Mind-Blowing Soup & Noodle Sets at The Master Spicy Noodle

Sometimes, restaurants with the most limited menus are the ones that execute them the best. A great example of this is The Master Spicy Noodle, which essentially only has three items — a noodle and soup set, with one side — on their menu, each of which is slightly customizable. Despite their small menu, this restaurant is crazy popular with locals, with queues forming outside even before they even open. Luckily, the lines move relatively quickly and the service is efficient, and the food is more than worth the wait.

The Master Spicy Noodle has a clean, modern interior that’s nice for photos without being too obnoxious. There are currently three branches in Taipei, one near Zhongshan MRT Station, one in the basement of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi A11 in Xinyi, and one near Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall MRT Station, but we have only ever visited the Zhongshan branch. Most customers are young Taiwanese friends or couples, but we’ve started seeing slightly older couples and families there more recently too. We’re usually the only foreigners there, which is a pity considering how great the food is and how nice the service staff are.

Ordering is easy, even if you don’t read Chinese. You are given a menu (an easy-to-follow English menu is available) upon entering or as you’re lining up, and you can mark down the items you want to order and pay at the counter before receiving your food, which usually comes within 15 minutes. Staff members are courteous and available to help you in English if you need it.

The first thing we got was the spicy beef soup with noodle set, with spicy soybean as the side ($230). Every single part of this set is absolutely amazing. The beef soup is spicy and complex, but still extremely drinkable. It’s loaded with tender strips of beef that you can dip into a phenomenal sauce before eating. Both the sauce and the broth are refillable, which we took full advantage of.

From the pictures, it’s easy to think that the beef soup outshines the noodles, but you couldn’t be more wrong. The noodles may look plain, only accompanied by a soft boiled “sugar” egg and thinly sliced green onions on top, but they’re the bounciest, tastiest, most flavourful noodles we’ve had in Taipei — and that’s saying a lot. We seriously couldn’t believe how unexpectedly delicious they were despite looking so bland and boring.

The soup set comes with your choice of spicy duck blood or spicy soybean, and we went for the spicy soybean. This really wasn’t that spicy at all but was lovely all the same. We’re not normally the biggest fans of that kind of texture of tofu, but we liked the way this soaked up the sauce, and it made for a nice change of texture. In addition to this, we got another order of spicy cucumbers on the side. These were sweet and tangy and delicious but be warned that the set comes with a huge amount of food that will be hard to finish as it is.

If you can’t handle a spicy broth, we recommend you choose the stewed soup set ($230) instead. This can seem a little plain compared to the complexity of the beef broth, but it’s a lovely light, comforting soup that’s still packed with flavour. We really enjoyed how soothing it felt to drink it on a cool, rainy day.

This set also came with spicy soybean, and we added a side of spicy tofu ($60) too. The tofu was soft and juicy, soaking up deliciously spicy mala sauce. We found that cutting it into smaller pieces helped absorb more of the sauce, and was easier to eat too. We regretted the fact that we’d ordered so much food, but still savoured every bite of the tofu.

Check out the menu below:

All things considered, The Master Spicy Noodle is one of our favourite restaurants to eat at near Zhongshan MRT Station, if not the favourite. We’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been, people we’ve taken, and people we’ve sent there, but every single person we’ve ever introduced to it has agreed: it’s amazing. The soup, meat, noodles, and sides are all cooked and seasoned to perfection, and the portions are incredibly generous to the point of being hard to finish. The spicy beef noodle set is almost like a deconstructed beef noodle soup and is perfect for people who don’t like beef noodle soup because they don’t think it’s flavourful enough (guilty). Even if you’re not always the biggest fan of Taiwanese or Chinese food, we strongly recommend giving the soup sets here a try — they’ll surprise you!

What’s the vibe?

Clean and modern noodle shop with impressive lines. Customers tend to be young Taiwanese friends or couples, though there are older couples and a few families once in a while too. We’ve always been the only foreigners there.

Worth it?

So worth it. We’ve been multiple times, and every time we go we fall more in love. You could definitely get cheaper noodles around Taipei, but in our opinion, these are worth the difference in price and the waiting time.

Would you go back?

We’ve been back plenty of times and like to take our friends and colleagues there. Every single one of them has loved it, and told us they’re going to come back too.

Last updated May 2020