Noodle Bowl Restaurant
Restaurant, Bar
Hours
Profile
$$ - average
Vietnamese
Veg-friendly Vietnamese with unusual selections
Noodle Bowl is a veg-friendly Vietnamese restaurant with a number of vegan options you won't find elsewhere. Some of their more unique dishes include Tofu with Chinese Broccoli or Bean Sprouts and Chives with Tofu.
They also have familiar standards including spring rolls, Vietnamese noodle salads, and vegan pho.
Just north of the 27th & Nicollet intersection.
- Large Group-Friendly
- Quiet
Added by Dave Rolsky on Aug 9 (updated Aug 14)
Reviews
This is one of the most veg-friendly Vietnamese places in the Twin Cities area (along with the Lotus just outside downtown).
I really like the food here. It's more creative than your average Vietnamese restaurant, and they have a good selection of veg choices.
Their spring rolls are excellent, and really stand out from other places. Besides the usual bean sprouts, noodles, and lettuce, they also have a sheet or nori seaweed and chives, giving them a really interesting flavor.
I also love the Bean Sprouts and Chives with Tofu. It's pretty much what it sounds like, and it tastes great. Their five spice tofu is a lightly breaded tofu dish with five spice powder. They also have a really good curry noodle salad with mock duck or tofu.
I'm looking forward to trying more of their dishes, including their pho.
Noodle Bowl has a large vegetarian section on their menu and I was pleased that they don't consider fish sauce to be vegetarian. Most of the dishes are very simple (tofu with one other ingredient, or mock duck with one other ingredient).
I had a "fried tofu with chives and bean sprouts" ($8) which was good, but not great. I think it needed a lot more spice (fortunately there's some chili oil on each table) and also could have used a bit of ginger to add some zing; as it stood, the tofu was nicely fried (though they skimped on the amount of tofu) and I appreciate any dish with chives, because you don't see them often enough.
The dish could have used one other vegetable (carrots? bamboo shoots?) to give it some color and break the monotony of the chive-bean sprout-tofu holy trinity.
I was also disappointed, as I always am, by places that don't offer brown rice as an option. Unfortunately, Noodle Bowl is one of them.
The prices are good, with pretty much every dish in the $7-9 range.
The service was friendly, if a bit slow, even with a lack of other customers. The air conditioning wasn't working so it was nice that they kept my glass of ice water filled.
All in all, Noodle Bowl is a nice alternative on Nicollet, though in terms of taste and quality, I'd still prefer either Jasmine Deli or Jasmine 26.