Noodlebox — Restaurant in Ontario

Noodle box was my favorite in BC and I’ve been eating there since 2006 but this location is very difficult to work with.

For $50 for 2 people to eat it shouldn’t be this difficult, this isn’t MacDonalds or Tim Hortons where it’s cheap and you expect your food served in garage made with mistakes. We pay a premium for options.

Today the woman at the cash taking orders didn’t know what a “bowl” was. Their food comes in a bowl so it was very awkward. I was asking if they had real bowls to eat their food out of or just the to go bowls - (paper lined with forever chemicals PFAS that have been linked to all kinds of serious health issues). In BC you can eat your food in a normal bowl instead of this garbage if you choose dine in. That’s all I was asking and she just kept saying “what’s a bowl? I don’t understand bowl”.

Hot food leaches the PFAS into your food from the to go bowls so it’s really unhealthy to eat out of these here. So much healthier in BC to eat out of a real bowl. Unfortunately we were already there and hungry after driving 3 hours, so food in garbage was the decision.

My kid said “extra mango please” and she rang in a mango milk tea.

I saw it on the bill and got it changed and when they asked which meal to add it onto I said “add extra mango to both please” but they only could manage to add it for one.

I asked “do the zucchini noodles have flour” and she said no. I said are you sure? And she said yes. I said ok I’ll get those please. But she gave me rice noodles instead which I’m not supposed to eat due to current dietary restrictions from my specialist and didn’t realize until I got home.

I had 2 pieces of cilantro on my whole meal. Or maybe it was one leaf torn in two. I had 3 tiny chunks of mango. In BC I used to get so much! Hardly any veggies or chicken and just all noodles I didn’t ask for here. BC isn’t like this at all I’m dying inside to see it like this. In BC there were so many veggies, good customer service, lots of cilantro and mango, real dishes to eat out of instead of toxic trash, but here they are just cutting corners but charging the same expensive amount.

I’m really just so sad about this place because it’s really one of the best chains in Canada for healthy food but this location could...

After reading Noodlebox reviews and seeing their establishment along our route, we decided to give them a try. In hind site, we should have left and gone to Thai Express. We picked up this order Saturday at 5:20 ish.

They have many options on their ordering board but some of the descriptions seemed a bit off. For example, the description of Pad Thai is as follows...Sweet, sour & salty tamarind sauce with garlic, wok fired with ginger, onions, peppers, broccoli & Asian vegetable mix. Topped with a fried egg, sprouts, roasted peanuts, cilantro & green onions. Recommended with RICE NOODLES.

This is not at all what we received. We chose to add protein of Chicken and we received Slop. I am not being ignorant but it was soggy with pressed chicken and no veggies and absolutely no flavour.

SPICY PEANUT NOODLE BOX Rich & creamy Indonesian peanut sauce with coconut milk, wok fired with garlic, ginger, onions, peppers, broccoli & Asian vegetable mix. Topped with sprouts, roasted peanuts, cilantro & green onions. Recommended with RIBBON noodles. This was the best of the three that we had ordered but once again very few pieces of chicken and almost no veggies.

CAMBODIAN JUNGLE CURRY BOX A rich yellow curry with lemongrass, galangal, coconut milk, ginger & garlic, wok fired & simmered with onions, peppers, broccoli & Asian vegetable mix. Topped with mango, sprouts, cilantro & green onions.Recommended with RICE NOODLES. Recommended with RIBBON noodles. This one was soggy again and definitely more like a soup....with very few veggies.

Along with the three mains we ordered Spring Rolls which were flavourless and also Gyoza which were good but again nothing special. In the photos below are the meals that we ordered and what we did not eat. We each had one serving each and were speechless. The best thing about this restaurant was the professional and polite service from the lady at the front cash.

I absolutely hat wasting food but we could not eat it and threw the leftovers out. I felt compelled to write this review as this can be fixed but beware before going in blind like we did. Some review are written by friends and family and real...

Honestly, I’m a little surprised by the other reviews. I had the teriyaki box, with chicken and spring roll on the side. I wouldn’t normally go into this level of detail, but with the number of times I was asked to leave a review online combined with the cost I feel obliged.

The spring roll was smaller than I expected from the price, it was also quite mushy on the inside unfortunately - would not recommend.

The teriyaki sauce had a strange taste too it, its like it is 50% low quality ketchup.

The noodles were okay, tasted like they were slightly dried out but the problem was the extreme amount in the box. So many noodles.

The heavy handedness of noodles feels like it’s meant to distract from the 1/2 cup of veggies. I got a couple small broccoli, a few small carrot circles, and a small mess of shredded cabbage and onion that gets lost in the dish. There is a confusing handful of plain raw bean sprouts added at the end for some reason. I love bean sprouts but not sure what the idea is here...

The most egregious thing about this was the chicken. The chicken tastes like it comes in frozen and precut - very dry and tastes distinctly plain from the rest of the dish, except for the bean sprouts I guess. At best, the restaurant cooks the chicken in bulk and then cuts it for the week. I really don’t understand how this dish doesn’t have fresh chicken as a minimum.

The pricing strategy is deceptive. Having separate protein price and “box” price and not having a base price is tricky and makes it harder to figure out your final price...