Mifen101 — Restaurant in Mountain View

This used to be my #1 store to go in the area. I've been visiting it for years ever since I came to the bay area, and I remember the days when owner handed over the takeout foods by himself, making sure the plastic bag was tied with a slipknot so that I never had trouble with opening it. Truly warm experience.

Unfortunately, this good memory has been overwritten by my recent bad experience with a staff in the store. As usual, I ordered a take out by phone and told them that this would be a delayed pick up. Typically, people in the store would plan the order accordingly so that food would keep warm at the moment of pickup. However, this time the staff not only refused doing so, preparing the food 20 min ahead of my arrival, but also relentlessly yelled back on me how unreasonable it was when I asked if they could align the time better. She kept finding excuses like she had no control of when the food would be ready, or the food is technically still "warm" if I were to consume it instantly -- to someone who drove 40 min to the store. When I tried to close the argument by asking for a warmup in the last, I got a rude yes and the hot soup was yet spilled all over the place out of the container.

Personally I am pretty sad that because of this experience, I will no longer be endorsing this store to people I know, and it will prevent me from enjoying the nice food there for a good while. But I hope that staff will be enjoying her time dealing with one less...

I came here on a Friday night with just a 10 minute wait or so. There aren’t many indoor seats so it does take a while to get a spot if you come at 6 PM on a Friday night like we did.

Good: I liked the servers they were really nice especially since we spoke Chinese and they came out with the food really really quickly we ordered and they got the beef noodle soup to us in about three minutes or something crazy so this place is super super good if you were in a rush and you want some warm noodle soup.

Definitely props though to the waiter who gave us free duck heads to take home that definitely added a plus one to my experience.

Bad: The only bad thing about this place is that the noodle soup is just average it is really warm it has a lot of stuff in it and it’s just a little bit spicy but other than that I thought that it wasn’t the best I’ve had before. The food is pretty oily and greasy so I didn’t feel that good eating it either.

Overall I might come back but I do think that the noodle soup was a bit less stellar than some of the other options on Castro and I would probably wait to try out the rest before I...

Its location is slightly off main Castro Street (where an Asian dessert place used to be I think?) so we've missed it despite coming to Castro regularly for our other cravings. You can tell it's good with how there's a constant stream of diners filing in (granted, it was also ~7pm on a Sunday evening).

We got the sour & spicy mifen (both the mutton and intestine versions) and you can tell their soup/noodles really shine with the sour/spicy profile. I imagine it will probably be a little greasy without the acidity and spice but it was really tasty with. (The chunks of pickled cabbage also taste of nostalgia (they are quite salty though so beware) -- it's how my grandma makes them.) The portions are pretty big though, so don't order too many appetizers if you have a small stomach:)

They also have the traditional Beijing yogurt drink here (though in a much different packaging from the ceramic jars of my childhood) and maybe it's the nostalgia speaking but it's also really good ;)

It's definitely a place we'd be making return visits to -- there's other things on the menu that look...