Xian Noodles Review
Xian Noodles is an authentic Chinese cuisine restaurant at The Domain in north Austin. The restaurant was founded by Ting Lin and his wife April Zheng in 2008 after moving to Austin in 2007. Their Domain location opened in 2017. Xian Noodles offers a variety of Chinese food including fresh noodles, dim sum, and authentic hot dishes. They also happen to serve sushi. The restaurant itself is welcoming with its open kitchen and warm rustic feel. The great wall mosaic on one of the walls is beautiful. The plating and silver ware makes eating here a pleasant experience.
photo by: Community Impact
Xian Noodles’ Menu
The Xian menu is split up into a couple of different sections. First comes the alcoholic drinks, tea, and happy hour items. From there, Xian’s menu displays a nice helping of appetizer items such as spicy lobster dumplings, yellowtail sashimi with jalapeno, and side salads, to name a few. After that, the menu goes into more specific categories.
In the steamed section, soup dumplings; char siu bao, a steamed bun with BBQ pork; and even braised chicken feet are all readily available for you to choose from. The fried portion of the menu displays an equal amount of offerings: shrimp and cheese wontons and pork and vegetable gyozas stood out the most here.
For larger plates, look no further than the hand-pulled noodle and hot dishes area. Xian’s variety of noodle and soup dishes pepper the menu. It would have been great to try them all, but the cold sesame noodles and red braised beef noodle soup caught my eye the most. The broth here is more colorful than at other restaurants. It is layered with spice and veggies and the leftover juices of whatever protein you asked for.
The hot dishes at Xian are what you could normally expect from an authentic Chinese restaurant domain in Austin with the likes of sweet and sour sauces, General Tso’s chicken, Mongolian beef, and the fan-favorite fried rice. They also offer simple over-rice dishes with teriyaki chicken, tonkatsu pork, and various tempuras.
Photo by: Xian Noodles
Xian offers a strong amount of sides to pair with their hot dishes and maybe even to share with the table. The miso soup as well as the wonton one are perfect with some of the rice dishes. They also offer edamame.
At the end of the menu, you can see all of Xian’s sushi. Here the classics are offered, but so are some new rolls that I hadn’t encountered before. The out-of-control roll, a roll that happens to feature tuna, salmon, and yellowtail with asparagus, eel sauce, and spicy miso, immediately grabbed my attention. Another interesting one was the golden trio which contained salmon tempura, spicy salmon avocado and topped with fresh salmon and spicy mayo.
Xian Noodles’ Lunch Special
During weekdays, Xian Noodles promotes their lunch special from 11 AM to 2:45 PM. This is the only time where you can get their bento box, a combo meal with the dim sum of your choice, a select main dish, salad, rice, and seasonal fruit. They also serve certain noodle plates and sushi rolls at a discounted price during this time as well.
Location + Opening and Closing Hours
Xian Noodles is located at The Domain in north Austin. Their location is right next to Zara. The restaurant is open from 11 AM to 3 PM and then 5 PM to 9:30 PM Monday through Thursday. On Friday and Saturday, they stay open from 11 AM to 10 PM. And on Sundays, Xian opens from 11 AM to 8 PM. Happy hour is available Monday through Friday from 5 to 7 PM. Reverse happy hour is from 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM.
Photo by: Xian Noodles
Xian Noodles’ Online Order Process
To order online, simply go to Xian Noodles’ website, and click on online ordering. Select the Domain location which will take you to an external site where you can browse the menu and select your preferred items. From there, you can continue to checkout and select your pick-up or delivery time.
Conclusion
Xian Noodles is a solid place to get Chinese food in Austin. It isn’t every day that you find a place with such various offerings. The food is warm and comforting. Along with all of that, the promotions that Xian offers are great, especially the lunch special. And let’s not forget about the sushi.
