Vegan Hand Pulled Noodles at Xian Sushi & Noodle

Recently it was cold and raining and the only thing in the world that I could imagine eating was a steaming hot bowl of noodle soup. I’d seen a delicious looking noodle bowl on Busy Veggie Mama so we headed off into the labyrinth of big box stores that is the Muller Redevelopment in search of the strip mall we were looking for that houses the newest vegan friendly hand pulled noodle restaurant. Actually, as far as I know it’s the only vegan one in town but hopefully someone can correct me. I spoke with the managers and they told me that the white noodles are vegan most of the time but the green ones are always vegan. They also said they’d be adding more to the menu as time goes on. The interior of the restaurant is kind of tiny, very bright and clean without a lot of adornment. You can see the chefs pulling the noodles and there were tons of front-of-the-house staff making sure everyone was happy.

We started with the edamame dumpling which were actually my favorite part. They were chock-full of edamame and the dumplings had a very nice smooth texture.

For the soups the only veggie choice has a seaweed broth that is rounded out with tofu, asparagus, bell peppers, bamboo, and spinach. You also choose whichever noodle type that you fancy and they will make them fresh, there were the standard vermicelli. fettuccine, spaghetti,  parpadelle, thick spagetti, and triangles. Of course when I saw the latter, I had to get triangle and my friends all laughed at me since I was disappointed when my noodles were not, in fact, little triangles. Laura said “what you think there is a guy back there with scissors cutting out every tiny triangle?” Yes. I did.

Speaking of scissors, the menu says that you can request scissors to cut the noodles if you like. They also recommend eating your whole bowl in less than 5 minutes for optimum texture. My whole table took this as a challenge but none of us were able to make it because these are gigantic bowls. We all found the soup a little bland. Like, so bland that it would be the perfect thing to eat after a bout with the stomach flu, but when we added soy sauce and asked for their homemade chile sauce it was much better. I think it can be tough for people that rely on meat to develop good flavor in all veg soups so hopefully the broth will improve over time because the noodles were delicious. And I love noodles. I even love the word: noodle. It’s good stuff.