At a self-serve malatang shop, the menu doesn't tell you exactly what to eat. A refrigerator full of greens, noodles, tofu, meat and unfamiliar shapes does. You choose the pieces; the kitchen turns them into soup. It sounds like extra work. In practice, choosing is a big part of the appeal.
A trend backed by more than a few viral clips
In SHIBUYA109 lab.'s 2025 survey of 619 women aged 15–24, malatang topped the café-and-food category. The report pointed to short videos showing customers choosing their ingredients.[1] Cookpad recorded a 452.6% year-on-year rise in searches for malatang in its 2025 food-trend review.[2] And in a June 2026 survey of 600 people aged 15–29, 19.5% named it the food they thought had been most popular in the first half of the year.[3]
That last figure measures perceptions of a trend, not the number of people who regularly eat it. Still, the story is clear: malatang became a food people talked about, watched and tried.
The order is part of the entertainment
In the type of shop visited for this article, you fill a bowl from a refrigerated display and pay according to weight. My first strategy was wonderfully unscientific: take a little of everything I couldn't identify. The bill reached roughly ¥1,400. Apparently I was building a meal and completing a collection at the same time.
The upside is choice. Want leafy greens and noodles? Go for it. Prefer springy tofu products and tripe? That's another possible bowl. There's no fixed combination to memorise. The downside is that every extra handful adds weight and potentially cost.
Texture is the hidden menu
The honeycomb tripe felt chewy and ridged—my first thought was “rubbery seaweed”. The duck tasted subdued in this particular bowl. Fish-cake-style pieces were bouncy; glass noodles carried the soup beautifully. None of those impressions is a universal verdict on the ingredients. They describe one meal.
But together they changed the question from “What does each thing taste like?” to “What mix of crunchy, chewy, springy and slippery sounds good today?” Malatang starts to feel less like ordering a finished dish and more like putting together a food playlist.
The broth makes it work
The broth in this bowl was spicy and slightly numbing, yet surprisingly rounded and rich. Ingredients with very different textures shared one flavour base. That is why even the unfamiliar bits worked together for me: the broth did the unifying.
Different shops will make different broths, of course. And choosing vegetables doesn't automatically make a bowl light—oil, noodles, toppings and portions still matter.
A first-timer's approach
Start with ingredients you already like, then add one or two curiosities. Check how the shop charges before filling the bowl. If heat levels are adjustable, you can begin gently: chilli heat and the tingle from Sichuan pepper are different sensations. Also consider darker clothes if you're worried about red soup splashes. My white shirt learned that lesson on the job.
The point is: malatang's appeal isn't just the finished soup. It's the feeling that you designed the bowl yourself—and, with a broth you like, even the oddest texture can earn its place.
Sources: [1] https://www.shibuya109.co.jp/shibuya109lab/reports/251111/ [2] https://static.cookpad.com/campaign/foodtrend/ [3] https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000670.000018991.html
The tasting notes reflect one visit, not a claim about every shop or diner.
