There's a new noodle shop where Sugarbowl used to be on Gouger St; I spotted a huge crowd having dinner one night when I was passing by and the popularity of the place had me intrigued. After all, they're still in their soft opening phase and already they had filled up the entire restaurant. I was pretty eager to give it a try.
They have a sign outside that apologises for any faults you might find with the noodle bar; they are still training their staff and improving their service and food. The sign is written in Mandarin and my partner had to read it for me if not I would have never known.
The noodle bar has an elegant black and white setting but still remains casual. They've got some funky decorations at the left of the entrance; a telescope and a Viking helmet? Interesting decor choice; I like it.
The staff at Moodle had a little difficulty in communicating with my partner and I in English (I'm Malaysian-Chinese but I don't speak a word of Mandarin, unfortunately). The menu stated that if we wanted to find out what sort of vegetables were being served today we should ask the staff, which we did, but they were then unable to properly tell us what they were serving. One of the waitress quickly searched for a picture of the vegetable on her phone and showed it to us; unconventional but it works I suppose.
At Moodle, there are only two main noodle dishes that they offer: a clear stewed beef noodle soup and a braised beef noodle soup in either a small or large size. They do have several side dishes like Taiwanese chicken popcorn or vegetables and a selection of braised dishes. Naturally, as this is a noodle bar, my partner and I opted to try the two different beef noodles. Each noodle dish is served with a side of pickles.
Clear Stewed Beef Noodle Soup
The soup wasn't as flavourful as I wanted it to be; it was actually kind of bland-tasting. The chunks of beef in it were chewy and not tender at all, which is what I expected them to be. I tried to add some soy sauce to alleviate the taste but to my surprise, the soy sauce bottle which clearly had the label 'soy sauce' on it, contained vinegar! Because of that, my bowl of noodles tasted sour and awful and I was unable to bring myself to finish it. Not an enjoyable experience.
Braised Beef Noodle Soup
The soup tasted good; Moodle's braised beef is much better than their clear soup as it's got a lot more flavour. Once again, the beef chunks weren't tender and half of them were actually just chunks of fat with no meat.
For some semi-bland tasting noodle soup, a few chunks of chewy tough beef and barely a handful of vegetables, I would say that the price of $10 is still not worth it. But as it is still in the early stage of their opening, I do hope that Moodle manages to improve on the quality of their noodle bar.
