It’s always random the hours that restaurants have on weekends. We failed at going to one place that wasn’t going to be open for a little bit, so we headed over to Pei Wei instead. I hadn’t been here in awhile. I don’t remember being able to get beer there before, but you definitely can. And you can get big ass beers.
We totally got bamboozled by the menu. We read Japanese Chile Ramen and totally thought this was going to be a bowl of ramen noodle soup. Total order fail! Instead, this just ended up being a noodle dish with ramen noodles in it. You cannot imagine the disappointment. Anyhoo, this was a heaping bowl of egg noodles with a slightly spicy soy mirin sauce, scallions, garlic, bean sprouts, carrots, onions, lime, cilantro, chile peppers, and tons of tofu that we’d picked. It tasted fine, but it was totally not what we thought it would be. So it made us a little sad.
This is the Thai Dynamite with crispy chicken. It’s cooked in a sriracha sauce withh lime, scallions, garlic, red bell peppers, carrots, and thai basil. While there were some visible scallions, the carrots and bell peppers were few and far between.
I’m a creature of habit with certain restaurants, so here’s my Japanese Teriyaki rice bowl, which is my favorite dish here. It’s got a nice thick sweet soy glaze, onions, napa cabbage, carrots, spinach, scallions, and sesame seeds. And as usual, I got mine with brown rice, some of the best brown rice, ever! Why would two people order three entrees? Well, we thought we were going to share a nice bowl of ramen. Cue the sadface! At least we got to drink the crap out of some mr. pibb.

When it gets cold out, I want nothing more than soup and noodles. What better place to get my noodle and soup fix other than Nan Zhou? I had a concert to go to at the Trocadero, so when in chinatown, take advantage!
There’s nothing mysterious about this food. It’s made simply, with the best made ingredients, at unbelievably low prices. When you put good broth and delicious hand drawn noodles together along with some meat and a few veggies and garnishes, you can’t really go wrong.
It’s a nice alternative to pho when you want something a bit different. If I lived in chinatown, I’d eat here way too much.

For my last night in Cincinnati, I was craving pho. I felt like crap, it was super cold, and I just wanted a hot bowl of noodles in some soup. But apparently, there are no vietnamese spots in Cincinnati. At least not near me at least. So I went for a quick walk to Shanghai Mama’s. This place is really cool looking, in a strange sort of way. It’s dark with lots of red, and I keep thinking opium den. Ha. They’re open late on the weekends so I’m sure there are lots of characters there at 2 in the morning.
I asked the bartender what he recommended and when I told him I wanted a noodle soup, he recommended the rib noodle soup. The ribs were just fine, and so was the soup, but these noodles were amazing! From the texture of these, I could totally tell these were fresh and handmade. I asked the bartender if they were handmade and he confirmed that they were. I told him to tell whoever made the noodles that I was a big fan. I didn’t realize until just now that the menu said “featuring homemade noodles”. Now it all makes sense! This is quality stuff. If you’re a noodle whore like I am, then stop here!