The Best Noodle Shops in the United States

This Lents noodle shop is named after its one big move, the spicy beef soup from central Vietnam, and it sees no reason to hedge. The broth runs meaty, shrimpy, and lemongrass-bright, with collagen-heavy cuts, pork blood cubes, and thick, slippery noodles. A plate of banana blossom, basil, mint, and lime arrives for you to dump in. Eater's list of Portland's best restaurants and food carts includes it. Dine in or call ahead.

Staff pull fresh noodles behind a glass window in full view of the dining room, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Squirrel Hill noodle shop. The rest of the neighborhood already knows it, so expect a wait. Hot spicy wontons buried in cilantro and scallions are the move, but regulars tend to circle back for the soup dumplings, the classic pork especially.

The pho broth here is light and fragrant with onion and ginger, and the soy-protein brisket has enough chew to make you question your assumptions. This all-vegan Asian restaurant, connected to the Loving Hut network, runs through a long menu of pad Thai, wonton soup, and claypot rice without any of it feeling like a consolation prize. It's a Civic Center lunch spot with real intentions and very reasonable prices.

The Bowl Club membership tells you everything: this is a ramen shop with regulars who show up multiple times a week and never look at the menu. Jimoto does tonkotsu, soup dumplings, and poke in a town where most restaurants treat a reservation like a moral commitment. Low-key, no-fuss, and one of the few places in Aspen that does takeout well, which matters more than it sounds in a city with basically no food delivery.

This is a casual ramen shop in the Eddy Street Commons strip just south of Notre Dame, which explains why a former Cowboys linebacker co-owns it and why current players wander in between practices. Expect creamy tonkotsu in a bowl, a few spicier takes on it, and a bar program with a smoky old fashioned for the post-game crowd. Dessert is a layered crêpe cake, if you've got room after the noodles.

A Lanzhou-style hand-pulled noodle shop in a Fremont strip mall where the broth is somehow both chile-fierce and quietly soothing at the same time. The signature beef noodle soup comes with stretchy flat noodles pulled to your chosen width, tender beef, and floating coins of radish. Start with the pigs ears in chile oil if you know what's good for you. The San Francisco Chronicle named it among the Bay Area's best Chinese restaurants.

Pho Thin is a pho shop whose signature move is wok-searing ribeye in garlic before it ever meets the bowl. The broth leans savory rather than the sweet, star-anise-heavy style common around DC, and the noodles are wide and chewy instead of threadlike. The Falls Church outpost of a Hanoi institution, it arrived already pulling crowds. Order the pickled raw garlic that comes to the table and don't leave it untouched.

A casual Vietnamese restaurant in Pittsburgh's Strip District where the walls feature a poster reading "Pho King Delicious," and the kitchen commits to its broth with equal conviction, simmering it for days. The pho comes loaded with options, tripe, meatballs, sliced beef, a solid chicken version, and the grilled plates hold up well enough to make the leftovers argument for you. A good stop before wandering the neighborhood's grocers and shops.

A casual soup-and-salad counter on Water Street that hides an unexpectedly pan-Asian menu behind a straightforward downtown cafe face. The ramen comes with jalapeño heat and a choice of vegan or bone broth, rice bowls run with house teriyaki and toppings like unagi or kimchi, and fresh smoothies offer a gentle reprieve from the chile-everything intensity of the surrounding city.

Tori paitan, a creamy Japanese white chicken broth, is the anchor at this intimate ramen shop tucked inside Dun Huang Plaza. Mensho runs just thirty seats, so the line forms fast and the room stays loud. The noodles are springy, the duck is smoky, and the soft-boiled egg arrives at exactly the right wobble. A ramen shop where every topping feels deliberate rather than decorative.

Laotian noodle house on National Avenue, a stretch of Silver City where you can eat Thai, Mexican, and Puerto Rican within a few blocks and never double back. The menu runs from turmeric-spiced crepes and fried quail to beef soup with tripe and spicy larb, the kind of sinus-clearing food that manages to feel comforting anyway. Whatever you order, ask for the house "steak sauce," a funky, garlicky, chile-flecked condiment that regulars treat as non-negotiable.

The broths here spend serious time extracting collagen and fat from pork and chicken, and you can taste the commitment. Tokio is a ramen shop that also does sushi and small plates, but the noodle bowls are the main event. The chef trained in Japan specifically for this, and the menu runs from traditional to a cream-and-cheese Cremoso Diablo that sounds dubious until it doesn't. Westword has named it Denver's top ramen two years running.

Noodle Topia is a casual Madison Heights noodle shop where someone hand pulls the noodles within view of your table, and a robot may roll up to clear your bowls. The bowls run from numbingly spicy Sichuan to a rich lamb broth, with green onion pancakes and toasted pork buns on the side. There's plenty of seating and parking out back, if you spot the easy-to-miss driveway. Eater lists it among Metro Detroit's best Chinese restaurants.

The hapa ramen gets its smoky broth from pigs roasted whole in an underground oven at the luau next door, which is either the most Hawaiian supply chain imaginable or proof that good neighbors make good soup. This oceanfront Asian family-style restaurant in Lahaina fills up fast, so book ahead. Pohole fern salad and raw ahi with avocado share the menu with inventive cocktails built around calamansi lime and Asian pear.

A Chinatown noodle shop where the soup comes piled with roast duck, wontons, and springy yellow noodles, all for around eight dollars. The move, though, is the brisket version, where the braised beef melts into the broth and makes the whole bowl taste twice as serious. Add a side of slow-cooked beef tendon and stir it in as you go. Named among the San Francisco Chronicle's picks for Chinatown, and the line out front tends to agree.

The noodles come from Sapporo, which tells you something about how seriously this ramen counter takes its business. Downstairs, bowls of springy, custom-made noodles arrive in a long-simmered broth, with a vegetarian version that holds its own against the pork. Upstairs flips into a Japanese tavern pouring sake and yuzu cocktails alongside a full menu of drinking snacks. Two moods, one address, zero bad options on either floor.

Papa Noodle is a fast, casual Chinese noodle shop a short walk from a good chunk of SoMa's office towers, which explains the lunch-hour line of people holding badges. The menu is a handful of bowls, including pork or chicken noodles, beef noodle soup, and a vegan option, with noodles made daily. Every order comes with a White Rabbit candy, the closest thing to a dessert menu or a raise.

The broth at this Chinatown pho shop has been going since 1987, and regulars treat it accordingly, never opening a menu. A sprawling Southern Vietnamese lineup covers nearly 60 dishes, but the namesake bowl, available in more than two dozen variations, is the reason most people brave the line. The imperial egg rolls, crisp and stuffed with pork and wood ear mushrooms, make a strong case for arriving hungry enough to order both.

Rice ground daily on-site in electric stone mills is the tell at this no-frills Flushing counter, a Cantonese cheong fun spot tucked into a minimall off Roosevelt Avenue. The noodle sheets come out nearly translucent, rolled around pork, shrimp, or egg to order. The New York Times gave it a Critic's Pick, which tracks: there are very few places in the city where the rice noodle itself is this clearly the point.

Noodles pulled and cooked in-house is a rarity in Colorado, and Dragonfly Noodle makes them on the premises, which gives the ramen a texture that dried product simply can't fake. This casual noodle shop on the 16th Street Mall works its way across Asia, moving from Japanese ramen to Singaporean, Vietnamese, and Taiwanese dishes. The broths run deep and traditionally built, with just enough tinkering to keep things interesting.

The broth simmers for twelve hours, which tells you everything about how seriously this Vietnamese noodle shop takes its pho. Sixteen variations run from the classic stacked beef bowl to seafood versions with shrimp and fish balls. The room is no-frills and the portions are generous, the kind of place where the soup does the talking and nobody feels the need to narrate it.