MáLà Project – the East Village dry pot that started a small empire

On First Avenue in the East Village, MáLà Project has been feeding New Yorkers neo-Sichuanese fire since 2015, when a 23-year-old Amelie Kang, fresh from the Culinary Institute of America and a stint at one of the city's first Michelin-starred Chinese kitchens, opened the original room with business partner Meng Ai and opening chef Zilong Zhao. The restaurant's engine is the build-your-own dry pot: a wok-fried assembly of meat, seafood, vegetables and noodles tossed in a sauce the kitchen keeps simmering for six hours, then calibrated to one of four heat levels. It holds a MICHELIN Bib Gourmand, the guide's mark for satisfying cooking at a moderate spend, a distinction the restaurant has carried since its first year in business. What began as a single, often-queued-for room has since grown into a small citywide family of MáLà Projects, but the East Village address remains the original, and still the one with the deepest local following.

01The room and the setting

The East Village dining room is built for noise and sharing. The winding, cavernous setting includes a communal table, exposed brick, and low ceilings. Round tables dressed in pink linen sit under warm, low-slung lighting, a deliberately informal counterpoint to the brick, and the whole layout favours groups who arrive ready to argue over spice levels and pass plates down the table rather than linger over a single dish each.

02The chef

Amelie Kang had already graduated from the CIA, learned the ropes at New York City's first Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant, and opened the first outpost of the hit restaurant MáLà Project when she was just 23. The East Village menu itself was built in partnership: sourcing the best produce and proteins was a no-brainer for Kang when she was developing the menu with one of her business partners, Meng Ai, and opening chef Zilong Zhao. The gamble paid off fast — when the first MáLà Project opened its doors in the East Village in 2015, the bold, spicy flavors and cozy, industrial-chic space quickly became a hit, landing Kang and her co-founders on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, nabbing her an Eater Young Guns Award, and garnering the attention of the likes of "The New Yorker" and Michelin. The kitchen still credits its base seasoning to Chef Zhao's own recipe, a blend built from two dozen herbs and spices that is cooked down for hours before it ever touches a wok.

Insider tip

Open daily from 11am/noon; weekday lunch specials and a daily 3–7pm happy hour.

03The cooking

The centrepiece is still the dry pot, and the Michelin guide describes the mechanics plainly: some opt for the dry pot in which diners customize their ingredients—meat, seafood, vegetables, rice—and degree of spiciness, and the possibilities here are nearly infinite. On the restaurant's own menu, the process starts with a sauce base — Soy Ginger, Little Spicy, Spicy or Extra Spicy — before diners choose freely from meats such as marbled beef, beef tongue and pork belly, seafood including scallop and frog leg, and a long vegetable list running from lotus root to taro. For anyone who would rather not build from scratch, those who aren't up for making so many decisions swing for Sichuan classics, and even the fieriest order rarely overwhelms: nothing is an intense barn-burner in terms of spiciness.

04What to order

The kitchen's own highlights, according to Michelin, are specific: recent highlights include the cold husband and wife appetizer (braised beef and tripe), warm dan dan noodles, and a particularly elegant white fish with pickled vegetables — on the menu, that fish arrives as Fish With Pickled Peppers & Mushrooms. Since the brand's Greenpoint expansion, two more dishes have become regulars across every location: that Sichuan stalwart mapo tofu is available for the first time, for example, as is a hearty new "crispy duck salad" and silky egg custard with minced pork. On the East Village dinner menu itself, a scallion pancake, a plate of duck tacos and the classic dan dan noodles round out a table built for sharing.

05Wine and drinks

The drinks list leans into the same East-meets-West instinct as the food. The home page sums up the range as a dining experience centered around the traditional dry pot backed by a bar built to match it — on MáLà Project's own cocktail menu, a Sichuan Sazerac mixes cognac, baijiu and Sichuan spices with Peychaud bitters and absinthe, alongside a Purple Rice Lager brewed as a collaboration with Evil Twin, bottles of Tsingtao, and the softer, sweeter comforts of plum juice and jasmine green tea for anyone cooling down after Extra Spicy.

06When to go and booking

The East Village original keeps long hours for a neighbourhood restaurant: Monday to Thursday from noon to 9.15pm, Friday to 10pm, and weekends from 11am, with a daily happy hour from 3 to 7pm and weekday lunch specials served until 4pm, according to the restaurant's own site in October 2026. Success here has since spread across the city — Kang followed the success of her original MáLà Project with two spots in Midtown Manhattan (one east, one west), and last week, finally, she opened an outpost in Brooklyn in Greenpoint — but the First Avenue room remains the one locals queue for first, still a short walk from the L train at First Avenue.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.