Take-out: Yes Good for Kids: Yes Good for Groups: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range $11-30
1 review
Shira Conyer
One of the largest stalls in the Golden Shopping Mall basement, this place specializes in "ma la tang" or hot and numbing soups. Pictures of their offerings are plastered floor to ceiling right outside, with the written menu above the ordering counter inside. They have a few booths across the counter, and some counter seating. Around the corner, they have an additional dining room with booths. There is also a store with this name in the New World Mall, not sure if they're affiliated.
We tried the spicy beef ma la tang, which came in a pretty big white takeout bowl, topped with thin sliced, fatty edged beef. It was a multi-person effort to mix up the ingredients: one to mix, several to catch things falling out. These soups were chock full of ingredients, and we kept finding something new as we ate. Besides the beef, which were ok, there were thick vermicelli noodles, rice cake, wood ear, tofu, napa cabbage, Shanghai bok choy, tofu skins, and probably more. The soup was very oily, and not initially very spicy, but as we ate our way through, the numbing heat started to build up. Still, I wouldn't say it was very spicy; I think one would need to go through the effort of convincing the staff that you can take spicier when you order.
Overall, the ma la tang was ok but I wasn't wowed. What did wow the group, surprisingly, was a side order of tofu skins that were more tender than the ones in the soup and tossed in a seductive blend of sauce that tasted of numbing spice, sesame oil, and other flavors I couldn't tease out.
One of the largest stalls in the Golden Shopping Mall basement, this place specializes in "ma la tang" or hot and numbing soups. Pictures of their offerings are plastered floor to ceiling right outside, with the written menu above the ordering counter inside. They have a few booths across the counter, and some counter seating. Around the corner, they have an additional dining room with booths. There is also a store with this name in the New World Mall, not sure if they're affiliated.
We tried the spicy beef ma la tang, which came in a pretty big white takeout bowl, topped with thin sliced, fatty edged beef. It was a multi-person effort to mix up the ingredients: one to mix, several to catch things falling out. These soups were chock full of ingredients, and we kept finding something new as we ate. Besides the beef, which were ok, there were thick vermicelli noodles, rice cake, wood ear, tofu, napa cabbage, Shanghai bok choy, tofu skins, and probably more. The soup was very oily, and not initially very spicy, but as we ate our way through, the numbing heat started to build up. Still, I wouldn't say it was very spicy; I think one would need to go through the effort of convincing the staff that you can take spicier when you order.
Overall, the ma la tang was ok but I wasn't wowed. What did wow the group, surprisingly, was a side order of tofu skins that were more tender than the ones in the soup and tossed in a seductive blend of sauce that tasted of numbing spice, sesame oil, and other flavors I couldn't tease out.