[Takeout & Delivery ONLY] Xi'an Famous Foods 西安名吃@PICNIC | Times Square — Restaurant in New York

Don't order from XFF website, go through the picnic times square website instead. Ordered at 12:30 PM, estimated pickup 12:55. At 12:55 order tracker shows order ready to pick up, nothing at the pickup area. Ten minutes later I call the number provided on the order page for order problems. It's basically 3 minutes of ads in English and Chinese before saying there's no one on the line, go to the website instead. There is nothing on the website except the phone number. Massive waste of time. Order finally ready to pick up at 1:10 PM, so closer to 45 minutes for one noodle order. Not even packed with chopsticks or napkins. 0 stars.

Edit: Great, so you get 90 seconds of ads instead of 3 minutes. This can be easily changed to having the call message first instead of the ads, or gee, i dont know maybe NOT telling people to call the number for order support. I see now that the website has you fill out a form that will take who knows how long to respond to.

Absolutely no menu item descriptions mention utensils not being included. ok i only checked 4, maybe some do, but certainly not every single one Go on your website and please read them yourself. It shows it at the very bottom of the main menu, so if you know what you want to order and just add your item then go into cart without scrolling through to the bottom, you won't see this.

Don't outsource your issues with your partners to the customers. You're using Picnic's space, their problems are also...

This is probably the most-hyped Chinese restaurant on the east coast, and it lives up to its reputation.

This location is long and narrow and was nearly empty when we came at 3pm on a Sunday. You can see the cooks pulling hand noodles behind the counter where you order. The fact that you can't order in mandarin here is either a sign of how quickly they expanded or of how the midtown locations are catering to a different demographic.

The hand-noodles with lamb come as cabbage underneath a pile of noodles topped with a scoop of fragrant cumin-spiced lamb. The lamb is tender and perfectly flavored. The noodles are snappy and obviously freshly-made. Don't try to find the ends of the noodles: they're pulled as giant rings of unbroken dough. Everything is drenched in their famous chili oil, which blends heat and acid to complete the flavor profile. You can add more hot sauce, but I thought the dish was well balanced.

The vegetarian cold noodles are clear rice noodles in the same oil as the hand-pulled noodles but with chewy tofu instead of lamb. The tofu soaks up the chili oil very nicely.

The spinach dumplings have chewy wrappers and are also soaked in chili oil. The extra roasted ground chili that comes with the dumplings are great on top of...

Ok, TimeOut US named Xi'an Famous Foods the second-best Chinese restaurant in the US in January which meant that it was well overdue for me to pay this place a visit the next time I was in New York City. We went to this location because it was the closest to Broadway where we had to catch a show (Aladdin on Broadway: WATCH IT!)

My boyfriend and I ordered 2 of the cumin lamb handmade noodles, and it came out extremely quickly. I loved the consistency of the noodles (so "QQ" as many FOBs may say) but my boyfriend came to the realization that he enjoys thinner noodles better. The flavors were delicious and the lamb was cooked perfectly. My only gripe was that there was celery in the mixture and I'm not a big fan of celery, but this is personal preference.

They only take credit cards, and there is a $5 minimum. We didn't buy water when we ordered the food, and so when we tried going back to get a bottle of water after taking a few bites, it wasn't cost-effective enough to spend the credit card minimum. We handled the fiery pain (well, mostly me since the boyfriend can handle a lot of spice) and carried on. If you aren't as pro as me and can't handle your spicy foods without water, be sure to order it along with...