Mala Sichuan Bistro — Restaurant in Houston

Mala Sichuan has become one of my favorite places to eat in Chinatown. I always like to come here when I'm craving a homey meal. Their family-style is ideal for groups and portions are shareable. Although it's located in a bit of a run-down plaza alongside many other Chinese restaurants.

Nonetheless, Mala offers authentic Sichuan cuisines. I can always count on them to deliver consistency through the quality of their food. There is an abundant of dishes to select from. Their menu is categorized from veggies, meat, soup, rice, and etc. Easy to read and descriptions of each dish is available.

Some of my go-to dishes that I always have to get are the spicy crispy chicken. Small chicken cutlets with a not so overwhelming amount of spice. The chicken meat is tender and the fried-layer is crispy. Just be careful to not eat the red peppers. A favorite veggie item is the spicy eggplants. Eggplants are always cooked to perfection. The eggplants literally melts in your mouth. It goes great with a bowl of white rice provided with the meal.

If you're looking for something to start off the meal, then I would recommend the hot and sour soup. Portion was big enough to share between 3-5 people. Equal level of spicy and sour in the soup. The water-boiled fish fillet also goes great with white rice. The texture of the fish is soft and the sauce of the fish was nicely seasoned.

The dan dan noodles is also a popular item here. Watch out for the spiciness after you have mix it up. It numbs your lips and tongue. Service is always fast, food doesn't take that long to come out. This place is usually crowded at most hours, but they move fast. Friendly staff who refills your water frequently. Overall, one of the best...

I had heard about Dan Dan noodles, and so my boyfriend and I decided to do some research and found Mala! We saw all the great reviews and were excited to try this place out. We went around 3pm and there was plenty only a few other parties in the restaurant, so we were seated right away (we were able to choose where we wanted to sit.) The server took our drink order right away, and we went to looking over the menu. The menu was pretty long, but we were able to find the items we were searching for: dan dan noodles, kung pao chicken (we ordered it without peanuts since I'm allergic) and red oil dumplings. The kung pao chicken came out first. It came with a big container of rice, and the kung pao itself was a mixture of dried chili peppers, garlic, the chicken and green onion; it was really good! It had a slightly fried taste, and I would have liked for it to have been spicier, but I really enjoyed it. Next came the dumplings and the noodles. Both of course have oil that you mix the food in and both include pork. To be honest, I didn't really like the pork that the dumplings were stuffed with, but I loved everything else about the dumplings. The sauce that the dumplings were in was slightly sweet and had hint of a smoky spice. As for the noodles, you get a good sized bowl of noodles mixed with ground pork, some vegetable, and the spicy oil sauce. The noodles get spicier the more you eat them, which I really enjoyed. Besides the food, the service was also attentive and were on top of refills. When we were ready to pay, the waitress asked us if we wanted to pay cash or card. We chose to pay cash since you get 5% off, which is awesome! Overall, I enjoyed the whole experience and look forward to...

Came in as a group of 3 after seeing such excellent reviews. They wanted to seat us at a table that was kind of in the middle of the way and when we asked to change the table the hostess laughed and spoke to someone at the front in chinese and then told us that the table is fine. We looked around and saw another small table and asked if we could sit there and that’s where we were seated. We ordered fried rice (mild and spicy), kung pao chicken, spicy crispy chicken, and the house special noodles. The food came within 10 minutes and looked very appetizing. The taste, however, was a completely different story. The fried rice was just that...rice. It had none of the flavor of the char that fried rice is supposed to have, no seasoning or flavor at all. The kung pao chicken tasted only of soy sauce and szechuan peppercorns- no garlic, ginger, no balance in the flavors at all. The house special noodles tasted of purely sesame oil. That’s it. The spicy crispy chicken was also just that. Spicy and crispy and salty. Again, no flavor of garlic at all unless you pick up a piece of garlic. This was literally the worst Chinese food we’ve ever had. The worst part of this entire experience, however, was after we paid and left the restaurant the waiter followed us to the car to let my friend know she hadn’t added a tip...he literally followed us to the car. The only good thing to mention was that we had ordered an extra order of kung pao and after tasting it we asked if we could cancel that order even though it was ready and the waiter made it happen. Definitely won’t come back and will not...