so the order also weights how often the food gets named in each venue's latest reviews, how positive those mentions are, and how recent they are. That is why the single highest score on the board does not sit at number one: David's Hot Pot leads on sheer volume and freshness of praise, while the very top scores belong to smaller, newer rooms further down.
Curateria score 4.73, and the most-talked-about pot in the city right now: 43 of its last 100 reviews single out a dish and 42 of those run positive. Order the dry mala, the mala xiang guo, alongside a classic malatang bowl at roughly $4.28 per 100g, choose your spice from level 1 to 4, then work through fried chicken skewers and crispy youtiao before the self-serve frozen yoghurt. One caveat that is really a feature: as a regular bluntly notes, they do not do communal hotpot, they do malatang, the wandering cousin of the pot. In Carnegie it is the one everyone is talking about. Most recent praise logged 20 May 2026.
Curateria score 4.84, and a perfect run: all 26 of its dish-naming reviews are positive. This is the communal pot done with theatre. Split the base between the signature spicy mala and the tomato, cook hand-cut lamb and wagyu beef slices, and finish on fried rice cake in brown sugar. Reviewers reach for superlatives, one calling it the best hotpot in Australia, performance and all. Carnegie's heavyweight.
Curateria score 4.74, another clean sweep of 26 positive mentions. The name is the brief: this is where you go when the craving lands after ten. A mala Sichuan base, snowflake beef, beef tongue, tripe and the exploding shrimp-paste balls, then mango bingsu or iced tangyuan to cool down. Warm, cosy, professional, and built for cold nights.
Curateria score 4.06, the CBD workhorse, and the most-reviewed pot on this list alongside David's: 43 dish mentions, 35 of them positive. The draw is reliability and a deep, always-stocked ingredient bar, and the recent addition is a fish maw and chicken collagen broth now poured across every Dragon location. The honest knock, and the reason it sits here rather than higher, is the cramped room. Go for the broth and the consistency, not the elbow space.
Curateria score 4.76, the pick for the northwest, with 33 dish mentions and 31 positive. The owner makes the chilli oil in-house, the soup is notably less oily than the city malatang factories, and the chicken sesame broth has a quiet following. It trades a buzzy room for a calmer one, and it deserves to be busier. One note: its most recent logged mention is older than the rest of this list, from August 2025, so it leans on a longer track record rather than this month's chatter.
Curateria score 4.89, with all 21 dish-naming reviews positive. Pick the Midnight Edition black garlic broth if you want something off the standard menu, take the free fried dough fritters, and build a bowl from a genuinely deep fresh selection. Clean, fresh, friendly, and one of the highest-rated malatang rooms in the southeast.
Curateria score 4.92, the highest on this entire list, off 20 dish mentions that are unanimously positive. The format is maocai, the choose-your-own spicy pot, and the broth is the point: rich, properly numbing, with a chilli kick that still carries depth rather than just heat. In the Monash heartland of Clayton, this is the one to beat on quality. It sits at number seven only because its review volume is still building.
Curateria score 4.73, all 20 dish mentions positive. The global name, and the service is the legend: theatrical, attentive, the kind one reviewer rated worth five to six hours on public transport. Order a set meal for two to three, do not skip the shrimp paste, and let the staff run the show. The most polished communal pot in the CBD.
Curateria score 4.71, with 20 of 21 dish mentions positive across a smaller window. The north-side option, and a generous one: a wide fresh ingredient bar, a well-liked laksa soup base, and a medium-spice bone broth that regulars order on repeat. Around $58 fed two people very well. The only wish on the record is a spicier base.
Curateria score 4.52, all 22 dish mentions positive. The lamb specialist, and the city's most common first hotpot: review after review describes a debut here that converted them. Order the lamb slices and the sour and spicy broth, add banana prawns and beef tongue. The easy, welcoming entry point in the CBD.
Curateria score 3.8, the value play: an all-you-can-eat conveyor format at around $29.90 plus soup for 90 minutes, 36 dish mentions and 33 positive. The spicy beef tallow broth is the order, the mushroom broth wins quiet fans, and the soft-serve finish keeps the table happy. It is fun and well-priced rather than refined, and one reviewer found the broth ran too hot to enjoy. Go for the format, not the finesse.
Curateria score 4.75, 20 of 22 dish mentions positive. The recent win here is choice: soup malatang or a Sichuan dry pot, with newly added broths. Take the dry pot with the handmade noodles, add quail eggs and you tiao. A Glen Waverley regular's regular.
Curateria score 4.84, all 17 dish mentions positive. The specialist: lamb spine and beef spine hotpot, where the broth only gets richer the longer it cooks. Order the lamb spine, the crunchy tripe, and the double-skin milk pudding to finish, and note there is no weekend surcharge. The connoisseur's bone-broth pick, in Kew.
Curateria score 4.61, 22 of 25 dish mentions positive. The west's conveyor-belt buffet, where dinner becomes an activity and the unlimited self-serve bubble tea and dessert do a lot of work. The broth is a separate charge and worth choosing well. Honest note: one regular found the meat variety thinner than the spectacle suggests. Best with a group that wants the show.
Curateria score 4.45, 23 of 25 dish mentions positive. The CBD malatang default, the one reviewers name when they cannot decide what to eat: build your own bowl, choose your broth, free rice. Cheap, comforting and consistent on the food. The one recurring gripe is service on an off day, so come for the bowl.
Curateria score 3.92, 30 of 33 dish mentions positive. The big-occasion venue: hotpot and BBQ on the same table, fresh oysters, blue swimmer crab, wagyu, tiger prawns and salmon sashimi, unlimited drinks, and Basque cheesecake to close. One of the newest and busiest rooms in the city, and spacious with it. This is a spread for a birthday, not a broth purist's shrine.
Curateria score 4.79, all 16 dish mentions positive. The value buffet near Deakin: 50 to 60 dishes, unlimited prawns, crabs and squid, plus free ice cream and fried milk. Reviewers keep using the same word, value. Solo diners and families both eat very well here.
Curateria score 4.48, all 20 dish mentions positive. The Lygon-side communal pot: a proper Sichuan spicy beef tallow broth, M5+ chuck eye roll, a DIY sauce station and a brown-syrup glutinous rice cake to finish. One measured reviewer notes the self-serve bar is a touch limited and the format familiar, but the broth and the beef carry it.
Curateria score 4.3, 24 of 28 dish mentions positive. The neighbourhood gem for the far west, with the family-run warmth to match: friendly staff, fair prices, and a spicy Sichuan broth that reviewers say hits hardest with rice. If you are out Point Cook way, this is the one.
Curateria score 4.76, 16 of 17 dish mentions positive. The fish-broth specialist: a signature fish soup base, wagyu top cut, fish slices and homemade dumplings. A Level 8 Google reviewer rates the fish noodle soup, and the $90 ten-ingredient lunch set is the value move. Different from the mala crowd, and better for it.
Curateria score 4.91, the second-highest on the board, all 12 dish mentions positive. A revolving-belt all-you-can-eat in Box Hill where the mala butter broth and the fresh Chaoshan beef slices are the headline, with a steam pot option that surprises people and self-serve ice cream to close. The score is high and the praise unanimous; it sits at the foot only because its review volume is the smallest here, so treat it as the high-ceiling newcomer to watch.
Hotpot in Melbourne clusters southeast, through Carnegie, Clayton, Glen Waverley, Burwood, Box Hill and Kew, where most of this list lives. The CBD covers the chains and the late nights, Haidilao, Happy Lamb, Dragon and Fishpot among them, while the west and northwest hold their own through Footscray, Ascot Vale and Point Cook. Wherever you are this winter, one of these is close.
How we ranked it: from the latest 100 reviews of each of 1,531 Victorian venues (657 with on-dish mentions), blending the recency-weighted Curateria score with how often, how positively and how recently each venue's food is named, as of June 2026, with no language model run across the review corpus.
Explore more of Melbourne on Discover ->
Every venue here is ranked by its Curateria Score, a recent-review-weighted quality signal that leans on what diners are saying now, not years ago. Keep browsing Melbourne, sorted by Curateria Score, on Discover.
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Melbourne does not really have a hotpot season so much as a hotpot reflex, but June is when it fires hardest. The temperature drops, the broth goes on, and the queues in Carnegie, Glen Waverley, Clayton and Box Hill start spilling onto the footpath. One review on this list puts it plainly: cold weather equals hotpot season. This is the guide for that craving, refreshed for June 2026.
Two different things answer to the name here, and it helps to know which you want. There is the communal pot, a broth simmering at the centre of the table while you cook your own wagyu, lamb, tongue and prawns. And there is malatang, the self-serve cousin, where you load a basket from the fridge, choose a spice level, and it comes back as one steaming bowl. Both are below. A few much-loved Malaysian kitchens and a vegan pho specialist surface when you search this; they are worth your time, but they are not hotpot, so this list leaves them out.
The scores run close, so the order also weights how often the food gets named in each venue's latest reviews, how positive those mentions are, and how recent they are. That is why the single highest score on the board does not sit at number one: David's Hot Pot leads on sheer volume and freshness of praise, while the very top scores belong to smaller, newer rooms further down.
Curateria score 4.73, and the most-talked-about pot in the city right now: 43 of its last 100 reviews single out a dish and 42 of those run positive. Order the dry mala, the mala xiang guo, alongside a classic malatang bowl at roughly $4.28 per 100g, choose your spice from level 1 to 4, then work through fried chicken skewers and crispy youtiao before the self-serve frozen yoghurt. One caveat that is really a feature: as a regular bluntly notes, they do not do communal hotpot, they do malatang, the wandering cousin of the pot. In Carnegie it is the one everyone is talking about. Most recent praise logged 20 May 2026.
Curateria score 4.84, and a perfect run: all 26 of its dish-naming reviews are positive. This is the communal pot done with theatre. Split the base between the signature spicy mala and the tomato, cook hand-cut lamb and wagyu beef slices, and finish on fried rice cake in brown sugar. Reviewers reach for superlatives, one calling it the best hotpot in Australia, performance and all. Carnegie's heavyweight.
Curateria score 4.74, another clean sweep of 26 positive mentions. The name is the brief: this is where you go when the craving lands after ten. A mala Sichuan base, snowflake beef, beef tongue, tripe and the exploding shrimp-paste balls, then mango bingsu or iced tangyuan to cool down. Warm, cosy, professional, and built for cold nights.
Curateria score 4.06, the CBD workhorse, and the most-reviewed pot on this list alongside David's: 43 dish mentions, 35 of them positive. The draw is reliability and a deep, always-stocked ingredient bar, and the recent addition is a fish maw and chicken collagen broth now poured across every Dragon location. The honest knock, and the reason it sits here rather than higher, is the cramped room. Go for the broth and the consistency, not the elbow space.
Curateria score 4.76, the pick for the northwest, with 33 dish mentions and 31 positive. The owner makes the chilli oil in-house, the soup is notably less oily than the city malatang factories, and the chicken sesame broth has a quiet following. It trades a buzzy room for a calmer one, and it deserves to be busier. One note: its most recent logged mention is older than the rest of this list, from August 2025, so it leans on a longer track record rather than this month's chatter.
Curateria score 4.89, with all 21 dish-naming reviews positive. Pick the Midnight Edition black garlic broth if you want something off the standard menu, take the free fried dough fritters, and build a bowl from a genuinely deep fresh selection. Clean, fresh, friendly, and one of the highest-rated malatang rooms in the southeast.
Curateria score 4.92, the highest on this entire list, off 20 dish mentions that are unanimously positive. The format is maocai, the choose-your-own spicy pot, and the broth is the point: rich, properly numbing, with a chilli kick that still carries depth rather than just heat. In the Monash heartland of Clayton, this is the one to beat on quality. It sits at number seven only because its review volume is still building.
Curateria score 4.73, all 20 dish mentions positive. The global name, and the service is the legend: theatrical, attentive, the kind one reviewer rated worth five to six hours on public transport. Order a set meal for two to three, do not skip the shrimp paste, and let the staff run the show. The most polished communal pot in the CBD.
Curateria score 4.71, with 20 of 21 dish mentions positive across a smaller window. The north-side option, and a generous one: a wide fresh ingredient bar, a well-liked laksa soup base, and a medium-spice bone broth that regulars order on repeat. Around $58 fed two people very well. The only wish on the record is a spicier base.
Curateria score 4.52, all 22 dish mentions positive. The lamb specialist, and the city's most common first hotpot: review after review describes a debut here that converted them. Order the lamb slices and the sour and spicy broth, add banana prawns and beef tongue. The easy, welcoming entry point in the CBD.
Curateria score 3.8, the value play: an all-you-can-eat conveyor format at around $29.90 plus soup for 90 minutes, 36 dish mentions and 33 positive. The spicy beef tallow broth is the order, the mushroom broth wins quiet fans, and the soft-serve finish keeps the table happy. It is fun and well-priced rather than refined, and one reviewer found the broth ran too hot to enjoy. Go for the format, not the finesse.
Curateria score 4.75, 20 of 22 dish mentions positive. The recent win here is choice: soup malatang or a Sichuan dry pot, with newly added broths. Take the dry pot with the handmade noodles, add quail eggs and you tiao. A Glen Waverley regular's regular.
Curateria score 4.84, all 17 dish mentions positive. The specialist: lamb spine and beef spine hotpot, where the broth only gets richer the longer it cooks. Order the lamb spine, the crunchy tripe, and the double-skin milk pudding to finish, and note there is no weekend surcharge. The connoisseur's bone-broth pick, in Kew.
Curateria score 4.61, 22 of 25 dish mentions positive. The west's conveyor-belt buffet, where dinner becomes an activity and the unlimited self-serve bubble tea and dessert do a lot of work. The broth is a separate charge and worth choosing well. Honest note: one regular found the meat variety thinner than the spectacle suggests. Best with a group that wants the show.
Curateria score 4.45, 23 of 25 dish mentions positive. The CBD malatang default, the one reviewers name when they cannot decide what to eat: build your own bowl, choose your broth, free rice. Cheap, comforting and consistent on the food. The one recurring gripe is service on an off day, so come for the bowl.
Curateria score 3.92, 30 of 33 dish mentions positive. The big-occasion venue: hotpot and BBQ on the same table, fresh oysters, blue swimmer crab, wagyu, tiger prawns and salmon sashimi, unlimited drinks, and Basque cheesecake to close. One of the newest and busiest rooms in the city, and spacious with it. This is a spread for a birthday, not a broth purist's shrine.
Curateria score 4.79, all 16 dish mentions positive. The value buffet near Deakin: 50 to 60 dishes, unlimited prawns, crabs and squid, plus free ice cream and fried milk. Reviewers keep using the same word, value. Solo diners and families both eat very well here.
Curateria score 4.48, all 20 dish mentions positive. The Lygon-side communal pot: a proper Sichuan spicy beef tallow broth, M5+ chuck eye roll, a DIY sauce station and a brown-syrup glutinous rice cake to finish. One measured reviewer notes the self-serve bar is a touch limited and the format familiar, but the broth and the beef carry it.
Curateria score 4.3, 24 of 28 dish mentions positive. The neighbourhood gem for the far west, with the family-run warmth to match: friendly staff, fair prices, and a spicy Sichuan broth that reviewers say hits hardest with rice. If you are out Point Cook way, this is the one.
Curateria score 4.76, 16 of 17 dish mentions positive. The fish-broth specialist: a signature fish soup base, wagyu top cut, fish slices and homemade dumplings. A Level 8 Google reviewer rates the fish noodle soup, and the $90 ten-ingredient lunch set is the value move. Different from the mala crowd, and better for it.
Curateria score 4.91, the second-highest on the board, all 12 dish mentions positive. A revolving-belt all-you-can-eat in Box Hill where the mala butter broth and the fresh Chaoshan beef slices are the headline, with a steam pot option that surprises people and self-serve ice cream to close. The score is high and the praise unanimous; it sits at the foot only because its review volume is the smallest here, so treat it as the high-ceiling newcomer to watch.
Hotpot in Melbourne clusters southeast, through Carnegie, Clayton, Glen Waverley, Burwood, Box Hill and Kew, where most of this list lives. The CBD covers the chains and the late nights, Haidilao, Happy Lamb, Dragon and Fishpot among them, while the west and northwest hold their own through Footscray, Ascot Vale and Point Cook. Wherever you are this winter, one of these is close.
How we ranked it: from the latest 100 reviews of each of 1,531 Victorian venues (657 with on-dish mentions), blending the recency-weighted Curateria score with how often, how positively and how recently each venue's food is named, as of June 2026, with no language model run across the review corpus.
Explore more of Melbourne on Discover ->
Every venue here is ranked by its Curateria Score, a recent-review-weighted quality signal that leans on what diners are saying now, not years ago. Keep browsing Melbourne, sorted by Curateria Score, on Discover.
More from the Lowdown
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