Tips: Come early for parking as this plaza is notorious for awkwardly small parking spaces and not well-equipped drivers 😩. Recommend parking on the street by the residential area.
We arrive a little after 11am when it opens and the place is empty, how we liked it! The staff quickly says hello and allows us to pick any seats we want. We opted for an orange booth seats.
The restaurant has QR code taped to the wall where you can scan to order but the staff bought over a laminated menu for us and took our order. Within 5 minutes of ordering, the food arrived at our table.
Food: We ordered two set meals which came with main entree, rice, and hot soup (you can also choose a cold beverage instead of hot soup). The Hainan chicken came with three different sauces which I appreciate and the soy chicken was sweet and flavorful. The Hainan chicken rice is also accompanied with chicken rice. We also got an order of Egg Burrito, which was just OK. It was overpowered by the sweet savory sauce and not very egg-like taste. I think more eggs would have been better.
The staff were very friendly and helpful and offered tea and checked on us. They even have refrigerated pre-made dumplings and wontons to purchase. The overall price is friendly in my opinion especially eating in the Bay area. We are looking forward to coming back here and trying other items...
Read moreSaw there was a new malatang restaurant so had to come try it right away!
This is the same setup as most malatang places... you pick out the ingredients, choose a soup base, then they cook it for you! For this place, they charge the same per-pound price for both meat and veggies. I do have to say all of their labels are wrong... so if you're not familiar with these ingredients, you may be quite confused. The ingredient selection is decent, but not the best variety I've seen. For example, they don't have the pork rice cake that I like :(
Service was great, I was seated immediately and got some instructions since I've never been to this location before. I picked out a bunch of ingredients and chose medium spicy soup base. It was cooked quickly and served to me right away!
The soup flavor is great - definitely taste the spiciness but it's not so much that you can't taste anything else. The different ingredients are cooked properly so everything tasted good!
Since this is very convenient location, I definitely see myself coming back often whenever I have spicy pot cravings. They have a promotion going on so my big pot of goodies was under $15...
Read moreThe owner refused to speak to non-Chinese speakers and gave attitude making the atmosphere of the restaurant very unwelcoming. We understand if she had trouble speaking english but she did not make any effort with communicating to us non-Chinese speakers. The food was not the best especially for the tip the owner demanded later on. She chased us down, looking through the window of nearby stores causing unnecessary scene in the nearby store demanding more tip. Not only did this make us feel unsafe and bothered the people inside the store were laughing and the owner was giving us a snarky patronizing look making us feel more uncomfortable. In the end we had to cough up more than we initially put despite the poor food, service, and atmosphere. She has no sympathy or self respect as we are broke college students who simply gave her the tip that she deserved. Maybe try being more friendly and you would actually get the tip you want. Overall I would not recommend coming to this establishment unless you desire to experience mediocre food and service for a high...
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