Originally Posted by
AANYC1981
ORD-H/K's new offering of the Hunan Broth Bowls are gross......not a fan.....the vegetable stock tastes weird with something like cinnamon in it, yuck. The noodles are really hard to get into the paper bowls, but there still is one soup offering over in the back by the H concourse......today is was beef chimichurri.
Pro tip: fill up your bowl(s) 75% of the way with the steak chimichurri soup, then put chicken breast and jalapenos from the noodle bar and top w/ hot sauce. The chicken is just plain boiled chicken so it absorbs the flavor of the soup well without clashing, and takes it down in temperature from scalding to consumable.
(Also the flavor in the broth is Chinese five spice, one ingredient of which is Chinese cinnamon -- so you're not far off!)
The setup of the noodle bar is still comically bad. There are two very fixable problems: (1) the noodles all stick together and the tongs they provide are utterly useless, meaning I witnessed many people resort to using their fingers (!) to get the noodles off of the tongs and into their bowl or plate. Some said fingered noodles landed back on the tray. Yuck. (2) the bowls are too small to put the noodles in, so people either fail at bowls or try using plates but then realize that there's broth and then stand around confused. Solution: pre-portion noodles into the brown paper bowls, so people can add their toppings and pour broth over top. Maybe a sign that says STEP 1 - add toppings, STEP 2 - add broth. Signs would help.
Here's the full setup, and there are two of these in the lounge:
