Cloudland Rice Noodle — Restaurant in Newark

Looking for an authentic Yunnan Style "Crossing the bridge rice noodles" Spot in Bay Area? Cloudland Rice Noodles definitely your choice!! Everyone has his/her own type of comfort food when his/her need to nourishing the tummy and soul. "Crossing the bridge rice noodles" is my comfort food when I craving for noodles soup.

Little bit background about "Crossing the bridge rice noodles": The rice noddles usually serving with a large bowl of hot broth and soup ingredients including raw veggies and light cooked meat. The server will pour all the ingredients into the hot broth bowl when delivering to the table. Once added into the broth, it cooks quickly with a layer of melted chicken fat and oil glistening on top.

What we usually ordered: "Crossing the bridge rice noodles": The classic!, the soup is sooo yummy and the rice noodles are so soft. Fried Yunnan cheese: you cannot find in other places. It's very interesting to try the salty Yunnan cheese with cane sugar! Tasty! Fried Wild Boletus: Yunnan ppl love mushrooms, and they excel the mushroom to a higher level. Best company w/ rice noodles.

Overall: Food: 5/5 Service: 3/5 The restaurant usually very busy and packed during the dinner and lunch time and they lack of staffs, so they don't have enough time to prepare for the side dishes. Sometimes, they would run out of what they offered...

0 star if possible. Service is HORRIBLE. After ordering, the waitress put down a set of dishes on the table, which we thought was part of the combo that we ordered, and never told us that they are not part of our order and later tried to charge us for them. We also ordered one of the 3 bowls of noodles NOT spicy since it is for our 2 kids and the waitress confirmed the change with us and yet they still made it spicy so our kids couldn't eat it. Then half-way eating the dishes we slowly realized those dishes are not part of our order, and the kids told us the noodles are spicy (it was not obvious because the soup base is dark and we didn't eat it and just gave it to the kids). When we confronted the waitress about the dishes we didn't order and the spicy food, she was SO very rude and said why we didn't tell them earlier. We would certainly have if we found out earlier. We had to argue with her and finally the owner himself and he backed down and said will not charge for the additional dishes but the waitress still tried to charge us for them despite the owner's comment, so we had to argue with her one more time before she finally took off the additional dishes. Food is ok but to me overpriced for its ingredients and portion size, but the horrible service ruined the night for us. They can surely count us out forever...

This is a pretty good spot for Yunnan style food. It was my first time here and I decided to try the stewed pork ersi, which was very tasty, fresh, and well portioned. The spice level hit the spot just right and the noodles had a nice texture. The restaurant is pretty cozy with pleasant decor and also clean. One thing to note is that this place is cash only, so make sure to have some on you. However, I will say I was quite taken aback by the waitress demanding a tip when I paid the bill. The staff were polite enough but the service wasn't really anything tipworthy in my opinion, and putting me on the spot by asking for a tip doesn't really help. I understand the staff depend on tips, and it wasn't a huge deal as I still paid a 10% tip after she told me to tip, but essentially forcing the customer to tip isn't a good practice since tips are supposed to be voluntary. On the whole this restaurant is still worth checking out since the food is quite good and Yunnan style food is pretty hard to find around here. I'll definitely be coming back to try their crossing...