Noodle Topia
Restaurant · Madison Heights ·
Housemade noodles, dim sum & Chinese sides served by robots
Housemade noodles, dim sum & Chinese sides served by robots
"Because if there’s anything a kid loves more than hand-pulled noodles, it’s a robot that will come to the table and help serve your meal. This chill Madison Heights spot features an array of finger food dim sum and hearty, warm noodle bowls served with or without broth. Plus, the kids will appreciate that they get to try an array of milk teas that are served by Bella, one of the robot servers with an adorable cat face." - Serena Maria Daniels
"This modern, casual restaurant serves bowls of numbingly spicy Sichuan noodles and rich lamb noodles that are perfect for slurping, and a robot waiter may even bus your table. Watch one of the skilled staff hand pull noodles before emerging them in soothing broth. Beyond the soups, the restaurant also serves a handful of sides and dim sum options such as green onion pancakes or toasted pork buns. The space features ample seating and parking behind the restaurant. Be sure to keep a close eye on the address when you pull up as the driveway can be hard to miss." - Danny Palumbo
"Relatively new to the area, this Chinese eatery is already off to a promising start thanks in part to its hard-to-find offerings. For starters the noodles here are hand-pulled and served in a tongue-numbing Szechuan sauce. The restaurant also serves jianbing, savory Chinese-style crepes." - Dorothy Hernandez
"I noticed Noodle Topia in Madison Heights welcomed two robots to its serving team in 2021." - Serena Maria Daniels
"Inside Noodle Topia in Madison Heights I watched a new server named Bella — a fairly short robot with protruding ears and the face of a cat — bring orders to tables and return to the kitchen like the other servers. She looks like a rolling bookshelf, with four trays, a touchscreen and an upward-facing infrared camera that helps her navigate; a staff member loads food onto a tray, enters a table number, and the robot takes off. Customers pulled out their phones to film as Bella chirpily announced, “Here I am!” and, “Hello, dear guest. Please pick up and don’t forget to hit confirm,” indicated which tray held the food, and either waited for a diner to press the confirm button or sensed the empty trays and returned on her own. Built by Shenzhen, China–based Pudu Robotics, Bella can be petted behind the ears to make her purr and will even display an exasperated expression if stroked too long; another robot, Hola, serves as a busboy. The two robots cost the restaurant about $800 a month to rent, a cost-effective help amid a statewide labor shortage (87 percent of Michigan operators say they don’t have enough staff), but they can’t fully replace humans — they don’t take orders, collect cash, or answer menu questions — and on a recent afternoon Bella delivered pork buns, lamb kebab and plastic cups of water but wasn’t used for other beverages or the restaurant’s famous hot bowls of long, handmade Chinese noodles because, as a colleague explained, “It might spill.”" - Monica Williams