Well, in a blink of an eye, Sizzling Pot King became a location of Jiang Liang Malatang! Now, on my last visit to Sizzling Pot King just last month, the woman, whom I believe is one of the "owners" of the franchise told me they were "adding" Malatang. I thought they were just going to start serving hot pot in addition to the dry pot, but a drive past the place a couple of weeks later revealed what was going on!
Whoa! So, it seemed that Sizzling Pot King has become a location of Zhang Liang Malatang. From what I could gather it's a pretty big chain. I know of locations in Rowland Heights and Irvine to name a few places.
It took a bit of work, but I managed to talk the Missus into visiting, because they do a version of dry pot, which they call the "Stir Fried Spicy Pot". We found parking on Engineer Road since the parking lot was full. Upon walking in, I recognized the previous owners of Sizzling Pot King. They explained that we'd fill up a bowl of ingredients just like Malatang and just tell the folks we want "dry pot". So, it was off to the races.
One good thing I liked about this process was you get to choose your ingredients. I've noted that over time Sizzling Pot King had stopped offering or removed items from the dry pot. Now I could pick my own and there was tripe, Chinese cauliflower, even stuff like Konnyaku Knots, several types of bean curd.
Of course, all this comes at a price. It's $13.99 a pound for ingredients and another $3.99 charge for the dry pot. Rice is $1.50.
You can season and et things as spicy as you want by adding items from the sauce bar.
What we picked ended up being $40, with the dry pot upcharge, and one rice. Even with us getting a bunch of different bean curd and mostly offal, this was cheaper than before.
The place filled up pretty quickly. The clientele seemed to be on the younger end of the scale.
Soon enough our order was delivered. It doesn't look like a whole lot of food, but there was enough for me to have the leftovers for lunch the next day.
Not quite as "numbing-hot" as what we had before; though it had more of a pronounced soy sauce – white pepper flavor. It was still decently spicy; but the "stuffs" from the sauce bar made up for things and then some.
The rice was mushy and not very good.
We enjoyed the frozen tofu; there was a firm bean curd we didn't care for. The intestine and two types of tripe were lovely….of course the Missus loves quail eggs. The lamb and sliced beef were meh…..at least to us. It seemed that offal was the way to go for this dish. At least for us.
And so, we decided to see what takeout would be like. And I returned and put together a bowl.
And got a variety of various sauce mixes…….
This came out to be $35.
The Missus enjoys the raw garlic- chili flakes – raw chilies – sesame oil combination the best.
In the end Zhang Liang does a decent job of replacing Sizzling Pot King for takeout. Which is what we'll be visiting for.
Zhang Liang Malatang
8058 Clairemont Mesa Blvd.
San Diego, CA 92111
Current Hours:
Mon – Fri 1130am – 3pm, 5pm – 930pm
Sat – Sun 1130am – 930pm