Hong Fu Noodle

I have recently returned from a short break to Edinburgh with my girlfriend, and on our final night we decided to go to the Hong Fu Noodle Bar.

Where to start.

Firstly, we walked into an empty restaurant (which was perhaps a sign of it's reputation in the area), with a bleak decor. After we had been seated, it took a long time for us to be handed a menu.
After ordering our drinks, we were brought 2 improperly cleaned glasses of Coca Cola.
The menu was very poorly laid out, with ridiculously long titles for each dish, first written in Chinese with the smaller English translation underneath.
We decided to skip the starter and have our main. I ordered a steak dish with crispy noodles, and my girlfriend had a similar meal only with chicken. The noodles were not crispy and the steak tasted more like some sort of pre-packed manufactured in mass product from an Aldi supermarket. During our meal, someone who I can only assume was a member of the family running the noodle bar approached us is an unprofessional manner wearing casual clothes, and asked us if we were enjoying our meal, which seemed like it had taken a great effort for this person to get up off their feet despite it being an empty restaurant.
After finishing what we could of our monstrous portions, we decided we had had enough and unfortunately could not find anyone to ask for the bill. The waitress reappeared and informed me that for me and my girlfriend to have our one course would cost us £25.00. She also conveniently added that an automatic service charge is added to the bill, which is surely supposed to be at the guest's discretion? I felt like I had been robbed!

This no doubt put a taint on what otherwise was a great trip to Edinburgh. I would encourage others to avoid dining at the Hong Fu Noodle Bar.

Poor Decor
Poor Food
Poor Service
Terrible prices

Good grief, where to start with this one?

I'd been told that Hongfu Noodle Bar was brilliant and that I should make dining here a priority, so after pestering my boyfriend about it for months we finally popped in on a Thursday night. And I'm glad it was just a Thursday and not a special occasion.

We were given knives and forks, and when we asked for chopsticks the waiter laughed: "you? Chopsticks?" as if we were complete plebians. He brought them to us, though.

Our starter of ribs were covered in a nice gravy: sadly, so were our main courses. As I've gotten older I've learned how to tell a nice bit of beef from a crap piece of beef and the beef Hongfu use is comparable to Tesco Value nonsense. I could actually taste the steer's depression.

Add to that slow service and a nostril picking waitress, I felt like I'd been had when the bill (eventually) came.

This is one to avoid. Honestly, don't be taken in by positive reviews.

I was in here the other week, and had a fantastic dinner. It was great, I love noodles and they tasted fantastic. This felt like an authentic restaurant, and it was effortlessly great. Certainly not a fine dining experience, but I think this is what gives it the charm. This was a great find and I urge you to go and try the noodles!!

Just terrible. While the waitress was friendly and chatty, the service was painfully slow. A couple came in after we had ordered and were served main course dishes before our starters arrived. If this is meant to be a no frills canteen then I could forgive flaky service in exchange for great food. Unfortunately not....salt and pepper squid was passable but lacked a dipping sauce, while prawn and coriander dumplings tasted of exactly nothing. For mains we both went for noodle dishes (this is a noodle bar right?) and were treated to two plates of oily, greasy noodles drenched in a thick dark sauce that rendered the fried fish limp, soggy and lost. Suddenly the non-noodle dishes at the next table looked more appealing. In the end, the bill came to £40 for four rather meagre portioned dishes. If you want Chinese food try Chop Chop, Wok and Wine or Saigon Saigon.

We ordered two lots of dumplings in the afternoon. Some of the prawn dumplings were missing prawns, the pork was actually chicken, overall the dumplings were bland, and to top it off a 10% service charge was added without warning. There are much better dumplings elsewhere in the city and for a better price.

I was delighted to find a new noodle bar in the centre of town but was completely disappointed by the food at the hung fo.
The decor is O.K. and the service was fine but the food was terrible...tiny portions of soup noodles ( about a third of the size I was expecting ) and the ' vegetarian ' broth tasted distinctly of chicken.
My partners hot and sticky vegetables was a plate of pak choy more like a side dish than a main course and it was expensive.
Save your money and appetite for somewhere more worthwhile of your custom.

I love the food, and am sure the noodles advertised as handmade are just that. You can taste the difference, to borrow a phrase. So many dishes with an authentic North-eastern China origin. The vegetables are deliciously fresh, but the waitress explained that they are bought daily from the best greengrocers in town........ Staff certainly wanted to speak when asked questions about the food. Decor minimalist maybe, but in a beautiful building and with views to die for. Of course it's a restaurant, but terminology doesn't matter when the food is so good. Fantastic value!

Is it a restaurant or is it a canteen? It was probably closer to the latter with Ikea furniture and minimal effort in the interior decor. Not entirely convinced that the noodles were handmade and it was not 'crispy' as described in the menu, and the duck was pretty average. The food was more westernised 'takeaway' chinese rather than authentic. Service charge was automatically added to the bill as well which would have been better left to the customers discretion given one waitress did not speak and did not use the card payment machine.

On the plus side, fairly large portions that filled an empty stomache.