mala tang 麻辣烫

hot pot. six of us came here for dinner. it was my first time using an individual small pot but it proved to be really useful since half our table wanted the spicybrothand the other half wanted mild. for appetizers we had the dan dan noodles (delicious!), ma po tofu (spicy, really tasty) and the green onion pancakes (good). for the hot pot we ordered chicken, beef, pork, lamb, mushrooms, tofu, chinese cabbage, and bean sprouts. ended up ordering more chicken and beef. and sesame balls for dessert... six on a plate, wish we had ordered more than one plate! :) a really good meal and i can't wait to go back.

side note: i was a little disappointed that our reservation got us a table by the bathroom.

walked in blind and had an absolutely wonderful experience. definitely a step out of my comfort zone with the diy style. never expected i'd be served raw meats and veggies until they were presented on the table. the sauce bar was fun and we got to design our own particular sauce concoction. food was really good. i got the surf n turf with mala beef and scallops and my boyfriend got the chicken with the chinese veggies and malabroth(not too spicy-great flavor) we were both skeptical about cooking the meat throughly but after a little direction we had no problem. finished the entire meal with no leftovers to spare.

will definitely be coming back.

really interesting and good food. i had never had hot pot food until coming here and it was really good. i had the traditionalbrothand chinese vegetables with the sirloin steak. service was fast and friendly the waitress even explained things to me on how to order and i watched the other patrons for tips on what to do. great atmosphere it was really busy, a hidden gem for sure.

we loved this place. the food was fantastic- so fresh. dipping in the hotbrothmade dinner fun and we loved all the sauces. service was wonderful- super helpful and friendly.

when b and i first lived together in santa monica, ca, our downstairs neighbors would often set up a hot pot on their patio and cook meat and vegetables for dinner. they also set up a torch lamp that shone light directly up into our bedroom rather than down onto their dinner (grrr), but the point is that we observed a lot of hot pot eating in our first few years together. for some reason, despite seeing and smelling hot pot-style cooking every week, it took almost eight years together before we ever sat down to a hot pot of our very own. thank you to the new mala tang in arlington for providing us with that opportunity. hot pot cooking is what it sounds like: it's a hot pot full ofbroththat you dip thin slices of meat or veggies in to cook. different cultures have different names for it (shabu shabu, anyone?) and different levels of spice and flavor in the broth. mala tang specializes in sichuan-style hot pot, which uses the mouth-numbing sichuan peppercorn for flavor. (mala translat

not too good. thebrothwasn't good was pretty low on flavor. their idea of spicy was to add more schezuan pepper. while i love it, the stuff has a weird taste and interesting tongue numbing characteristics. the mouth can only take so much of it and beyond that goodness is compromised.


-----03 jun, 2011-----

the build your own hot pot cost me $25. i could have done a better job reading the menu and it probably would have been less, but i ordered the exact same thing everyone i was with ordered initially: the kitchen prepared meat, 2 veggies, and 1 starch. then, i thought it would be more fun to cook my own do i switched to that. thir lunch (and mine, had i not switched) cost about $10. also, i asked for mybrothto be really spicy. spicy does not mean more szechuan pepper, but more chili. mybrothwas way to tongue numbing to be very good. this is a pretty lame joint and not nearly as fun as the hot pot i ate in singapore.