Yangguofu Malatang 杨国福（柏林） — Restaurant in Berlin

I think this place has a lot of potential and could easily become a neighborhood hotspot, but they definitely still have some starting problems to iron out.

I think the food/soup is actually pretty good, but I'd definitely have loved a more spicy & numbing option. It's not really 麻辣. This might be a choice to appeal to European customers, who aren't used to it, but I think they should at least offer the option to have a more authentic level. Nevertheless, it's certainly flavorful and tasty and they have a pretty decent selection of toppings. Also, at least half of the customers were Chinese, which is always a good sign for a Chinese restaurant.

The biggest room for improvement is in the processes and service imo: There aren't any labels on the toppings - The table arrangement seems pretty inefficient and chaotic Bowls and dip ingredients weren't being refilled Table cleanup took pretty long

The overall impression was like it was a restaurant run by people, who have never actually run a restaurant before, but still somehow managed to offer pretty good food. I'll definitely come back again in the future to check out...

I‘ve only managed to eat here once. The other times we tried to come here, there weren’t even places to sit at. It gets very full in the evening so make sure to come early. The price is standard around 3€/100g. One downside is there is a 400g minimum. Which is a lot when you’re not that hungry and you’ll have to at least pay more than 12€. The selection is the best from all the places i’ve tried in Berlin. There’s 2 big fridges with everything from veggies meat seafood to mushrooms and all kinds of tofu and many more. There is a lot of stuff that not many other places have like chicken feet etc. The sauce bar has everything you need (sesame/peanut sauce, chilli oil, cilantro, garlic etc.) The flavour of the broth was good but way too salty! We bought a water bottle to pour into our bowl and it was still too salty 😅 It’s a shame because everything else was very good...

Decent hotpot for 1 - if you wanna solo a hotpot or simply aren’t a fan of sharing food from the same soup, this is a good option for easing you into hotpot culture.

I got a mid sized portion which came out to €15 ish on food alone. It’s nice you get to pick out exactly what you want and how much, which isn’t really a thing in most other restaurants.

The menu has low and mid spice options, I went for mid spice which is totally fine for anyone who eats spicy. If you enjoy spice, recommend you ask for extra spicy!

You also get to make your own dipping sauce though so you could make that extra spicy for the toppings.

When you walk in, you take your own bowl and tongs and pick any selection of meat, fish and veg that you want, which you take to the counter to be weighed.

If you just wanna eat hotpot, this...