Fu Niu Tang Noodle Talk — Restaurant in Sunnyvale

We had lunch at Fu Niu Tang Noodle Talk.

On the positive, the food was very good. Squid with cumin, green onion pancakes, beef In sour broth, and batter-fried fish. All perfectly done, very delicious. Five stars.

However... The music from speakers was so loud you couldn't have a conversation. No heat in the restaurant. It was in the high 50s (14-15C). Although dishes were served in porcelain, the water glasses were cheap plastic cups. We asked for tea. They gave us tea in paper cups with Lipton tea bags. This is one of the cheapest, no-flavor teas possible. It costs at most $0.05 per bag. A few sips and we pushed it away. The service, well, you get much better service at McDonalds. Waiters barely notice you. They never said a word to us. There is no menu to hold in your hands. You order by scanning a QR code on your phone. Okay, a low-end restaurant does that to cut costs, but Fu Niu Tang is not low-end: we paid $90 for lunch. The lack of menus is just cheap.

All of this happens because the manager simply doesn't care. Waiters aren't trained or managed.

Noodle Talk is a chain. We've been several times to Noodle Talk in Los Altos: much better place. If you're in Sunnyvale, drive 12 minutes more to Los Altos for a...

Authentic spicy mouth watering...and numbing noodle soups. I had the beef shank noodle soup and it was delicious. But I really needed the aloe drink to reduce the heat: they don't fool around with the hot and numbing spices!

The non-soup noodle dishes were quite good too. We got addicted to the spicy preserved/fermented cabbage free appetizer, so we often order a dish of it (which is huge compared to the free portion) to have some extras to take home.

Ordering is by QR code which takes you to the menu on a web page like many restaurants, and you can ask for extra toppings or noodles as well as for the dish to be less spicy. Unlike most restaurants, multiple guests can use different phones to add dishes to the order, which is associated with your table number, and everything synchronizes. Very nice.

It's also easy to update/add to an order. I forgot drinks and added the aloe after putting in the main dishes, and the staff brought the drink out within a minute of my order update.

Each order submission can be dine in or take out. We were able to add a few dishes to take home for later, and it was really easy.

Payment is also via the web page....

I definitely won't back either, and cannot agree any more with Mr. Eric Xu who also left one star earlier. My reasons are: I ordered saute green pepper & pork with rice. The rice was hard and cold, and the pepper pork was lukewarm. Obviously it was not made freshly. My friend ordered spicy beef rice noodle. OMG. The beef came out dark green and we asked the waiter why it was like that. He somehow got a big attitude, said in a very cold tone, yeah it is like that. I asked for a bit more peanuts, the same waiter, he goes, oh that's all we gonna provide. If you want more then we will charge you. Same tone. Then I asked for a box to pack the leftover, he gave me a big tall container, so I said nicely, can I get a smaller one for the dry food? He goes, that's what we do, if you want a different one, you need to pay for it. Wow, bad food, bad attitude, expensive noodles. I cannot see why I...