Radiance Noodle Bar
Radiance Noodle Bar
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
Good for Kids: Yes
Good for Groups: Yes
Outdoor Seating: Yes
Caters: Yes
Price range.
$ Price range Under $10
4 reviews
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Radiance Noodle Bar is in the atrium, downstairs of the main Radiance and next to Pompano Taqueria. It occupies a sunny spot by the waterfall and seating, and you can hear the lovely piano playing during the lunch hours. I am a fan of the original Radiance on 55th St so I was pretty excited to see the Noodle Bar offer lunch specials and teas close to my office.
Radiance offers Lo Mein, rice boxes, noodle soups, wontons, and bao, and everything is under $10. They also have a selection of hot and cold teas.
The dishes overall are good, spiced authentically, with fresh ingredients and made well. Portions are heavy on the carbs, and selective with the protein and vegetables (which is understandable for a $9 dish I suppose…) Toward the end of some of the dishes, you'll start noticing that the food is a bit salty – if you're watching your sodium intake, I would be careful. I have ordered the spicy fish over rice, lo mein with beef, chicken wonton noodle soup, and braised beef with noodle. The iced tea, while strong, also had a good deal of sugar in it. Iced teas are prepackaged, so no way to ask for it unsweetened or half sweet. The hot teas are bagged, but of good quality.
Service is okay – the workers here are fluent in Mandarin… and not so much in English. If any complications arise, they tend to look a bit panicked. I've seen orders get lost here too, so try not to make your order difficult or give people a hard time. Credit card accepted.
A decent Midtown lunch option to get some Chinese food in, without the typical take out oily mess or fortune cookie.
On a hot summer day, I ponder what to order for lunch and up pops Radiance Noodle Bar. Besides noodle soup, this little shop in the atrium of a food court serves up cold noodles. Problem solved for me.
I usually order the pork, packed with flavor and the noodles are seasoned well with sesame and peanut flavor. I can't speak for any other dishes but the cold noodles are one of the best in midtown…actually I doubt there is another place that serves up cold noodles like Radiance.
I've heard good things about their noodle soup also, but that'll be for the colder months which are coming soon in NYC.
Wow, how many 3-stars is this in a row for my ratings? Maybe my standards have gone up or my expectations have in New York, but I've been writing a series of 3-star reviews for some reason. I'm just thinking back to it, and no, I don't think it's my expectations or standards, I think these are deservedly 3s, maybe some 3.5 and others 2.5, but nothing that warrants a 4.
So, I realized that I have checked in here twice, vs. the Radiance restaurant which is apparently attached to this. The Noodle Bar is located inside the building in the "food court" along with Pompano's take-out version and Picnic Basket. This is a to-go bar but you can eat at the community tables. I've had 2 meals here. First was the mapo tofu and second the spicy chili fish, both over rice. Ingredients are fresh, taste is… pretty good if missing a bit of substance. Not as flavorful as they need to be.
Prices are reasonable – $9 for the entree – and amount is decent for that. Considering the quality of the ingredients, it is a good choice for your everyday, quickie lunch.
I posit than you can tell the strength of someone's character based on whether or not they try to skirt out of lunch obligations. Schedule a meeting that starts, ends or continues from 12 to 1 p.m. and I strongly believe you are duty-bound to serve lunch.
Maybe this seems like common sense. This means you must naturally be a good person. Unfortunately, I've seen too many people keen to let people suffer, even though I don't think there's a company in the world that will sink because of a $7 sandwich.
This is all prologue to why I was so happy when I arrived for a 11:30 a.m. meeting to hear that lunch would be serve shortly. It was the CEO's favorite, from a Chinese place a couple blocks away.
Beggars and people getting free lunch can't be choosers, but I got nervous when I heard it would be a mixture of regular takeout Chinese and dim sum. I'm one of those people with a decidedly old school approach to dim sum, where it should preferably come from a cart or steam table, and definitely needs to be eaten from 2 a.m. to 1 p.m.
I need to relax my sometimes too strict standards, because in addition to a totally passable sesame chicken and stir-fried noodles, I had a nice sweet pork bun and firm shiu mai. While not the best ever served, they were in line with the rest of the food, and ensured that I was sharp and attentive for the rest of the meeting.