LanZhou Ramen — Restaurant in Doraville

Lan Zhou deserves a rating beyond the standard five stars; a nine out of ten seems fitting, as a four out of five simply doesn’t do it justice. This Michelin-reviewed gem consistently appears on lists of the best restaurants in Atlanta, and for good reason. The food at Lan Zhou is flawless. Watching the chefs hand-pull their noodles through a small window is both fun and exciting, adding a unique touch to the dining experience. The restaurant offers an excellent selection of vegetarian options, with the egg, glass noodle, and green onion soup dumplings standing out as a superb alternative to traditional pork-filled dumplings. When it comes to noodle dishes, I have high expectations. I want gourmet quality, not something that tastes like it could have been made at home for a couple of dollars. Lan Zhou delivers on this front. The noodles were perfectly al dente, and the broth hit the perfect balance of salty and savory, making my taste buds sing with delight. Any meat and vegetables were cooked to perfection – tender and juicy. The food alone makes Lan Zhou one of the best restaurants in Atlanta. If the review were based solely on food, Lan Zhou would easily earn a ten out of ten. However, dining ambiance, hospitality, and service are crucial elements of the overall experience. Unfortunately, Lan Zhou’s service is quite cold, lacking the warmth of southern hospitality. This is particularly disappointing because the food is so exceptional that I wanted to express my appreciation, but I was met with cold stares and silence. I understand that cultural differences might play a role here, as Lan Zhou is owned and operated by Chinese Americans. While the cold service could be a cultural difference or lack of hospitality training, it might hold the restaurant back if they aim to expand or attract more business. Despite this, there was a touching moment when a server noticed I was struggling with my long noodles and rushed over to cut them for me. This reminded me of my grandmother, who, despite her cold demeanor, always showed she cared through her actions. I was deeply grateful for this act of kindness. As for the ambiance, the restaurant is typical, quaint, and functional. Given the current trend toward aesthetically pleasing dining spaces, some renovations and stylistic updates could benefit Lan Zhou. Overall, the food at Lan Zhou is out of this world, but there is room for improvement in hospitality...

This place has been on my list for a while out on Buford Highway in GA. It’s a Michelin star guide recommended restaurant so I had high expectations but also excited for them to be on the list! We had a group of 5 so we ordered several things to share. Our server was a very nice and patient man. I had 2 teenagers with me so that’s why I said patient lol! 😆 Soup dumplings- I’ve had many in my travel but these exceeded my expectations. When the dumpling wrapper ratio to dumpling is perfect, you just know it’s perfect. The skin wasn’t too thick or doughy, the soup inside- OMG I needed a bowl of it. And the pork was perfectly seasoned. 5/5 Beef fried rice- simple but delicious. Not overly wet and not dry, good flavor and pieces of beef were tender. 5/5 Scallion pancake- it was what you would expect, was pretty standard and the sauce that went with it made it taste better. 4/5 My friend ordered a beef big noodle soup. It was thick almost like udon. The broth was really nice, but for me the noodle to broth ratio was a bit off. Too many noodles and not enough broth. The noodles are so thick it started to almost soak up the liquid faster. 4/5

Now this is what I came for bc I saw this on YouTube as something highly recommended. Big chicken plate with knife cut noodles. This dish says it can share up to 4 people but honestly it could be 6 or more. It was massive! My honest opinion of this dish is that it didn’t have the flavor profile that I expected or hoped for. There was way too much cumin used, which I felt was unusual for a Chinese place. A little sure bc I do like cumin but that was just the reoccurring flavor and overpowering. There many good elements to the dish, the chicken was tender (although A LOT of bones) I think maybe they used literally half of a chicken in this dish and chopped it up into small pieces. So sometimes you would bite into small shard of bones so that was not pleasant for me. It had lots of peppers and onions and what I did enjoy the most were the “knife cut” noodles. You could tell they were homemade and they had a nice chewy texture. I still give this place a solid 4/5 bc everything else was really good, but the chicken dish could just come down to preference as well.

I will be back to try more dumplings and...

Demanding for tips (when i already left $10 cash on the $50 check) even though service was not provided accordingly.

Walked in happy and all, left feeling disgraceful, humiliated and angry. Last Monday night, I and my friend showed up at 8:50PM, store sign said they close at 9:30PM, but we don’t want to be “that type of people” so we politely asked if they were still open for dining-in. Waitress seemed annoyed and reluctantly said yes. Things started going south from this point. I would have left from the moment they tossed us the menu with the most obnoxious attitude ever, but my friend insisted on staying and just get our dinner done with. They did not provide any proper service whatsoever - I said so because I work in the F&D service and I know better this is not how you should server your customer!!!!!

The food was ok. It’s the service that makes thing just worse and worse. We literally finished our dinner within less than 30’ since sat down cause the whole time being there, I felt like they were staring us down and just wanting to get rid of us ASAP! My bill was around $50 with tax, i left $10 tip in cash right on the table - which was more than 20% and way more than what they had to offer. I left that tip cause i felt bad going in “later than normal”, not because i want to prove them something. An older lady came to clean up right after we got up. She seemed to be the owner or manager cause she didn’t really clean up the table but just came by, took a look and said something in Chinese - this is when sh|t went down. Right after she said some BS - which i guessed she told the waitress “They didn’t leave the tip” - this made the waitress who did barely anything had the audacity to yell loudly “EXCUSE ME, YOU DIDN’T LEAVE THE TIP!” This is over the edge of my patience so I yelled back “It’s on the table!” And with no shame, no apology, she bluntly simply said “Oh i thought you forgot cause you write cash on the check.”

WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL WAS THAT? How dare you do nothing yet feel the courage to ask customer to tip you? Do you even know why you got the tip? Tipping is only a must if you provide service that cost it “extra” work!

Never go back and will let everyone that I know of to stop supporting...