Came here one night with my husband and some friends to give this place a try. I saw it pop up on Yelp as a new restaurant so naturally we would want to give it a try. Even better? It's NOODLES. I LOVE NOODLES.
The establishment is located inside the Chinatown mall in the Chinatown plaza. It's in the same mall that No. 1 Boba Tea is located at. I used to be a crawfish place? I was super confused because everything on the outside did not suggest that it was a noodle place. They had signs for all you can eat steam pots. And everything in the restaurant still had their old name: Spicy Crawfish.
We stood there for a good 5-10 minutes before anyone noticed us. It wasn't busy in there at all. And when the waitress finally saw us, she rushed over to us. Apparently you can choose to eat the all you can eat steam pot or you can get XiangXiang noodles. So they're two restaurants in one? Who knows.
XiangXiang Noodles specializes in the knife cut type of noodles. So they're the wide noodles that are not too thin and not too thick. XiangXiang is supposed to also have other types of noodles, such as regular round noodles and buckwheat noodles. However, the night that we went, they only had the knife cut noodles. Perhaps they are still new and haven't been able to get everything that is on their menu?
There is a check offer! You get tea eggs or buns. That's assuming that whoever you talked to even know what you're talking about. I showed it to our second waitress, she said yes but then she called for help. A guy showed up and clearly did not know what was going on and he just asked if we spoke Mandarin. We did not. We speak Cantonese. They decided to call our first waitress over because she spoke Cantonese. I asked if there were tea eggs and she said they only had the buns available. They were kind enough to give us five buns -- one for each of us. The buns are sweet egg yolk buns though so if you don't like that type of bun then be sure to pawn it off!
Also, this server seems to be the only one who is working. I suppose that mainly rides on the fact she is the only server that can speak some English.
I ended up getting one of their specials: lamb with quail egg noodle soup while my husband went with the traditional beef sirloin noodle soup. Just based on their noodles alone, they were perfect. The noodles were done really well and had just the right about of bite to it. Keep in mind, with their special bowl of noodles, they also put glass noodles in there as well as seaweed.
The soup base, on the other hand, was on the lighter side. If you like lighter soups then this would be for you. However, I was expecting a heavier flavor. I love lamb and I've been wanting some really good lamb noodles but to make it good, you need a really good base. I once tried a fantastic lamb soup filled with lamb flavor and XiangXiang, unfortunately, falls short. It's understandable though -- not a lot of people like the taste or the smell of lamb. But honestly ... if you don't like lamb but you're getting lamb noodles, you can see yourself out.
We also shared the wood eared mushroom appetizer and it was pretty nice. I mean, it's normal .. there isn't anything bad or spectacular with it. Just a nice and light appetizer.
Overall, it's a pretty average place. It's a pretty average yet confusing place. Service was pretty decent after we ordered because the initial confusion is gone -- they kept our waters filled. I'm not too sure if we'll return only because, well, there are better options in the city.