Back in December, we visited our first officially unofficial stop of our restaurant club (later to be called the SWEETs). As a group, we decided to try a place in Arlington called Mala Tang Hot Pot. This was a new type of cuisine that was originally suggested by Heather P's coworkers. When we arrived, we noticed a "sauce bar" at the entrance of the restaurant. We would later find out that this was to make our own asian creations with our entrees. We sat at a round table in the back of the restaurant and each had our own "hot pot" cooking station. The hot pot was a small (maybe pint sized or larger) metal contraption with a heat source underneath and a pan on top that would hold the broth to cook the food. When we ordered, we had the option to order the mild or hot broth. Then we can a choice of meats and a choice of a vegetable mix (Asian or American veggies, I think).
We also ordered two different varieties of dumplings for a few SWEETs to share. The dumplings were slippery, but yummy! Also, the only one of our group to venture out and experience a new alcoholic drink this night was Bobbi L. She took a leap of faith and tried the spicy cucumber martini. A few of us passed it around and had to taste for ourselves, but I think she said she liked it!
The server then brought out our main entree that consisted of your basic meats and veggies for asian style food. The raw chicken, shrimp, and veggies looked a little weird, but the waitress explained that they cook quickly in the broth. I remember that the little slivers of chicken took about 1 minute to cook each, and the veggies up to five minutes in the broth. Katie W. realized quickly that if you put a lot of veggies in the broth at one time, it takes longer to cook! Once we cooked our pieces of food, we were able to mix them however we liked with the white rice that was provided and the special sauces from the front of the restaurant. The sauces included things like soy sauce, garlic sauce, plum sauce, asian bbq sauce, etc. I know I am forgetting a few, but we mostly stuck to the plum sauce and the asian bbq sauce.
As usual when this group gets together, we laughed at each other and the experience quite a lot as we were figuring out how it all works. It was pretty much a trial and error event to find the right mix of tastes for our food. By the end we decided that it was a good time, but definitely a lot of work for a meal! The dinner total price was around $20-$25 depending on the entree and appetizers.
Images from this post were not taken by our lovely SWEET photographers. We had not yet decided to document our dinners. The pictures were found in Google Images. Thanks for letting us borrow!
Keep eating, ladies :)
