Note: Store information and public surveys were checked as of September 6, 2026. Observations about the crowd and all taste judgments refer only to this visit and should not be generalized to the store or any demographic group.
I Returned to Asunal Kanayama After “200 Million Years” and Found Malatang
After what felt like 200 million years away from Asunal Kanayama, I came back and found Liu Jia Malatang on the first floor. Was malatang really trending that hard? Yes.
SHIBUYA109 lab.’s 2025 Trend Awards ranked malatang No. 1 in Café & Gourmet among 619 women aged 15–24, describing it as a trend continuing from 2024 and citing short videos of people choosing toppings as a popularity factor.[2] In June 2026, a survey of 600 people aged 15–29 again placed malatang first among foods thought to have been most popular in the first half of 2026, at 19.5%; among females aged 15–19, it was 32.0%.[4]
What Exactly Is Malatang?
Malatang is a soup associated with Sichuan, China, characterized by chili heat and the numbing sensation of Sichuan pepper, or huajiao.[2]
At many Japanese self-service shops, customers fill a bowl from a refrigerated display with vegetables, noodles, tofu products, meat, fish cakes and more. It is weighed, priced, then cooked in broth. Liu Jia’s official listing advertises more than 50 ingredients, pricing from ¥4 per gram and house-made beef-bone broth.[1]
First Problem: I Did Not Understand the System
You enter, see a refrigerator full of ingredients and think: “...Okay, what am I supposed to do now?”
Ramen gives you a menu. Conveyor-belt sushi gives you a screen. Malatang hands you a character-creation screen before the tutorial. Pick a bowl, choose ingredients, and the weight becomes the price. Freedom comes with a dangerous mechanic: the more excited you get, the more your bill levels up.
In the Display Case, Almost Everything Looked Unappetizing
Before cooking, the food looks aggressively like components: a mysterious white sheet, a brown sponge, translucent noodles, unidentified fish cakes, leaves, and something clearly resembling an organ.
The refrigerator contains “parts,” not a finished meal. The honest first reaction: “Almost all of this looks bad.”
So the strategy became: take a tiny amount of every ingredient I do not recognize. Total: about ¥1,400. Lunch had turned into an ingredient gacha collection.
The “Ingredient Gacha” Is Actually Part of the Appeal
Cookpad’s 2025 food-trend report said searches for “malatang” rose 452.6% year over year, highlighting customization and the healthy image created by freely choosing vegetables and other ingredients.[3]
Ordering is not merely selecting a finished product. Ordering itself becomes play. More noodles today, vegetables tomorrow, the mysterious white thing next time. Dinner has a character build.
Taste Test: Honeycomb Tripe Was “Rubber Seaweed”
Honeycomb tripe—the cow’s second stomach—looked formidable. The verdict after tasting it was immediate: “Rubber seaweed.” Not much beef flavor, but lots of chewy, springy texture and ridges that carry broth.
Duck: “Barely tastes of anything.” Fish cake: “Flavorless fish cake.”
| What I ate | Scientific-ish verdict | Main job |
|---|---|---|
| Honeycomb tripe | Rubber seaweed | Chew and bounce |
| Duck | Flavorless meat | Meat-like texture |
| Fish cake | Flavorless elasticity | Springiness |
| Noodles | Chewy department | Broth transport |
| Mala broth | Delicious | The thing that saves everything |
These are reactions to one bowl, not universal judgments about those foods.
Is Malatang Basically a Texture Game?
It made more sense to classify ingredients as crunchy, chewy, crisp, bouncy or broth-absorbing than by flavor.
The broth handles flavor. Chili and huajiao handle stimulation. Ingredients handle texture. Self-service handles the experience.
Maybe malatang is not about collecting different flavors. Maybe it is a game where different textures ride in one excellent broth. That is why rubber-seaweed tripe, mild duck and flavorless-elastic fish cake can all work.
But the Broth Was Genuinely Good—and Spicy Yet Sweet
The most memorable part was the broth: hot, lightly numbing, yet also sweet, rounded and rich. Compared with the sharper direction of many jjigae-style broths, this bowl felt rounder to the taster.
Liu Jia officially emphasizes its beef-bone broth.[1] In this bowl, that rich, slightly sweet base seemed to sit behind the chili and huajiao. If the broth is what you love, the toppings can change with your mood. Honestly, the broth alone almost felt sufficient.
Tapioca, Açaí, and Malatang: “You Choose It Yourself” Is Powerful
Tapioca drinks and açaí bowls also became huge even while some people wondered what was so extraordinary about the taste. The shared point is that the experience becomes part of the product.
Tapioca has the cup, color, chew and portability. Açaí bowls have color, toppings, presentation and a healthy image. Malatang turns choosing among dozens of ingredients into the event itself. SHIBUYA109 lab. specifically cited short videos of topping selection.[2]
But this tasting had one extra safeguard: the broth was simply delicious. That leaves a reason to return even when novelty fades.
A Store Full of Women, Solo Diners, and a Conversation About Chiikawa Plushies
During this visit, the visible crowd was overwhelmingly female and, for a while, almost no male diners were in sight. That is only a snapshot, not the store’s permanent ratio. Still, it does not conflict with the broader 2026 survey, in which 32.0% of female 15–19-year-olds chose malatang as the first half’s trend food.[4]
There were many solo diners too. Then a nearby table started talking about Chiikawa plushies. Malatang, solo dining, plushie talk: the room felt like a compressed exhibition of 2020s trends, while someone sat there calling tripe “rubber seaweed.”
White Clothes Turn Into a Blood-Splatter Costume
The visit was spontaneous. No preparation. White clothes. Red mala broth. The result: blood-splatter cosplay.
“Wear dark clothes to malatang” would have been more useful strategy information than any topping guide.
No Tapioca, but Plenty of Starch and Chew
There were tuber ingredients and chewy noodles, but no black tapioca pearls. Tapioca is starch derived from cassava, while some glass noodles are made from mung-bean or tuber starches.[5]
So literal tapioca may be absent, but the broader family of “turn starch into something satisfyingly chewy” is already everywhere. Adding pearls would be an unholy merger of old and current food trends. Adding açaí too would probably collapse the culinary universe.
Conclusion: Malatang Is a Character-Creation Hot Pot for Playing With Texture
Trend research points to self-selection, variation from bowl to bowl, an easy-to-build health-conscious image, colorful results and a selection process that itself becomes short-form video content.[2][3][4]
The tasting added one more insight: the ingredients do not need to be the stars. The tripe was rubber seaweed, the duck mild, the fish cake flavorless elasticity—and the meal was still good because the broth unified everything.
Malatang fixes an excellent broth as the base, then lets you character-build the textures according to your mood.
You choose not only what to eat, but what combination of crunch, chew, bounce and broth absorption you want today. In an era where meals themselves can feel like gacha, that is strong design.
Next time there is no need to collect every unknown ingredient. If the broth is good, the toppings really can just be whatever you feel like.
