This post was updated April 10 at 7:28 p.m.

Bruin Bowl Malatang fails in its first impression, and it struggles to leave a lasting one.

Offering build-your-own hot pot bowls in a dubiously decorated space, Bruin Bowl Malatang quietly opened in Westwood in March. Even before its opening, it generated the wrong kind of buzz online for its alleged use of AI-generated art in the logo. Now, with a chance to taste the food, the concerns generated by such a low-effort logo turned out to be more than a gut feeling.

Perhaps the best characteristics of this restaurant are its location and hours. It proudly sits on the corner of Weyburn and Gayley, stalking Westwood’s infamous late-night food spots – Fat Sal’s, In-N-Out Burger and Hangry Moon’s – with an 11 p.m. weekend closing time to boot. With these features, it has the potential to join the late-night canon of UCLA, becoming another spot where students might head to clear their minds after a very long day on campus – or a very short night at the club.

But to become a fan favorite, it first needs to draw customers through the door. And hanging just above the entrance is the first red flag: a logo that blatantly appears AI-generated. The shrimp floats ominously above the broth; the ornamental squares around the perimeter break and bend randomly; the “G” in malatang implodes as the spur collides with the rest of the letter. As soon as the restaurant began construction, UCLA students took to Reddit and other platforms to point this out, declaring they would never eat at the restaurant until they hired a human artist to redesign the logo.

The interior is not any better. The sparse dining room, dotted with lightweight chairs and small tables, sits beneath wall-to-wall art seemingly curated by AI artists – accompanied by random sentences in bespoke, incongruent fonts. Maintaining the theme, the menu offers presumably AI-generated imaginings of the various broths and styles, rather than picturing the items themselves, making it actively deceptive when deciding what to order.

At the center of the menu – nestled amid this maze of dubious art – is a number that also might raise eyebrows: $14.99 per pound. For food in Westwood, this is a high price, but within the context of West LA malatang, this is unfortunately somewhat typical. If the alleged AI art sets a disappointing tone, then the price kills any last hopes for something excellent: This will be a totally average experience, through and through.

But before a customer even sees the menu, they are likely to grab a bowl and browse the smorgasbord of ingredients. There is a good variety of tofu, meat and vegetable options for the bowls, alongside fun accouterments such as fishcakes and crab-flavored buns. It brings the variety expected from a malatang establishment, offering the joy of sampling a dozen different ingredients in one bowl.

After pouring their chosen goods into a bowl, customers have their orders weighed and then whisked away to be turned into their personal hot pots with their choices of broths or dry seasoning. The bowl came out scalding, as it ought to, with the toppings tasting exactly as one might expect. With a stop by the condiments station to load on some garlic, chili oil and sesame seeds, the bowl feels like a complete and mildly indulgent meal, as malatang bowls ought to.

That said, the broth leaves something to be desired. In particular, the beef broth at medium heat – the second-highest spice offering – featured neither spice nor a terribly robust flavor profile. This is not the kind of broth that one might slurp up following the meal to savor every drop, but instead a simple salty base for the toppings. It is nothing spectacular – but neither are the toppings, the price nor the wall art especially.

In that mediocrity lies the heart of the restaurant’s issues. It aspires to be nothing more than a standard malatang restaurant, AI-generating the ugly wall art and presenting the bare minimum product to satisfy a customer’s craving for hotpot. It is the background noise of the restaurant industry, neither an appealing destination for novelty nor notable in its quality.

With these middling qualities, Bruin Bowl Malatang fails to completely earn the Bruin name.