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Healthy eating right? These days, everyone is touting healthier stuff…so we opted to pay a few visits to Tea House Noodles.
Located in Cleveland’s Little Italy, a small unassuming store front with the cobblestone roads make this a cute location with easy access for all of those fledgling poor CWRU students.
Tea House Noodles tucked away
Needless to say, foodies will go anywhere for good eats.
Storefront - don't drive too fast
Parking is located in the rear of the building where you are greeted with healthy signs.
Parking in the rear
Not necessary, but thanks for reminding me.
Healthy and green!
I guess these signs will attract those outdoor hiking customers that traverse the rear foliage of the restaurant.
At the counter, we decided on their flagship dishes.
Pad Thai for $6.99 : Noodles, Veggies, Chicken & Tofu, Peanut & Rica Sauces, topped with peanuts, sesame seed, scallions, and paprika.
Pad Thai = 6.5/10
Surprisingly, the plastic bowl holding the Pad Thai seemed a bit unsturdy and flimsy…aka transport leakage.
As we “unboxed” the Pad Thai, first thing we noticed is the onslaught of sauce used in this dish.
Holy sauciness Batman!
Seriously? Its Pad Thai! WAY too much sauce and clearly not a good start.
As you can see, our macro view showed everything swimming drowning in sauce.
Way too much sauce
Digging deeper we found a very thin layer of noodles in Pad Thai. Thin.
Pad Thai includes noodles right?
C’mon people – Noodles are just as important in Pad Thai as the rest of the ingredients!
Speaking of ingredients, in the typical preparation of veggies at Teahouse Noodles, a small scoop of cabbage, onions, peas, etc…are thrown into boiling water for over minutes before plating for service.
Mushy veggies and sauce galore
2 minute blanch? We believe that is WAY too long to “blanch” your veggies. Veggies were mushy and lacked any crunch. Not healthy-boiling away all the nutrients. If you are going to blanch for 2 minutes boil veggies, just serve canned veggies. Blah. We suggest 30 seconds.
Additionally, the chunks of boiled chicken breast were flavorless and cardboard like. C’mon-it takes 8 minutes to grill a breast. Pad Thai? We are not very happy with dish at all.
Whole grain brown rice, Mild Hawaiian Teriyaki pineapple soy based soy sauce with chicken.$4.99.
Apparently all dishes come packaged in the aforementioned shallow plastic bowls.
Teriyaki brown rice bowl = 6.0/10
After the swimmingly unimpressive Pad Thai, we hoped for better.
Pass a straw please...
Sadly, life did not get better. Like a fat whore on a hot day, this dish arrived dripping with the sauce.
Maybe Teahouse Noodles requires their staff to dose their dishes with Costco portions of sauce. Good and bad.
Good: If they served 12 pounds of rice with every dish.
Bad: There is more sauce than food.
Note: This same problem plagues every Asian style restaurant that doesn’t appreciate the food itself. People! It’s not about the sauce, IT’S ABOUT THE FOOD ITSELF!
Eat with a straw
Again, the protein in this dish is prepared with that same bland chicken chunks used in all of their other dishes…so no benefit there.
Bland chicken
As you can see, a thin layer of brown rice down below did nothing to help dissipate the tsunami layer of sauce.
Not cool Dr. Jones
Sesame seeds and green onions were mushy and didn’t seem to help at all.
Overall, it was a small nice restaurant/atmosphere with very friendly staff. In the 5 visits, we have never waited longer than 6 minutes for the food.
But we hope they improve with our suggestions of grilling the chicken breasts, blanching the veggies, and 75% less sauce.
Website: www.teahouse-noodles.com
Two locations to choose from for your redonkulous saucing.
Sauce galore
So if you like more sauce than actual food, bring your straws as Teahouse Noodles will not disappoint.
Reporting live from QuarryLaneFarms…
Hope everyone is enjoying your holiday weekend.
We just finished a few app dishes for tonight and now we are experimenting with a few Hawaiian fusion dishes and Middle eastern fusion dishes. To give you some insight, here’s a few of our thoughts…actually rediculous redonkulous ideas.
Kalua pig is VERY versatile. I won’t bore you on the pig, imu, rocks, etc….as I am sure you’ve seen Guy Firei on Diner’s Drive-Inns and Dives in Hawaii here or here.
QuarryLaneFarms Kalua pig
So needless to say, we decided to play with a Hawaii favorite…pig. And lets face it, who doesn’t love pork? (Insert your favorite Bourdain quote now).
Kalua pig wrap
QLF Kalua pig wrap (the idea from Koolau Golf Course menu)
Kalua pig, rice, fried or carmelized onions, blanched cabbage, and bourbon mushrooms, and pineapple salsa. Served with a small cherry tomato tarragon bi-colored corn salad.
QLF cherry tomato tarragon bi-colored corn salad
We were fussing around with it last night and believe this is a good “winnah winnah piggy dinnah” combination.
Koshary (Thanks to Abu Tarek)
Now we don’t normally serve middle eastern foods…in fact, the only one we make regularly is koshary.
Again, if you don’t know what Koshary is, check out the Bourdain in Egypt episode here. Also for all you chefs, you can see the “fast food action” here.
QuarryLaneFarms Koshary
But then we also like LOVE the idea of small one bowl hand-held foods. See our posts about one-handed wonders here.
Shawarma
Braised or grilled lamb with cucumber yogurt, and cherry tomatos topped with a thin sun-dried tomato humus.
Alright, so we don’t have a picture of this yet….but we will. Sounds like a bite sized gyro, but I intend for this to be HUGE on flavortown.
Also on the docket, lobster rolls (Thanks Giada De Laurentiis), steak au pouvire (Thanks Alton), egg ravioli (Thanks Michael Ruhlman @ruhlman), ceviche, and gaezpacho.
So here’s to your holiday weekend and experimenting with new dishes!
Cause we made a mess.
Reporting live from QuarryLaneFarms…
