Nothing craves my appetite more on a cloudy, rainy, and cooler day than an All You Can Eat (AYCE) hotpot! I used the good ol' handy Ipeen app which is basically a near identical copy of the Yelp app that's most commonly used in the US to find this place. The place was called Ma La (or direct translation Horse Spicy). Don't worry there's no actual Horse meat served here...phew! The original name of the restaurant was supposed to be called "Numb and Spicy" because the nature of the Sichuan peppercorns used in their broths create numbness along with spicy sensations when consumed. Their restaurant name was a play on pronunciation of the words Horse and Numb.
For 498 TWD or $16 USD, you can have all you can eat for lunch. It's 598 TWD or $20 USD for dinner. There were apparently cheaper options like hole-in-the-wall ones but they may not have been all you can eat but I just wanted to go to one that was nearby since we were getting tired near the end of the day to explore too far away from our hotel for dinner. This is actually not bad of a price but it may be considered expensive for locals there as food is ridiculously cheap and rarely do you see fat or heavy people here. They don't eat too much or they have high metabolisms. There is a mandatory 10% service charge which isn't too bad considering how most of the US demand for 18%+ in service charges these days and get really upset at a 10% tip.They gave a 2 hour limit per table in case people tried to take advantage of their buffet.
You start off by selecting the broth(s) of your choice, you can choose two if you like or just one broth. Choices are:
- Spicy Mala
- Vegetables and Herbs
- Northeast Pickled Vegetables
- Protein Egg Whites
We got the first two because the others didn't seem particularly interesting to us. Next you get to order your meats and vegetables which they had a ton of varieties to choose from. Here were some possible choices (basically what we ordered):
Meats
- Sea cucumbers (it's not a vegetable but a real living sea creature!)
- Oysters
- Scallops
- Fish balls
- American Fatty Beef
- Angus Beef
- Mussels
- Crab
- Razor Shell Clams
- Pork Shoulder
- New Zealand Beef Loin
Vegetables/Others:
- Baby Bok Choy
- Enoki Mushrooms
- Tofu
- yeah...we are more carnivores...didn't order much vegetables
Next you get to choose your drinks and your very own custom dipping sauce.
Drinks which were also all you can Drink! Included alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks.
Choices were:
- Red Wine
- Honey Lemon Juice
- Coke
- Sprite
- Heineken Light
- Taiwan Beer
- Milk Tea
- Calpis
- Lemon Tea
- Green Tea
- Coffee/Espresso/Cappuccino/etc
- Herbal Tea
They had a huge range of sauces/toppings you choose from to make your sauce. There's no real right or wrong combination as long as it tastes good!
To finish off, you can feast yourself on fresh fruits or their awesome Haagen-Dazs or Movenpick ice cream! This was a first time I've seen such famous brands being all you can eat!!
Definitely recommend giving this place a try! Let me know what you think! They have several locations but the one I went to was near the Taipei 101.
Name: Ma La (馬辣頂級鴛鴦火鍋 信義旗艦店)
Address: 台北市信義區松壽路22號3F (NEO19) Taipei, Taiwan 110
Google Map:
Click Here!!!
Phone: +886 2 2720 5726
Website:
http://mala-1.com.tw/
