Founded in 2015, Dingniu Beef Pot is a typical restaurant that follows the Chaoshan beef hot pot trend. Nowadays, the most eye-catching words of the restaurant are the words "charcoal-grilled bullfrog" and "Hainan Wenchang chicken", which are also the protagonists of the menu. First-time diners may have a hard time believing that this is a Chaoshan beef hot pot restaurant without confirmation from the staff. This also illustrates the survival status of the Chaoshan beef pot industry in Suzhou.
The material of Dingniu pot is Yunnan-Guichuan local cattle, which is basically consistent with the industry. However, the official claim of "fresh beef delivered directly from the ranch within 6 hours" is a bit confusing. After all, it is difficult to grasp the time it takes for cattle to be transported from the pasture to the slaughterhouse and then to the store, and it may be that the statement is "no more than 6 hours from the slaughterhouse to the table". The restaurant's beef is delivered once a day, so it's best for diners who want to eat the original taste to have lunch.
The Ding Beef Meat Cutting Kitchen is relatively clean, and its performance is worthy of recognition. But the master's knife work is average, and the presentation is also a little casual. Fortunately, each plate of beef has flowers and paper reminders, so the dining experience of diners is not too bad.
Dingniu provides a total of 4 kinds of pot bases to choose from, including the signature Dingniu pot (clear soup pot), tomato beef brisket pot, spicy beef offal pot (mandarin duck pot), and tomato spicy beef offal pot (mandarin duck pot).
Hand-made beef balls are a recommended dish for the chef of the restaurant, and the official WeChat public account also recommends them. It should be noted that hand-beaten beef balls need to be manually beaten for at least 40 minutes, and the yield is not high. The price of Dingniu hand-beaten beef balls is low and unlimited, the input is not proportional to the output, and the possibility of hand-beating is not high. We speculate that it must have been made by a machine in the back kitchen, which is the unwritten rule in the industry - a young man hammers the beef in the hall while the machine in the back kitchen works hard. What's more, Dingniu did not arrange personnel to carry out the beef beating "performance", and the beef balls produced by the machine were actually not inferior.
The private dining room in the restaurant is only for Gong Chaozhou diners, which is not good news for beef hot pot diners. The restaurant environment is bright, and the tableware cleanliness is acceptable. The waiters are not enthusiastic, but are responsive to diners.
