Spicy Tang

I was craving some warm and spicy food in this cold Illinois winter. So my boyfriend and I went to Spicy Tang for the first time and the food was way beyond our expectations!!!
Since I was starving, I got both the Hot Pot and the Spicy Stir Fried (麻辣香锅). There was a variety of veggies and meat available for us to choose from and the ingredients were all very fresh. We had a medium hot pot with tonkotsu broth. The food was decent. The sesame sauce was the best part of the Hot pot!
I love the Spicy Stir Fried even more!!! I’d say it definitely tasted much better than what we had in EVO and is probably the best spicy stir fried on campus. It was authentic, delicious, and just the right amount of spicy! I will definitely come back for more of that. Nom Nom Nom!!!
The service was also wonderful. With the cashier’s help, it was easy for us to figure out what to order the first time we went. We didn’t wait long to get our food either. All in all, it was a wonderful and satisfying experience for us and the price was decent. Keep it up, Spicy Tang!

They use fresh materials for all of their dishes. The spicy stir fry (麻辣香锅) is especially good compared to other places in Champaign-​Urbana area. If you like spicy Chinese food, you should come. The one thing that I don’t like about this place is that the wait time is always long during lunch time.

For those who want a quick review: I liked what I got (the beef and noodle soup), and I’ll most likely come back at least once more.
For those who want more detail in a review: I came here on a whim to try something new. I got a tiny bit anxious when I saw no menu displayed anywhere, but the staff at the counter was kind and gave a small brochure menu that had pictures on it of the pre-​made orders (you could also make your own — cost was determined by how many items you put in it) and gave me his recommended item — the beef and noodle soup. Since I had no preconceived idea of what I wanted and I figured something basic would tell me a decent amount about their food quality and preparation, I decided to order just that.
It didn’t take that long for the soup to arrive, but it wasn’t that busy when I had ordered, though a decent amount of people came in after me– not too many that it got crowded, but enough to tell me that this wasn’t a place that got few customers. But I digress. The presentation was kind of unique — it came in a black pot/​kettle with chopsticks, a fork for those not comfortable with the chopsticks, and what I think is a broth spoon. I thought it tasted quite good by itself. I added some spicy taro to it and I liked it better that way, but that’s a personal preference.
I finished it all, full and satisfied. Admittedly, it was a bit more than I would have liked to pay (9.40 is what I paid), but I had a good enough time and enjoyed what I had that I can deal with it. When I come back again, I’ll try one of the custom dishes and see if that’s any good, and if I remember, update this review.

This is quite an excellent Chinese soup place. Overall I give it 3.5 stars when compared to food everywhere and 4 stars for a place on campus town.
The concept is essentially pick your own ingredients and soup stock and they make a single serving of personalized hot pot for you. They have non-​spicy fish stock for you people with cats tongues.

We ordered Spicy Tang, and the food has no other flavors but spicy taste. It is really hard to make bad taste of Spicy Tang. I would not Recommend this place.

Like the food here, especially the beef tomato soup. There are many choices and you can pick up whatever you want. The servers are very nice:)

I have been there several times, and I really like the food in spicy tang. The new spicy stir fried in this restaurant is very delicious and spicy. This restaurant is very characterize, because we can choose the food by ourselves. The service in this restaurant is very good, they serve the food for us and we do not need to clean the table after we finished. I also recommend you to try the daily special in this restaurant since they change the menu everyday.

EDIT: It appears that the restaurant owners (or somebody else affiliated with the business) have taken to writing fake shill reviews in a pathetic attempt to manipulate their overall rating. Notice that all of the 5-​star reviews are by users with only 1 or 2 reviews. They probably gave one another most of their useful/​funny/​cool votes. In fact, Gabrielle Y.‘s original review was removed by the Unilocal admin, but a new one was posted IMMEDIATELY (literally within a few minutes). I urge my fellow Unilocalers to read everything carefully and decide for yourself which ones to trust.
My original review is below:
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Wow, I haven’t been this disappointed in a long time. My fiancée and I had been excited about coming here since we first saw the signage outside last month, and we finally came today (a Saturday), around 11:30 AM. The first thing we noticed is how disorganized the place is; they were busy training a new employee and none of the others was dealing with the line of customers waiting to order. The place wasn’t super busy, maybe a dozen people eating and 4 others in line ahead of us.
The way this place works: ingredients are separated into meats (which include fish, shrimp, etc.), vegetables, and «mixed meats» (fish balls and quail eggs). You tell them which ingredients you want, they put them all in a bowl, and cook in a soup with your broth of choice. Meats are $ 2 each, vegetables $ 1, mixed meats $ 1.50. While the concept is fine, the poor organization here means ordering is very inefficient. The staff are Chinese and so are we, but they didn’t know the names of several items we asked for. I imagine it would be even more confusing for English speakers. They don’t have a large quantity of the ingredients on the counter, so they are constantly running out of things and running to replace with a new batch. They also failed to keep track of what ingredients we ordered, and we had to help them add it up. All in all, ordering was a messy ordeal and I don’t want to imagine how they handle the crowds during busier times.
Personally, I think they should let customers fill their own bowl and pay by weight (like most similar places in China), or a fixed price per bowl (like the Mongolian grill type places in America). By charging different prices for different ingredients they may be squeezing out better profit margins, but at the cost of poor operating efficiency. I also think they should call your number and have you pick up your order at the counter, rather than trying to bring it to your table, which they can’t find and end up constantly calling out numbers anyways. At the very least, they should let customers get their own chopsticks, napkins, and cups of water — it’s yet another extra burden on the already disorganized staff.
We asked for «slightly spicy» broth but what we got lit our mouths on fire. I don’t know if they misheard or just don’t have anything less spicy, but keep that in mind. They don’t give you white rice, so make sure you order enough for the soup. My tongue was completely numb so I can’t comment much about how the food tastes. But my fiancée had stomach cramps during the drive back home, and ended up getting sick.
Overall, it seems that the owners didn’t do sufficient preparation before opening the restaurant. They should have had the staff properly trained and rethought their operation procedures. As of right now, the place is a complete mess, which is a bad sign for a place that just opened and should have had things planned out. I won’t come back because of the food poisoning, but in any case I would urge them to consider adopting the self-​serve model of several other nearby eateries (Spoon House, Sushi Ichiban, etc.). It would significantly speed things up while not adding to their costs.
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