No.1 Malatang - Burwood

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 customer service.