李面请 大碗刀削面 Li's Knife Cut Noodle — Restaurant in San Mateo

New restaurant in town. It replaces previous noodle shop. It is small restaurant. We arrived around 5:30 and get seated about 30 min later. The waiting list need to be improved. You put your name in the wait list using touch screen. You got text message but they won't send text message when your table is ready. Instead they call the number which most people were not there. Funny thing is because many who have number in front of us were not in front of restaurant when their number is called, we got the seat. After were seated we got text that we number is csncelled because we were not present when our number is called. The process need improvement. Now for the food. You ordered via QR code atcyhe table. There are plenty items on the menu. We ordered beef noodle soup, tan tan noodle, scallion beef pancake , and spicy beef and tendon appetizers. The order was ready pretty quickly. All came almost the same time. The food is yummy and the portion is good. The tan tan noodle is a bit salty. Price...

The food is good, but I had an issue with the queue system. When my group (2 people) arrived, we joined the queue via the Chowbus system, which only has a single queue for all party sizes. We were number 4 in line. After waiting about 25 minutes, we became number 1 in the queue. However, a group of 5 people who arrived after us was seated first, without any explanation or notification.

I approached the staff to ask about this, and they told me that the next available table couldn’t accommodate 5 people, so the 5-person group was seated at the current table, and my group would be seated soon. I wasn’t satisfied with this response. The table given to the 5-person group had previously been used for a 2-person group, so it clearly could have worked for us.

What bothered me most was that the staff didn’t seem to consider this unfair or offer any communication when they skipped us. A simple explanation or notification would have helped, but instead, it felt like our place in line...

We usually go to Hunan Mifen, but since a new restaurant opened next door, we decided to give it a try. We ordered the crispy lotus root salad, spicy beef tendon, mala beef potato noodles, and Dan Dan noodles.

The appetizers were decent at first, but after a few bites we found ourselves getting very thirsty—likely due to a heavy hand with the MSG. The mala beef potato noodle was disappointing: the broth was bland and lacked depth, though I did enjoy the bouncy, chewy texture of the potato noodles (which might be too chewy for some). The Dan Dan noodles were pretty standard; mostly dominated by sesame and peanut sauce, with the ground meat adding texture but not much flavor.

Overall, I’d stick with Hunan Mifen next door. Their broth and noodles are consistently flavorful, even if they don’t offer as wide a selection of appetizers as Li’s Knife...