Wow Noodle - San Jose

Hubby found this restaurant on the Metro Newspaper (?) recently. Then he looked it up on yelp to find out more information. And there we were this afternoon checking it out.

The location on First St isn't exactly convenient for people who drive there. First St on that part of town is one way because of the light rail. So we had to park about two blocks away and walked there. Of course another alternative was to park on a paid parking lot at the corner of First and San Fernando.

Restaurant was empty when we went there and as we stood there looking at menu nobody came and greeted us or tried to talked us in. ha..ha..Maybe they figured we'll be going in anyway why bother. And also there was no other restaurant near by if I remembered it correctly. Anyhow we went in and were seated on a booth. We kinda knew what we wanted to try but still looking at the menu to see whether we would change our mind. Hubby got pad see ew and I ordered house special noodle with chicken. The waitress left with our order and I asked hubby why he didn't tell the waitress what kind of meat he wanted with his pad see ew. And why the waitress didn't ask either ? Later the waitress came back to check on us and hubby told her that he wanted his pad see ew with chicken.

The pad see ew looked good and tasted good. Not oily but it could be more spicy. My noodle soup wasn't too special. The noodle was rice noodle like the one used for pho. Soup was surprisingly spicy for my taste so that was the plus. But other than that, there was nothing much in the soup. A bunch of chicken breast meat, a bit of bean sprout, a few pieces of celery chunk and fried garlic. That's it. I actually thought that the picture of that special noodle soup showed meat balls and imitation crab. So when I looked at that plain noodle soup I was a bit disappointed.
Hubby finished his pad see ew and was looking for more. There was another girl that brought our order. So I asked her if there was rad na on their menu. She told us no but could make it for us. So we went ahead and ordered. The same with our previous order, she asked how spicy he wanted it.
The rad na came out on a bowl. It had a bit more gravy than we usually see on rad na. This one looked almost like a noodle soup. The noodle didn't have any hint of smoky flavour so I think it wasn't even fried at all. All in all we didn't like rad na as much as the other orders.

The restaurant didn't provide chilly or anything to spice up your food on their table. So it's really hard to get the most out of it. And for me who like to customize my noodle soup I didn't have that opportunity at all. I guess they wanted the feel to be like cafe instead of regular noodle restaurant. The ambiance was nice with nice music and interesting decor. There was a big wall waterfall in shape of a Thai lady across from where we sat.

Wow Noodle 78 S. First St, San Jose, CA 95133 *(408) 279-0881