YGF Malatang

Yes I would recommend this restaurant. Self service small hot pot style. You get the bowl in counter and you choose the items like noodle,seafood, meatballs, beef and Lamb. Also lots of veggies options.Then give it to the person at counter to weigh. Yes they charge food portion by the weight. Then you choose the soup base. I chose beef bone broth mild spicy. Then get the token number and go to the table number they gave you. Food quality & taste is so fresh and delicious. There is also lots of sauce options. I also tried ice jasmine tea. That is not good. Do not try the drink. Ambience is good. Waiter seems like tired and dropping utensils a lot which disturbs the vibe though. Overall, food is fresh and yum. Reasonable price. Careful with the spice level. Mild spicy is spicy for me .

First time at a Malatang and I loved the experience! You enter and are given a table number. Then you can start filling a bowl with veggies, mushrooms, protein, noodles, etc. There are so many options! Then you give the counter your bowl, they weigh it, tag it and give you a number corresponding to your bowl, and then you take a seat while they prepare your meal.The soup bowls are huge so be mindful when filling your bowl. It's priced by weight (13.99/lb) - I got a lil carried away and filled my bowl with 2lbs worth of veggies, mushrooms, and tofu but was able to save a good portion of it to take to go to use as a meal the next day. I'd say 1-1.5lbs is a solid meal.They also have a sauce station to make your own sauce which really helps make this customizable meal even more customizable! For my fellow vegans, the tomato soup base is vegan (not sure about the others bc I forgot to ask) and it's super flavorful! Since mushroom and tofu are heavier than the thin meat slices, it does feel like I'm paying more for the vegan/vegetarian option but that's my only complaint. Parking is fairly easy as it's located in a plaza with a large parking lot.

Came for dinner and there was a short wait to get our table. Service was good and quick. I chose the beef bone broth again extra mild and chose my ingredients. Staff provided iced lemon water and utensils upon us sitting down. The food came out pretty quickly too.The crispy pork ($8.99) was pretty good. Very crispy and tender pork that was only fatty for some pieces. Portion was decent for the price.

My partner loves malatang so we chose this spot on our way back from Death Valley. The place had plenty of seating and a wide variety of options to add to your malatang. I really appreciated the different noodle options they have ranging from black rice noodle to purple yam noodle. I ended up accidentally getting about 1.85 pound of food, which was enough for two meals. The mild bone broth was super flavorful and I liked it mixed with a bit of the medium spicy broth. Our server was pretty attentive for a malatang restaurant and refilled our water for a few times, which was a pleasant surprise. I heard they're opening up a location in Westwood soon so looking forward to having a malatang place on the westside!

I've really grown fond of this style of soup. It's great for people who love meat for a cost effective bowl. The taste is great also. Just be warned about the spice level, it's pretty heavy here. Or maybe I'm just a whimp. ‍ The service is good and the staff is friendly. All in all this place is in my top 3 places for soup now. Definitely give this place a try if you're in the area.

YGF Malatang is seriously addicting! The best part is being able to customize your bowl exactly how you want it--picking your own ingredients makes the experience so much more fun and personal. The broth is rich, flavorful, and perfectly spiced, and the ingredients are always fresh. Whether you like it mild or super spicy, they've got options for everyone. The portions are generous, and the flavors keep you coming back for more. If you're a fan of hot pot-style dining, this place is a must-visit. Highly recommend!Lastly, my coworkers and I always come here during our lunch since it's fast and easy too.

The malatang craze has taken the 626 over by storm! Many build your own hot/dry pot places have been popping up all over the 626 and you can't go wrong with the YGF franchise. PRO-TIP #1: Make sure you get a stamp card as I think you can use them at other locations (except for NorCal, RIP to those poor bastards). PRO-TIP #2: Everything is weight based! The cost is based on what you put into your bowl and either through design or careful thinking, the heavier, "cheaper" items are located at the start of the line, thus psychologically psyching people out into getting them and making their bowels heavier. The smartie thing to do is skip over, get meat, and then go back to contemplate what other items to put in. Those fresh noodles and some of the veggies are SUPER heavy so keep that in mind. I've seen people pay $30+ for a singular serving (granted you can take it home, but still, make smart choices!). You get the choice of soups or to make it a dry pot and I got their tomato soup base. I remember it having a nice depth and tomato taste that was a bit spicy, but nothing too overwhelming, and a slight sweetness from the tomato. Everything comes out super fresh and hot so that all the ingredients can cook inside. I got the instant noodles which weren't bad, but I would have loved to have Korean instant noodles to get that chewy texture with the soup flavor. All the meats I got were tender and everything else tasted decently fresh, especially since a lot is frozen/refrigerated. There is a sauce bar, but the line and crowd can get a bit busy since for some bizarre reason the serving spoons are puny, but I got my good old spicy chilies, sesame sauce and some numbing peppercorn oil as well. There was enough soup for me to take home and I cooked this with my Tom Yum Buldak noodles and it was DIVINE. Can't go wrong with a trusted franchise.

The most amazing pick your adventure type of meal. I walked in on a Saturday afternoon and was welcomed with a selection of ingredients I can make my malatang bowl with. All the ingredients were fresh and restocked pretty often so they're not sitting there. I tried the beef bone broth and the tom yum soup bases and they were excellent. The sauce bar had a lot of selection as well. Their service was great because they explained everything well and the food came out really quick. I will say, mala spice is an acquired taste so be hesitant if you're not used to the numbing feeling but definitely give this place a try. Their service ambiance was very chill and we had a great time here.

I am not great with spicy foods, it's Halloween night and it's cold and around 8:30pm. We wanted some hot soup and this place was close and open.Upon entering through the plaza (not Baldwin Ave), you need to enter your name on the waitlist for dine in. The waiter will call your name and hand you a number. The table seating is further down after you grab your raw food in a bowl with tongs, get it weighed, and then your paper number is your table while your bracelet number is the meal. You can grab drinks from the fridge to your table and they will sum up the check afterwards. As you are seated the sauce station is in the corner near the servers station. The place is clean, a bit chilly as you are closer to the door, and have numbers on the table. As you get your sauce made, the server will bring your cooked meal to the table using the bracelet number. We grabbed mostly pork belly, garlic beef, quail eggs, sausages, spam, a few veggies with udon packet. Our broth (the only one they said was most nonspicy) was tomato. My kid only cared for the udon. The tomato broth was nice and warm (a bit sweet and sour with a hint of spice). Unfortunately they said the beef bone broth cannot be nonspicy. We didn't order any appetizers or specialty drinks. We got small bowls to share our meal. Afterwards we just left in a hurry to get home go en how late it was. Next time I'll explore some more of their appetizers and specialty drinks.

I have been twice now and the beef bone broth is sooo good! It really hits after craving asian food for a few days. I'm not sure what's in there but I have never had a soup broth this good before. Since the broth is so rich in flavor, I didn't use any my sauce from the sauce bar. **The mild spicy is mala spicy so if you can't handle any spicy or want a looot less (like me and my family), I definitely recommend asking them to make it much less spicy and your soup will have barely any of the red chili oil.When you enter the restaurant, you grab your own food at a food bar including noodles, veggies, fish balls, thin slices of meats and seafood. I love seafood so I get a ton of scallops and shrimp. The black noodles are really good and stay very chewy and bouncy after being cooked. Lastly I personally get a lot of bamboo because this is the first place that I've seen serve it. I wanted to try frog legs but it was frozen in a block so I couldn't... Everything is pay by weight. After paying then you walk into the back half of the restaurant at your assigned table number then wait for your hot bowl of already cooked hot pot to come out. They keep the AC on so it is pretty cold in there! you can ask for a take out container which is pretty big to take home your leftovers and extra soup! I hate seeing good soup wasted :)