Zhangliang Malatang — Restaurant in Berkeley

TLDR: THEY DEMAND TIPS!!

When I visited this establishment I was super excited. When the food came out, after I had built my own bowl, built my own sauce, and poured my own water, (and even packed my own leftovers) and I ate I was super satisfied. The food tasted pretty good. Why am I emphasizing that I did everything myself? I understand the concept of Malatang, everything is do it yourself, but if that's the case why was the worker hovering over our shoulders until we selected tip? When we decided we wanted to pay in cash we told him to give us a minute, and he walked away. After conversing more, we realized that we all had pretty big bowls and did everything ourselves and there was no need for a tip. (We are also very obviously college students, not that we can get away with not tipping, but we genuinely believed the service was not worth tipping, otherwise we always budget to tip our kind waiters and service workers). If they had done any of the things I mentioned earlier I would have been happy to tip a couple dollars from all three of us, but they had done nothing, however they did stare us down because we were sitting and chatting 10ish minutes after eating our meals.

Here's where it gets absolutely embarrassing for this restaurant: When we decided it was time to go, before we barely got up, the worker came, scanned our table and mumbled something, and my friend asked him to repeat myself and I was shocked when he said even louder and angrily: "Where is the tip?" and stuck out his hand. All three of us were stunned at his brazen tone. Out of anxiety we pulled some money out of our pocket and handed it to him and with an attitude he took it from us and said in the most entitled tone: "Thank you."

After we left we hovered outside the restaurant's glass doors for 1-2 minutes in shock of what happened and then I realized I had forgotten my phone on the table. When I walked in and before I could even finish asking about my phone he went to the back and gave me my phone with the same entitled "Thank you" and shoved it into my hands. The whole staff without a doubt had seen us outside and they probably would have kept my phone if I hadn't gone back to grab it.

Main takeaway from this: if you have anxiety over tipping, or general anxiety with confrontation or rude wait staff, AVOID THIS PLACE AT ALL COSTS. Due to this incident, my first Malatang experience was ruined and I will not be coming back here again. :)

And if the owner is reading this- Be kinder to your guests because you are in a college town, not everyone can afford to eat out, let alone a tip. So if someone saves their money to eat at your restaurant, be grateful. Word of mouth is powerful, and you better believe that I will never shut up about...

I do not take pride in writing bad reviews nor do I write very many of them but this place has to be the worst service I’ve ever had in Berkeley and I don’t just say that for myself me and my fiancé who are both blind and work with to guide dogs went there today to get some lunch we were very excited about the new place that we were going to go to after our favorite rice bowl place dumb Bori got shut down and this place got put in its respective place. We were met with discrimination and prejudice as I said we work with to service animals both guide dogs fully fledged guide dogs we were told “let me see if I can even seat you in the dining room we were mortified we had never gone through this before here in Berkeley this place needs to be shut down and or staff retrained you cannot discriminate against the disabled nor is Berkeley the place I wish the rice bowl place would’ve never left the man working service today was not only the problem we sat at our table for 6 to 10 minutes before being told that we had to go and get the food ourselves again this was our first time here we had no idea what we were supposed to do the man then informed us that we should both go separately he did not agree to help us get our food or explain to us what the walk-through procedure was there was no Braille there was no audio functions this place is absolutely horrible I would avoid this place at all costs there are much better options here in Berkeley hopefully this place only stays around for a few months they need...

I was really excited to try out this new hot pot place, but unfortunately, my experience left much to be desired. While the concept of choosing your own fresh, varied ingredients was great, the overall process of seating and paying needs a serious overhaul.

When we arrived, no one was at the host desk for over five minutes. We waited patiently, but as more people arrived, a line began to form. We joined the line, assuming it was the process, but it quickly became clear that things were disorganized.

When we finally got to the front of the line, the employee at the register argued with me unnecessarily—even after I offered a solution to address the confusion. I was willing to go back to the end of the line with my selected ingredients and wait for a table, but instead of resolving the issue calmly, the employee continued to berate me. At that point, I decided to leave. It was their loss which I estimate to be approximately $60.

As a new restaurant, I understand there are always kinks to work out, but treating customers respectfully and managing operations smoothly should be a top priority. I hope the team takes this constructive feedback seriously and improves the flow of seating and payment. Perhaps once the initial rush of popularity subsides and these issues are addressed, I might give it another try. For now, though, I can’t recommend this place. We ended up going to Tasty Pot just...