Lao Ma Spicy
Sichuan restaurant · Greenwich Village ·
Build your own Sichuan dry pot with 50+ ingredients
Build your own Sichuan dry pot with 50+ ingredients
"Lao Ma Spicy is a Chinese restaurant on 8th Street near NYU that specializes in dry pot dishes, and is spacious enough that you’ll easy find a table. The only options are dry pot (soup or noodles) and dumplings, and depending on how much you hate making decisions, you can order a seafood, vegetable, and meat combo directly from the menu, or customize your own soup or noodle dish at a counter. The DIY area is set up a little like a Chipotle, only with lobster tails, tripe, and a soul." - hannah albertine
"Ordering the classic combo ($11) at LaoMa Spicy (also called Spicy Lover and emblazoned “The Taste of Szechuan”) I picked a vegetable-based special containing Napa cabbage, fried tofu, celtuce, sprouts, mung-bean vermicelli and more, and chose medium spice — which gave a prodigious tingle; the long counter lets you pick raw ingredients for hot pots, dry hot pots, or stir-fries, and meats can be added at $3 each, though I thought they weren't necessary." - Robert Sietsema
"If, like me, your only experience of plum juice is to fix some… uh… bowel issues, then I understand the hesitation with trying suanmeitang. But this is an all-around winner: a sweet, sour, and very slightly salty plum juice, in an adorable bottle, that, yes, helps with digestion — because bowel movement is important! Grow up! You can likely find suanmeitang at most Chinese grocery stores." - Pelin Keskin
"I found Lao Ma Spicy’s hot-and-sour soup singled out as a highlight among offerings at the new Elmhurst HK Food Court." - Serena Dai
"My most pressing craving is the hot-and-sour soup from Lao Ma Spicy: a large disposable bowl (priced $4.99) packed precariously full of glass noodles in an intensely flavorful broth—hot in temperature and spice, scarlet with chili oil and vinegar-sour; for a few dollars more you can add beef, shrimp balls, or Spam, but the finishing touches—dry-roasted peanuts with papery brown skins, sweet steamed bok choy leaves, and an intoxicating spoonful of ground pork sautéed with wood-ear mushroom and pickled radish—are what haunt my daydreams; the vendor also specializes in dry pot (brothless, cooked to order), which is worth trying too." - Hannah Goldfield
