Noodle Face Co

I usually don’t write reviews despite having gone to quite a few restaurants, but I’ve had a consistently good experience here. For a $ 10 meal, the quality, quantity, service, and setting can’t get much better.
I’ve tried the noodles with bone soup, the beef soup, the peanut (dandan) soup, and the szechuan soup and they don’t cheat to make it taste good with fat and salt. The portion size is outrageous and the meat quality is quite good too. Don’t get turned off by their new menu design, which will remind you more of poor quality all you can eat hotpots in Chinatown. It seems the Chinese way is to showcase as much variety as possible but in this case the variety is all good so far. I would give it a 4.5 stars as the appetizers are a bit underwhelming in comparison and there is no liquor license, but otherwise this is a pretty authentic Chinese noodle soup experience if you get tired of the ramen and phở around town. No comment on the rice, pancake, or fish options yet…
After settling your bill, there is an additional option to spin a prize wheel and we’ve won ⁵⁄₅ times, one of which was a free meal where they handed back the full $ 10 in cash… just ridiculous. I’ll definitely be coming back and am writing this review as I fear they don’t get enough customers and won’t be open for very long.
It used to be called Noodle Face but is called Fish noodle now, however it is essentially the same restaurant I believe… having read the other reviews perhaps it’s changed owners again so could be worth a second try for those who had bad experiences before.

Thanks for the review from here… I don’t know how can it be a 4 Star
The Guang dong beef is really salty… no. it is extremely salty.
If you want to have Chinese noddle. Chinese town will be a better choice for it

The food was expensive, the service was slow, the flavours were lacking.
This place combined all the things I do not like. And I walked into this place really hoping to enjoy it.
Now it’s worth noting I was there when it was changing hands. Who knows what glory it had prior to that?

I actually think this is the worst restaurant I’ve been to in Toronto. I came in with two friends on a Friday evening. The place is small, but there were only two other tables. Waitress drops off menus, we ask about the dinner special, but find she doesn’t speak English that well and can’t explain. That’s fine, not uncommon for the area.
One friend orders the guang-​gong beef soup, myself and other companion order the popcorn chicken combo. The soup comes out, and — twenty minutes later — one dish of the popcorn chicken comes out. Er, okay. The other comes out about ten minutes later. On the menu, it specifies that each combo comes with a bowl of rice and ‘cheesy seafood stick’. The rice came, but the stick didn’t — we ask about it, she doesn’t understand, and becomes frustrated. She and the male server (might be the manager/​owner) start whispering together. Finally, she comes and drops off a bowl of lettuce leaves with a disgusting amount of mayonnaise on top. What??? When we ask about the seafood, she barks ‘we don’t have any left!’ and walks away. The couple sitting next to us heard this and told us they’d been disappointed as well.
Initially thought the prices were reasonable, but for the portion size, they’re awful. Maybe six small/​dry pieces of popcorn chicken per order, no sauce to dip — and as we didn’t actually receive the combo we paid for, we were still hungry after. My friend reported that the soup taste like ‘shittier ramen’.
Is this restaurant supposed to be ironic or something??? Hilarious Communist mural on the wall, though.

Came here for lunch. I was excited to eat some zha jiang mian because I’m beijingnese and I’ve been craving it. On the menu it claimed to have been cooked from a Beijing chef but NOOOO… It was the most unauthentic jajung noodle (idk what the name was on the menu) I’ve ever ate. Look my picture and you will see that there is no soybean paste! 酱 (Jiang) the second letter in the name of the dish means sauce/​paste but where was it? Definitely not ordering that again. On the bright side it came with a variety of veggies but kind of made the dish more flavour less.
My friend got a pai gu fan which is like pork ribs on rice. The portion was so small and the supposedly «lunch combo» for 14.99 was a rip off. We ordered friend chicken wings and mango fresh bubble tea which on our bill which was (+$ 2 each). Two piece of chicken wings and a very thin glass of bubble tea. Another order was guan gong noodles which is a beef noodle soup. It was okay but it seemed to look different than the pictures other ppl posted.
I am very unimpressed with their food… Service was okay though.

I had tried a lot of variation of the food and absolutely loved the Shuhan and Dandan. I love the noodles and sauces they use. It gives it a combination of different tastes that work together in harmony.
I love spicy food and this place really hit it well for me. I also tried the zen salad, rou-​jia mo, house beef pancake, zhang fei chicken, street wonton, and the shaozi. Not all of these dishes are spicy, but the one that really surprised me was the zhang fei chicken. I thought I was going to spit fire after eating half of it. Perhaps you can ask for less spice if you can’t handle that type of degree. The other dishes were good — but my favourite still remains Shuhan and Dandan.
The one thing I highly recommend is the jasmine tea; the aroma is so rich (The owner told me that they import the tea leaves). I would considering going back just for tea. When I was done, I was debating whether I should chew on some leaves to savour the moment I had left with the tea.

WARNING: HAS CHANGED HANDS… NOW A DISASTER
I loved the previous incarnation of this place. It has just changed hands (mid-​June), gotten a new chef, and is on a perilous trajectory. None of the previous reviews, including my own apply anymore.
First of all, they were out of a number of items… but it’s only one of those things where they come and tell you long after you’ve place your order and then thought it was settled.
The real problem though is the FOOD. The beautiful Chef Q Noodle soup now comes without soup and new factory-​grade dumplings. The pork buns were served with what must have been day-​old dry buns. All the subtlety and beautiful seasoning is now gone.
Instead, they are adding the standard laminated Chinese menu. You don’t really need to look, it’s the same as every other cheap Chinese restaurant… just order the Bingo number… A2 or B3.
The poor server was trying hard, but she knew the new owner had ruined the place. When my noodle soup was served without any soup, I voiced my displeasure, and after tasting them, decided not to eat it. The new owner was ready to rumble, but thankfully she backed down and let us just pay for our over-​priced buns and salad and leave.
So, after 30 minutes, neither of us had gotten what we originally ordered, and what we got was bad.
Now, if anyone knows where the old chef went, please let me know.

I thought the the name of the place was clever. The words «noodle» and «face» sound the same in Cantonese. And repeating a noun in Cantonese is somhow parents would talk to their children.
1. Jiajiang mien
— Not a lot of jiajiang sauce
2. Spicy noodles
— Noticeable amount of heat. Definitely big enough to share between 2 people with an average appetite.
Overall:
Would rather head to Chinatown for noodles. Not a lot of seats, looked like under 50.

What a gem! Prices are good, food is good, and service is great!
I ordered the pork belly rice, it’s good, but if you want something light, go for their noodles.
The wonton soup is good. Lots of small wontons, bite size, with a decent broth. If there is any MSG, there is very little of it.
If you check-​in via Unilocal,you get a free tea to go with your meal.
The owner is so nice. My group arrived 10 minutes to closing and he let us take our time with our meal. I couldn’t thank him enough especially since we had a big group of 12.
Definitely going back to try the noodles.

They call themselves Mandarin Beijing Mian? What should a Beijing-​broth taste like? Like Ramen?
In China old Chef School defines three levels of broth.
Mao Tang (street level) — Thick broth, lots of fat, usually from remains of Pork with blood. Lots of flavor at 1^st hit.
II. Hong Tang (formal dinner level) — Red broth, less fat, clearer taste with increasing back-​kick flavor. Usually only from pure beef or pork bone with minimal blood. Only quality soya should be used and absolutely not overdosed.
III. Qing Tang (banquet level) — Transparent broth, minimal fat, clean or «tasteless» taste at first shot but eh — you got your face punched by the huge fresh back taste. Usually only from whole old chicken, fresh (MUST BE NO DRY FOOD) shrimp, fish and abalone.
All broth lives forever by cleaning replacing broth ingredients. Thick broth is very popular in Toronto now because of Ramen-​mania. After 1700s Ramen was exported by an escaped prince in Ming Dynasty. Japanese improved Mao Tang by adding miso and seaweed. Some dried ingredients were also attempted. For downtown toronto In my opinion, Sansotei gets the best thick broth now which reminds me a famous ramen bar in Osaka called Ichiran. Both Santoka and Kinton somehow has more or less concentrated broth taste. Other places simply add powder.
In terms of Hong Tang, besides a Taiwanese cozy restaurant in Markham village named Mama Beef Noodle. I have only tasted Noodle Face.
The broth was plain at first, but it shaken me after the 3^rd spoon with hinder beef bone flavor melting my stomach and then mouth. And yeah, no heavy Soya taste, I loved it.
I asked the server if the broth was somehow related to China because it reminds me Beijing’s Ox street beef noodle soup 3 years ago when my grandparents treated me this. And yes. They imported the broth from Beijing by somehow (how they sneaked out of Canada custom?!).
The noodle is good, but can be better with more strength though.
Service was friendly and fast considering the price I paid. Well no reasonable customer expects any server hangs the dinner napkin for you in any single-​digit budget restaurant.
Overall my experience is as 4.5 stars (–0.5 star because of the softer noodle) but the other half was left as benefit of doubt and price. For this quality of food, BlogTo is quite accurate — serious bang for your buck.
Portion was like TWO bowls of Sansotei mixed TOGETHER. 10 years ago maybe I finished easily but now I just couldn’t.
Next week I will try some of their other dishes.
In case of Qing Tang… yeah Full house restaurant and Mingmen Banquet does this, but not as well as those 5 star restaurant I had in China. Southern Chinese does best at Qingtang, go to Hangzhou or Yangzhou to find out yourself.
A Tip: if you end up drinking more than a can of water after having any noodle soup, consider yourself cheated by some non-​organic dry stuff melted in the soup already. There were a few Ramen places not backstaged by authentic Japanese owners doing this, and I hated them. Yet mainstream customers just get blind by their RAMEN branding and years of MSG sauteed tongues. Figure out these places yourself.

Simple, delicious Chinese dishes, this place reminds me of the street stalls in Taipei, but cleaner, with better quality ingredients and without all the msg. :)
They’re also not Taiwanese but from Beijing but have a similar style and taste.
I may be bias with nostalgia but many of the dishes, the street wonton, dan dan noodles, and zen salad are pretty spot on. I love that they add seaweed to their wontons like they do at every street stall in Taipei. It’s nice to have an authentic modern noodle house in Toronto.
My personal favourites are the street wonton, beef roll, zen salad, dan dan noodles and shaozi noodles.
A lot of their dishes are spicy so if that’s not your thing you may want to double check with the waiter. The Zen Salad is also a nice way to cool things down.
Overall I’d say this is a great stop in, quick bite kinda place. I think all menu items are under $ 10.

While ramen is still all the rage these days lest one forget; noodles originated from China. One of the newest contenders to join the battle of the noodles is Noodle Face Co., located on Baldwin Street, a bold move considering Kinton Ramen is just a few doors down.
We arrived on a Thursday night around 8:30PM and the place was not super busy. They definitely didn’t spend much on décor as it is quite minimalist to the point of functional, save for the large painted mural that invokes images circa the Mao Zedong era.
«Tea» is provided, (if you can consider the barely pale yellow and flavorless liquid that graces your mug that).
The menu consists of noodles, rice dishes, salads, buns and pancake rolls and on the back is a guide (with names of places in China) as to what level of spiciness you should opt for. We went for level 3 — Wuhan. I’m surprised Szechuan was nowhere to be found on the spiciness scale.
Old Beijing Style Zhajiang Mian, 醡醬麵 — $ 9.90. Handmade noodles, shredded carrots, shredded cabbage, diced celery, diced cucumber with pork soybean paste.
While I know that the bean paste is supposed to be salty — this was way too salty. The noodles had a good texture to them but the overall dish was one-​dimensional in terms of flavor (read, it was salty, the end).
Dan Dan Mian (擔擔麵), $ 8. Noodles with ground pork, yacai, bok choy, grated garlic, bean sprout in spicy pork bone based broth with sesame sauce.
This dish originates from Szechuan, so it was no surprise that this was going to pack on some heat (but again, you can choose your level of heat). We chose level 3 (out of 5), and we thought we could’ve gone spicier — that was, until the spice snuck up on you after a 3 second delay and smacked you in the face. It was definitely a pleasant kind of spicy, with a bit of tang to it. The flavors reminded me of hot and sour soup. The noodles were much more al dente and the minced pork was also delicious. I preferred this to the zhajiangmian as it was more aromatic and there were many more flavors coming together. The bean sprouts were crunchy and fresh which are an added bonus. The only thing that might throw people off are the random chunks of star anise that dominate the palate as it kind of obliterates any other flavor. I would say the experience is akin to Harry Potter eating an unexpected flavored jelly bean, though star anise isn’t as gross as earwax or farm dirt.
Signature Beef Pancake Roll, $ 8. Homemade pancake, spiced beef shank, green onion, cucumber with (choice of) hoisin sauce or mayo.
This was actually my favorite dish of the night, granted it’s not exactly what you’d call a traditional beef pancake roll. The «pancake» itself wasn’t even a tad chewy, but starchier like a crispy paratha (less the grease). It was stuffed full of the same vegetables that seem to be recycled in every dish (shredded cabbage, shredded carrot, diced cucumber, diced celery) and we were just served the creamy mayo sauce. It would be a refreshing wrap to go on a summer’s day and there would definitely be enough for leftovers. The size compares to that of a Burrito Boyz burrito, minus the hangover.
Beef Mo, $ 3.50. Homemade roast bun with spiced beef shank and mayo.
In hindsight, we shouldn’t have ordered this dish. It was basically the signature beef pancake, but instead of being rolled into a pancake wrap, came in the form of a bun. But it was still infinitely better than…
Rou-​Jia-​Mo, $ 3. Homemade roast bun with chopped pork, green pepper & scallions.
This was borderline inedible. The pork was so dry and had the texture akin to canned tuna. Compared to the beef mo, this one had zero fixings in the filling and zero flavor. Anything, even mayo would’ve helped. We all took one bite and abandoned it back to its plate.
Pork Belly on Rice, $ 8.50. Yacai, pickled daikon and soy sauce braised egg.
Sadly, the dish I was most looking forward to but it really disappointed (read, how do you screw up pork belly?!). This was more like bacon (though even just frying up regular strips of bacon has more flavor) marinated in Asian sauce. It was extremely greasy (which would normally be worth it if it were flavorful); though the egg was tasty and the rice was its saving grace. It’s not your typical white rice, but a shorter grain rice which was more similar to the kind that would cushion the sashimi in a bowl of chirashi.
All in all, the damage was about $ 50 and we were stuffed. There were some real hits and some real misses. When I think of the overwhelming choices of places to get a bowl of noodles in the area, I think to myself — I probably won’t be back. But then my thoughts start wandering to the delicious beef pancake roll and I think — well, maybe just for takeout.

Don’t go to a noodle bar and not order noodles apparently– this place was brutal and I’m literally writing this review from another restaurant down the street because we were so unsatisfied with our meal. Drinks are room temperature at best and they have no alcohol. My egg in my pork belly on rice was overcooked and the entire meal was cold. My boyfriend ordered «the perfect chicken leg» and it was only bone and fat and had a huge blood clot in it.
The room smells of Ikea furniture and are so low you can’t even cross your legs if you were a suntot.
Hated it. Never again.

Orders: ALMOST EVERYTHING! LOVED THE SHUHAN NOODLES THOUGH.
Pros:
— Zen Salad: cool and tangy/​sour. It was a good palate cleanser with all of the spicy goodness!
— Zhang Fei Chicken: I loved the story behind it (named after a bad tempered general & warrior). The peanut sauce/​spicy chili combination made it delicious but deadly!
— Street wonton: refreshing and fulfilling. Wasn’t over seasoned at all
— Shuhan (Sweaty Cold Noodle): BY FAR MY FAVORITE DISH. Has a little kick to it, but so worth it.
Cons:
— Rou-​Jia Mo: homemade roast bun with chopped pork. I wasn’t a big fan; it seemed like an ‘oriental’ egg mcmuffin (& I have a particular distaste for fast food).
— House Beef Pancake: came across as bland & lackluster to me.
— Dandan: I wouldn’t say that it was a bad dish, but I wasn’t a particular fan of it. My friends seemed to like it though.
I got the privilege of speaking to the owner of the store. He was very modest and spoke of the ‘au naturale’ of the store. He mentioned that the restaurant did not utilize any store-​bought seasonings. How authentic!
Thanks to the lovely Alice for planning this collaboration between Toronto Common & Noodle Face Co. If you haven’t checked out Toronto Common & are the avid foodie, you’re seriously missing out. Toronto Common is similar to ‘Winterlicious’ or ‘Summerlicious’. Basically, you’re given bite sized portions of a variety of menu items. This allows you to get a little taste of everything and figure out what you love about the restaurant. Those Shuhan noodles are calling my name…

We went for lunch. Will not return or recommend.
Bad service — the waiter only had one table in the restaurant when we came in. The waiter didn’t check on us during the meal,
didn’t refill my tea, and never got us water. I got my food like 15 mins before my friend. There was only Siracha sauce, and nothing hotter (chilli oil, etc). When I asked for hot sauce or something hotter, the idiot waiter gives me a totally empty jar that used to contain hot pepper paste as he is taking away the Siracha bottle. «Um what am I supposed to do with that?» I ask him looking at the empty jar. «It’s hot sauce– but we don’t have anymore» he answers gesturing to the empty jar. WTF?!
«If the jar is empty, what am I supposed to do with that? Can you take it away and give me the Siracha back.» He literally made no sense whatsoever. LOL. My friend and i couldn’t help but laugh for a good 5 mins. Thankfully ppl started to enter so it just wasnt the echoing sounds of our laughter in the restaurant.
Food– large portions of bad. I ordered the first thing on the menu. The noodles were exactly like yet-​ca noodles out of a box, not homemade. The broth was flavourless. There was like 3 – 4 slices of meat and one half a bok choy. It was not spicy at all. I can make better at home. Why call a place noodle face (they get points for the cute name!) and serve noodles from a box? What a shame.
Also I ordered pork belly on the side, thinking i was going to get some on my bowl of noodles. Well, don’t expect slices of delicious pork belly, instead expect tiny minced cubes of it. And he didn’t even put it on my dish. He put it on a plate, beside my bowl of food. To him, that made sense.
Ambiance– industrial in an unfinished and haphazard kind of way, don’t go in expecting drywall or paint of any kind. There was no music– it was total silence which made it SO awkward. There is mural that reminds me of communist propaganda on the wall. The cups are thin aluminum or tin cups that you would expect from war time in China.
Menu– the menus were printed on what looked like brown recycled card stock with an ink jet printer. It was illegible, what was on the menu? I don’t know. I could barely read it. When I told the waiter that I needed a new menu because I can’t read the font, he just gave me another one with the Same poorly printed menu problem. Honestly, I don’t expect him to be a genius but, come on, no effort to mitigate the problem whatsoever or explain what was offered in the menu. Its a new business, you’d think he would hype up the offerings at least a little. Not sure why the owners would choose that menu and hire that server. Maybe the owners know their menus are shit, don’t care and aren’t going to change it.
Edit: I would actually give them one star, but it’s new so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they are just working out logistics and are running out of things eg: cups.

How could I not go to a place with a name like Noodle Face?
A cute little spot that I think could be great for lunches in the future because the prices are right and the portions are huge. Don’t let them tell you something is «snack sized», it’s lunch sized.
I tried the last noodle on the soup menu and while it was semi bland; it was filling, and the pork was delicious. Next time I would ask for hot sauce. I also ordered their «famous bun» (so good, totally splitable for two) and was able to try the «evil in the soup» and one of the noodle dishes. Everything was pretty decent.
One annoying thing that I’ve noticed has already been mentioned, is menu-​readability (which is ZERO) and strange seating set-​ups. I would be SO awkward if someone had to join my table while I was slurping down noodles, I honestly can think of almost nothing worse than trying not to make eye contact while shoveling down food. Also I had so much trouble reading their menu; a lot of the words have faded off, and looking around I could tell I wasn’t the only one.
Overall I could see myself coming back here for cheap and filling noodles; but I don’t know if the place is quite good enough to last on a street with so many options!

New spot on Baldwin?! Why of course I was itching to try it out. Being a fan of Ryu’s I was curious to see how Noodle would compare to my favourite noodle spot on the block.
Although it looks pretty bland from the outside, I enjoyed the spacey interior, however they did run out of table space and had to bring out an extra table from the back to accomodate a group of 3. My question is… why not have already set that table up earlier for lunch hour? Something else non-​food but table related that I wasn’t a big fan of was when the staff seated a couple at the same table as a guy eating solo. This would not be a big issue if these were big tables, but these tables are just big enough to seat 4 people and I know if I were to be eating solo I would definitely not like to be in very close proximity to 2 strangers! It made me feel awkward just being on the table across, so I’m definitely not going to be coming in here to eat solo which is something I often do in the city.
Now to the food. Oh wait, before that I must comment on the menu readability (a little shout out to previous Toronto CM Vivek there :-p) it was pretty horrible, the entire menu was printed on what could be recycled paper, but the font choice coupled with the fact that the words were mightily scratched out made menu readability not easy, especially when trying to decipher what’s in a certain dish.
So yeah, the food, I was hungry and quite a few items on the menu sounded great, so I wanted to try a couple, I went with the «Evil in the Soup» which I was told would be a «snack size» but ended up being big enough for a meal if I were to couple a pork bun (which we also ordered and ended up being a lot bigger than we were led to believe) with it or something. I enjoyed it, but it was no where near spicy to warrant the name «Evil». Although it does look like you’re starring into a dark abyss surrounded by chili where glass noodles reside inside. For my «main» meal I went with the noodle option of «Old Being Style»…something? It was sort of like a Chinese version of a bibimbap, with really thick doughy noodles. It was really nicely done though and left me feeling heavy after eating it. And the prices overall were not bad, my «Evil in the soup» was $ 3.90 and the pork bun was $ 3 and most of the other items were on average around $ 7 or $ 8.
Service was OK, the staff are certainly friendly, but they could have come around more often to see if we needed more tea or offer us some water, and perhaps know how to distinguish between «snack» size and «meal» size? I’m unlikely to come here on a busy lunch hour, but maybe on an off peak hour?

Food was good. There were two vegetarian options.
The service want great but I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt since this place just opened. Once they get the hang of things I’m sure it’ll improve!

The bun was quite bad. I wouldn’t order it again. It was nicely pan fried but the meat inside it was dry and scraps. I wouldn’t serve it to my friends if I was making it at home. I had high expectations for this place and was hoping that Chinese noodles could rival the ramen takeover that’s been happening in Toronto. But this place doesn’t cut it. It’s also very unorganized. The dishes went to the wrong table.
I also had the guang dong beef noodle. Which when compared to taken standards had the same amount of meat and veges as momofuku and sansotei ramen but the real difference was the lack of flavor in the soup and softness of the noodles. Definitely not up to Markham standards for noodles.
The best thing was they give you lots of hot yummy tea.

Great service, amazing food !
Love to be there again
Personally recommend Rou-​Jia Mo