{"id":450169,"date":"2026-09-01T18:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T18:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/450169\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T18:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T18:24:09","slug":"review-mala-class-still-cranks-up-the-heat-in-highland-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/450169\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Mala Class Still Cranks Up the Heat in Highland Park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph u67w0ti va4xi81 va4xi80 e8cira1\">Kevin Liang and Michael Yang, two former New Yorkers who met while working at Han Dynasty, are behind Highland Park\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/la.eater.com\/venue\/109576\/mala-class-los-angeles\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mala Class<\/a>, a jewel-box-sized restaurant serving chile-spiked Sichuan cooking. Inside the dark mint\u2013green building, find a bare-bones dining room accented by red tile, a handful of tables that remain busy through lunch and dinner, and enough plants to make the interior feel like a greenhouse. The kitchen quickly turns out Sichuan peppercorn\u2013dusted wings and numbing mapo tofu, as well as other Sichuan classics, all for under $20. Mala Class isn\u2019t trying to rival <a href=\"https:\/\/la.eater.com\/venue\/14064\/chengdu-taste\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chengdu Taste<\/a> and similar icons; it succeeds as the best affordable neighborhood option for those looking for some serious heat closer to Highland Park.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph u67w0ti va4xi81 va4xi80 e8cira1\">Sip on a can of Wong Lo Kat, a Chinese herbal tea known for its cooling properties, or order a pot of hot tea that gets steeped tableside.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph u67w0ti va4xi81 va4xi80 e8cira1\">The heat level of any dish on the menu can be modified. Try it as-is on your first visit, before asking for a little more or less spice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kevin Liang and Michael Yang, two former New Yorkers who met while working at Han Dynasty, are behind&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28829,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-450169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-dining-reports","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}