Asia Noodle Cafe

I love this place! I have been buying food from here for the past 14 years! I can’t stop crying on this sad day. I will always remember the amazing service, owners, and food. This restaurant brought memories to everyone and has brought many memories to my family. Thank you for servicing Irvine for these many wonderful years.

Well the owner said the place would close down on Sunday, and I have yet to confirm that.
I was really surprised this little shop stood on its own for the last 19 years, but service was really nice here! The owner was nice and he gave us all our utensils and asked if we ever needed anything else, and after, he let us be. Their food is good– I ordered the Hong Kong Chow Fun, and it had just enough flavor and sauce that created a perfect fusion in my mouth. Their egg rolls, however, had too much oil. I wish the owner the best!

Really friendly service, I was the only one there and seriously thought the place closed down. I was craving noodles, so I ordered the Singapore Noodles. It was decent, not bad, or great. Not very oily, good mix of egg, onions, chicken, and shrimp.
Best of luck to the owner, they are closing in a few months.

I luv this place. The owner is awesome! I recommend the land and sea bowl or ramen soup.
It sucks that this place is closing in a couple of months. I don’t know about why the low Unilocal rating but to me this is a great place. I’m going to miss it.

A very basic noodle place. Located in the University center across from UC Irvine. I usually get the udon to go and found it very basic.
That said, the service is good and the restaurant is clean which are two good things. But, the thing is that the food doesn’t match up. They need to change chefs or something. The noodles felt store bought and the broth was equally mediocre.
To be honest im surprised this place is still open. its never packed, but I guess it survives on people who are first time goers or those who just dont know what good noodles should taste like. (i.e. those who subsist on that instant stuff)

This place reminds me of my childhood. I remember I used to come here when I was younger (think elementary school) with family and grab quick meals. I remember always getting the Teriyaki beef ramen and my brother would get the fried rice (and then get in trouble with mom for adding too much soy sauce). The owner was super nice, and because we were frequent visitors, he would sometimes give us extra free noodles if we were feeling extra hungry that day. I definitely remember enjoying the food.
A decade later (damn that makes me feel so old), I visited again (yesterday actually) and ordered the land and sea ramen — basically a noodle soup with beef, chicken, shrimp, and fish. It was basically a VERY mild (almost watery) broth with teriyaki-​esque sauce poured on top. The noodles were standard, and the various toppings were all okay, except the fish smelled kinda funny.
I’ll be honest — the food I would say is probably a 3 (and that’s being slightly generous), but I just have to add an extra star for my childhood’s sake.

Been wanting to try this place for a long time. I was very disappointed. It was so bad I cannot go back. I had the Tonkatsu with Ramen. The Tonkatsu was reheated in the microwave. It was like eating jerky. The ramen was spaghetti in water. WHAT?!
I was there today at 12:05 pm 7÷9÷13. So sad. Maruchan Instant Ramen is better.

This is a favorite of my girlfriend for a sit down dinner in UTC. The older man and women that work there are very friendly and nice and I’m always pleased to see them when I come here. They have a large variety of Asian foods but their best is the Hong Kong Chow Fun. It’s a bit spicy, but very flavorful. Have yet to be disappointed with any of the their dishes.
— Spectacular Hong Kong Chow Fun
— Very friendly service
— Large variety of Asian dishes

The place is clean and the staff is friendly, but flavors severly lacking.
One thing I have to say is. well, you know, for how many items they have. and for the amount of time it took them to make it, I only ask if the food is actually just microwaved. The food came out wayy too fast.

Um, no. My sister and I were looking for something hot and quick near campus during winter break. The plaza was pretty much empty since UCI wasn’t in session. I ordered the miso ramen and she ordered the vegetable ramen, which were $ 6.50 each. What we received is not ramen, and I was kind of embarrassed to have my sister eat it. We each received a portion of thickish egg noodles; hers came with what looked like an assortment from a frozen mix vegetable bag, and mine came with a scattering of seaweed and some pieces of fishcake in a cloudy miso broth. The service was friendly enough, although I overheard some very confused transactions at the front counter.
If you want ramen, make the trip to Kairakutei or Kohryu for the real thing.

Came back to give them a fair shot. Last time, my 1-​star review was based on the my order of some mystery shrimp dish swimming in a salty dark sauce loaded with God knows what.
But it wasn’t a noodle dish.
This is a noodle restaurant (allegedly).
So I came back and ordered the Steamed Dumplings and Beef Chow Mein.
Pretty standard and I imagine difficult to F up.
Wrong.
Final Answer: No Thanks on the food, but the Service is really friendly. =)

I would say this place deserves an overall, solid 3-​star rating not 2.5.
My favorite item here is the Land and Sea Ramen. I know, I know, it’s not actually ramen. But I don’t really like ramen, so I definitely prefer this over a bowl of real ramen. It actually has a good variety of chicken, seafood, fish, shrimp and vegetables unlike a boring bowl of ramen.
The owner is also very personable and accommodating.

I started eating here when I was a freshman at UCI, and then I moved to San Diego, and then I moved to LA, but whenever I’m in town (like this past weekend for homecoming), I like to stop by. 10 years later, it is still exactly the same, which is reassuring to me.
It ain’t gourmet cuisine or whatnot, and it’s not particularly «expert» at any one culture’s type of noodle, but I will always and forever be in the mood to eat noodles, and this place has got tons of different kinds. Fried, soupy, thin, thick, you name it. I have no qualms about eating here when I’m just in the mood for a quick meal of noodles.

This place was my spot for my «too lazy to cook nights» during my undergrad years in Irvine.
I always order the beef chow fun. They made it pretty good, not fantastic, but good. I liked the texture and the flavors. The only thing I didn’t like was the portion and the price. Almost 8 bucks for a relatively small portion I think for a Chinese place. Oh well, what can you do? They were directly across from campus so they can really do whatever they wanted to do.

After an hour of shopping at the Farmer’s Market, I wanted something with vegetables. I ended up at Asia Noodle Café by chance. I settled on «Sesame Chicken Salad» for $ 6.50. My first impression — too small, a salad for weight control which I regretted ordering. No wonder In N Out Burger a few hundred feet away gets all of the foot traffic! No wonder carnivores ignore this place. For the same price, I could’ve had a double double combo, I honestly thought since college students ate here at lunch, the portion size would be bigger than this appetizer size salad. I have Samoan nephews that would’ve eaten this in one mini gulp. It did have iceberg lettuce, a few slices of carrots, and a few tablespoons of chicken slices. Besides the small portion size, the salad was swimming in the vinegary sweet sesame dressing. If they doubled the amount of cheap lettuce, it woudlve been alright IMO. And you wouldn’t feel like you needed to eat something else. As it turns out, it gave me an excuse to stop at Yogurtland next door.
I’d been here a time before at dinner with friends eating some of the noodle dishes. They were just OK. It was convenient since we were at the nearby theater watching some boring artsy fartsy highly recommended movie by so called critics. And I thought by now things would’ve improved. Some things stay the same, however.
It was fairly quiet, there is a TV in case you need your news fix, and service was friendly. The parking is near impossible during Saturday mornings when the Farmer’s Market is on along with the dance and karate classes and all the other shops are open. I might come back. Well, not before there are rich Irvine boy gangs tagging this upscale shopping center.

I couldn’t fathom any other reason to eat at this place, other than sheer convenience. There are so many other better choices for noodle soup within proximity… but this place is walk-​able from the UCI Student Center.
Is it ok? Sure, the food isn’t Horrid, but $ 8 for a bowl of Wonton Noodle soup (The better tasting equivalent, being from S&W, and being $ 6) it just wasn’t up to par.
The Beef Chow Fun was also just OK, but at $ 9, there are a bunch of places in Irvine that serve a larger, better tasting portion.
SO just to reiterate my point… its ok… but there are better choices if you can venture off to the rest of Irvine… otherwise its just a convenient place to eat an OK dish of Asian inspired noodles. It just isn’t the place you think of when a craving for noodles happens, and transportation isn’t an issue.
Cheers.

I was pleasantly surprised at the OK-​ness of this place. I mean, it’s called Asia Noodle… strike one… and is in the UTC… strike two. But everything turned out better than expected.
Ordered the Hong Kong Chow Fun with chicken and a Thai iced tea. Even though it said it was spicy on the menu, I learned from recent experience and got a side of hot sauce anyway, which I ended up using all of.
The dark, heavy black bean sauce coated the noodles thickly and the chicken was sliced thin and cooked right. There were red bells, green bells, onions, and those death peppers, those dried red ons, that you daren’t eat, but that add a nice flavor.
The whole thing was sweeter than I would have liked and otherwise didn’t have that memorable of a flavor. Most of the flavor came from the hot sauce I dumped on. But I felt all right after eating there and that’s more than I can say for most of the surrounding establishments. I’ll be back.

I am simple when it comes to this place. The only thing you need to know is the Beef Hong Kong Chow Fun. I’ve been ordering this same dish here since I was18! It is consistent and derrrrlicious. TRY IT if you love bold, deep flavor, with fat rice noodles… mmm… I love their black bean sauce! Childhood comfort food for me and one of a kind in this area. I only order this dish with the exception of the fried wonton chips and sweet and sour sauce. That sweet and sour sauce is home-​made and not out of bottle. Super simple with no frills and YUMMY!
The owner is a sweet man, a hard worker, and runs a tight ship. I’ve see him run that register since I was young, so he knows what he is doing.
PRO TIP: I never had to wait, even on a Friday night prime dinner time.

Question: How do you stay in business when your food is generally average and slightly expensive?
Answer: Deliver exceptional customer service. Patrick does a great job of taking care of his clients, calling a lot of them by name, and genuinely showing an interest in people. I appreciate this greatly, and would rather eat average food here than at some super-​mega chain that had no service at all.
However, it’s not really a sit down restaurant, so the service only goes so far for me. I had the «tonkatsu plate,» which was a small serving of tonkatsu chicken and some type of ramen, which consisted of a broth, a few pieces of broccoli, and some noodles. It was almost completely bland, so I added soy sauce. A lot of soy sauce. And the chicken was razor thin and hardly crunchy.
Come here for the service, and leave here without ordering.

What a mistake stopping in here to grab a bite! I should’ve just gone home or gone to Veggie Grill, or even a sandwich at Le Diplomate Café. I got the beef chow fun and not only were they super super greasy, but the gal told me it was more on the salty side — which it wasn’t — as I was debating between the Shanghai stir fried noodles and the chow fun.
There were 4 pieces of beef and a few slivers of sliced onions hidden between the ‘fun’ — beef was of really bad quality, grisly, fatty and I had to spit one huge piece out because it was completely grisly and fatty. I almost vomited it tasted THAT bad. By the I stopped eating and I had only gone through less than ¹⁄₃ of my plate.
For a UCI campus restaurant it was not cheap. For a plate of $ 7 noodles you could do so much better elsewhere! This is disgraceful to charge students $ 7 for inedible food! SOOOOOO GROSS!
My Unilocaler friends were so kind to give them 2 stars — I wish I could give zero stars!