Imagine Noodle

+.5 for service
Imagine Noodle is, for the most part, Magic Noodle’s competitor. It’s open 24 hours, just like its challenger down south. However, does the quality match up?
Arriving at around 8:30pm, the restaurant was only about half full, which surprised me considering the surrounding restaurants were quite busy. Nonetheless, we decided to try this place out as we wanted something with soup since it was a cold night.
The menu was quite similar to Magic Noodle, so a comparison can definitely be made. I ordered some similar items I would order in Magic Noodle, such as the braised beef brisket with hand pulled noodle, pork with hand pulled noodle, BBQ squid tentacles, BBQ pork sausage, BBQ tofu, BBQ lamb skewers, shredded chicken, and beef pancake.
Overall, I preferred Magic Noodle over this place. However, this place offers dishes such as BBQ pork sausage and shredded chicken, both of which were quite good! The noodles as well were quite decent, but Imagine falls short when it comes to the juiciness of some dishes, such as the beef pancake and BBQ tofu.
Service was good, although only one of the employees speaks Cantonese/​English, while everyone else speaks Mandarin. If you don’t have a good command of either Chinese language, you may want to grab a Chinese companion with you!
I’ll likely try Magic Noodle one more time before making a decision on whether to return here.

2.5
Came for lunch with the family just past 1pm last Monday. We were deciding between a few of the new noodle places that have popped up on Silverstar recently, and settled for this place since they were currently offering 10% off. There wasn’t a lot of people there when we went, only about ¼ full.
The 4 of us order the following to share:
— Large Traditional Lanzhou Beef Noodle ($ 7.99)
— Large Hand-​pulled Noodle with Shredded Pork ($ 7.99)
— Small Sliced Noodle with Lamb ($ 8.99)
— An order of Sizzling BBQ Tofu ($ 1.59)
— An order of Sizzling BBQ Fresh Squid Head ($ 1.99)
Hand-​pulled noodles were ok. The sliced noodles were not overcooked or gummy, which is something I always worry about when I order sliced noodle. The lamb was tough and lacked flavor. It also had a lot of tiny shattered bones attached to the meat, making it annoying to eat. Portion sizes were ok. The shredded pork noodle, didn’t have a lot of pork though. The BBQ Tofu had too much spice powder on it, I had to drink a whole glass of water after eating it. The BBQ Squid was very good. Not overcooked or over sauced, and had a good crunch to it. Also my family all seemed to like the chili oil they had there.
Food was just ok in general, however the 4 of us were dying of thirst and I had a headaches 2 hours later. They must have put soooo much MSG in the food! I’ve rarely experienced this before. Service was slightly aloof. We had to wave them down a few times to put in our order, and they never came over to see if we needed anything.
Menu and pricing quite similar to Magic Noodle just a few blocks down the street. You order by checking off what you want on a pink piece of paper. There is a menu for reference with numbers to all the dishes, but those numbers don’t appear on the order paper so it took us a while to find each item after deciding what we wanted from the menu.
This place is opened ²⁴⁄₇. I guess this might be an ok alternative if you want hand-​pulled noodles in the middle of the night and Magic Noodle is busy since there’s more sitting here. Personally I’d rather go to Magic Noodle or The Bowl Noodle Bar nearby if they are open. At least I haven’t experience dying of thirst and headaches from eating there yet.

Came in around 2:30 PM today and was surprised at how quite busy this place is. Apparently they have 10% of all menu items, so I thought I’d give them a try.
I got the special beef burger. Very saucy, and meat is tender. Good meat to bread ratio. The sesame seed bun is thin and chewy.
My BF got the hand pulled braised beef brisket. He actually did not like it. Meat was tough and mainly got big pieces of fat with absolutely no meat. For the most part it was just chunks of fat. And whatever meat there was, it was tough.
We also got the pork skewer. Just ok. Comes covered with spice which was good. Note that: the pork skewer doesn’t say spicy, but it was spicy. It felt like they put too much of the spicy powder.
They also got some drinks like milk tea, green tea, juice, but just meh in my opinion.
I’ll give them another try when I am in the area. But this place does NOT compare to Magic Noodle. At all.

3 Star for food and 0.5 Star for Awesome Hours!
Now I have another option in Scarborough for some late night noodle as Imagine Noodle is open ²⁴⁄₇!
Just imagine at 3 am on a cold winter night and you can have a bowl of noodle in hot broth. And at $ 6.99? And some BBQ skewers? And some Spicy Cold Chicken? Just imagine that!
The Chinese Name of Imagine Noodle is Palace in the East (東方宮). I cannot imagine how the English and Chinese Name be related in any way.
Braised Beef Brisket with Hand Pulled Noodle ($ 6.99) for a small is really generous in portion. The noodle was al dente with bite and the broth was nice and hot!
BBQ Spicy Squid Tentacles ($ 1.99) has a nice spicy sauce and not over cooked so crispy outside but soft inside.
I would be back to try out other items. Imagine just imagine…

So good! My favorite is the braised beef noodle, I usually get that with skewers of lamb or octopus and the fried tofu is delish. Service is good, very quick and attentive. Oh and it’s open 24 hours!