四姐 Special Noodle — Restaurant in Austin

This is a newer eatery having replaced the previous Chinese restaurant that was here for many years. My first impression walking in was, they did a great job giving this property a facelift. Looks great, modern, clean and open. Not particularly welcoming though despite being greeted pretty quickly.

Not being super efficient with app menu ordering, it took me a minute to fumble around and finally get to the menu. I understand it's cool and whatever.... but I think old school menus with barcodes next to the items would be much faster and make for a better experience.

So, found what I wanted and ordered - chicken fried rice. It came out fairly fast and was fresh and tasty. Portions sizes were fair too, I have paid more for less at other places. Overall it was good, not great, not terrible.

My brother wanted noodle soup. Hong Kong style wonton noodle soup. He was told they don't do "American style Chinese food" and was told they do authentic Chinese food. Fair enough. But wonton noodle soup is not American but actually, Cantonese.

Anyway, he ordered the soup with dumplings and no noodles. A different approach I guess to Hong Kong style wonton noodle soup. When he asked can he have noodles in THIS soup? He was told no, again. Politely we giggled and then pondered how a restaurant with NOODLE in the name - does not offer noodle soup. The biggest part of all this? When the actual soup came out? It was tasteless. Bland. I tried his soup, nope. Hardly any salt let alone ginger or shoyu or spices. No amount of added-in soy sauce or chili sauce helped, the vinegar did help a little, but not enough to save it.

The main focus was when we were order was on the dumplings apparently, as we were reminded twice to look at the chef behind us preparing the dough for the dumplings. At this point we were not really wanting dumplings of course. But I guess my point is, the social media hype and reviews seem to focus a lot on the dumplings - not noodles. So I humbly suggest maybe changing the restaurant name to Special Dumpling? Because there are noodles to be had in your soup.

Overall I appreciate what they are trying to do here. And given a little fine tuning on service, menu items, actual menus I think this place will be a go to restaurant. But for now, for me, I'm not feeling it. I probably will not return unfortunately, but don't let my lackluster experience put you off. Try it, support local businesses, you might be...

We came here with someone's recommendation. It was still their grand opening week.

The wait wasn't too long, maybe 15 minutes and the restaurant was bustling. When we were seated, there was a QR code that we had to scan with our phone and that is where we viewed the menu and also ordered. If you have two phones ordering, whatever one person orders on one phone will be on their check and whatever orders the other person places on their phone will be on their check. But at the end of everyone's order, it will all be combined into one to show what was all ordered for one table.

Food comes via a robot but there are staff members walking around table to table.

Everything that we got was amazing. The dough of the dumplings and noodles were the best I've ever had. I've never had noodles/dumplling dough that was 'soft and snappy' but I tried it for the first time in my life at this restaurant and now the bar for noodles is higher. This is how noodles should be!

The steamed soup dumplings were good. The soup pan fried buns were so unique and delicious--the bottom crispiness and dough was so so so good, a top tier item. We also had the snowflake pan fried dumplings that were also good but I feel like pale in comparison to some of our other items. The red oil pork won tons were soo good, we were thinking about ordering another one--definitely one of the top tier items on my list. The beef kabobs came in late so we didn't really get to fully enjoy the taste but honestly, we should have ordered another type of kabob. The spicy lamb mixed noodles were so good! The noodles were soft and snappy and the lamb and sides to make the noodles were seasoned to perfection and soft and perfect. The spicy beef noodle soup was also very good, so so so tasty and it hits the spot. Honestly I recommend any noodle dish, as long as the noodles are soft and snappy and made at Special Noodle, I think it will be really good.

I'm usually not a huge fan of Chinese food but this place changed my mind. I think I just haven't had GOOD Chinese food. This place changed my life. If you're ever in Austin, this is a must try spot for Chinese food. It has a lot of hype for a reason, so it is worth trying. I highly highly recommend. I've never tried anything like this with this...

I wanted to love this place because I'm a sucker for great Chinese traditional Eastern style, not overly western type Chinese food. This place is nicely decorated and has a very family-friendly vibe. The issue starts with the digital only menu. Great with pics, but it's laid out so strangely hard to really find what to order. I did like customization of how to order food like less oil, less spicy which who does that lol. There was a line of folks when we got there around 8:30 p.m. in a Saturday, but they moved people thru in a decent amount of time. We just walked over to Dollar Tree to pass the time and came back and were seated within 5 minutes after a little stroll. Maybe in total, 20 to 25 mins or so. Considering the crowd, that was ideal.

I've seen others comment about the prices based on the quality of food. Portions are generous, and they do have most of the usual suspects. We had lemon chicken. Don't judge me. I hadn't had it in ages, and it was good light crispy nor overly breaded chicken breast. Mongolian beef was actually really good. I customized with less oil and great, and quality beef was good tasty and lean but not hard and chewy. I only wish I could make it more spicy, so chili oil to the rescue, and I was happy. I enjiyed oyr veggie dish of eggplant and green beans with a little farl7c ciykd use more garlic but yummy!! Final happy note I like the pan-fried soup dumplings. The breading of the dumpling was light and almost soft bread like texture. Soup broth was OK, and filling needs a bit more flavor. Overall, it was a delightful change from traditional steamed soup dumplings, and they have plenty of those and lots of soups and hot pot style offering too.

I'd do it again, but I believe that I'd do a family group and split it. To help you feel a little less sting at...