Doha Review: The Noodle House

We went to the Noodle House the other night during Iftar, because of the ridiculous opening hours here during the crappy Ramadan month, malls are open late in the evening after Iftar and stays open late into the night, 2am. Most Qataris go nocturnal during Ramadan, choosing to sleep in the day and wake up at night to carry about their activites. On top of that most expat has gone off for holidays-treating themselves for cheap fun at Thailand and Bali so the restaurant was pretty much empty so we had good time to mull over food options without being rushed by the server and truly enjoyed the meal, albeit the EXTREMELY SMALL portions of food especially the main course. Noodle House pride themselves in selling authentic Asian and South East Asian cuisine with the common food in their menu such as Hong Kong style steamed dumplings and duck dishes, Indonesian and Malaysian style noodles and Thai style soups and rices. I wished they would have PROPER dessert though, like ice kacang and cendol or Thai mango sticky rice. I don't see how lava cake (although very tasty) and cheesecake are counted as Asian dessert. The one thing that I really liked was my Jasmine tea which reminded me of the tea I used to have in Malaysia where they come in a small Chinese teapot with small cups and they refilled the teapots every time it emptied

To order your food, you have to tick on the boxes next to the list of food on the Order Pad provided to you. We just scribbled vegetarian next to what we wanted to eat and they provided shaved eggs for my husband's bakmi

Go only if you don't mind forking money for stylishly presented food, average tasting main course but good selection of non-Asian dessert menu. The service was excellent with both the manager and assistant manager coming to us to ask if we needed anything else with our food, like water etc etc. We both had (vegetariansed for us)

Starters

• Vegetable Spring Roll
• Vegetable kacao

Main Course

• Bakmi Goreng for the husband
• Pad Thai noodle

Dessert

• Seasonal Fruit Platter
• Lava cake and vanilla ice cream

My husband and I didn't like the fruit platter because they mango they had was old, it was browning at the edges and it was AWFULLY SOUR. But the lava cake pretty much made up for the lousiness of the fruit platter. My husband had to mix it with the vanilla ice cream to wash out the sourness of the day-old mango

They're located at City Center on the Ground Floor and some place else at the Pearl

Note the 4 tiny jars that has thick chilli paste, thinned chili paste, ginger paste and green chili pickle in vinegar

The popiah/spring rools were fresh out of the pan and tasty

Vegetable Hacao, I think this was frozen and only steamed when needed because my hacao was damp and sticky

Bakmi goreng, as you can see while the presentation is lovely the portion is not. My husband was promptly hungry 2 hours after dinner.

The pad Thai was simple, nothing to shout about...well because none of the taste you would expect in a traditional Thai dish sprang out. Rather a mellow dish

Notice in the far back the condiments to complete a pad Thai, chilli flake, some shaved long beans, roasted peanut blend, and shaved eggs for the bakmi

The chocolate lava cake was lovely, and the vanilla ice cream was deliciously thick almost like a gelato

You can see what I meant about the freshness of the mango from this picture. The browning is very visible from here

Of course the tab will be paid for once the claim goes thru