This is a great place to have casual dining with friends because the ambiance is hip and the food presentation is good. The food presentation is artistic and unique. The pork with brown sugar has a very familiar dish name but the dish is very different from the traditional one. This one is more like fried pork. Dry inside and crispy outside. But the presentation is amazing, just like a fried pork mountain on a platform. The string bean dish on the other hand is very flavorful and freshly prepared. The restaurant deco is interesting with a lot of chic slangs from the Chinese community. The waiter was polite and quick to help me settle in. No other customers dined in when I was there, the restaurant was slow in business. The other restaurant workers chatted on their own. The talk was not work-related and loud. Maybe they forgot they were working.

The food was a visual experience!! The ambiance chic! And the service fast! Loved this place , the food, the friends and will definitely recommend!

Nice viby place with good food and fast service. They do have plenty stuff to pick from. Food is well seasoned and good size portions. Liked their soy fried rice.

I've been here enough times to confirm the consistency of the quality. I like the MaLaTang offered at this restaurant the most. You pick the items you want included in your MaLa() from a buffet line, your selection is weighed, and they cook it for you. You get to choose 1 of 3 options of how you'd like your MaLa() cooked -- hot pot, stir fry, or something else. You also choose your level of spiciness . I choose 0 spice, but some friends that think they can usually handle mild find level 1 spice to be surprisingly much spicier than what they expect (typically what they consider a 4-5). I love this place since they cook for you, so unlike other hot pot places, there's no chance for you to over-boil your own food. The broth flavor offered here also is savory, and matches my palate. I think some other hot pot places could improve their broth since it's not memorable or anything better than what you make at home. I will continue to go back for the MaLaTang (soup). My friends think this is their best strength on the menu, too. Although the fries look fancy in presentation (they use dry ice in its own bowl and refill the water in the dry ice bowl to continue the show), I found it too greasy but without much flavor or the right crunch to order again.

Authentic Chinese restaurant with a great vibe, good service, and rare-to-find northeastern 东北 cuisine. I've been here a couple of times now. The restaurant has a great vibe. Wall signs are pretty funny. The service here is awesome. The server today showed me his trick of juggling rice in a bowl to make it a perfect sphere! I was blown away by his creativity and positivity. Besides MaLaTang, they also have a few signature dishes in northeastern cuisine with a bit of modern touch. The Sweet & Sour Pork 锅包肉 here is one of the best I've had in the Bay Area. The meat slice was thin and crispy. This restaurant really stands out with its service and unique offerings.

This is a great place for authentic Chinese food though the prices are a bit high. This pretty much feels like a typical Chinese restaurant in one of those Asian shopping plazas, but this one comes with nice servers that offer great service! You scan a QR code to order any items on their menu but you can also choose to get a customizable bowl of Malatang. You choose a bunch of ingredients and your bowl is then weighed to calculate the price. I think it was about $14 or $15 per pound. There is a good amount of variety for ingredients, but they were missing labels for many options. Also most things here (like instructions for building your bowl) are written in Chinese, so it would be a bit harder to understand what's going on if you didn't read Chinese. The servers are nice enough to explain anything to you if you have questions. Once you weigh your bowl, you can choose between three levels of spice. I chose mild and still found it quite spicy. My bowl came out to be about $18, even though I don't think I got that many ingredients, so I'm not quite sure if the weight of the bowl was deducted from the total weight. The price wasn't exactly the most worth, but everything still tasted great. I ended up packing part of my meal since I was stuffed from trying both my malatang and other menu items. The servers actually pack your to-go box for you which is so nice of them! Overall I'll probably come back if I was really craving something spicy, but I'll explore some other Chinese food options around the area first. Also one thing to note, is that if you go as a group make sure you remember how much your bowl weighed to make it easier to split the bill.