All-you-can-eat Chongqing hotpot lands in Porta Venezia, and we went in the dead middle of August to try it!
Hotpot in August Is Not a Mistake
In Chongqing, nobody waits for the weather to cool down. August hits 40 degrees, the humidity sits on the city like a wet towel, and people still line up for a bubbling pot of chili oil at 9pm, sweating through their shirts on purpose. The logic is old and slightly unhinged: you fight heat with heat, you sweat it out, you feel better after. So when we walked into Hui Hotpot in mid-August, with Milan on Ferragosto autopilot and half of Porta Venezia shuttered, we were not being brave. We were being accurate.
Hui is a serious name back home, with hundreds of locations across southern China, and Milan is its first Italian address. The format is all-you-can-eat: one fixed price, one boiling pot, unlimited runs at the ingredient counter. It sits at Viale Vittorio Veneto 28, which is not Sarpi, and that matters. Porta Venezia now has enough Asian openings to function as Milan’s second Chinatown, whether or not anyone has said it out loud yet.
The Vibe
The room is enormous, which is the first thing that reads as authentically Chinese rather than authentically Milanese. Hotpot needs volume: long tables, groups of six, that low industrial roar of twenty pots going at once. Hui has taken a space that used to feel like a cocktail bar and filled it with induction wells, split pots, and a lot of red. The air conditioning is serious, which in mid-August is not a small detail!
The best design decision is also the smallest: every table has a covered basket for your bag and jacket, so you do not leave smelling like a chili oil incident. Service is fast and friendly, more efficient than warm, which is correct for this format. Book ahead on weekends. There is no time limit on weekdays, but peak weekend slots can run in turns, so a 7:30pm reservation is not the same experience as a 9:30pm one.
The Food
Start with the broth, because everything else is downstream of it. The split pot lets you run málà on one side and something gentle on the other, and the Chongqing red is the reason to come: heavy on dried chili, properly numbing from Sichuan peppercorn, oily in exactly the way it is supposed to be. It is dialed a notch below what you would get in Jiefangbei, but it has not been flattened into tomato soup with ambitions. The clear chicken broth is a real broth rather than hot water, and the tom yum is the crowd-pleaser for anyone still negotiating with spice.
Then the sauce bar, which is where amateurs lose. Sesame paste as your base, raw garlic, chopped scallion, chili oil, a splash of rice vinegar, and stop there. At the ingredient counter the strong picks are the frozen-rolled beef and lamb, tofu skin, enoki, fish balls, and the wide sweet potato noodles that soak up everything at the bottom of the pot. The seafood is fresh but fairly basic, and the greens are there to do a job, not to impress. The fruit counter at the end is a thoughtful landing.
The Verdict
The math is the argument. Lunch lands around €24, dinner around €33 on weekdays and closer to €36 on weekends, drinks excluded, and drinks are where the bill quietly grows. Order beer for four people and your cheap hotpot is suddenly a normal Milan dinner. Even so, for two hours of unlimited protein and a table that turns into a group project, it is one of the better value propositions in the center right now.
If you want Chongqing at full volume, or a broth somebody has been fussing over for a decade, you go elsewhere and pay à la carte. Hui is a chain doing chain things well: consistent, comfortable, legible for beginners, forgiving if half your table is scared of chili. Bring five friends, book early, wear something you can wash, and go hungry!
Huì Hotpot 张崇会火锅
📍 Address: Viale Vittorio Veneto 28, 20124 Milano
🌐 Website & Instagram: @huihotpot_milano
Have you tried Hui Hotpot yet? Let us know your opinion, and do not forget to bookmark chinatownmilano.it for more hotpot spots around the city and follow us on social media @chinatownmilano.it .
