A new soup restaurant has opened in the Emporium this semester. The restaurant, aptly named Noodle Soup, features many soups to choose from.
Soup can take many forms: Japanese ramen, New England clam chowder, Jewish matzah ball soup and Vietnamese pho to name a few. Soup seems almost like a religion, every culture has a soup but no one soup is in every culture. Noodle Soup offers many of these options.
I went to Noodle Soup on a rainy night after another long week of classes and I was ready to eat. My first impression of Noodle Soup was that the interior was quite nice. It has a modern interior with a few traditional Chinese decorations. The restaurant feels homey and comfortable, the perfect place to eat with your friends (or alone as I was) on a rainy day. It is quiet inside of the restaurant in a relaxing way. After a long day of studying, this is where I wanted to be.
The restaurant had many options that are bound to suit anyone’s wants and needs. I ordered the crispy spring rolls, beef flank pho and chicken noodle soup. The person who took my order warned me that it would be a lot for one person to eat.
The food took under 10 minutes to come out of the kitchen. It was served in bowls on a red tray. Though the presentation was not classy it felt perfect for what I was about to eat.
I started with the crispy spring rolls. I can confirm that the spring rolls are extremely crispy. My first bite was rewarded with audible crispiness that one could find in an ASMR video. As I began to eat the spring rolls I began to notice that the crispiness was the best part of the rolls. The rolls weren’t greasy but just as anything else that has been deep-fried left a taste of oil in my mouth. The “spring” flavor was overwhelmed by the flavor of the oil. These spring rolls may cater to many people’s spring roll needs, but I felt as if they were slightly lacking in vegetables.
After that I ate the beef flank pho. The pho was quite simple. It only had rice noodles, beef flank and broth topped with cilantro. The noodles and beef flank were both cooked well and tasted very good. The noodles were cooked so they still had a bite to them and the flank was nice and tender like you want in a soup. The broth on the other hand was underwhelming. Pho broth should be pungent and taste strongly of beef, but the broth that I had tasted like water that was seasoned with a mix of spices that didn’t belong in the soup. The simplicity of the dish would have worked much better if the broth tasted better.
I finished my meal with the quintessential soup, chicken noodle soup. The best part of the soup was the hand pulled noodles, which came in abundance. The chicken was bone dry, the broth was extremely one note in flavor and the soup was devoid of any vegetables. Though the name of the soup only contains the words chicken and noodle, there is more to chicken noodle soup than that. I felt that I could have paid for a can of soup that could match the quality of what I was served.
Though my food at Noodle Soup was admittedly subpar, I will be going back to Noodle Soup. Though I won’t order Noodle Soup’s chicken noodle soup again I believe that their other foods have the ability to be good. Though it may seem like the good costs a lot of money the sheer quantity of food that you get is well worth the money.