Eden Noodles Cafe — Restaurant in Albert-Eden

First of all their food is good, there is no doubt about it. And we've recommended some of our friends to Eden noodles as well. We are loyal customer. But I have never had such terrible experience until today. They used to have not bad service, but not sure since when, the short guy taking over the place order process. Never found him friendly. Therefore, we go less to Eden noodles since. But today even worse, when my hubby order the food in English, it wasn't easy process, the short guy couldn't understand, so my hubby repeat that again which is find. So I think maybe I'd better order in Chinese. When I said add pickle cabbage into the noodle. He yelled back to me say add Kimchi at WHAT in a aggressive and impatient tone. I said back to him, oh, don't be aggressive. It is rude. He said back to me 'you are rude!' And turn his head to another side and mumbling. There was some disagreements about the noodle. I was try to understand how should I order the noodle. As last weekend, the other guy explain to me the Sichuan style noodle in plain soup, suppose comes with pickle cabbage, but they've been complained before as the pickle is a little bit spicy. So he suggested me if I order this noodle in the future, just said add pickle cabbage. Which I did the exact same thing today. But this short guy tried to stopped me order the pickle cabbage into the noodle. I said that's how the guy told me how to order the noodle, but you telling me different story now. Can I just have the pickle cabbage in my noodle? Why is so hard. But guess what the short guy said, he said WHATEVER!!! And turned his head to the other side again, basically his body language telling me he doesn't want to talk to me anymore. Also he smashed something to the sink to make big noise, telling everybody he is angry now. Really? Eden noodles? Is that how you treat...

If you’re all about good service DO NOT go here, if you don’t really care about the service as long as the food is good for the price you’ll like this place. If you go at the right time of the day you can actually see a woman at a workbench standing behind the person serving at the counter with a huge ball of pork mince making the dumplings, they’re that fresh. I have an average to high threshold for spicy food being part Indian and Chinese (amongst other things) but always ask for “mild” when they ask “how spicy?” and it’s still pretty up there. I like it just spicy enough to add character but not so hot that hot is all you taste. So about the service, not sure if she still works there because I haven’t seen her for a while but there was a woman who could be pretty blunt or even just plain rude to people. Once I thought I’d try to speed along the process by phoning in my takeaway order. SHE answered and told me to wait while she served customers. After 5 minutes waiting on the phone hearing others come and go in the background and her taking orders I decided to get in the car and head there anyway with the line still open on my Bluetooth in the car. So about another 5-10 minutes after I’d initially called she just hangs up the phone. I live by Unitec so at this point I’m in Kingsland by VTNZ from memory and call straight back only to have her say “sorry, I can’t hear you - it’s a really bad line” and hang up on me again - WOW! Yip, the dumplings...

Don’t make the name of the restaurant force you to order the Dan Dan Noodles (担担面)... actually, I never order the dandan noodles when I come here...

instead branch out a bit and order the shredded chicken cold noodles (鸡丝凉面) a delicious cold noodle in a spicy, numbing and sweet sauce (I would say it taste refreshing compared to the next noodle I mention, it’s the best noodle to have while you take a spicy break haha)

Another one you must (MUST) try through sweat and tears (and lightheaded dizziness from the fresh chillis) is the chicken mince pickled vegetable knife cut noodle (鸡米芽菜刀削面). Ahhhh the holy grail noodle of noodles, knife cut noodles. This spicy concoction is so spicy they always warn you that you can’t pick the spicy level (unless they’ve changed this..) this noodle is the reason I always go back to Eden noodles.... TRUST MEEE. NO PAIN NO GAIN.

Of course, order a side of LARGE dumplings in chilli oil (钟水饺), the best I’ve had outside of Chengdu, Szechuan... I recommend getting medium spicy otherwise it will just taste sweet when you have the knife cut noodles hahaha

PS: English names of noodles might be wrong... show them the chinese I wrote and you’ll be all good. Thank me later.

PPS: you can ring in advance to put down a takeaway order. Then go there and no wait. Whoop. Very very very...