Stretch The Noodle — Restaurant in Portland

One of the best food carts in Portland, OR (and anywhere). The noodles and offerings are legit. If you come early, you will likely see the lady owner making the noodles with her hands. Only a few choices but each is absolutely superb. This time, we had the La Mian & the Chao mian (La Mian is basically a Sichuan stype beef soup with vegetables and the Chao Mian is basically a lomein style stir fried noodles dish). Both are superb - gorgeous sauced, perfectly chewy noodles and each costs $ 9!. The Mian is HUGE. Unless you are really, really hungry, it would be more than enough for two people. The soup is wonderfully fragrant and the beef is soft and flavorful. Just a great truck. Now, the bad news - be prepared to wait for a while if there is 6-7 people ahead of you... It will be at least 15-20 minutes as they cook everything to order.

Updated Review - June 18th 2020

We have been going here since last summer. Today, we stopped by again and they have the summer Noodles Salad with Chicken... Well, we ordered it and our standard... Beef noodles stir-fry... The Noodles Salad with chicken came with a HUGE container full of goodness. Perfectly chewy noodles, crunchy bean sprout, salad, baby spinach and just gorgeous grilled chicken.... Did I mention the portion is HUGE? We could not finish either of our order.... Well, another good left-over from Stretch the Noodle... The owners are so kind and she is particularly very polite in handling your order and handing you the food. BTW - the price point is ridiculous for quality and portion - ranging from $ 9 to $...

This place used to be my absolute favorite but after todays visit I’m sadly not sure I’ll be returning. We arrived at 2pm to the new location which is very cute. The new food pod area is really nice and clean. We ordered our food (2 orders of Biang Biang noodles, medium spice) and were told it would be a 30 minute wait which was fine..we’ve learned with this place that good food can take time and there were a few orders ahead of ours. We sat down and waited…and waited…and waited. At 1 hour we checked in with them and we’re told another 10 minutes. After 35 more minutes we finally received our food (we saw 2 other groups get their food before us so they were busy but not super busy). We knew immediately these were not the same quality as before. There was limited sauce, no black vinegar and they were somewhat bland. No spice at all and the medium used to make us sweat which was amazing. The noodles were inconsistent, a few pieces were ok but the majority of pieces were huge, thick and uncooked. How is that possible after almost 2 hours of waiting? It was so disappointing. See included photos of raw noodle dough. For $27 and over an hour wait..not worth the time and...

My tummy is fully, very warm and happy. The wait is long but that is apparently pretty common with hand made, quality foods. The chicken was tender, veggies were cooked very well, there are a lot of flavors happening in each dish but the garlic and chili really stood out. The portions are massive, I couldn't even eat half and I have a healthy appetite. The prices are extremely fair, especially for the area! The menu does change, so I do recommend only ordering on site or your #3 might not be what you thought was coming. In terms of heat/chili, I like some burn but the medium was too much for me, it is not a warm heat like chipolte, it is a sharp heat like straight up chili oil. My friend got mild and she said that if somebody truly wanted a mild, this was not it. It was big, warming, quality, fair priced, busy and worth the wait. You thought I wasnt going to address the noodle, that is the base of it all. You can watch them make it fresh, it is not like standard pasta, these are much thicker and more doughy. I would describe it as a...