The noodlemaker — Restaurant in Frankfurt

In China 🇨🇳 Lumian eateries are inexpensive and unassuming.

People come in to have a quick noodle soup or noodles with meat and vegetables and are usually out of the restaurant 15 to at most 20 minutes after entering.

In Germany 🇩🇪 many locals (especially people in their twenties and thirties) use restaurants, all restaurants, any restaurants as hubs to socialise with friends and colleagues or simply to timepass as the vast majority of them do not have children or any chores to attend to.

I walked past the restaurant a quarter of an hour before entering and I saw three locals (a male and two females) in their twenties sitting by the window.

When I was seated near them and for another half an hour they were chatting as if they were in their own living room.

They had a grand total of one glass of wine 🍷, one small edamame plate, one cucumber salad plate and one 750 ml. glass of water in front of them and they probably stayed there for another hour after I had left without ordering anything else.

In China the chef would unceremoniously throw them out but in Germany restaurant owners have no choice but to put up with such people.

Keeping what I wrote above in mind I award the noodlemaker three stars because I genuinely sympathize with them.

However, if you want to have good quality meaty dishes in restaurants these days you must opt for one of a half dozen very expensive restaurants that also specialise in meat of which I suppose one or two are a Korean and a Chinese restaurant of the haute cuisine category in Frankfurt.

Everywhere else (the noodlemaker included) you will get pieces of meat that are not particularly tasty and small quantities as it is impossible to raise prices without getting priced out of a very competitive and oversaturated market for "Asian cuisine".

The lamb in my noodle soup was flattened pieces of lamb that was impossible to trace to any part of the animal and that to me is...

This review is about the service, not about the food, which by the way is very good.

I made a reservation via this restaurant’s Google Maps profile page. I did this because I know it gets busy during lunch hours during the week, with tourists and suits that work in the area.

Furthermore, the person I was meeting up with has a baby and would require a high chair. This is important as all the seating are HIGH BAR STOOLS which is not baby/child-friendly as some other stupid Google Map reviewers have claimed on the details section.

So I arrive on time for my reservation, the place is busy. The woman I speak to who is clearly overwhelmed by the busy-ness sort of gives me this look like she isn’t aware of my reservation and tells me to sit anywhere. Then I ask in German if they have high chairs and says she does not.

I am clearly angry and storm off to where she’s pointed. I assume I have a table with one of the reservation signs but she points to the crappy chairs in front of the staff room door and I’m like great - what’s the point of the reservation.

She can see I’m mad and says I could sit at the tables with the reservation signs if I’m not satisfied. I explain it’s not the point and that my friend has a baby that needs space and a high chair.

Furthermore the waiters are not warm, friendly or attentive. It did take me a while to get one of them to take our order.

So if you do want to come here with babies or toddlers, unfortunately you can’t. Unless you bring your own portable high chair. I would even recommend it for toddlers as a cushion on one of their bar stools would work but would be dangerous.

Such a shame as their food is good.

Also did notice that their portions are inconsistent. My Chinese bolognese noodles were smaller compared to when I had them...

Not suitable for nor friendly to families with small kids.

We’ve been here many times and know how busy it can get so we always make a reservation. We were a party of 6 and arrived an hour earlier than our reservation thinking that there shouldn’t be a problem moving it up. There was a table in the back for 6 reserved for 6:30 and it would’ve been perfect for us because we have small kids and the rest of the seating in the restaurant are all high chairs /bar stools. They insisted that the table in the back was not for our party of 6 but for another reservation that called much earlier and made us sit in the high chairs close to the open door with cold air blowing in. Closer to 6:30 a party of 5 adults came in. They said they called 20 min ago and was told to just come in. And guess what, they sat them down at the table in the back that was supposedly for another party that reserved “much earlier”. When I pointed it out, the manager insisted that that was for them when I clearly heard the guest say when they came in that they just called. Not only did they not apologise, the manager just ignored me. My family and I will...