Taigu Noodles — Restaurant in Middleton

Cute little homey place that serves some of the best noodle dishes in the entire midwest. Items I've tried:

1. Taigu Cat Noodles AMAZING wok hei. Like so much wok hei. WOW. And great savory flavors that complement the proteins on top of that! The veggies also come in small, chopped pieces which means you can use a spoon to scoop up the components and down it all in one single swoop.

2. Pork Dan Dan Noodles (I added eggplant) These longer noodles have a completely different charm to them compared to the cat ear noodles. Cooked to that perfect level in between al dente and fully cooked, they are extremely bouncy and springy, but not too tough that you'll be chewing way too many times in one bite. I loved the crispiness of the pork and how thinly julienned the veggies were because it allowed me to easily grab every component with my chopsticks! I will say though that this dish is extremely salty--like really, really salty. I was unable to taste the dan dan flavor to my preferred extent because I just couldn't bear to eat more than about half a spoonful of the sauce & pork mixture with every mouthful of noodles. I think I will definitely ask for less soy sauce / oyster sauce next time because if it weren't for the saltiness, I definitely could have eaten the whole thing! I also thought that the eggplant could have been a bit more crispy--it was more mushy all around than I would have preferred, and that kind of texture definitely clashed with the crispy pork and chewy noodles.

3. Taigu Hot and Numbing Youpo Mian Honestly, the best thing on the menu. It was once again way too salty (could have ate the egg topping with plain rice alone, and the sauce that first pooled at the bottom and was later soaked up by the noodles was super salty as well, which made the entire dish very, very salty overall) but delicious nonetheless. I think I will ask them to tone down on the soy sauce / sodium and add more of the vinegar and the hot and numbing flavor the next time I go. The noodles were cooked perfectly as always, and I really appreciated the abundance...

With apologies to Charles Dickens: “Beware the Maitre D’.”

“The master … turned very pale. She gazed in stupified astonishment on the rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the servers with fear. “What?” said the master at length, in an agitated voice. “No!”

“‘Please, ma’am,' replied Oliver, 'We don’t ask for more but may we replace these lukewarm noodles with fresh hot ones?” —- Stranger than fiction, the plate replacement suggestion had come not from us but from our server. We had noted that all the noodle plates were lukewarm. Apparently the new large Taigu space had led to some economies of scale, plunging their usual five star service to a kind of dining experiment. We picked just one for replacement. The server came to take the plate away, but the master returned with it and placed it on the table across from us—“We microwaved them,” she said—and she left them there as “take them or leave them.” “We cannot remake an item on the menu,” she declared.

We looked to each other at the table for gentle follow-ups to the master’s shock response—we wished to avoid the cataclysm of having no Taigu garlic eggplant at all. Two diners at a table next to us came over to say, “We heard this, and our noodles weren’t hot either.” Meanwhile, to add insult to injury, an apparently new heat vent to replace the shop that had stood here for decades poured out so hard on our Table #3 it alone could have reheated all the noodles.

As to our conclusions about the new location on Old Middleton Road, you will be happy if you don’t cross the master and do enjoy lukewarm noodles. The food remains delicious as the Middleton takeout we have enjoyed many times, though the heat venting is out of control and the service might benefit from a “maître d’” choosing someone other than Dickens as a model of customer...

Authentic Chinese restaurant with a surprisingly large menu. This place is not your run of the mill Americanized Chinese restaurant. They serve authentic Chinese fare with an emphasis on their handmade noodles. The menu offers some more Americanized options for those uncomfortable with branching out. The design is simple but comfortable, with surprisingly fancy ceiling tiles.

The restaurant was busy during our visit, late on a Wednesday evening. The restaurant was about half full with frequent pick-up and delivery orders leaving the door too. The staff were friendly, and communicated deliberately to ensure no screw-ups due to a slight language barrier. The prices are almost too generous. The portions were huge! We ordered two of the pan-fried noodle dishes-chicken and beef. We also got an order of rice noodles with tofu and a scallion pancake for an appetizer. The one downside of the meal was the scallion pancake was served with sauce (and none on the table). The pancake was plated, but the noodles came wrapped in foil within styrofoam takeout boxes. This was an odd but sensible choice, as the meals were enough for at least a lunch worth of leftovers. The noodles were all delicious. The rice noodles were ordered with light sauce due to some food insensitives. Even then, that dish had plenty of flavor. This is one of the few authentic Chinese places I am aware of in the Madison area, and one certainly...