Chinese people love eating hotpots. One reason is that they can get to socialise with other people. And another thing is that drinking hot soup is good for your health. Due to the slightly chilly weather a week ago, we decided to try out Mala Sze Chuan Hotpot at Met Live.
After we parked our car, we passed through the nonworking elevated walkalator, then turned left to get to Mala Sze Chuan Hotpot. The waiter greeted us as we entered their glass door, and then we chose a table in the corner beside the glass window facing the mall.
The restaurant was not packed when we arrived and started getting more customers mid-way. The hallway to the buffet table was already packed by the time we were almost done with our dinner.
A waitress asked if we were having an a la carte or buffet. We wanted to compare Mala to other hotpot buffets we have tried, so we chose the latter. The bone broth and satay soup caught our eyes from the five different soup bases available on the Mala Sze Chuan menu:
- Spicy soup
- Bone broth
- Mushroom soup
- Spicy miso soup
- Satay soup
Ambience and price: 5 stars
I stood up to check out the open fridge buffet and found lots of balls, mushrooms, and veggies, and they are included at a net price of 888. However, if you also want seafood (such as shrimp, shells, and mussels), duck blood, and Chinese sausages, you can add 200 pesos to enjoy food on the yellow plates.
We decided not to avail seafood to enjoy pork and beef when we ate. Besides, there are taro balls, cheese balls, mushroom meatballs, and crabsticks that we like. There are also seaweed, tofu skin, black fungus, and different types of mushrooms to choose from.
Mala Sze Chuan special sauce station
What I liked most about Mala Sze Chuan Hotpot is you can create your sauce. They have many ingredients available at the sauce station, so you can mix and match them to suit your taste. They have soy sauce, black vinegar, salt, sugar, oyster sauce, and sesame paste.
You can add fresh garlic, spring onion, wansoy, and chopped peanuts into your mixture to enhance the flavor. If you want a spicy dipping sauce, they also have chopped chilli, spicy dried fish, and chilli garlic sauce.
And if you are still not content with the taste, you can enhance the flavors further by adding barbecue sauce, beef sauce, and chicken powder. However, if you are not that adventurous, you can try their recommended special sauce.
Food: 4 stars
After we prepared our sauces and got food from the open fridge, we went back to our table to start cooking. It was just about time because the soup was already boiling. The raw fatty beef and pork belly already arrived.
The bone broth soup tasted heavenly! With a milky and hearty taste, our toddler loved it too. The satay soup was just like any other satay soup from other restaurants. Maybe I should have tried the spicy miso soup instead. (Anyway, we can always come back again in the future.)
I mixed fresh garlic, wansoy, spring onion, chilli garlic, oyster sauce, sesame oil, beef sauce, and sesame paste into my sauce plate. To complete our sauce, we each added a spoonful or two of our soup bases, as suggested in the special sauce board.
The sauce blended well with either the bone broth and satay soup. However, I found their chilli garlic sauce to lack spiciness. Even if I added some more, I still could not feel a hint of spiciness. Maybe I should have added chopped chilli too.
The beauty of eating at a hotpot restaurant is that you can put what you like to eat into the soup base one at a time. It avoids overcooking the meat and veggies that you want to eat. Best of all, you can choose from many food choices on the menu.
Mala Sze Chuan Hotpot also offers rice, vermicelli, instant noodles, and fried rice. However, we usually do not eat carbs, so we did not get any when we ate. We indulged in meat, balls, and mushrooms.
Before I forget, a pitcher of iced tea is also included. So you have something to quench your thirst as you eat. But if you do not like the free iced tea, you can also purchase other drinks available. They offer Tsing Tao, Snow beer, San Mig Light, Vita Lemon, Sprite, Coke, Wong Lo Kat, and Chinese red and green tea.
Service and child-friendly: 5 stars
The restaurant allows customers who choose a hotpot buffet to eat for 120 minutes. Usually, you would be full after eating for that amount of time. So time was nothing to worry about since they serve meat fast after ordering.
Free drink!
You could get a free drink by sharing a short reel on your Facebook or Instagram while eating at Mala Sze Chuan Hotpot. All you have to do is to record a 20-second video, then by using the hashtag #Malaszechuanhotpot, post it on social media by tagging Malaszechuan.
Make sure that you are following their official account, so your post would be counted. Inform one of the servers about your post, and you get to choose a free drink!
Mala Sze Chuan birthday promo
All October celebrants can enjoy a free unlimited hotpot for the whole month of October as long as they are accompanied by 5 full paying adults. Just make sure to bring a valid government ID when you dine in at Mala Sze Chuan Hotpot.
Conclusion
Mala Sze Chuan Hotpot is a great hotpot buffet restaurant that serves nice meat and offers many other choices. People who love to put different flavors into their sauces will enjoy eating there. Make sure to arrive at the restaurant early to avoid having to line up to eat.
While the food selections is superb, I only gave 4 stars because the pork belly was very fatty. Nevertheless, we were satisfied with the service and ambience, so we will surely come back again some other time. Now that the weather is becoming colder, why not try and enjoy a hotpot buffet on your next weekend date? 😉
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2 thoughts on “We Tried Mala Sze Chuan Hotpot, Hear What Our Bellies Can Say”