In just a few short years, the humble mala xiang guo has become a ubiquitous lunchtime staple.
The Sichuan stir fry dish has reached peak popularity levels, resulting in an onslaught of stalls sprouting up at hawkers, food courts and as standalone restaurants alike. Simply select your ingredients yong tau foo style, and have them flash-fried in a complex sauce of piquant spices and chilli, that gives it its distinctive, numbingly spicy flavour the dish is named after.
In this taste test, we sample five different mala xiang guo stalls near our workplace in Bedok—all in the name of science (actually, we can only comb the Bedok area because our bosses only give us an hour for lunch).
Five fragrant bowls await the judgement of our testers; which Bedok mala xiang guo will rise to the top of our list?