Spicy Food in NYC: Spicy Dry Pot from Mala Project

Spicy Dry Pot from Mala Project

Spicy Level: 🌶🌶🌶 for "Spicy"

🌶🌶🌶🌶🌶 for "Super Spicy"

Spicy dry pot is a kind of traditional spicy food from Sichuan.Such is the enduring power of mala that it has, of late, been transubstantiated from its renowned liquid form—hot pot, a bubbly soup—to its newer, hipper cousin, the dry pot. Mala Project is doing great on this!

From a menu of sixty or so meats and vegetables, you choose ingredients (three to six are suggested per person) and, more important, the preferred level of spiciness. (Of the four levels, the lowest is non-spicy, and the highest, super-spicy, might require a fire extinguisher.) Traditional Chinese favorites like beef tendon, tongue, intestine, and artery (a must-try for the uninitiated) merrily jostle with more conventional choices, like wakame, tofu skin, lotus root, and king oyster mushrooms. When an adventurous first-timer pointed to the unfamiliar item rooster’s XXX, the handsome Uighur waiter deadpanned, “Chicken testicles, ma’am. One order?”

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