Totoro

This restaurant has really attentive service. One time we came in and found that the non-spicy broth still had a bit of pepperish spicy, the waiter immediately offered us another bowl of plain broth. The next time we were able to order noodles with plain broth to start with. Their food is authentic, delicious and reasonably priced.

I came here on a Friday night with just a 10 minute wait or so. There aren’t many indoor seats so it does take a while to get a spot if you come at 6 PM on a Friday night like we did. Good: I liked the servers they were really nice especially since we spoke Chinese and they came out with the food really really quickly we ordered and they got the beef noodle soup to us in about three minutes or something crazy so this place is super super good if you were in a rush and you want some warm noodle soup. Definitely props though to the waiter who gave us free duck heads to take home that definitely added a plus one to my experience. Bad: The only bad thing about this place is that the noodle soup is just average it is really warm it has a lot of stuff in it and it’s just a little bit spicy but other than that I thought that it wasn’t the best I’ve had before. The food is pretty oily and greasy so I didn’t feel that good eating it either. Overall I might come back but I do think that the noodle soup was a bit less stellar than some of the other options on Castro and I would probably wait to try out the rest before I came back here.

We got the tomato fatty beef clay pot mifen, the house special beef noodle soup, and a spicy beef tendon cold dish. Meat portions were very generous, and the soup were alright, both were super spicy but I found the tomato one to be a bit bland. The beef tendon cold dish was really good, definitely the highlight of the meal. Overall decent spot if you’re feeling like getting mifen, nothing crazy, pretty good value.

The dumplings sauce was great, as was the voice of the lady singing in the back (seriously want her for my next karaoke sesh) I ordered the vermicelli beef however I wish I ordered the vermicelli beef casserole and added tendon. The casserole is the same as the spicy beef noodle soup however it contains a delicious tea egg, tendon would have added some gelatin to give more mouth feel. I ordered medium spicy which was plenty spicy. The service is fairly typical for an authentic Chinese place: speak up for service. The place is small enough that a simple hand gesture is enough to get their attention.

We ordered takeouts on a Saturday and they were ready very quickly. I got the tomato beef clay pot rice noodle and the beef stew with cold rice noodles. Nice rice noodles, and nice lamb and beef on top. The homemade lamb and beef stew together with the soup are the souls. The normal spicy could be quite spicy though. I often order slight spicy just to be safe. The cold noodles are not cold though, but the soup is hot anyways.