MDM Noodles

Chinese food in an area surprisingly sparse in good Chinese food, MDM Noodles offers good seating and a calm environment to recover from tiring events with a nice steaming bowl of wontons. And noodles, of course.

Atmosphere: The first thing you see is an ice cream cart modified to hold boba tea additives. Boba pearls take about an hour to cook, and must be done before the customers arrive or they will just have the tea that the pearls belong in. Past the protective wall of boba are the seats. On the right is a mix of booths and chairs, which is standard enough. But in the middle is an elevated counter top like the one McDonald’s usually has. Love me some elevated seating. Everything is wood and fantastic, doesn’t feel like its faking anything. There is a huge Chinese quote on the right wall behind the booths along with a picture of some noodles. Sadly, I cannot read Chinese, but I am sure it is deep and poetic in ways untranslateable.
It is cold outside this time of year, and the hallway the bathrooms inhabit is sandwiched between the back door and the interior of the restaurant, making it very cold in the pee-zone. And the washing-hands-zone. Personally, the restaurants in Boston I went to all had a similar theme: the cashier and receptionist stayed on the wings out of your way, and the restaurant just extended back from the storefront. That’s an abstract painting I’m painting, imagine it like a wide corridor instead of a restaurant. Very calming lights, not pure white. Pure white light doesn’t exist in nature, so all “natural” light must be tinted one shade or another. Reminds me of how the moonlight in minecraft is different from the torchlight in terms of color warmth.

Actual food: Since I missed the kebabs of China, I ordered two of those and a bowl of wonton noodle soup. My friends ordered various noodle soups as well. Personally, I think the wontons were store bought. Their peels were too shiny of a dough compared to my mom’s. Despite this, they tasted excellent. Store ones usually add too much anise, but these were tasty! I ruined the soup by adding kebab meat. You know the little seeds in the sausage in pizza? This kebab was made with chunks of half beef half fat DOUSED in those little seeds. If you know what those are called please tell me. I was able to remove most of the fat (which was only gross because it had solidified) and add it to my soup, which I thought would add a kick and extra meat source. No! It added the little seeds everywhere. Awful spices. I hate the seeds because they taste weird when I break them in my mouth, their flavor hurts me. They have a nice flavor in moderation.

I enjoyed my friend’s thicker noodles as well (she is small) (no innuendo). These were thicker sheets that went on forever and had a nice spicy sauce on them, and sweet beef meat. Those last three words *almost* rhyme. When fitting a noodle, a piece of meat, and a bit of sauteed onion onto a soup spoon, I struggled. But fitting that into my mouth was no issue. Wonderful, perfect al dente noodles in a Chinese noodle shop. Will come back for comfort food.

Rating: 14/18 sausage pizza seeds. A cozy environment that rudely interrupts its tasty food and warm atmosphere with sometimes overwhelming flavor and cold cold cold bathrooms, MDM is a place I could see myself walking back home from with a friend or two, engaged in pleasant conversation after a good night out.