100 Degree Hot Pot Buffet

If you’ve ever visited or lived in China, you’ll know how much the locals love community. Community mah jong? A+! Community exercise? A+! Simple, delicious community restaurant to enjoy with all your extended family and friends? A+!
100 degrees pretty readily captures the idea of community. Wander in any day of the night and it will be predictably full of young Chinese extended families enjoying hot pot. Sometimes there is a wait, so book ahead! They’re pretty good with calling you if a vacancy pops up earlier than they predicted too!
The concept of hot pot (or steamboat as the Cantonese Chinese call it) is pretty simple: you get your own Bunsen burner, light it and pop a bowl of soup on top. Then you dip raw meat slices, raw vegetables, tofu, fish and seafood into the soup to cook. Then you nom! (NB: the soup is purely for cooking & flavoring! Don’t drink it or sip it or you might look out of place!)
In Japan they call this style of food «shabu shabu.» In Mandarin Chinese, it’s «xiabu xiabu» (same pronunciation, though). In Brisbane, I call it yummy.
There are 4 soup options: mushroom, satay, chilli and a lemon flavored one. Ordinarily I would go right for the chilli and satay — which is the way I’ve seen locals do it in China. But this time, I was dining with a chili-​phobe, so we opted for satay and mushrooms.
There’s a veritable smörgåsbord of raw meats, mounds of seafood (the lobster balls are awesome!) and of course veggies and tofu. Mix yourself a little bowl of dipping sauce from soy, sesame oil & chilli or peanut, sesame sauce and shallots and chomp away to your hearts’ content.
There are also a couple of pre-​made stirfries available, as well as some dumplings, spring rolls, fried fish etc.
But for me, the best part was that they serve mantou! Mantou are little white steamed or grilled bread dumplings. They have no discernible sweet or savoury flavour, so can be eaten either way. My preference is to dunk them in sticky condensed milk. I used to eat these as a sweet treat at my uni dining hall in China, and literally haven’t had them since 2008. It really brought home that feeling of community & Chinese comfort food.
Oh, and it’s $ 28.80 for all you can eat incl soft drink & tea. Or 14.40 if you’re a kid under 120 cm. Kids under three are free! So, there’s no reason why not to go enjoy some comfort food with the Chinese community!

If there is one food I miss from when I lived in China, it is definitely hot pot. It looks like I’m not the only one because 100 degree was teeming with customers when we visited.
100 Degree is a hot pot buffet. $ 28.80 gets you a pot with broth (4 choices) and access to a huge variety of hot pot fillers (e.g., meat, veggies, seafood, tofu, eggs, noodles… you name it, they have it), sauces to dip food in, non-​alcoholic drinks (winter melon tea was a sight for sore eyes), hot dishes (e.g., veggies in oyster sauce, salt and pepper squid), dumplings, spring rolls, plain and fried rice and ice cream. Phew! In other words, make sure you go in hungry.
If you are a hot pot newbie, the concept is actually pretty simple. You tell the waiter what broth you want in your pot, pay, go to the buffet and pick up whatever you want to chuck in the pot, wait for it to boil, fish it out and let it cool for a bit, then dip it in some sauce and voi la, you’re good to go.
The restaurant is licensed, so you can pay extra for wine, beer or sake. The staff were really helpful, especially when the pots started bubbling all over the place. Don’t worry — if your table isn’t a complete mess after eating hot pot, you’re probably doing it wrong.
I confess I’m not actually a huge fan of buffets because I have a hard time controlling my gluttonous tendencies and invariably end up feeling ill. My bad. Close on $ 30 is pricey enough to make me feel inclined to pig out, especially since we weren’t eating any of the meat/​seafood. I thought the soup bases were ok but was disappointed the hot and spicy soup base wasn’t actually spicy (1 out of 5 on the chilli scale for me). However, this place gets a definite thumbs up from me for providing tonnes of foods like lotus root and several kinds of mushroom and beancurd-​based products which I haven’t seen since I was in China and miss desperately. It was hot pot and it was good!
If you’re like me and in great need of a hot pot fix or are just looking to try something a little bit different, give 100 Degree a go.