yimin zhang

The dish was absolutely amazing! The flavors were rich, with a perfect balance of spices and freshness. The ingredients were well-cooked, especially the meat and vegetables, creating a delightful texture. The presentation in the wooden bowl added a rustic charm. Definitely a must-try for spicy food lovers!

Hilton Webb

I was in the neighborhood and asked a worker in the place I was shopping if there was a good Thai or Chinese restaurant in the area. He said right down the block and that is how I found this gem Lao Ma Spicy. The atmosphere is a bit loud but after awhile the din becomes secondary to the absolutely amazing food. I only ordered the Spicy beef soup and steamed pork dumplings and had to stop eating before I could finish the huge portions. Both were amazingly tasty, expertly seasoned, and piping hot. I did notice that I didn't see any American silverware on the tables, only elegant shiny black chopsticks. However, I'm sure if you're a novice they keep some in reserve so you won't starve or have to eat with your fingers. 😉 Go, eat, enjoy. I'm headed back there this weekend after John Wick: Chapter 4.

+2

Pick your own ingredients is such a dangerous activity because I always want to eat everything! We shared this giant bowl of deliciousness among 6 people and all of us were super full by the end of it. Level 4/5 spicy was pretty satisfying, but I would say if I wanted to taste the ingredients better, than 3 would have been a good choice. Quail eggs, sliced beef, octopus were my favorites this time! Overall I do like this place @laomaspicy more than its competitors in the city🙈

Shravan Mehra

This was my first experience of an authentic Chinese hot pot place. I liked the concept of choosing your own greens and proteins. Good selection of that. The noddles tho weren’t that great. They only had glass noodles. I ordered a 5 spice level and that was really hot and had a good kick.

Omkar Vartak

We ordered the vegetable spicy dry pot(you can select your spice level) and trust me when the say max spice level they mean it, you have 5 options to choose from broccoli tofu cauliflower lotus root etc.The food is prepared quickly tastes pretty good. And service is very attentive. You get one rice bowl with dry pot you can add extra rice bowl and easily share a dry pot between two people.

Matthew Ho

My friend and I came by when we were in the mood for some mala dry pot (they have a more “regular” menu, but we didn’t try anything on it). I don’t really think there’s anything particularly noteworthy about the setup - the ingredients you pick from in the back all look fairly fresh, and indeed I was very happy with the quality of our delicious dry pot. Since it was my first time here, I was a little conservative with the spice level (only got the lowest level of spicyness), which was actually not that spicy. I’d definitely want to increase that next time. Price point was not bad - it was on the pricier end of things, but both of us were pretty full, and we still had around 1 meal’s worth of leftovers to take home. I think this place is a better option than Mala Project in price and quality - will definitely be back!

Tee

Altogether, in my opinion this place gets 4 stars. The food was 10/10 hands down. My man loved this spot too. I been telling him let’s come here for the longest lmao. I am a hot oil snob, so they did well there. The spicy fried chicken and fried rice was just perfect. The service here is confusing. They don’t instruct you how to order. Supposedly you can also order on the other side where you pick what you can get in a bowl? Then at the table you order via their barcode app thing? It’s confusing and they don’t instruct you unless you ask. I think they should from the walk in. But other than that it was all good. Lots of students all around. But definitely is a cute date night spot. Would definitely come back at least once or twice more. I’d eat here alone too on a day my boyfriend is running late from work or something hehe.

Mike Reviewed It!

Ok.. gotta say you need to know what this place is about before coming in. Like how to order. Kinda confusing. Really healthy food though. Bae and I always passed by on the way to the park. Finally decided to stop in. Okay... Gonna just hand me the bill and not even take the dirty plates.. I see how it is...rush us out.. you played yourself. Lowered rating for service

+1

JiShun Zhou

I liked this spot! Good food, comfort, perhaps flavours are a little too salty for the dry pot. A lot of meat to share - you’ll get quite full so make sure to ask for a little less food than they recommend.

Cris

Very authentic Sichuan food a block away from St Marks, I really felt like I was back in China. Love the extra spicy peppers in the lamb dish, the 生煎包 were just like the ones people buy in the streets in Shanghai and the 扬州炒饭 was very well executed, moist but not greasy. 都真好吃啊！

+2

Adrienne Gusoff

It was Christmas and we had to be in the city for an appt early the next day so we stayed over. We figured we'd follow the typical Jewish Christmas tradition of going out for Chinese food. We were wandering around our old neighborhood and ended up here. The hot pot looked as if it would be good. The ingredients seemed appealing and fresh. But we ordered from the menu: long bao (3 for $5) - my fave; scallion pancake (hubby fave), cold sesame noodles (a family fave), and eggplant with "grouded pork." The soup dumplings were quite good. The scallion pancake was ok though a bit too dough-y. I don't know what the heck was in those cold noodles but they were inedible. Crazy spicy with bit chunks of hot peppers and some sauce that was sour and bitter. Not at all like cold sesame noodles I've had everywhere else so that was a big disappointment because I was really looking forward to them. The eggplant was soft and creamy and delicious but I saw absolutely no evidence of meat anywhere in the dish, ground or otherwise. And it was literally swimming in oil. I am not exaggerating when I say there was at least a cup of oil under that eggplant! And we had to order rice separately. The service was pleasant but mostly inattentive bur i will write that off to the fact that it was Christmas and there was just one waiter on duty and maybe 7 tables full of customers all over the restaurant, so he was really running around. I would not go out of my way to go back there because hot pot is not my thing, though I suppose if we still lived next door, we'd find things we liked on the menu and might eat there from time to to time.

Wendy Yang

Went there on Saturday night got around $80 dollars of food but we couldn’t finish it so we packed it back home for tomorrow. And when we are eating it the next day we saw a scotch-brite inside our food. Couldn’t imagine if I did not see it I would have just eat it. But the experience in the store was good.

Megha Maru

The staff was super rude and was rushing while taking our order. Lady at the counter was so blunt, did not answer our questions and talked over when we were asking. Choose 5 veggies and that’s all. We asked if we need to pay right away, she repeated thrice “sit at the table”. When the food arrived the dry pot was without noodles and we had to explain to the waiter that we were never asked to choose noodles, she simply kept saying “choose 5 veggies” & cut us short when we asked questions. The waiter never apologized and instead of asking what we need, we said “5 dollars extra for noodles”, pathetic experience. Food was not thaaat great either and the service was horrible.

Ella

Terrible place. I can’t believe how disappointing this experience was. I traveled a long way just to eat here and carefully picked out my ingredients. When I picked it up, I gave them my order number. They didn't look at it and handed me the completely wrong dish, which I only realized when I returned home. I ordered a plate loaded with meat, and instead they gave me some random vegetable dish that cost less than half of what I paid for. After all that effort and time, the least they could do is get the order right. Absolute waste of money and time.