New Bay Area restaurant is bringing back the buffet

If you love spicy food, a new restaurant in Oakland that refers to its medium hot tier as merely “level 1” might be just the place for you. 

Pixiu Mala Hongtang, a popular South Korean chain with locations in Los Angeles, Portland and Texas, opened a new restaurant in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood in July. The Korean Chinese fusion chain specializes in an individualized style of hot pot called malatang, where customers can customize spicy bowls of soup with a self-serve buffet of nearly 50 different ingredients. 

On a recent Friday night, a friend and I headed to Pixiu Mala Hongtang for dinner, peppy K-Pop songs playing over the speakers. As a pescatarian, I was excited about being able to choose exactly what I wanted in my bowl, no undesired meat included (while the regular soup broth is meat-based, you can ask to make it vegan or vegetarian). 

Pixiu Mala Hongtang is far from the only malatang spot in the Bay Area, but it may be the first in Oakland. Just before the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown threw a wrench in buffet-style eating, malatang was actually trending in the Bay Area with the recent openings of Tang Bar in Stonestown Galleria, Customize MaLaTang in Newark and QingShu in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset, according to the San Francisco Chronicle (the Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms). 

On our visit to Pixiu Mala Hongtang, we were able to sit down immediately at prime dinner time, although the restaurant grew busier as the night wore on. Our server handed us aprons — errant splashes of flaming orange broth will quickly ruin your clothes — and explained how the process worked.

Grab a stainless steel mixing bowl and tongs, fill it up with your choice of ingredients, then bring it to the front register. There, you’ll pay for your dish by weight ($3.49 to $4.49 per 3.5 ounce) and let the cashier know whether you’d like the malatang (soup) or mala xiang guo (dry stir fry), as well as your preferred spice level and any meat you’d like to add (bacon, beef brisket or lamb). A helpful chart at the front of the self-serve bar broke down the spice levels — for the soup, 0.5 is medium, while 4 is “danger hot.”

Filling up your bowl is an exercise in self-restraint. Faced with dozens of ingredients, from veggies to meat skewers ($1 extra a piece) to Korean ingredients like cheese rice cakes, I was overwhelmed. With a near monk-like asceticism, I loaded up my bowl as minimally as I could: tofu, quail eggs, lotus root, bok choy, mung bean sprouts, pumpkin, tofu skin, enoki mushrooms, king oyster mushrooms, corn, sweet potato rice cakes, shrimp, fried tofu, fish balls, cilantro … OK, maybe I went a little overboard.

You can also choose between pre-packaged udon or ramen noodles for an additional $2.50. I opted for ramen. 

Because I’m a chicken, I ordered my malatang with a spice level of one, and ordered a banana milk to wash it down. My friend did the same with his mala xiang guo.

As it turns out, I’m quite glad I stuck with level one. When my towering bowl of soup arrived, at first sip I worried I’d made a horrible mistake. Tingly pepper attacked the back of my throat like Sichuan-flavored lava.

Fortunately, my mouth quickly acclimated. By my third spoonful, the creamy, peanut-y broth, which is made with Sichuan peppercorn and dry chile pepper, was actually the perfect amount of spicy. It was still pungent enough to punch me in the mouth with flavor, but not unbearable.

Both dishes came with rice, pickled yellow radishes and peanut sauce. Even if you’re a meat eater, I can’t recommend the fried tofu skewers enough, which soak up the broth like sponges. Only you can be the architect of your own perfect creation, but I also loved the chewy sweet potato rice cakes, the crunchy lotus root, and umami-rich mushrooms and fish balls. 

The dry stir fry was good, too, but my friend and I both preferred the soup. It also yielded more food — I barely finished half my bowl, while my friend cleared his plate easily. Before tax and tip, my malatang with three skewers and ramen came out to $21.70; my friend’s mala xiang guo with two skewers, plus beef and bacon, was $22.44.

As we left, I felt vindicated on my choice of spice level, although my stomach would later disagree. Proceed with caution, friends. But I didn’t regret going ham at the self-serve bar — the leftovers the next day were just as delicious. 

Pixiu Mala Hongtang, 4419 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Open Sunday to Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m., and Friday and Saturday, 11:30 a.m.-midnight.