Before attending an event in Westwood, my woman and I decided to see what the college town had to offer in terms of dinner. Sure, I had eaten in Westwood many times before, but typically with specific places in mind. This time, it was about walking around and picking dinner based on our gut, which led us to Noodle World. I had expected something like Noodles & Company, which makes dishes from all sorts of noodles, but Noodle World has a lot more options, while keeping its noodles Asian. No mac and cheese here.
I searched for, and quickly found my go-to Asian noodle dish, yakisoba. Those Japanese noodles are awesome and I ordered them with chicken and without veggies. We also ordered a bowl of tonkotsu ramen to split because why not?
The ramen was pretty basic and somehow tasted kinda fishy. I don’t mean weird fishy, I mean like actual fish. I’m not sure what it was that did this, but I wasn’t a big fan. Besides, even without the fishiness, the ramen just wasn’t anything impressive.
As for the yakisoba, it was perfectly free of vegetables and was simply massive. I’m not sure I had ever seen such a large pile of yakisoba on one dish, but I dug in happily. The noodles and chicken tasted great, but where they lacked vegetables they made up for in oil. Yeah, this yakisoba was seriously oily and while I love oil for its ability to make food awesome, there is a limit.
The dishes I ate at Noodle World definitely weren’t bad, but they also weren’t especially good in any way. It’s a good place to head when you’re deciding between Thai and Japanese (or any other Asian food), but if you are looking for something specific you’ll probably be let down.
