Shortly after our late lunch at Din Tai Fung, Mimi and I met up with our friend Gary who kindly booked a reservation at Mala Yuanyang Hotpot. Mala (马辣) is an all you can eat joint with a few choices in broth to cook your food in. We opted to go for a split pot of spicy (an herbal blend with a kick) and mild. The meat selection consisted of Black Angus beef, sirloin, lamb and chicken.

Unlike other all you can eat shabu-shabu/hotpot places we have been to where you end up wasting time while waiters bring you more food, at Mala there is an entire buffet section with seafood, veggies and an assortment of other stuff. So while you wait for the meat orders to arrive you can busy yourself with eating other tasty things or mixing your own custom dipping sauce.

Speaking of tasty things, Mala also has a great ice cream section in the dessert portion of the buffet filled with Haagen-Dazs and Movenpick. We were running out of time so I had to quickly help myself to two cones packed with 6 scoops in the last few minutes of our two-hour time slot. Also of note was their drink section filled with glass bottled Coke and Sprite, various tea (to brew on your own) and other popular things on tap.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take too many pictures because I don’t find mounds of raw food all that photogenic (In reality, I was just too busy gorging myself within the time limit to pick up my camera). It was a fun experience with nice quality and huge selection for this type of restaurant.

The untainted broth just before cooking.

Our first haul from the buffet section.

Layers upon layers of veggies…

dumplings, chicken, tofu and…

seafood.

A stack of meat trays was waiting for us after our return from selecting seafood and vegetables.

Soaking up the flavor within the broth.

I’m probably ridiculous but this food stall actually caught my attention after the dinner at Mala. Fortunately Gary and Mimi were moving fast so I didn’t have time to try any.