| rev:text
| - I admit (with shame) that I delayed eating at Doodles until just recently. The location is set in the greasy pit of campus-town, where I hesitate to venture unless compelled to by some supernatural force (like the lure of hot noodles in winter).
The interior space of this tiny shop is not exactly comfortable, but this is the unfortunate case with most campus businesses (i.e., furniture and surfaces should be able to withstand physical punishment from college students). For those choosing to dine inside, there's a picnic-style bench and a counter with stools. I guess I can't hold the lack of interior design against them because the restaurant is not attempting to follow a conventional theme.
The manager explained the primary concept behind the place is "food-to-go" (so students can eat something while running around campus), and all the food is packaged for such a purpose, including the noodles. Next to the front counter is a cooler with various drinks (both American sodas and Asian fruit juices) and "snack" foods. From what I observed, the same snack foods aren't served each day, though I haven't gone often enough to figure out the pattern/rotation of the different foods. These were a few dishes I noticed during my visits: glutinous rice balls (classic snack served in Taiwan and other parts of China), Chinese steamed buns, edamame, various sushi rolls, vegetarian gyoza, and spam musubi (a Japanese-Hawaiian invention that probably deserves a certain skepticism from most diners).
Of course, the main feature of this shop is ramen. When I mention this, most people respond indignantly, "What!? You can buy ramen for 40 cents at Wal-Mart!" The ramen-eating experience here is NOT the same as boiling noodles and adding sauce packets in your own home, though. Your ramen bowl is fully customizable, from the available broths (sesame, miso, kimchi, beef, seafood, etc.) to the toppings you can request for your bowl (baby bok choy, nappa, egg, fried tofu, wakame, Thai fish cakes, beef meatballs, etc.). At around 50 cents per topping, I was initially expecting pretty skim offerings, but I actually get a pretty decent ratio of noodles to vegetables.
Maybe this little restaurant appeals to me because very few places can offer me a reasonable lunch for $3 (and student debts are the primary constraint on my dining options). Probably real adults with real jobs would be less impressed by Doodles, but this is an ideal restaurant for most college students.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)