This place is in soft opening. They're offering 15% off during this time while they work out the kinks. Boy let me tell you, there are a lot of kinks.
When you walk in, there's the Yelp wait-list tablet setup at the door but right next to it is a giant screen where you can self-order your food. Nobody greeted me and the place looked pretty empty so I just browsed the screen for the menu and decided to order from it. That was a mistake. As I found out more clearly later, the soft opening discount will not be applied if you order from the screen setup. It also took them over 30 minutes to prepare my food. And they left out a dish I had ordered, but I didn't find that out until I was most of the way home and got texted by the restaurant.
Those were the bad points. On the other hand, the restaurant was accommodating in other ways in order to make up for their shortfalls and that counts for a lot. Since I was very far from the restaurant, I declined to return for the missing dish and asked for a refund to my CC instead. I also mentioned I did not receive the soft opening discount. They immediately refunded me the difference which I appreciated not having to go through a drawn out discussion to achieve. The waitress was also very nice in bringing me hot water while I waited for my food.
Back to the bad points. The food took so long to get to me and I didn't enjoy any of it.
I ordered the chicken roll, which was cold and rubbery by the time I tried it. It was also insanely spicy for some reason. I know the reason, there was a spicy cabbage relish added it to that could easily have been placed by the side to be added by the customer if they wanted to taste the fiery inferno of the sun on their tongue. Please do not add random spicy condiments that don't need to be there without warning. If I were eating this dish at the restaurant, I would have sent it back to be remade without the spicy condiment.
I ordered the duck, which I did not know was a combo plate that came with more spicy cabbage relish (that came on all the dishes) and some random steamed veg (bok choy). I was mainly interested in roast duck which I saw in another review was supposed to be good. This was not good duck. It was burnt to charred blackness and the meat was chalky and tasted mainly of disappointment. The pieces were hacked very small and unevenly. There was no picture on the screen for this menu item and I can see why if they're trying to sell it. If I had seen it before ordering, I would not have ordered it.
I ordered two rice combos with soup. One was the Hainan chicken. The ginger scallion sauce was good as was the rice if a little over moist, but the chicken was over boiled and very plain tasting. The sauce was there of course to add flavor but I expect chicken to have intrinsic flavor outside of additional sauce. I didn't even taste any seasoning on the chicken before adding the sauce. The other combo just said braised pork so I was surprised to find a soy sauce based liquidy stew with the pork diced into tiny pieces. The pork came with seemingly random sides like the cabbage relish and macaroni salad (??). The soup these combos came with was an emulsified milky bone broth. It smelled and tasted of pork fat but there were surprise chicken pieces at the bottom.
The missing item from my order was chili oil pork and shrimp wontons. I'm interest in trying it but I wasn't going to drive all the way back to retrieve it.
The decor is spare but clean. There's a giant tv behind the service counter that plays Korean singing and dancing which is odd considering this is a Chinese place. The outside only says Noodle House so seeing Long's Noodles as the name inside was a surprise. While I was disappointed by the wait and the food, good customer service means I will be back after they work out the kinks. 3 stars is generous but I hope they will exceed my expectations the next time I come in and fully earn all the stars. read more