In this YouTube vlog, hosts Josh and Rachael Fillbrandt revisit Las Vegas’s upscale Chinese restaurant Mott 32 to celebrate Rachael’s birthday, reflecting on their first visit five years earlier. They begin by ordering two signature cocktails—the Hanami and the Rising Koi—then sample a series of dim sum items, including Iberico pork buns, hot‑and‑sour xiaolongbao, and fried shrimp toast, offering vivid sensory descriptions and price points. The centerpiece of the meal is a whole Peking duck, priced at $138, which is dry‑aged for 42 days, apple‑wood roasted, and air‑dried before a tableside carving. They detail the duck’s preparation, the thin, crispy skin, the accompanying paper‑thin pancakes, cucumber, scallion, hoisin and peanut sauces, and the three possible ways to use the remaining carcass (duck soup, fried rice, or fried duck carcass). Side vegetables (wok‑fried snow pea tips) provide a fresh contrast to the rich duck. For dessert they try a cold dark‑chocolate‑almond xiaolongbao, noting its unexpected texture compared to the hot version at Din Tai Fung. Throughout, the hosts interweave nostalgic references to their first visit, discuss the high price point, and conclude with strong recommendations, emphasizing the duck as the highlight and the pork bun as a close second. The video ends with a call to action to like, subscribe, and follow on social media.
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Hey everybody, I'm Josh.
And I'm Rachael.
And tonight we're at Mat 32. And 5 years ago, our very first trip that we started this YouTube channel, we came to Mat 32 and we sat in a weird red light room.
I'll say the lighting was terrible, the food was fantastic.
Food was amazing. And so we figured, you know, for 5 years on YouTube, let's do it again.
Let's go!
All right, so we went from having a red room before to a very—
Dark, Private room.
Dark intimate room. There's only, uh, 3 other tables here. All right, at the menu here you can see we did reserve the duck, which comes at $138, but it is a whole duck. And, uh, yeah, it's supposed to be one of the best you can possibly get. There is a second course that you can add on. I'm unsure which one we'll do right now, but you can see they start at $22 to $32. I do remember before their dim sum being delicious. And so I have a feeling that we're gonna probably do some soup dumplings, which you can see are around $16. Pork buns, which are $16 as well, both signature items here. Soup is around $18 to well over $50, but we're gonna skip that. You can see— oh my gosh, abalone is around several hundred dollars. Lots of seafood that you could get. More seafood. Vegetable for sides is around $20 to $30. Meat, you can see, is in the $30 to $100 range. And then more seafood. But our big key for tonight is getting that duck.
All right, so Josh got the Hanami drink. It is bourbon, blue coat gin, yumeshu, yuzu, shiso, ginger beer, and chrysanthemum.
We're really good at acts.
And I got the Rising Koi. It's got a pink peppercorn and pear jam, gin, Aperol, honey syrup, lemon, rhubarb, and egg whites.
Yes, and, uh, the cucumbers were brought accidentally, so we get them for free, and they taste good.
They're delicious.
It's dark in here.
It's dark in here, but man, I love this place. Like, maybe it's just the nostalgia. It's hitting everything right. Iberico pork sugar-coated bun. I have said before, these are like little pillows of heaven.
Thank you so much. This is like the most gourmet version you could get, I think, of a pork bao right there. Look at it rise.
Oh my gosh, this is why I said I don't care that it's a birthday dinner. Like, we aren't going budget. This is a birthday celebration.
Oh yeah, this is celebration dinner. We're going overboard on budget. Hope you don't mind.
Oh my God, that's so good. Super tender, super sweet. The bun itself is like a little pillow of heaven. I don't know any other better way to explain it. And the barbecue pork inside is a sweet, savory note that you just can't replicate anywhere else. This is to die for.
All right, and this is the hot and sour, uh, xiaolongbao or Shanghai dumpling. Now she did recommend we do this one because we like spicy flavors.
Yeah, we do.
Um, it's been a little while since we had this.
Josh always tells me you bite the top off, let it release a little bit.
Because it might burn the shit out of you. It does have Iberico pork in it, so super fancy pork.
Let me tell you, those pork buns that I had while Josh is eating his Like, I truly think I died and went to heaven. What do you think about those?
You're gonna die again.
Okay.
It's delicious. I was nervous when it said it was hot and sour because I was like, I don't want it to be too sour, but the heat is nice and strong. The sour is not overtaking. It's delicious pork taste, perfect, perfect wrapper. Yeah, that's delicious.
Um, we also just received The shrimp toast.
Am I gonna eat it?
You're gonna go for it.
Okay, well, they said it was really hot.
They did.
Usually Rachael does the really hot dishes.
We're gonna let Josh do it since it came out that way.
So it is fried shrimp toast. It looks like a lot of shrimp, I believe. We'll find out with the flashlight in a little bit. Oh my God.
Is it super hot?
Wow. It's super hot.
Look at that. It looks so good.
If you've ever had a shrimp ball before, it's a lot like a shrimp ball on top of the crispiest toast you've ever had. Super strong but good flavoring of shrimp. The texture is awesome. There is a little bit of a sauce here. I'm just gonna dunk that.
It just looks like a sweet chili sauce.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
If you're a fan of shrimp, Highly recommend it. It's nice and fried. The toast is amazingly crispy. It's so good. Yeah, let's eat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's finish this.
All right, our Peking duck is here. That's so impressive to be able to eat it.
I'm— yeah, like I'm blown away.
What makes Ma 32's duck so unique is that they do have a 42-day dry aging, which intensifies the savory flavors and tenderizes the meat by breaking down muscle tissue. The ducks are roasted in applewood, which imparts a subtle smoky and caramelized sweetness to the duck and its skin. It is also air-dried in a custom fridge with a special marinade for about 48 hours before roasting. And the tableside carving and presentation, along with focus on traditional and modern techniques, create a luxurious and memorable dining experience. They do serve it with fresh paper-thin steamed pancakes, thin slices of cucumber, scallions, and homemade hoisin sauce for a multi-layered eating experience. If you're enjoying this video and looking for more Las Vegas restaurant reviews, be sure to hit that subscribe button. We have almost 200 restaurant reviews in Las Vegas alone. All right, the first course starts with just the back skin that you could see them cut off right away. He said go ahead and eat this with some brown sugar. And so, Rachael, it's about that time.
Wow, it is so good. It is just this like crispy flavor bomb in your mouth. The brown sugar brings out a little bit of sweetness to it. It's so rich and flavorful. You can't pass it up. Go for it.
It's not as crispy as I initially thought it would be, but it is like super rich, fatty, nice crisp but not too thick crispy skin.
Okay, the fattiness maybe is what I was trying to explain.
There's so much fatty in that. Like, this is gonna be a super rich meal, and, uh, he's still cutting away a duck over next Which we also have some pancakes that they give us, which is more like a crepe. So we're gonna go ahead and put some hoisin and peanut sauce on there, some cucumber and onion, and he's ready. All right, so you can see I went ahead and assembled one of the wraps. So you've got this super thin wrap.
You can see through it.
Yeah, yeah, you can see, yeah, the bottom of the plate. Then I put a A few pieces of duck on there, some of the hoisin and peanut sauce, onion and cucumber. Gonna go ahead and wrap that up.
We also got, while Josh is wrapping that up, snow pea tips, wok fried. I'm excited to try those. All right, you're up.
Yeah, it's been a while since we've had a full duck. Like, I swear to God, at least 3 years if not longer.
I agree.
This is delicious. Now, I mean, it's pricey, but this is a celebration meal for sure.
Absolutely.
You know, talking about like decadence, I think that's a great way to say it, honestly. The crepe doesn't— it adds a little, but not taking away from the duck. The duck is just super strong flavor, rich, fatty, and the cucumber and onion like add that freshness to it. It's delicious.
We ended up going with some veggies. We did some wok-fried snow pea tips with garlic. Fresh, green, vibrant. I think vibrant's a great word for this. It's a freshness I didn't know I needed in all this richness.
I love it. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think with all the richness it's gonna be huge. Need something to cut a little bit of all these fatty meat.
Very good.
After you do the duck, there is 3 options, I believe, for the— what you do with the rest of the duck, because Clearly, it's hard to cut everything off.
Yeah, you can't get all of it cut up and edible.
So you can either have like a tofu and duck soup, you can have a duck fried rice, or you can do what we did, which is where they basically take the duck carcass, cut it up, throw it in the fryer. You can see there's probably some garlic on there. You can see some little chilies on there. And then they bring it out. And I remember us thinking that this was like the best fried chicken ever. And so let's hope that it's still as good.
And I'll tell you why Josh is digging into that. I've eaten the duck in the crepe and then without. I actually prefer it without the crepe. I think it offers some more richness, some more fattiness, some more flavor. I love the crepe, but it is— it's just not needed for me personally.
Yeah, it's basically a vessel so you can get the cucumber, the scallion, and then the peanut and hoisin sauce.
Yep.
But we just ended up putting the hoisin and peanut sauce on top of it. This is amazing. It's frickin fantastic.
Is it just as fried as you remember? Yeah. Yeah.
And I was gonna say also, like, from the duck when we were just eating it without the wrapper, the skin is so crispy but so thin. Like, a lot of times with duck skin, you think that it's gonna be so thick and fatty, and it it doesn't eat that way. Yeah. No, and this is frickin awesome. It's got a nice heat to it. Nothing too crazy, but they do bring out some I believe Thai chili. So in case you want to really kick up the heat, you can do that. But we're just going to be eating duck bones for the rest of the night. All right, as you can see, here is the dessert menu. This is $20 per dessert. There's some crazy stuff I've never seen before. $88 soups.
Thank you.
So let me know if you've ever had those before and if they're worthwhile. But chances are we're going to stick to a $20 one.
Ready? Yeah.
Oh geez.
Gosh, those look beautiful. Thank you.
All right, there's our dark chocolate and almond, uh, xiaolongbao desserts.
Look at that, it's just crazy.
And if you had any question about it, yeah, it's Rachel's birthday month, so boom.
Heck yeah, we're gonna celebrate.
Yeah, happy birthday Rachel down below, please. Time for some dessert.
It's cold.
That's interesting to know.
I was not expecting cold.
Yeah, we weren't sure with the steam, so it must have been like a dry ice situation. Whoa.
Okay, I'm thrown off. The only comparison I have to dessert dumplings would be over at Din Tai Fung. And they're like a warm chocolate melty dumpling. This is not. This has got an almond in the middle. It's cold. It's like a very smooth dumpling on the outside. Smooth, creamy, rich, very rich chocolate and almond flavor. Not at all hot.
Do you like it?
At first I would say no, but as I ate it and it melted in my mouth, I do really like it. But it's a cold dessert, definitely not a hot dessert if you're used to the one over at Din Tai Fung.
So very different from what you were expecting?
Very, very different than what I was expecting, yes.
All right, so I did have the luxury of going ahead and cutting into it rather than just blindly eating it like Rachael.
It's not a wrapper, right?
It is definitely not a wrapper. Um, it is more like a— almost like a white chocolate mousse of some sort.
But that's not how it looks on the menu when you order it.
Right. Yeah, no, we, we fully expected it to be like wrapper, like a xiaolongbao.
Yes.
Um, but it's not. So it, it's much more dessert, dessert forward.
And there's a whole almond in there.
Correct. Yeah, it's not like almond flavoring. It's an almond.
It's legit an almond.
So there you go. It's different. It is a good wrap-up finisher to this meal though. This is where we sat the first time, under the red hooker light. I am full. That was a heck of a birthday dinner.
That was so good.
Yes, delicious. Favorite bite of the night?
Gosh, I think it's got to be the duck By itself. The crispy skin, the, oh, richness, tenderness of that duck meat. So good.
I'm going with the pork bun.
Oh God.
I thought it was so good.
I almost forgot about that thing. That was so delicious.
Anyway, I thought it was fantastic. Highly recommend. The price was high, but it was worthwhile for a celebration.
It was a celebratory dinner.
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