YIQILAH.

YIQILAH (formerly Pot Pot Malatang)

Malatang is Sichuan street food built for one person, a bowl of ma la broth cooked to order from raw ingredients the diner picks off the shelf.

Why go

The counter at 18 Newport Court traded as Pot Pot Malatang until February 2026, when the same operator rebranded it YIQILAH. It is the cheap sibling of YiQi Pan Asia, the pan-Asian room at 14 Lisle Street two streets away. The venue describes the food as "Traditional Sichuan Malatang meets Northern Chinese Hot Pot," and you fill a bowl from a fridge of raw ingredients and sliced meats, hand it over, and it comes back cooked in the broth you chose. Ma la is the Sichuan pairing of chili heat with the numbing tingle of Sichuan pepper, and in malatang it arrives as a single portion rather than a shared pot, which is why this works for one person at 9pm. It opens seven days, noon to 22:30, and to 23:00 on Friday and Saturday.

Order this / avoid

• Order: build the bowl around things that hold up in broth, sliced meats added by the plate, and take the ma la broth over the mild option since the numbing pepper is the reason the format exists.
• Avoid: hunting for the Pot Pot sign. It came down in February 2026 and the shopfront now reads YIQILAH.

What locals & experts say

• YIQILAH (venue, 2026): Traditional Sichuan Malatang meets Northern Chinese Hot Pot, with bowls built from high-quality ingredients and sliced meats. The same page states the business was initially trading under the name POTPOT MALATANG.1
• Time Out London (Elaine Zhao, 15 Apr 2024): on the operator's sister restaurant YiQi Pan Asia, Seriously good food from across east and southeast Asia, singling out irresistibly crispy Iberico pork with preserved red bean curd. That verdict belongs to Lisle Street, not to this counter.2
• Hot Dinners (6 Aug 2025): malatang has arrived in central London at scale, with Yangguofu taking the old Wing Wing site on Charing Cross Road and offering over 100 different elements to choose from. That is the competition two streets over.3
• Local rec: Jeff's note reads "Dunlop rec." No Fuchsia Dunlop recommendation of this venue could be found, so treat the provenance as open.

Good to know

• Timing: seven days, noon to 22:30, to 23:00 Friday and Saturday, closed Christmas.
• Booking: walk-in only, and the room is small.
• Name: the row says Pot Pot Malatang. The street says YIQILAH. Same address, same operator, rebranded February 2026.
• Nearby competition: Yangguofu at 47-49 Charing Cross Road since August 2025, and Zhangliang on Shaftesbury Avenue, both doing the same format at bigger scale.
• Hygiene: the FSA register carries this address at rating 3, generally satisfactory, from an 11 March 2025 Westminster inspection.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: "Dunlop rec." REAL. The recommendation itself is unverified, so tell us which post it came from.

Verdict

could-visit — A cheap Chinatown counter doing single-portion Sichuan malatang, where you pick raw ingredients and they come back cooked in the ma la broth you chose. The format is the appeal, since it gives one person the coverage a communal hot pot table normally demands. No critic has reviewed it, the operator's sister room on Lisle Street has, and Chinatown now has at least three malatang options within a few hundred meters. Go if you are already there and want a bowl for the price of a sandwich.