No.1 Malatang - Burwood — Restaurant in Sydney

This isn’t Yang Guo Fu, it’s actually No.1 Malatang. Doesn’t make too much of a difference, but I gave this place a try and I found the experience to be terrible.

My uncooked bowl was placed on the chopsticks tray, where a lot of people were trying to get their cutlery - super unsanitary (esp during this time). Not a large selection of ingredients either. Uncooked bowls were placed on top of each other, with the bottom of the bowls touching the food in other ones. The register staff was super rude and dismissive, was talking to 3 other people and ignored me while I was paying and ordering my soup.

My chicken soup was NOT cooked in the restaurant, but somewhere else, as another staff member carried my bowl somewhere else and came back with soup in it. Very dodgy.

My partner ordered the tomato soup, which was the worst tomato soup we’ve had - as it was just the original base with some chopped tomatoes in it. She had waited 35+ minutes for her bowl to be cooked, as they started cooking food for people who had arrived later before us. Some of the larger groups got their food in ~10 minutes, so we brought this up to the register lady. She started becoming defensive and saying that it usually takes 35mins to cook malatang anyway and acted like I didn’t know better. I have had better and cheaper malatang at other places where I got my food in under 15 minutes. Another lady who was there before us hadn’t gotten her food either and the register lady started arguing with her.

The register lady had also mixed up another group’s order where she combined two of their bowls (i think one was supposed to be vegetarian and the other had meat) - and she wasn’t apologetic, she just kept insisting that they could seperate it themselves.

I really don’t think I could recommend this place after my experience. I don’t think I would come here again, there are better places in Burwood of all places for malatang. It was expensive for such a small bowl, long wait time, unsanitary practices and unsavoury...

Self service. Long wait for food. Long wait for a table. Expensive.

Have decided to try this place out after a friend's recommendation but I was extremely disappointed. It was busy, but it was self service. The process is to grab a bowl, and select the ingredients you want then to cook. The bowl gets weighed at the Cashier and they cook it for you. You then get to choose the sauce at the end... But beware, if you do try it for the first time, do not select too many ingredients. It all adds to the weight in the end. $12/500g might not sound much but the size of the bowl can fit 2kg or more.

After waiting 30 mins for my food to be cooked, I was presented with a bowl full of soup and the various ingredients I selected. The broth they used was northern Chinese in flavour and was a little spicy. (Despite asking for it to be non spicy).

Being a first time, and not really knowing what sauce to pick, the girl at the counter had trouble explaining what each sauce was and I simply ended getting a bit of everything (except the chilli oil).

In the end, it was a bit bowl of mixed flavours which ended up begin inedible. I won't give it 1 star because it is partly my own choice of ingredients, but not having any help from the staff just doesn't work for me. I won't...

Decent... if you're chinese. Ordered malatang and I waited and waited. Thought they were just busy but I started to notice that something wasn't right as it passed peak time and my order was still not ready. The man sitting in front of me who had ordered later than me had started eating. The people, two tables away who had started eating when I had just ordered, had finished and even the new group of 3 after them (who had arrived much later than me) had gotten their food. Had they forgot about my order? After 20+mins of waiting and watching the people who had ordered later than me eat, I went up to ask. But what was more suprising was that the staff hadnt forgotten about it. The staff knew my order number before I had even showed it to her. 5-10 more mins she said.

Normally orders were done in order but i guess that wasn't the case here. My mistake was that I spoke to the staff in english when they clearly prioritised their chinese customers.

Its safe to say I won't be coming here again. There are other places with the same quality of food but offer basic service (which this place clearly does not provide for its...