Noodles & Company

This is the worst Noodles I’ve ever been to! Slow service & very unprepared staff. Waited 30 minutes for our food, only to get my son’s meal cold. I usually love Noodles, but never again will we go to this location!

I happened to notice the sign for Noodles & Company while looking for a place to grab a nibble, so I stopped in. According to the menu board behind the counter, they had an Indonesian Chicken Satay. I’m a great fan of Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean food, having spent quite a bit of time in the region. That may have been my problem, for if I hadn’t known in advance what a chicken satay should look like — and taste like — I might not have been especially bothered by what I got. Since I am familiar with those cuisines, I was bothered a whole lot. First of all, a chicken satay is a bit like a chicken tikka, the chicken is first marinated overnight, and then placed on skewers and the peanut satay sauce is swabbed on as it is grilling. Therefore, you have chunks of chicken bathed in a succulent, but very spicy, sauce. A good Malaysian or Indonesian satay sauce is a thing of culinary beauty. This was anything but. First, the chicken consisted of little, nearly flat, bits of chicken breast that must have been pounded by a sledge hammer. That was bad enough, but it was made worse by having been overcooked to the point of dryness with what was almost like a crust on both sides! Satay sauce? I didn’t know there was any there at all until I got to the bottom of the dish, but there couldn’t have been much more than a couple teaspoons of it. The noodles were okay and the stir fried veggies, too, which were the only things that prevented me from taking it directly back to the kitchen. The satay was, in a word, awful. I won’t be having that again, that’s for sure. And I doubt if I’ll bother to stop in again, for I have no trust in what I might wind up with when I order something else.

Just stopped for quick lunch. Soup was great if only there was a clean table to sit at. Next time it will be take out if I want a good chicken noodle soup.