T.O.P. Dining

Fast food that isn’t salty?

It’s true. And Oodles serves Asian Fare---cuisine that’s usually loaded with sodium
By Miriam Bowers Abbott

Salt sells. It’s a primal thing, really. Salt drives the universal thirst
for French fries as surely as it ignites the craving for a triple bacon cheeseburger.
The fast food industry has built an entire empire on the premise that salt sells.
So when something enters the fast-casual market with flavors
not dominated by salt, it’s worth noticing—especially when it comes to
Asian fare, a niche that’s drowning in soy sauce and sodium.
Enter Oodles Noodles & Dumpling Bar at 765 neil Ave. For a change,
there’s no need to wash down your dinner with a gallon of distilled
water. The concept behind Oodles seems not all that different from
that of the short-lived Grandview joint Zyng Asian Noodlery.
Various types of noodles are used as flavor carriers for the restaurant’s
soups, stir-fries and salads. Not everything at Oodles is noodle-y, but
noodles are the joint’s signature offering. Diner can customize each
dish’s starch-to-stuff ratio. Extra meat, extra vegetables or extra
sauce is the right choice for customers interested in less noodle-centri
dining.
Most of the starters fall into the noodle free category.
There are decent Wings ($3.50), fried crunchy and bathed in a
spicy sauce. But the best appetizer is something called Lemongrass
Dumplings ($3.50). Inside sections of hand-crafted spring rolls are
flavorful parcels of ground chicken with a distinctly fresh ginger accent.
It’s lovely (though skip the accompanying mustard sauce) and not he kind
of thing found at any local buffet.There’s a salad section of the menu and
the three choices are all portioned as main courses. The Buddha Salad
($7.95) is a garbage can of delights. It teams greens, noodles, seafood,
tofu and sliced potstickers into one big, busy concoction. >>>continue