Zhangliang Malatang

We have never experienced something like this place before. We are adventurous eaters, but not much. We came in and they show you where you sit. Then you go to the self service section and get a clean bowl and clean tongs. You choose the items you want, which they charge by weight. We had no idea what we were doing, but they told us what everything was, helped us avoid items for dietary restrictions we had, and even warned us to be careful because it was our first time and it's easy to choose more than you can eat. I must have asked for the names of 10 different items, and they even spent the time translating amongst each other to make sure I knew the name of everything I was choosing. Once you've made your selections, you get to the register. At the register, they have cold drinks, and a page with the 4 soup base flavors that they use to cook your items. They explained each one to us, weighed our items, tagged them and gave us a coordinating tag so we knew we were getting what we handed them back to us. After a few quick moments, our soups were ready and they even helped our kids bring theirs back to their table. Once we had our food, there was a bar by the steps that gives you every condiment you could possibly think you'd need. They also offer plastic works and spoons, disposable chopsticks, large reusable soup spoons, and bowls to put condiments in if you want a ton like we did. While we were eating, they checked on us because they knew we were new. I didn't feel out of place even though I didn't know what we were doing. They were so kind, helpful, and committed to making sure we had a great experience. We had a GREAT time!

The food are really good, cooked well and well seasoned. But the server girl with no glasses are very rude. She throw the order number at me. VERY RUDE. No smile

The food was good and my friend wrote a review about the girl with no glasses, but I also wanted to write one about the girl with glasses. We went here before and maybe that day wasn’t the day for them but the other service girl WITH GLASSES. Was very quiet and I could barely hear her, there was no smile on her face either.

It's a cute idea where you grab what you want and then you pay per pound. However there were several issues with my visit. First, there is absolutely no transparency on the price. When I inquired, the cashier/waiter told me it's $3.99 per pound of food based on the weight. Naturally, I thought that was a pretty good deal. Then we went to pay, it was almost $40 for two people with 1lb of food each. Also keep in mind, they make you put food into this huge and heavy bowl where it will be included in the total weight at the end. It all quickly became gimmicky. Second, one of the restaurant employees was next to us also picking from a very tight space of food. I observed that she picked up a very small portion and then she proceeded to the cashier. I'm thinking, ok I guess she just needs to be scanned through, but no. The restaurant employee had to pay for their own food! Now it all made sense to me why they were picking so little. That's absurd to me from someone who used to operate a small restaurant. We always provide food for our employees. Of course not unlimited but we would always cover lunch and/or dinner depending on the hours of operations. Finally, the food. I got the dry pot stir fry. The taste was good but without any warning, they put a ton of chunky peanuts in the stir fry. Thankfully I'm not allergic to peanuts but some warning would be good. Also, just a personal preference, it just sabotage the dish rather than complimentary. My husband got the original ma la soup base. I have never tasted ma la soup based with milk. It seems like they mixed it with some sort of milky based. Again, the pictures they have on the counter doesn't really show the soup base colors because it was filled with meats. Overall, I was so excited to visit because I love ma la but this is a big no for me. Save your time and save your money. Overall, I would not recommend.

The stir fried pot is my favorite and great price for small stomach. Nice and friendly service too!

All the meatballs in the store are spoiled and sour. Reporting to the boss did not resolve the issue at all. Truly disappointing.

Honestly, very disappointing from the start. I was out with my brother the other day and we had decided to grab some brunch at this spot. There's a wide selection of foods but I almost lost my appetite from seeing some flies crawl all over the food, it was really unsanitary. I still it gave it a shot though, and a couple hours later unfortunately, the food gave me diarrhea. When they were making the food I could see them put seasoning packets into the soup base. This entire establishment is nothing less than a shady cash grab meant to lure unsuspecting people to spend their money and time with food that is unsanitary and unclean. Later that night, we were on a call with our best friends and we talked about our terrible experience here, and one of my brother's friends used to work there, surprisingly, before she got fired for what seemed to be "not smiling at a customer". Usually she has a friendly and cheery attitude with everyone she meets, but it was that one day she got sick and was later fired during that following week. The boss confronted her and told her to not do it again as if he was letting her off the hook, but he let his errand boy fire her because he was too scared to say it himself. What kind of respect is that? Among co-workers and their boss? The guy is stingy as hell and can't muster up the courage to confront their workers properly. There's zero communication whatsoever, if I really could give this place 0 stars I would. The food, the environment, the treatment of its own workers, this place shouldn't be in any consideration of any person.

Friendly service This is a good spot to go to if you have a hot pot craving but don't want to do AYCW

The best malatang ever in Chinatown!!! I would say this is on the expensive side because my bowl ended up being around $36 after adding a whole variety of stuff, but I’m actually surprised I managed to finish it in one sitting when my bowl was humongous 😅 Bc of how pricey my bowl was I was given a free drink from the fridge which is awesome! I got their original mala flavor which wasn’t really that spicy so I’ll try it spicier the next time. The staff are very efficient when processing your payment as well as refilling stuff. I’m would say it is a little cramped on the first floor but they see to have a second floor as well. I’m very glad I went here right before their rush happened.

We are returning customers and this time we ordered 3 take outs during the busy hours, and one of the orders had missing items of my beef, lamb, fish filet, octopus, and lettuce. It is literally almost a pound of items missing and mostly soup base in the take out. We called in the restaurant to report about this (we called twice because we found out it was missing beef and lamb at first, then we found out there were more missing items) so we hope to resolve this issue. The person (sounds like the owner) answered the call admits that they found our orders of beef and lamb in the kitchen but did not admit that they are missing others. He is rude and interrupts our dispute every time we try to clarify what items were missing. He even reiterates about other items (rice noodle) that we did not mention about, which were irrelevant to our problem. He later changes his words and saying that we are lying to them, but why would a customer call in twice and lie about the food? It was ridiculous because we selected our own items and picked up our own food in the restaurant. But the guy only responded in a terrible attitude that he can only afford a 25% discount next time we dine and no apology. Not returning to this restaurant anymore.