FAQs

Noodle Nation is committed to providing freshly made, great value, oriental food to our customers. Although, we can’t provide specific calorie or nutritional specific information at the moment, we do have plans to do this in the future. However, wok stir frying allows for less oil to be used in the cooking process and the ingredients retain more nutrients.

Because we make our dishes to order, customers do have the option to tailor their dishes to suit the requirements. If you want to reduce the calories in your meal, you can ask for your dish to be made with less (or without) ingredients that are naturally higher in calories.

The wok offers a quick, healthy way of cooking. While preparation and organisation are involved, this is usually offset by quick cooking times – stir fries are an obvious example. In terms of health benefits, the woks wide surface area means that less oil needs to be used to cook food. Also, the fast cooking of stir fries retains the nutrient values of the ingredients to a larger extent than other cooking methods.

At Noodle Nation, we cook all our dishes freshly and we’ll always try to amend our dishes to suit our customers special dietary needs. We often get asked questions regarding the following:

Allergies & Food Intolerances:
Although we do cater for customers with mild allergies and intolerances, we are extremely aware of the risks involved in our business and our style of cooking. Traditional wok stir frying is an extremely vigorous process and we cook our dishes to order. We have both seafood and nuts in our kitchens and there is a slight but very real risk of cross transference of ingredients during the cooking process on the wok cooking range.

We have catered for customers with allergies since we opened our restaurants 10 years ago but we do feel that customers should be aware of the very real risk in our kitchens. For this reason we do have a notice on all of our menus, making sure our customers are aware. However, when a customer states they suffer from an allergy, our procedure in store should prompt a manager/supervisor to actually speak to the customer regarding our cooking process. Also, all of our staff on starting are taken through an allergy awareness worksheet and are taught how to process an order for a customer with an allergy.

Generally, if a customer makes us aware of an allergy, we will ensure that we use certain woks, certain oils and avoid using certain ingredients. Similarly, we will take extra vigilance in our cooking process. Again, although this does not completely stop of any traces of a certain ingredient being in a dish – it does limit them to highest level we can attain in our cooking environment. However, as stated, customers should be aware of this issue and make a free choice to eat with us knowing these facts.

We do have an ingredients/allergens guide in store but due to the above factors we re-iterate this is a guide only.

Vegetarians:
To let you know, we are and always will be happy to serve vegetarians at Noodle Nation. In fact many of our staff (and customers) are vegetarians. We are one of the very few oriental/asian restaurants who use vegetarian oyster sauce and vegetarian chilli oil and although we have a ‘not a vegetarian restaurant’ warning on our menu, this is to make our customers aware of the very minimal risk which exists in our kitchen. This risk exist in other restaurants but they do not always make their customers aware. We however feel it is only right to make vegetarian customers aware of the issue.

We do use the same woks to cook meat and vegetable dishes but please note, we wash all woks thoroughly between uses – i.e. a dish that was used to cook a meat dish would be used to cook a vegetable dish but only after a thorough cleaning process. This is exactly the same process that is used in other restaurants. Also, we only use vegetable oil in store to fry goods and have a vegetable stock in our soups.

In regards to preparation, we use separate equipment to prepare our raw meats, cooked meats, dairy & vegetables – this is best practice and common sense in any restaurant, as it avoids cross contamination of potentially dangerous bacteria.

As you may or may not know, we cook the vast majority of our dishes fresh to order using the searing effects of traditional wok stir-frying. This is an extremely vigorous process which literally tosses the ingredients in a wok. During this process, we have identified a minimal but real risk that ingredients may be transferred between woks.

Over a 10 year period this has happened rarely. However, the risk still exists. As we care about our vegetarian customers, we felt it was right to put a warning on the menu – which highlights this risk – However, all noodle nation vegetable dishes never knowingly contain any meat or poultry or ingredients of meat origin.

Halal:
At Noodle Nation we use halal chicken breast. However, we do not consider ourselves a halal restaurant.

This is because there is a very slight but real risk that different ingredients can be transferred during our cooking process. Traditional wok stir frying is a very vigorous process and during the action of ‘throwing the wok’, ingredients could be ‘tossed’ between the different wok stations. Although we thoroughly clean our woks between cooking every dish, the very slight possibility of this cross transference does exist – Therefore, we do not advertise ourselves as a halal restaurant, despite the fact our chicken is halal.

We employ a wide variety of employees and I can confirm that many of our waiting team across the business and also a few of our managers are Muslim. They regularly eat chicken dishes and are aware of how we cook and where we source our chicken.

Other meats in our business are not halal. We strongly feel that unless we can make our kitchens 100% halal safe (from the minor risk that exists), we will not advertise this fact. Please note that we are currently looking at sourcing more halal products at the moment and may change this policy if we can confirm that all ingredients are halal safe.

Gluten Free Diets and Coeliacs:
We can cater for customers who have wheat allergies. Generally, as we cook our dishes to order we can take out any wheat based ingredients. Customers with wheat allergies should be aware that soy sauce contains wheat. However, our rice noodles (mai-fun and ho fun) do not use wheat flour and are safe for those with wheat intolerance to eat.

Some dishes may use wheat based ingredients in the preparation process and unfortunately, we can not amend these to order. If you do have an intolerance to wheat, please do make our managers aware during your visit, before you order and they will be able to help.

Our prawn crackers do contain prawn and are therefore unsuitable for vegetarians.

Noodle Nation has been serving our version of Oriental Food for over 10 years. All the directors have grown up in the Chinese Restaurant Business and have great knowledge of Chinese food. One of the main reasons we opened our restaurants was to make good value, Great quality Chinese food accessible to the majority.

You won’t find our restaurants ‘exclusive’ but you will find our menu is packed with ‘chin-glish’ classics and also traditional dishes too. Whether you’re a traditional Chinese foodie or simply love good British Chinese classics we think you’ll find something to love on our menu.

We are really passionate about our food and love to get feedback and ideas from our customers. If you have a suggestion, please do send it into us. Remember to add as much detail as possible and we’ll see if we can re-create the dish. If your lucky, it may make it onto the menu or one of our specials boards.

Our senior chef team would be happy to help you with recipes. If you want to get some tips on cooking Chinese food, please feel free to e-mail in.

Later this year, we hope to bring out Noodle Nation cook book to show you how you can cook great Noodle Nation style dishes at home. We’ll also begin selling authentic oriental ingredients to help you get started.

We love having children in our restaurants and feel it’s our duty to increase their Noodle Knowledge! Our portions tend to be quite large, so we’ve created our Noodle Nippers Menu (under 10’s only). We’ve taken some of our most popular dishes and made them into mini kid’s versions.

You’ll also find loads of noodle games on the back of our table menus – hopefully, this will entertain the kids whilst you tuck in! We regularly entertain big parties of children and have plans for bringing out some specific party packages later this year.

Noodle Nation restaurants have licenses that allow us to serve alcoholic drinks with food that’s going to be eaten in our restaurants. We’re really sorry but we can’t let you take alcoholic drinks away from our premises – it’s against the law.

Similarly, were not allowed to serve a customer a beer or wine whilst they wait for their take out to be prepared. This is against the law and could end up with us losing our drinks license outright.

We always try to keep our menu constantly evolving at Noodle Nation to meet our customers needs and taste preferences. Therefore, certain dishes may come off of our menu if they are not popular, to make room for dishes we feel our customers will like.

We also bring out a specials menu 4 times a year, to give our customers new flavours and taste experiences. If the dishes on these specials menu are popular enough, they may even make it as a permanent fixture on our menu. If you have any opinions on our dishes, please do tell us.

Please know that our proposed collection & delivery times are our best estimates. We try really hard to get your food prepared and cooked as soon as possible. It’s worth noting – we don’t sell fast food…we serve fresh cooked food as fast as possible. Consequently, there may be a wait while we cook your order. Generally, we aim to have all collections and deliveries ready within 45mins – however, times may be longer subject to quantity, level of business and type of dishes ordered.

At Noodle Nation our rule is basically, ‘we can take ingredients out but don’t add extra ingredients to dishes’ (the only reason we take ingredients out of dishes on request, is that some customers may have an intolerance).

We take great care in making our dishes the way we think they should be served, and generally don’t add any ingredients or change specification in dishes. However, our menu is pretty comprehensive, so we do think that you should be able to find something you like.

The only things that we can add to dishes as an extra are chilli and garlic, as we view these more as flavourings than ingredients.

If you feel our dishes and the ingredients in them should be changed on the menu, please tell us using the contacts page.

Unfortunately, we don’t do kids meals for take out or delivery. However, we have plans to introduce a noodle nippers take out option in the future. Our portions are pretty big though, so you may find there is enough to share

We don’t serve starters at Noodle Nation. We are an Oriental canteen and we serve our side dishes at the same time as our main meals. If you would like a side before your main to whet your appetite, please make sure you ask your server at the time of ordering – if not you will receive it as a side order to accompany your main meal.

At Noodle Nation, we’re always looking at new opportunities to grow our business. We’ve got some target towns were looking into – you’ll see these on our New locations page. Were passionate about what we do and we’d love to open more restaurants. If you feel your town could do with a Noodle Nation please e-mail us – if you think that you’ve seen the ideal site for a Noodle Nation please include these details.

We’ll keep you in the loop about any new sites were opening on this website.

Noodle Nation is proud to be a family owned business. We love our business, team and customers and are passionate about what we do. You will often see us in our restaurants, chatting with the team, working on our laptops or eating with customers. We have a small but close team and the idea of being a faceless franchise or corporate business doesn’t really appeal to us.

We often get asked if we are a franchise but at the moment we have no intentions of franchising the business. However, if you feel that you would like to get involved in the business, please feel free to contact us via e-mail were always willing to listen to suggestions. Similarly, if you would like to invest in the business – feel free to get in touch – we can’t promise we’ll say yes but we’d love help growing the business.

We’re happy to take bookings for any size of party. Although we can usually seat parties of up to 6 diners quickly without a reservation, we’re more than happy to take a booking. As we do get busy, we encourage larger parties of 6 or more to simply ring to book a table, so that we can cater for you as efficiently as possible. To book a table: simply pop in or call us in advance. We will need to take the following information:

• Party Organisers Full Name
• A Contact Telephone Number
• An email address
• The Number of Guests in your Party
• The Date & Time you want to visit

If you make a reservation, we will have your table ready at your booking time and hold the table for a maximum of 15 minutes. If your entire party are not ready to be seated at this time, we may have to let your table be used by another group and make alternative seating arrangements for you – but don’t worry, we’ll always try our hardest to make your party a success. Click here to find your nearest Noodle Nation Restaurant

Yes, due to popular demand, we have recently launched in store vouchers – we like to call them Noodle Notes. You can use these vouchers to treat your friends and family to meal at Noodle Nation. The Noodle Note vouchers come in £5, £10 and £20 denominations.

To purchase vouchers, you will have to visit one of our stores and our manager will be able to organise these for you. Please note that any terms and conditions that apply to the vouchers will be detailed on the voucher themselves. Vouchers and Gift Cards need to be used prior to the expiry date, or the value will be lost.

We love helping people celebrate special occasions at Noodle Nation. If you’re having a party, leaving do or family get together, we’d love to have you. At the moment we don’t have any specific party packages but you’ll find our menu great value, brimming with choice.

We’re more than happy for you to bring in balloons and a cake – and if you bring them in before your party arrives, we’ll even help dress your table. We do have plans to introduce some party packages later in the year, so keep logging on to find out more.

Loads of our customers ask for our t-shirts – However, we don’t sell them at the moment, as were worried our customers might get a little confused and start asking each other to help them with ordering in store!

For waiting team jobs, we would suggest you visiting our stores directly to find out about vacancies. You’ll need to be happy, customer obsessed and outgoing to succeed. Being a clean freak would also help. We are always looking for good chefs – knowledge of Chinese food isn’t essential – However, a hard working nature and a willingness to learn is a must. If you’re successful and you want to build a career with us, we’ll also train you. If you want to join us as a Manager, you’ll need to have experience of managing people and be passionate about people and service – don’t worry, we’ll help you build more business-related skills if your successful. Check our recruitment page here.

We love giving value at Noodle Nation and regularly have offers available. If you join our Noodle Nation Love Club, we’ll e-mail our offers to you, so you can have your noodle fix for even less money.

Student Discount – We know that it’s hard to survive on a student budget, so we also have a student discount. You’ll need to be over 18 years old and have your student I.D. to take advantage of this – How’s that for (fresher’s) fair.

Emergency Services Discount – All of our restaurants give 10% OFF FOOD to people who work in the Emergency or Armed Forces (RAF, Army, Navy, Police or NHS). To take advantage of this you will need to show an official form of I.D. It our simple way of saying thanks for everything you do.

Each of our Noodle Love promotional offers comes with it’s own set of specific terms & conditions – we include these on the vouchers themselves. These state when and how an offer can be used and which stores will accept the vouchers. Please check them carefully as our staff members and managers have to stick rigidly to the terms set out on these. If you’d like to join our Noodle Love e-club, we’ll send these offers to you by e-mail. You can join the club by clicking here.

We love to get suggestions on how we can improve or grow our business. You can use the contact us page. Make sure you provide as much information as you possible can on your enquiry/proposal.

Being a family business, we also endeavour to support local charities and schools. All requests must be sent via the contact page. Please note only registered schools, organisations and charities will be supported. Also, please note that we have many requests and cannot support all charities.

We feel our restaurants should be involved with the local community. We do get a lot of sponsorship requests but also like sharing the noodle love. Any sponsorship or advertising queries should be sent to our Noodle HQ using the contact sheet. Please make sure that you give us as much detail as possible about how we can support you.

We love hearing from our Noodle Fans. You can contact us from this website, using our online form. It’s rare that people ‘put pen to paper these days’ but if you choose to write a letter, we’d love it. Here’s our postal address:

Noodle Nation HQ, 1-3 Bourbon Street, Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, HP20 2PZ.

We have all the bits and bobs you need to know about our restaurants on the Our Restaurants section of this site.

• Due to differing levels of business our shops have different opening hours. Please make sure you check our opening times.
• All our restaurants have baby changing facilities and disabled toilets.
• Noodle Nation accepts the following credit/debit cards VISA, Switch, Mastercard (but not American Express)
• In line with legislation, all Noodle Nation restaurants are entirely non-smoking.

Of course – Noodle Nation is committed to paying minimum wage and not topping up wages for our waiting staff team using their tips. We do not get involved with our staff tip money – we feel this is their reward for a job well done.

Service is not included on any bill, regardless of the size of your party/group. However, we would suggest a tip of about 10% if you feel t

If you have any food or drink products which you feel could help our business or improve our offering, please send details using our contact page. Please make sure you send as much detail as possible and also contact details.

If you’d like to tell us something about our business, we’d honestly love to hear it.

If it’s about something one of our team have done well, we’d love to congratulate them on a job well done – so please do tell us.

If you think there’s something we could have done better, we’d also like to know. It’s important that we get feedback on where we could improve for the future.

We like to read through things thoroughly before replying but hopefully one of us (usually a director) will reply as soon as possible.

We very rarely receive complaints but please do contact us if you were unhappy. Initially, please contact the Noodle Nation you visited – our managers are passionate about our food and service and should be able to help. If you need to contact our head office, please use the form on our contact page.