LaoMa MaLa Tang

I’ve been to both locations and they are pretty consistent. I usually get the extra spicy veggie hot pot stew. Not only is it filling but it’s also got the best assortment of veggies in a bottomless bowl. I’m always super full from it so you get your money’s worth. The best thing about the base is it’s not super numbing so you can actually taste the flavour and different texture.

This place is the fucking shit. DAT FISH DOE

All drinks are free. Even the golden market is not clean enough, the hot pot is quite nice and clean. Highly recommend. 20 for each one. The waitress are very nice. We are from dc.

This is THE spot for Ma La Tang. The restaurant is in the basement of a bunch of local eats called Golden Mall. For the uninitiated, the place looks dingy and crowded. But for the locals and the regulars, this place is the perfect spot after along day of work. The food is authentic and cheap. You simply can’t go wrong.
The Ma La Tang have several choices from beef, fish fillet, seafood, and veggie. The spicy levels are «wei la» — tiny heat, «xiao la» mild heat, «zhong la» medium heat, «da la” — major heat. You can chose to not have certain items from the bowl such as clear noodles, tofu, veggies or add on more of certain items.
The space is limited, so unless you have a large party, be prepared to sit next to someone while stuffing face. They have box tissues as paper towels, so be prepared to wipe often cause it gets hot and humid.

This is the original Lao Ma Ma La Tang before they started branching out to the other food courts in Queens and now even Brooklyn. Found in the lower level of the Golden Shopping Mall, this Lao Ma Ma La Tang serves only the individual sized ma la tang (spicy numbing) noodle soups. Unlike, its newer counterparts at the other malls, they don’t serve the big bowl where you choose your own ingredients, pay by the pound, and they stir fry it in a ma la spicy sauce for you.
When I came to this location, it was during the height of summer, when it was sweltering hot and humid outside. Walking into this place, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this place actually had it’s own room, unlike some of the stalls in this so called mall. Considering the fact that this place actually had eating booths with fixed tables, it was comparatively fancy when judged against the many folding chairs and rickety tables used by the competing food venders, The word is comparatively though.
Although they only speak Mandarin here, there are plenty of photos of every dish with it’s Chinese and English names for people to point at when ordering. No matter which one you choose, you get to choose the level of the numbing spiciness. I think it goes from mild, medium, hot, to very hot. Be aware that they don’t play around with the spiciness here. If you choose very hot, it WILL be very hot.
The soup will come with whatever main ingredient (mine was beef) that you choose on top, and under that, a seemingly haphazard mix of cellophane noodles, veggies such as bak choy, wood ear mushrooms, firm and dried tofu and other ingredients that I can’t remember as of this moment. The more you dig into the soup, the more things you might find in there. The soup broth, besides being spicy is also a bit oily. The spicier your order, the more oily it gets, but that is common with Sichuan food which uses a type of spicy oil a lot to give it some extra spicy punch. Just be aware of this before ordering. The various components never work together flavor wise as a whole but taste rather good as individual bites with the numbing flavor of the spices and broth.
As much as I enjoyed the food, I took out one star because they had one major weakness during the hotter and more humid months like the one I went here in. There is no freakin AC in this place or the whole lower level. The longer I ate here, the more I sweated. I quickly went from eating in to «please, please could you give me a lid for take out so that I could run away» halfway through the meal. Try eating your meal in a sauna. Yeah, it’s like that. Come to this location only during the milder weather, otherwise, just head over to their sister location just a few blocks away within the spacious, and AC cooled New World Mall.
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Spicy level from 1 to 5, 5 being the hottest: Up to 4 depending how hot you tell them to make it.

Hits the spot when I’m craving noodles, and not just any noodles — clear noodles topped with an absurd amount of fresh veggies (tofu skin + greens) and protein of choice. I usually get the fishballs. You can also get it spicy or mild. I stick with mild. I tried spicy once and holy crap, my stomach was churning the entire day and thereafter. Also you can add other toppings for $ 1 each. I add the enoki mushrooms too!

One of the largest stalls in the Golden Shopping Mall basement, this place specializes in «ma la tang» or hot and numbing soups. Pictures of their offerings are plastered floor to ceiling right outside, with the written menu above the ordering counter inside. They have a few booths across the counter, and some counter seating. Around the corner, they have an additional dining room with booths. There is also a store with this name in the New World Mall, not sure if they’re affiliated.
We tried the spicy beef ma la tang, which came in a pretty big white takeout bowl, topped with thin sliced, fatty edged beef. It was a multi-​person effort to mix up the ingredients: one to mix, several to catch things falling out. These soups were chock full of ingredients, and we kept finding something new as we ate. Besides the beef, which were ok, there were thick vermicelli noodles, rice cake, wood ear, tofu, napa cabbage, Shanghai bok choy, tofu skins, and probably more. The soup was very oily, and not initially very spicy, but as we ate our way through, the numbing heat started to build up. Still, I wouldn’t say it was very spicy; I think one would need to go through the effort of convincing the staff that you can take spicier when you order.
Overall, the ma la tang was ok but I wasn’t wowed. What did wow the group, surprisingly, was a side order of tofu skins that were more tender than the ones in the soup and tossed in a seductive blend of sauce that tasted of numbing spice, sesame oil, and other flavors I couldn’t tease out.