Mei T.
Yelp
My fellow Yelp Elite friend and I decided to try out this restaurant since it was in the same plaza as Matcha Cafe Maiko. We thought it would be a good idea to have dinner before our dessert event, and with the horrible parking in Clairemont, we could kill 2 birds with 1 stone. We arrived early so there was plenty of parking. The restaurant selections in the plaza was rather limited, and we chose this restaurant because the Dan Dan Noodles looked promising on Yelp, and we both love spicy food.
We arrived at the restaurant at 5:30pm, and were the only guests there. The restaurant was clean. They used disposable tableware only. Upon arriving, they brought 2 paper bowls, disposable chopsticks, 2 plastic cups, and a pitcher of water for us to self serve. The water was nicely filtered, so that was a plus.
We noticed the menu had a lot of "sold out" stickers next to items. Sadly, the Dan Dan Noodles that we had our hearts set on was one of them! That was disappointing! We came to realize that "sold out" didn't exactly mean it was sold out. It actually meant they weren't selling it. For example, we decided on the Griddle Cooked Braised Pork Belly, but the small size was "sold out." There was only an option to get a medium for $26.99 and a large for $30-something. I forgot the exact amount for the large because we did not even consider getting a large for the 2 of us. The small was like $18.99. How is a griddle pot "sold out?" There weren't other diners at the time, so it's not like everyone in the restaurant ordered a small and they temporarily did not have enough small griddles. Also, it's not like you get to take it home with you. If they only wanted to sell the medium or large size, then they should consider updating their menu.
About the food...For the Griddle Cooked Braised Pork Belly, we had some options in how we wanted it cooked. We selected mild spicy and garlic flavored. It came with cubes of pork belly and bean sprouts, broccoli, potatoes, and celery. They dish was primarily potatoes by the way. It was served in a silver griddle pot, already cooked, over some flames to keep it hot. The flavor profile was good, but it was overly greasy. Definitely too much potatoes and not enough pork belly. Not worth $26.99!
We also settled for the Wuhan Hot Dry Noodle for $6.99. This dish has a peanut sauce that was flavorless. It was very bland and came with some chopped pickled string beans and carrots. We had to use sauce from the pork belly dish to bring some excitement to these lifeless noodles.
We ordered a 3rd item, the Wonton in Spicy Sauce for $7.99. The wontons barely had any meat in them, maybe at most about 1/4 teaspoon of ground pork in each wonton and that was about it. It was soaked in spicy chili oil that didn't have much flavor to it.
Overall, we were rather disappointed with our dining experience and would not recommend this restaurant. 2 stars for the filtered water!