Radiance Noodle Bar

this is without a doubt the nastiest place I’ve ever been. Let me first say that I’ve eaten there before and the food was ok (meh, nothing to write home about). Radiance is in a food court in the meredith building. I usually go downstairs and get a sandwich or a salad from somewhere else. For the past two days (I’ve now lost my appetite altogether) I’ve sat next to a staff member who was pulling the fish bones out of the soup that he was eating after his shift. Not only was this extremely uncomfortable to sit next to, I had to smell it and watch it while I ate my sandwich. So unprofessional and so unnecessary. No ones wants fish bones in their soup and I certainly do not want to watch bones being pulled out of someones mouth and being put on a napkin next to them.

Staff is friendly but service is slow. Food is ok but not great. If you’re in the mood for Chinese food and are in the area — good to order food for takeaway or sit at the building’s atrium (nice waterfall, live piano music in the background, etc.)

Radiance Noodle Bar is in the atrium, downstairs of the main Radiance and next to Pompano Taqueria. It occupies a sunny spot by the waterfall and seating, and you can hear the lovely piano playing during the lunch hours. I am a fan of the original Radiance on 55^th St so I was pretty excited to see the Noodle Bar offer lunch specials and teas close to my office.
Radiance offers Lo Mein, rice boxes, noodle soups, wontons, and bao, and everything is under $ 10. They also have a selection of hot and cold teas.
The dishes overall are good, spiced authentically, with fresh ingredients and made well. Portions are heavy on the carbs, and selective with the protein and vegetables (which is understandable for a $ 9 dish I suppose…) Toward the end of some of the dishes, you’ll start noticing that the food is a bit salty — if you’re watching your sodium intake, I would be careful. I have ordered the spicy fish over rice, lo mein with beef, chicken wonton noodle soup, and braised beef with noodle. The iced tea, while strong, also had a good deal of sugar in it. Iced teas are prepackaged, so no way to ask for it unsweetened or half sweet. The hot teas are bagged, but of good quality.
Service is okay — the workers here are fluent in Mandarin… and not so much in English. If any complications arise, they tend to look a bit panicked. I’ve seen orders get lost here too, so try not to make your order difficult or give people a hard time. Credit card accepted.
A decent Midtown lunch option to get some Chinese food in, without the typical take out oily mess or fortune cookie.

Wow, how many 3-​stars is this in a row for my ratings? Maybe my standards have gone up or my expectations have in New York, but I’ve been writing a series of 3-​star reviews for some reason. I’m just thinking back to it, and no, I don’t think it’s my expectations or standards, I think these are deservedly 3s, maybe some 3.5 and others 2.5, but nothing that warrants a 4.
So, I realized that I have checked in here twice, vs. the Radiance restaurant which is apparently attached to this. The Noodle Bar is located inside the building in the «food court» along with Pompano’s take-​out version and Picnic Basket. This is a to-​go bar but you can eat at the community tables. I’ve had 2 meals here. First was the mapo tofu and second the spicy chili fish, both over rice. Ingredients are fresh, taste is… pretty good if missing a bit of substance. Not as flavorful as they need to be.
Prices are reasonable — $ 9 for the entrée — and amount is decent for that. Considering the quality of the ingredients, it is a good choice for your everyday, quickie lunch.

This little stand started out pretty well, but has slid somewhat and is now kind of average. Sometimes the ladies will bring your tray to you as you sit and listen to the jazz piano in the Crystal Pavilion atrium, but on other occasions you must stand and wait for your food.
The stand out item is the braised beef noodle soup, or perhaps the pork belly buns. Sometimes there is a special soup.
I often have some sort of dumpling or won ton as a starter and I am always a little bit disappointed with their dim sum offerings.
The flavored ice teas are quite nice, but will bulk up your bill.
Since Oriental Noodle Shop on 45^th closed, this neighborhood wants for good inexpensive priced Chinese food, so this is all we got.

I posit than you can tell the strength of someone’s character based on whether or not they try to skirt out of lunch obligations. Schedule a meeting that starts, ends or continues from 12 to 1 p.m. and I strongly believe you are duty-​bound to serve lunch.
Maybe this seems like common sense. This means you must naturally be a good person. Unfortunately, I’ve seen too many people keen to let people suffer, even though I don’t think there’s a company in the world that will sink because of a $ 7 sandwich.
This is all prologue to why I was so happy when I arrived for a 11:30 a.m. meeting to hear that lunch would be serve shortly. It was the CEO’s favorite, from a Chinese place a couple blocks away.
Beggars and people getting free lunch can’t be choosers, but I got nervous when I heard it would be a mixture of regular takeout Chinese and dim sum. I’m one of those people with a decidedly old school approach to dim sum, where it should preferably come from a cart or steam table, and definitely needs to be eaten from 2 a.m. to 1 p.m.
I need to relax my sometimes too strict standards, because in addition to a totally passable sesame chicken and stir-​fried noodles, I had a nice sweet pork bun and firm shiu mai. While not the best ever served, they were in line with the rest of the food, and ensured that I was sharp and attentive for the rest of the meeting.

On a hot summer day, I ponder what to order for lunch and up pops Radiance Noodle Bar. Besides noodle soup, this little shop in the atrium of a food court serves up cold noodles. Problem solved for me.
I usually order the pork, packed with flavor and the noodles are seasoned well with sesame and peanut flavor. I can’t speak for any other dishes but the cold noodles are one of the best in midtown… actually I doubt there is another place that serves up cold noodles like Radiance.
I’ve heard good things about their noodle soup also, but that’ll be for the colder months which are coming soon in NYC.

I go to Radiance Noodle Bar at least once every other week. Their braised beef noodle soup reminds me of my mom’s cooking and that was what drew me in initially. I could happily hibernate with a big vat of that stuff for the winter. I also highly recommend the Sweet & Sour Pork Chops (I have no idea what that Kevin person is talking about, this special comes with two very large pork chops on the bone with mild batter — nothing like the «General Tso’s Chicken» style that he implies), Spicy Chicken Cold Noodle, Shrimp Wontons, and their Pork Belly Sandwiches. I’ve introduced this place to at least 15 coworkers and friends, they have all become repeat customers!

I tried to go here for lunch today. I say tried, because they were completely incapable of producing food. They were open and they were staffed, but the guy taking orders couldn’t manage actually to take any orders. He was going back and forth in conversation with the cook and with somebody else who periodically appeared from the back while trying to fill the one order that had apparently been placed several minutes previously. There were only 3 people in line so it wasn’t that they were just slammed with business – they just literally could not process the one order that was put in.
The high point of the 5 – 10 minutes I waited without a single order being taken was when the gentleman whose order was in progress asked for something. All three of the employees then proceeded to get down on their hands and knees and look for something either on the floor or under one of the counters. Yes – that did include the cook, who performed this ritual while wearing his cooking gloves. And then he proceeded to go back to cooking without changing them. All 3 people in line who had been fortunate enough not to order, including me, promptly left.

I tried out the braised beef noodle soup for $ 8.95 and it was okay. The soup is pricey for what you’re getting, it’s almost 10 bucks with the tax. Anyway, this place has to pay its rent like all of us. The soup broth was just okay, nothing stellar. The noodles were somewhat overcooked and did not have the right mouth feel, it was way too soft. The braised beef was the only thing that was good about it, you get four decent slices of braised beef that was very tender. If you piled it up, it’s like a filet mignon size. That’s why the price of this soup is on the higher end. If you get this, try to get it to stay, but only if you can land a seat in the Atrium, because it’s not fun to eat soup in a takeout container with a plastic spoon to get the broth.

I had the braised beef noodle soup. Four pieces of beef, decent noodles. Broth was neither overly salty nor oily. The lunch surge seemed to be overwhelming the staff, but I’ll give them a pass for that. I really liked the lychee ice tea I had with my meal, it was sweetened but not overly so.
All in all, a competent but unspectacular Chinese meal. It’s more expensive than it would be in Chinatown or Flushing, but it’s in midtown, so one should expect this. I’ll probably be back there again.

Sweet and sour port rice bowl special was disgusting — was literally battered, and fried pork fat. No meat, just chunks of fat, absolutely disgusting. Ate the rice and veggies, and found a few miniscule pieces that actually had meat on them. Do yourself a favor, and skip this dish… sick just thinking about how gross it was.
Ive had some decent rice bowls here, chicken and mixed vegatables, and General Tso are pretty good, decent Chinese food, I rate it a ⁶⁄₁₀. I hear the soup is good, haven’t tried it yet.

Yuck on the «Steamed Bun Sandwich». They come four to an order. Got 2 chicken, 2 beef… for which I was charged $ 8.95. The chicken is one thick flat grisly piece of meat coated in some sort of sickly sweet glaze. It had to be cut with a knife! Not good. The beef was just okay… a stingy portion… approximately one large tablespoon of beef. So basically you’re paying for a steamed bun. I’ll stick to the Moo Shu Grill truck for triple the portions… and a much better flavor profile!!!

First visit so I didn’t venture too far off the beaten path for lunch. The Braised Beef Noodle Soup was good and relatively filling, but too expensive for what it is ($ 10 after tax). While it fulfills the Midtown Lunch rule of being under $ 10, I’d like to see just a little bit more substance for that price.

This is a hidden gem inside of the 805 Atrium. Although I haven’t ventured out too much from my usual, the beef noodle soup is awesome — everything is perfectly cooked and seasoned just right. I definitely would like to check out the full Radiance restaurant one day. Maybe even I’ll get something besides the soup, but it’s just too good to not get it.

I cant believe I didn’t know this place existed inside the atrium! It’s new! Anyway, I was eating at pampano’s taqueria and this place caught my eye. Given that I was still hungry and they had a picture of pork buns… I was like… MIDTOWN LUNCH ADVENTURES HERE I COME.
I got the assortment of buns (each order of buns comes with 4 buns 4 slices of cucumber and tomato). You get to pick and choose so I chose 2 Braised pork belly, beef and chicken.
The pork belly was pretty juicy but nothing special. The chicken is a HUGE chunk of chicken. It’s pretty nicely flavored. Channeling the words of my friend Sean L. «The meat to bun ratio was PHENOMENAL». The winner here though is the beef. The beef was in strips. It was very nicely marinated and full of flavor and not too tough/​chewy. Should have gotten two of these.
They also serve traditional beef noodle soup as well as cantonese wonton noodle soup. got to go back and try these.