YinTang Spicy Hot Pot

In recent years, multiple “build your own malatang hot pot” restaurants have opened across Orange County, offering guests the opportunity to select their preferred ingredients, weigh and pay a flat fee for the bowl they’re in, then get everything cooked as either a soup or dry noodle dish with spicy or non-spicy flavorings. Buena Park’s Pixiu Mala Hongtang impressed us with its South Korean-style take on the Chinese formula, and the Orange County location of YinTang Spicy Hot Pot – an LA-based chain with Taiwanese and Thai recipes – is arguably even more compelling.

Located in the same Irvine plaza (Orange Tree Square) as Heytea and Wushiland Boba, YinTang sits immediately next to Japanese noodle shop Menya Hanabe and offers a conceptually great deal: Whether you prefer “ma la dry” or “ma la tang” soup, the flat price is $15 per pound, which is several dollars less than Pixiu despite a wide range of meat, vegetable, noodle, and soup options. It’s possible to have a light and vegetarian or pescatarian meal here, as well as one loaded with meats, seafood, noodles, and heavy sauces; meals take 10 or 15 minutes to prep, and are paid for after you’ve finished everything.

Armed with a big plastic bowl and tongs, you can pick from lobster and fish balls, shrimp, squid, and scallops, thin-sliced lamb and beef, ham and sausages, fortune bags, rice cakes, multiple types of noodles, tofu, mushrooms, quail eggs, bok choy and taro, lotus slices and tomatoes – note that that’s a non-exhaustive list. Five soup bases range from neutral veggie, tomato, and bone broths to yellow curry and tom yum bases, most with several optional spice levels, while the “dry” mix includes a peanut sauce base with up to four levels of chili spice.