China-Chinese Food

We preferred this bowl to the Sichuan Dan Dan Noodles ($9). The portion is similarly small and didn’t come with that many toppings for this price tag, though the noodles were chewy and the sauce had quite a nice tangy and spicy kick. We had this as extra carbs to fill us up, but it’s not something we would get again - would opt for extra white rice to go along with the Suan Cai & Fish instead!

Ordered the Dan Dan Noodles for more carbs to fill us up, but a pity the portion is pretty small and the texture of noodles were a tad too soft for us. The sauce used is prominently nutty.

Finally trying out 太二! Very lucky we got a table really quickly for lunch today, though we didn’t manage to make a prior reservation.

Loved the appetising sauerkraut soup base that was done well-balanced, unlike many overly sour / spicy renditions. We almost wiped it clean! It is definitely pretty pricey - we had the smallest portion to share at $49, but it did come with quite a lot of tender fish slices and generous suan cai. There’s not many ingredients you can opt to top up to add in (I wish there was more), but the crunchy bamboo shoots ($3) is something we’ll get again next time. Skip the vermicelli ($3), I think white rice is a better and more value for money pairing.

The bigger portions go for $69 for 3-4 pax and $89 for the largest. Plus points for the complimentary, free flow orange peel and roselle tea!

Scrambled eggs in your mala?! Found ourselves near NTU for our pottery class, so we popped by @ahothideout for the ma la xiang guo we kept seeing on Instagram 😂 The wait was really quite long though, so it’s probably not something you can get for a quick meal.
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What’s cool about their mlxg is the cook on the ingredients - eggs are scrambled, while the fish, luncheon meat, lotus and potato are fried. It is more pricey, but we enjoyed it quite a bit, apart from how salty it was. Spice and numbness was pretty balanced. Would recommend to request for much less oil and salt!

This has been my regular mlxg spot near work. Theirs is saucy and more heavily seasoned. Definitely make sure you opt for less oil and salt, because even though I usually do, it’s still more oily than the usuals 😂 I like that their ingredients are always fresh.

📍银湖麻辣香锅
GHK 407 Foodhouse
Blk 407 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10

Back to this mala spot after quite a while! Glad we had foresight and bought bubble teas before we sat down to eat 😂 Had their medium spice but it was fiery! The mala here maintains its standard pretty well - fresh ingredients, thoroughly fried and reasonably priced.

Rainy day weather calls for anything spicy (am I right)! It’s a flat $1.98/100gm for the mlxg here and was surprised by their range of ingredients to pick from. They even had my favorite veg that I’ve only seen at Gong Yuan Mala thus far. Pretty good bowl in terms of flavour, though it was really quite oily (and I actually requested for less oil). It’s much less in its numbness as well. Would get this again and specifically request for much, much less oil 😂 They also serve the zi char style dishes!

📍银湖麻辣香锅
GHK 407 Foodhouse
Blk 407 Ang Mo Kio Avenue 10

57 Ma La Xiang Guo is a chain shop with outlets in Ang Mo Kio, Pasir Ris, etc. Pricing goes by portions instead of weight and ours here was $8.50. It wasn’t as good as we hoped for unfortunately. It wasn’t fried as thoroughly and the ingredients were mostly dominated by spice, but lacked flavour. The wide sweet potato noodles could be better cooked for a softer texture too.

The dish we preferred most for our meal here though still average. The fried dumplings had a pretty juicy filling of pork and shrimps. The slightly crisp base was thin and not too greasy. I would have liked it fried a little bit longer for a better crunch.

This comes in 3 sizes and we went for the small that had 5 pieces. Had pretty high expectations for this, and while decently seasoned and each of them had a good amount of broth in it, we found the filling too mushy soft for our liking. Skin was a bit thick as well.

Noodles had a good bite, but unfortunately our bowl was quite salty as a whole. The sauce had a strong peanuty smell, but the taste of it wasn’t as distinct (which was a plus for my preference). The saltiness aside, it had a likable tang. If you’re one who needs more heat, they have chilli on the side to add on.

On top of their new bentos, we took the chance to order more spicy lotus roots which got us hooked last round. Perfect balance of flavours + the heat and lingering numbness in it is suuuper addictive. It’s as good as I remembered If we didn’t stop ourselves, my sister and I probably would have finished a box each in one sitting 😂

You can find out more about the ordering details at @_cecilia_chen_, thank you Cecilia and @szechuanese again for sharing your food with me! ✨