Before we go into why this is a 1 star review.

I will start with affirmation and from a business perspective.

I think Night Shade Noodle bar made a fantastic business that fits a need in the area it's located in. Their business model gives the people of Lynn and surrounding areas, a upscale night out without traveling into Boston.

Based on their clientèle, they have taken not commonly eaten asian food and packaged it in a way that will appeal to them. Therefore exposing them to new flavors and experiences.

From a business perspective, this is a home run.

These dishes are commonly found in Chinatown in larger quantities.

For example, their sticky rice and coconut milk with pork floss. It's just a dish from Thailand; mango sticky rice. Pork floss is commonly found served with congee or on a sweet bun. So they removed the mango and paired it with pork floss. The coconut milk, sticky rice and pork floss was executed well, on par with Chinatown standards, nothing exceptional.

There was another dish, served in a small cup/bowl. I don't remember what all the ingredients are, however what I remember is vermicelli noodles and nuoc mam ( fish sauce ) and perhaps a protein. Again, it was executed well but it was literally one bite. This dish is commonly found in vietnamese restaurant. It's very cheap and served in big quantities.

So now I will address why this is a 1 star review.

Food:

We got the 9 dish blind tasting.

The first dish we got was chips, egg based dip, and cavier. Chips and cavier is a classic pairing. Creme fraiche is also classic pairing. The cavier was entry level quality, the chips were store bought and the egg based dip was over powered by dill. Good cavier should provide a good brineiness and saltiness however, this entry level cavier is more palatable. The chips and dip should enhance the cavier taste, however this dish was just store bought chips and a dill dip with cavier acting as a luxury component.

The egg noodle dish, the noodles had a play dough consistency. They use flour from one mighty mill and extrude it thru a pasta maker. Egg noodles should not be extruded and this was not executed well. I think they have a branding problem as they call themselves a noodlebar however lack noodle dishes. The owner said 2 years ago, they will focus on making more noodle dishes, it doesn't seem like that promise was fulfilled.

The other 7/9 dishes were mediocre at best however what made it terrible was the excessive use of dill. Attached are some photos of how much dill they used. I feel that they used this much dill to make the food less adventurous for their clientèle's palate, giving them comfort in trying different asian flavors. However, dish after dish, our palate was overloaded with dill and couldn't taste any of the other flavors. At one point, we just remove all the dill ourselves.

Service

The service here was quick and but not responsive. What I mean by that is they created an ecosystem for themselves that gives them a false sense of excellence.

However, this boosted some pretentiousness. I'm using the word pretentious loosely here and will explain why I am using this word.

One server asked us how the food was, we told them it was an excessive amount of dill, which they responded proudly that it's the head chefs signature topping. They totally ignore our disappointment, and proceeding to bring out the rest of the dishes with exceedingly more dill.

Another server was able to empathize with our unhappiness with the meal. She did her best to check in on us, however our gentle approach in telling her this wasn't good made no difference. They seemed shocked that we didn't praise their food like everyone else and didn't seem to care to figure out how to make us happy as stated on their website "with your preference in mind". In other reviews, the owner responded with telling customers to let us know in person and they will make things right, this was not fulfilled either.

Our diverse group of friends all agree that it was not worth the $100+ a person.