Noodle Nine Way & Mala Bowl — Restaurant in Redmond

Nine Way was awesome! A friend of mine introduced me to the restaurant and I wanted to try out the noodles. I tried out pig ears for the first time, and TBH, they don't look or taste funny or weird. The texture is like half soft meat and half cartilage. Never ate this as a Korean growing up and so this is a new experience. The spiciness was subtle. I think I would have liked it better with more spiciness, but we need to protect our stomachs 😂. The handmade Sichuanese dumplings were great. Not super mushy and so though I wouldn't recommend this to my grandparents, I love them personally. I love how the waitress would advise me to mix with the sauce and the sauce was perfect. Dipped it with the meat inside the dumplings. Delicious. The beef noodle soup with braised beef and clear noodles was delicious but a little disappointing for me only because I forgot to ask them to add some spice to it. It's not often to put tongue numbing spices to my everyday meal and this would have been a nice addition. The minced beef dry (not so dry because it has its own sauce and spices and just not the broth) noodles had an awesome amount of spices to it. Again, I wished I asked for some more spice to it, but overall a very fulfilling meal. TBH, I got here around 2:30PM and they close at 3PM. Though they were closed at 3PM, they didn't rush us to finish eating and that was nice. Only one working bathroom, so please be patient and lock the bathroom door if you're using it. 😂 Had an embarrassing moment when the dude inside the bathroom was still there and the door...

I came here on a Saturday evening with a friend, and we snagged the last table. We were handed paper and pen for ordering, and flavors in general were pretty good. We got: green pepper dry noodle with extra spicy: chewy noodles, good flavors, chili was super spicy and added good flavor sweet water noodle: super thick chewy noodles, good peanut-y sweet flavor with not too much spice hot pot with ma la soup base, fish, cuttlefish balls, rice cake, fried tofu, soft tofu, and napa cabbage: for how expensive each ingredient was to add, there was a very small amount of food. Fish was coated in flour which wasn't great. The other ingredients were fine, and in general this was super oily and had a savory taste that makes me think there was MSG. Good flavor but not a lot of food; I took the leftovers home to make more meals out of it.

Service was alright, our waters got repeatedly filled. Prices were high for the not-so-great amount of food, as these three dishes came out to be about $50 post-tax. I also highly disapprove of the plastic water cups and throwaway wooden chopsticks - not...

TLDR: homey food.

COVID19 Update: take out only.

Handmade Chinese Scallion Pancake: thin, lightly flavored, and not overly greasy--some places make it too grease slippery! Satisfying crisp and chew. Comes with hot oil, which I did not use because I'm a wimp. It tasted just fine on its own. Definitely recommend this.

Noodle Soup with Pickled Mustard Green and Shredded Pork: very authentic satisfying flavor--meaning it's not overly flavored and taste bud overwhelming. The broth is clear and just a tad on the salty side but this dish does taste very homey. I really like the pickled mustard cabbage in this soup--it adds a nice tang. I do wish the pork was in stewed chunks rather than shreds though. The shredded pork was a bit on the spongy side--like they have been sitting in corn starch to soften them up. Don't get me wrong, the pork was good but I do love me a hunk of stew meat!

Braised Beef Noodle Soup: very flavorful with tender chunks of beef. The only thing that I didn't really enjoy was that the soup itself was a bit on the...