Restaurant review - Asian Noodle House Hoffman Estates, IL

On Man vs. Food (on the Travel Channel) there was a guy who finished a bowl of 5 pounds of pho in 10 minutes. Have you ever watched this show?  You see all these people finishing HUGE amounts of food in CRAZY short periods of time.  Don't ask me why we were watching it.  We happened upon it once and got hooked.  One of the few shows that whole family watches without someone stomping out of the room angry. Oh family...can't live with it, can't live without it.

Anyways, it got me stoked up for eating noodles.  I looked on Yelp (one of my favorite sites for finding places to eat) and found this place.  Great reviews....no website = had to go there. Off we went, kids in tow to find the Asian Noodle House in Hoffman Estates, IL.

We got there around 6p which was just in time.  This place fills up!  When we got there, we were the only caucacians - always a good sign when going to a ethnic restaurant.  The interior and exterior are nothing to write home about.  Plain, kind of run down.  The kids were a bit put off by this, but we kept encouraging them to hang in there and don't make decisions until you eat the food.  Luckily - we were right.

We ordered some hot tea.  It was brought to us in the same thick plastic cups that the water was served in.  Made it a bit tricky to drink it right away - too hot to handle.  Oh well....it's more about the food.....

We ordered spring rolls and egg rolls to start with.  The egg rolls were ok, not worthy of a picture...but the spring rolls were very good.  They had thin rice noodles, lettuce, carrots and shrimp in them.  Cute presentation, but this picture doesn't how the chips and discolorations of the "boat".

I had braised noodles with BBQ pork and shrimp dumplings.  The dumplings were so nice and light. I love when the wrappers are almost paper thin. The noodle dish was delicious, though there was a slight seafood/fishy flavor to the noodles.  Not enough to go yuck, enough to go hummmm.  It went well with the sweet BBQ pork.  Everything was served on the thick plastic blue and white dishware. Fine....

One of our daughters had chicken fried rice - no vegis (this is her favorite go to dish).  She didn't like it because the chicken was dark meat.  We all ate it instead.  I thought it was good.  My husband had a soup that was just like my dish, but in a broth.  He said it was good....not full of flavor like he had had at other noodle places.

My husband ordered shrimp udon for our other daughter.  WOW....great thick, chewy noodles!!  See them....so good. And the flavor rocked!!  HUGE portion too....had left over - yeah!

Our son had chicken with thick noodles.  It wasn't on the menu - all that was on there was beef and thick noodles, but they did it with chicken when we asked.  His was delicious too!  Thick rice noodles.  Again huge portions with left overs.

We will be going back here.  The prices were VERY affordable.  The service was excellent - we never will leave with an empty water glass - a fancy place like Flemings (see restaurant review) can learn from a small place like this.