UPDATE WITH REVIEW - FYI Xian's does meal kits for their noodles

I’ve been to the Xi’an in midtown Manhattan. It was a small place but good. My wife, no pics, ate at the one next to the WTC today coincidentally. Hard to compare to the many times I’ve been in Shanghai and had street noodles there. I don’t follow the lead of most of my coworkers who prefer the safety of a brightly lit mainstream restaurant, often going off on my own looking for something more local. I stumbled across an alley that had a dozen or so restaurants lining it, most with cauldrons of boiling stock in pots on the sidewalk outside and boxes of freshly made noodles next to them. Each restaurant seemed to specialize in a specific protein or vegetable. I ended up eating at the lamb one many times. One of the few things I miss about flying to China. Maybe the only one.

quote:

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Just ordered 2 meal kits

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they came out almost 100% like xi'an.

here's a pic of the lamb curry from their website.



here's how ours came out:



Review:

Taste - 10/10
Value - 11!/10 (it says feeds up to 4, but we invited our friends from the Philippines over so we made 4 servings and none of us came close to finishing). Best $85 i've spent on dining in a long time. CAN EASILY FEED SIX PEOPLE.
Prep - 7/10 (see details below)

I would rate these 10/10 on all 3 the next time if it wasn't for a couple screw ups (on our part)

1. DO NOT WORK THE NOODLE DOUGH UNTIL THE WATER IS BOILING.

2. DO NOT WORK THE NOODLE DOUGH UNTIL THE WATER IS BOILING.

3. DO NOT WORK THE NOODLE DOUGH UNTIL THE WATER IS BOILING.

The kit is shipped in ice/insulated bag and its a bunch of ziploc bags with scallions, cabbage, onions, whole garlic, big chunk of lamb...everything is super fresh as if you purchased all of the ingredients and are doing the prep yourself.

The only missing ingredient was the oil and we opted for peanut oil over vegetable oil.

Ok, back to the dough; we stretched the dough and ripped them perfect (make 100% sure you put the little indention in before stretching; the 'rip' will follow that every time and you'll get 2 long perfectly ripped noodles. WATCH THE YOUTUBE VIDEO they recommend.

DO NOT pile them up as you go..Xi'an gives you 9 or 10 flat dough sheets so you'll end up with a TON of noodles after stretching/ripping....which will IMMEDIATELY REFORM INTO A GIANT BLOB.

when we realized what was going on we tried to reseparate them and that failed so tried to roll it into balls & flatten into sheets to stretch again...NOPE. one and done.

so we spent probably 30-40 minutes trying to repair the noodles and while the end product was delicious, this was an unecessary step as we did not time the boiling water so we could drop them in immediately after stretching/ripping.


TL;DR, have the water boiling and quickly add the noodles as you stretch them. you will fill up a large pot with them so make sure you are ready for that...or simply prep half of the food and save the other for another meal.

Finally, the flavors are 10/10 amazing and while I didn't think they were too spicy, we ended up only using one of the wet packets of chili sauce for all 4 servings an they were PLENTY FLAVORFUL. The lamb wasn't gamey at all; absolutely delicious..the flavors melded perfectly.

i actually opened a second packet and poured it over my noodles and I still thought the spice was still not too overpowering.

We ended up with a ton of leftovers; you could easily feed 6 adults with this if you have any kind of sides to go along with it.

In short, I'm going to order another meal kit this week.