With the prevalence of Malatang in Sunnybank, I always thought that it was merely a matter of time before they opened one in the city to satisfy the masses of office workers who also crave a hot bowl of noodles. I was surprised however, to see that Fill The Bowl decided to open their store at a shared shopfront with GongCha in the two level shopfront which used to house Top Sushi. Whilst GongCha has been open for quite a while, it took a few extra weeks for Fill The Bowl to finally open its stairway.
Like all other places, I knew the drill and grabbed a bowl.
Toppings were abundant, regularly restocked and quite fresh. There were quite a few options for sliced meat, vegies, noodles, mushrooms, meatballs and offal.
Making my selection, I paid at the counter. Despite being a Chinese operation, I was pleasantly surprised to see they accepted payment via eftpos. I was also surprised to see that my relatively small selection came to a grand total of $21.75. Also expensive for a malatang.
Was then given a buzzer to collect my noodles when ready.
Seating, as you would expect, was extremely limited. A lot of people stood around with their buzzers awaiting a seat and some had to take away due to the lack of seating.
Unlike other sit down restaurants for malatang, there was no separate sauce bowl for a DIY sauce. Once you got your noodles, you added the sauces directly into your soup and hoped for the best. I was pleased to see garlic and soy, but there was an apparent lack of spring onion and sesame oil.
My noodles came out fairly quickly and I loaded it up with garlic and a dash of soy. At the point of collection, I was provided with one set of cutlery, including a set of chopsticks, spoon and napkin, this kind of made me curious as to whether or not I would be offered a second packet if I dropped my chopsticks, but I didn't explore that much further. The bowl was steaming hot which meant I took a fair while to eat it all. I ordered it with mild spice as no spice wasn't an option. The toppings were cooked generally adequately but the meat slices were overdone and chewy. Noodles had a good texture, but soup was exceptionally salty and left me very thirsty after my meal (hence the GongCha downstairs I guess). I also feel that presentation could also be improved upon, having tried places like Love Malatang and Fill The Bowl Sunnybank,
Price Range: $15 - $25pp
Taste: 4/10
Value: 4/10
Service: 7/10
Environment: 5/10
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