Mala Tang Chinese & Hot Pot — Restaurant in Arlington

We decided to have dinner for my mother-in-law's birthday after a quick trip to MGM National Harbor. It was a last minute outing, and being the weekend and having seven people in our group we tried to get reservations wherever we could. Mala Tang was the only restaurant that could accommodate us that night, and it would be an understatement to say that we had nothing short of a wonderful experience here. It's located in the George Mason University area, and parking is located in a garage nearby. As a tip, make sure you get the physical ticket rather than paying by card right away, Mala Tang will validate your ticket, effectively making parking free during your meal. Right away, service was just a little slow, but considering it was a busy night with large groups, it was understandable. That gave us plenty of time to figure out what we would order. There are two menus, one with the hot pot offerings and one with cooked dishes to choose from. We ended up going with three sets of hot pot for two combos, which allowed our group to essentially mix and match meats and veggies to share. Everyone got their own personal hot pot, heated by a portable burner. The brisket, wine marinated meat, and mala beef are all highly recommended, but that's not to say that the prawns and flounder were awesome as well. The mala broth is amazing, it is not very spicy at all but packed full of flavor. The sauce bar was well stocked with the usual hot pot sauces. At the end we were very satisfied and full from our meal, and upon mentioning that we were celebrating a birthday, our servers brought out complimentary golden buns with sweet cream for the whole table. And to segue to service quality, it was top notch all around. The servers are all super friendly and patient, and made sure we were well taken care of despite being very busy that night. I would consider this a real gem in Arlington and well worth the trip into the city, highly recommended for a date night or a night out with friends. We will for sure visit again and try the other offerings, which I'm sure will be just as amazing as...

I'm not a huge fan of restaurant hot pot since I consider myself pretty seasoned at making it at home. So when the SO said he wanted to try Mala Tang one cold day, I rolled my eyes discreetly and agreed.

We went around 5 so it wasn't too crowded but by the time we finished our meal at 7, the restaurant was fully packed. The décor is very oriental, even the tables and chairs. It's a pretty clean restaurant, and the service is really good.

We decided to get both the Mala spicy and the mild hot pots. Next time, we'll probably only get mild because they have the mala spice in the sauce bar so you can make it as mala spicy as their broth if you really want. These hot pots are individual-sized but can be shared. We ordered combination entrées so they came with a plate of veggies and white rice. You can choose between American or Chinese veggies. The American veggies include broccoli, potatoes, and white mushrooms, while the Chinese veggies include Napa cabbage, lotus root, and wood ear mushrooms. I would recommend the Chinese veggies.

Opted for milk marinated beef ($21), Mala beef ($19), beef sirloin ($19), tofu ($13), bok choy ($4.50), watercress ($4.50), and fish balls ($7.50). Everything was tasty. I particularly liked the milk marinated beef. It was very flavorful and tender. However, the prices are pretty expensive. $7.50 for fish balls? Fish balls are not $7.50 if you buy them from the store. $13 for tofu?! There are whole BUCKETS of tofu for less than $5. We also ordered an appetizer of dan dan noodles. The dan dan noodles were surprisingly not bad.

Service was spot on. Our server was really friendly and accommodating. I feel like for most hot pot restaurants there's usually not too much service since you cook the food yourself, but our server would come around and make sure everything was OK, take away empty dishes, rearrange the platters so we'd have more room, refill our tea cups for us, and even personally packed all the...

Parking: you have to park in the GMU parking garage located next to the parking garage, the restaurant will validate your parking so don't forget to bring the ticket in with you.

Atmosphere: the interior is very nice, i used to frequent the restaurant that used to be here and mala tang has defiantly improved the interior

Food: beware that if you aren't careful you can end up with a very expensive dinner. the portions of meat and veggies are generous so i'd suggest for 2 meat, 2 veg for 2 people. We got 1 meat, 1 noodles, and 4 veg and spent about $50.

we ended up with a bunch of leftover veggies and meat which i thought we would loose but the restaurant cooks the leftovers and gives it to you in a doggie bag. while not as good as fresh the leftovers were still pretty tasty the next day for lunch.

I'm a meat eater and my gf is a veggie so it was nice that we could each do our own hot pot. the hot pots come in mild and mala tang (spicy), i went mild and added hot sauce and spices to bring it up to my desired heat level. my gf went mala tang and found it very spicy, the waitress was very nice and replaced the spicy soup with a mild version.

hot pot is unlike fondue in that you must actually cook your food not just lightly heat it or dip it in sauce so prepared to spend some time at dinner.

Service: Mixed, we were seated quickly and the wait staff is very friendly. the manager came over and explained how everything worked but our waitress took a little while to come take our order. also it took almost 20 min for our food to come out.

i will definitely see myself making another trip but next time i'll go with a group instead of just 2 people. if we had a group of 4 we would have ordered the same amount of food but had a much lower per person cost. also since the dinner takes a while to cook it's great to have long...