Lan Zhou Lamen Noodle House — Restaurant in Temple Terrace

The WORST customer service I have had in Restaurant. It’s a small place, the 1 waitress was never on the floor! I went there on a Tuesday night with my 4 yo daughter. We walked in and up the counter and waited. She finally appeared with drinks in her hand and after talking to 2 other people, I asked her how do I order and she asked, “dining in or to go,” I said dining in. She then pointed me to a table and disappeared for what felt like 20 minutes, but was definitely at least 10 mins! I had to get up to ask her if I could place my order! She said she’s coming… after another 5 mins, she came and I said, I have never been here before, what is the proper way to come in and dine, she said, “I was busy.” I proceeded to order. Got the shrimp noodles, extra braised beef and a chicken skewer. The skewers were brought out by someone in the back and were great. The noodles came out with a boiled/braised egg and they were ok. My beef never came. After eating, and realizing the entire left side of the restaurant didn’t get any service at all, I AGAIN LEFT MY SEAT and went up to the service to ask for the check. I hear laughing and joking from the kitchen. No waitress in sight. 4-5 mins go by and there is now A line of people coming to pick up their food, etc. waitress comes out and I tell her, you never got my beef, but Forget about it, I just want the check. She then says, “you didn’t order beef, you got a braised egg”. So…after wondering why there was a brown boiled egg on my plate it made sense, she was NOT able to do the job properly. I Walked her back to my table and showed her the egg on my plate which went completely untouched and explained that I did NOT order an egg, just extra braised BEEF, but please no worries about it now, just give me the check. Then after waiting for another 15 mins….. I finally was brought my check. To recap: 1. Good chicken skewers. 2. WORST SERVICE EVER. 3. Mediocre noodles. Maybe I went at the worst time, but I will never know as I won’t be returning...

Ever since my travels to China, I have been on the hunt to find food with bursting flavors that would remind me of my time spent abroad. I saw the reviews of this place and to hear that they made the noodles fresh, I was sold. When I saw their menu item, I was excited to find dishes that I once had back in China. I ordered the soup dumplings, cucumber salad, the braised beef soup, the regular beef soup, a beef burger and a pork burger. The soup dumplings and cucumber salad were very good, so I was expecting the same for the main dishes…😪 alas, I was pretty underwhelmed. Both soups did have some flavor, but nothing to what the other reviews were boasting about. When my soup arrived, the noodles were somewhat glued together, as if they were frozen or chilled prior and then thawed out for my soup. There was some flavor to both soups…but it definitely needed more punch…I had to add chili and the vinegar sauce from my soup dumplings to give it more life. The burgers…I honestly was so excited to try them as the ones I had back in China were so flavorful and filled with juicy, tender meat! The bread had a good crunch, but yup…they both could have had more filling and definitely more juices from the meat sauce drizzled and doused in the meat and in between the breading themselves. I was pretty disappointed. As someone who loves trying new spots and likes a good flavor palate, this didn’t hit the spot for me, nor did the dishes truly resemble the flavors I was seeking...

On entry to the restaurant it was little confusing because you have to walk to the back of the restaurant to be seated. Only indication of this was a chalk board sign that read this way and pointed to the dinning area. Apparently pointing is a theme here, we walk to the back and the lady behind the counter doesn't welcome/greet us at all just asks how many. Ok fair enough. We tell her and she gestures to us a table to sit at by pointing to it. Like what? Are we dogs? Speak. Anyways restaurant really isn't THAT busy maybe another 5 or 7 max tables are seated. Takes ATLEAST 10mins for our drink order to be taken, based on this we were wise to go ahead and know what we wanted instead of getting our drinks and waiting however much longer until we could've ordered food. Food was meh. We got some skewers and they were skimmppyyy. I got noodles and other people with me both got stir fry. Not going to knock it honestly. But it was straight. We weren't raving about it or anything but nothing you probably couldn't get from another noodle house with better service. I will say it was priced decently well. There were 3 of us and came out to 60. ALL IN ALL: SIMPLIFIED REVIEW SERVICE: TRASH FOOD:...