A note on the words: mala xiang guo is the dry, soupless cousin of hotpot — you pick your ingredients and they are stir-fried together with Sichuan pepper and chili instead of being simmered in broth. Mala means the numbing-and-hot double sensation of Sichuan pepper plus chili. Youbaji, written with the characters for “drooling chicken,” is chicken served under a chili-oil sauce.
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Nakamura Gen on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
You can book through AutoReserve.
Right then, this is Hangover Meshi. Something spicy this time, for the first time in a while! I heard there was an extremely hot soupless hotpot in Ebisu, so I booked and off I went. “Nakamura Gen.” It is one of those known-to-those-who-know places — and it is literally a room in an apartment building! That is brutal on a first visit, ha. But this sort of hideaway feel is rather cool to be in on, is it not!
Step inside and the mood turns suddenly Asian. The place is full of the good smell of spices. Heaven for anyone who loves spice.
Mala xiang guo course (soupless hotpot), 5,000 yen
A hotpot course at 5,000 yen a head!
There is a table charge of 500 yen per person on top, so call it 5,500 yen. Rather good! Feels cheap to me.
And with the hotpot you can choose a certain number of ingredients, I believe. Anything beyond that is charged separately. We all decided in a great noisy huddle, so I no longer remember much of what went in, ha. And then you choose the heat level.
+1 to +3 are free
+4 is 500 yen, +7 is 1,000 yen, +10 is 1,500 yen!
Well… since we are here, are we not? And so we chose +10! We shall see what becomes of us.
Right, drinks ordered, and the course begins!
The cilantro is all-you-can-eat, apparently?
This is Wanglaoji. It is read “wanglaoji,” and it is a sweet herbal tea that is popular in China, apparently.
And this is the Nakamura Gen highball. There is a chili pepper in it!
Drunken shrimp!
I seem to eat these a lot lately. The soft, melting flesh is extremely sweet and delicious.
Scallop and scallion with hot oil poured over, is it?
The appetizer of the day. A fresh sauce with a good sharp acidity.
Sichuan means youbaji, mouth-watering chicken!
A great heap of scallion and chili oil! A well-judged level of spice and heat, and delicious! Perfect with a drink.
If anything, the fact that it is practically steeped in oil is the good part ^^
At a glance it has the air of proper Korean naengmyeon, but apparently these are black-bracken starch noodles.
Well now — I have never seen them before. Smooth and slippery, and they were delicious!
And here comes the +10! A cloud of hot, spicy smoke, ha.
That is a very great deal of chili in there!
One mouthful, and it is not as bad as all that. The spice is strong and it is certainly hot, but it seeeems fiiine…
— or so I thought, and I was completely wrong, ha.
As you eat on, your tongue starts to genuinely hurt! It huuurts! It is hoooot!
Not that I could not eat it, of course, but it is hot! +10 indeed. I press on solemnly, saying ow, ow, the whole way.
In the second half the hotter sauce clings on more and more and it gets steadily harder going, but somehow it starts to seem… rather delicious?
Which is the strange part ^^. It is a heat you get hooked on. I also have the sense that the soupless version is easier to eat than the soup one.
If a soup one were this hot, I might not be able to finish it.
![Sichuan-style mapo tofu [extra] (1,600 yen)](https://cimg.eat.hangover.work/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/17065246/th_DSC09694.jpg.webp "The +10 Soupless Hotpot at Nakamura Gen, Ebisu 17")
Having safely (?) finished the hotpot, we obviously had to have the mapo tofu at the end as well, so I ordered it.
This is hot too, of course, but it is a mapo tofu where the sweetness and the savor really stand out. It may simply be that after the hotpot nothing registers any more, ha, but I did feel the sweetness stood out.
One way and another there was quite a lot of food, so I ended up completely full!
Nakamura Gen is a unique place, but the Sichuan cooking is beyond doubt! Delicious! The hotpot, though — hmm. +10 may have been a step too far, ha. I found myself thinking around +7 is probably where you can enjoy eating it. Then again, people feel heat differently, and if you have come all this way you do want to try the top level, do you not! So: the soupless hotpot, recommended!
Nakamura Gen (Chinese / Ebisu Station, Daikanyama Station)
Tabelog dinner rating ★★★☆☆ 3.6
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
