Qin West Noodle

Located on a street named Scholarship in the middle of a condo complex, the Irvine location of Chinese noodle specialist Qin West Noodle is a thought-provoking exercise in modern fast casual dining: how stripped down can the restaurant experience be before it ceases to feel like a restaurant? From the moment you spot the words “self service. no tips. enjoy.” on the Shaanxi-style shop’s menus – and discover the QR code-based fulfillment system you must use to place your order without human involvement – Qin West tests that envelope. Then, when its front doors are wide open on a cold December evening, and no one else is sitting at the tables inside, you may wonder if it’s really just there as a takeout restaurant for the condos’ residents, actively discouraging people from dining in.

If you can put those sorts of issues aside – and there are more, as literally everything is self-service at Qin West – the food actually turns out to be pretty good, especially if you love wide and/or thick noodles. Dropped into a medium-sized cardboard bowl, the dan dan-flavored chili, vinegar, and peanut Liang Pi noodles arrive just a little over lukewarm but irresistably thick and chewy, even in fully vegetarian form; beef and pork are optionally available at modest surcharges. Similarly, the Beef Noodle Soup arrives as a bowl of strong, hot beef bone broth with chunks of beef short rib, ribbon-like wide flat noodles and scallions – somewhat like pho on steroids, heavier on the meat and noodle flavors and lighter on veggies. We’d gladly order either of these bowls again.