YI PIN MALA TANG （麻辣烫） — Restaurant in Honolulu

this restaurant is on the 2nd floor of the building inside of test kitchen. ambience inside is nice, great for photos.

we tried the build your own hot pot. i loved the concept as you can pick all of your fav toppings, put them into a bowl, and hand them to the chef to cook. however neither my bowl nor my sister’s bowl came out hot. both were lukewarm. would have been much better hot. pretty disappointing.

i ordered a second dish thinking what i ordered didn’t satisfy my craving, and asked for wontons with chili oil and no soup. i received wonton soup with chili oil, but this time it was piping hot. still not exactly what i wanted.

service was lovely but i’m not sure it’s worth the price. maybe try the other malatang bowl options, not the...

Too pricey for cheap service and cheap place- Too expensive for what you get. We were planning to eat here, but once we saw the prices—$20 per pound of food (not including the soup base, which is another $16–$20)—we were already hesitant. Then, after looking at the menu and asking the staff, we were told that everything on the menu was unavailable for the night… and it was only 8:40 PM!

They’re supposed to be open until 11:30 PM, yet they wouldn’t serve any of their $12.99–$16.99 menu items. Honestly, that’s kind of ridiculous.

To make it worse, the person working there was very unprofessional—super casual, eating while talking to us, and didn’t seem to care at all.

On top of that, the place uses the name “Overload”—just… eww....

price has gotten out of control. dry pot is $23/lb and malatang is $20. that's about as expensive as in NYC. a little food in ur bowl will run u close to $40, which can get u ayce hotpot at a lot of places. dry pot was mediocre at best.

exceptional service from the boss tho, he runs the register and the server himself and make sure everyone is happy. only if the price was more affordable and food was better

overall would not come again, but not the worst choice if ure really craving...