California Noodle House Reopens at The Cal After Four Years

By Scott Roeben, on May 06 2024
3 min read 3 comments
Downtown Las Vegas Las Vegas Las Vegas Restaurants

A well-regarded restaurant at downtown’s California casino, California Noodle House, has quietly reopened after a four-year hiatus.

The Noodle House is especially popular among The Cal’s guests who hail from Hawaii, so basically, all of them.

The Cal, owned by Boyd Gaming (along with downtown’s Fremont and Main Street casinos) opened the restaurant quietly so staff has a chance to get back into the groove before a public announcement. We aren’t really about public announcements. The formerly-great Eater Vegas and always-meh Las Vegas Review-Journal should be copying and pasting the news release in a week or two.

Noodle House isn’t a “house,” per se, as a real house would be messier and have a stack of letters piling up from the HOA about excessive weeds.

California Noodle House was a casualty of the pandemic, and closed in 2020.

Boyd is clearly seeing business levels returning, so the Noodle House is back in the game. The casino also has Aloha Specialties, Market Street Cafe and Redwood Steakhouse. And Lappert’s Ice Cream, one of the best ice cream shops in Vegas. We’re boycotting the place until they bring back chocolate chip, but that is neither here nor there.

Here’s a look at the California Noodle House menu.

No prices, which is really annoying. From what we recall, all the dishes were in the $8-12 range. It’s downtown.

The menu at California Noodle House isn’t extensive, but it’s all really just a diversion from the star of the show, the Oxtail Stew. This particular Oxtail Stew is known far and wide. The Cal has been serving it in the Market Street Cafe, but its real home is the Noodle House.

Oxtail soup or stew isn’t made from oxen, of course. It’s cow tails.

We are not a soup person, mainly because hot liquids are weird in a state where the temperatures regularly approach that of a pottery kiln.

But people from Hawaii (many of Asian descent) love the Oxtail Stew at The Cal.

Noodle House also features, you know, noodles.

Noodles are a staple of Asian cuisine, just as staples are a noodle of Office Depot.

During our most recent visit, in 2015, everything we tried was delicious.

Knowing us, this was some sort of chicken.

You can find out more on the California Noodle House’s official Web page.

California Noodle House is open 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday, closed on Sunday and Monday.

Yes, everything in Las Vegas closes earlier now. We are trying not to think about it too much, because it, too, is annoying. Has everyone turned into babies? On Fremont Street, once party central into the wee hours of the morning, we will often find an empty street at midnight. If you aren’t able to stay up drinking and gambling and fornicating with strangers until at least 4:00 a.m., maybe find another place to vacation.

Speaking of hooking up with strangers, since we didn’t include an A.I. image in this story, we had A.I. create a catchy new song, “Lost in the Neon,” about the famous Las Vegas walk of shame. Listen here. We can retire on the royalties, so adios, suckers!

Seriously, who are these weirdos who get up at 8:00 a.m. and “exercise” when they’re in Las Vegas on vacation? What the hell has the world become? Vacations are the opposite of exercise. These people are doing Las Vegas wrong. Stop hurting the feelings of children in Beijing making blackout curtains! Las Vegas isn’t a daylight town. It’s like being in a nightclub. The Sun is like turning on the lights. Nobody wants that! Las Vegas is meant to be experienced by the light of neon (or cheaper, energy-efficient LEDs).

How did a story about a restaurant reopening turn into a rant about people being lame and going to bed too early? Do you know this blog at all? Don’t get us started about grocery stores! They used to be open 24/7, now, you’re lucky to find one open at 10:00 p.m. It can’t be a staffing cost issue, because we’re all doing our own check-outs on machines. We are trying to limit our rants to one per story, but self-checkout is the worst trend since nose piercings. Adding that to our list of future rants. Are women trying to ugly themselves up because of this whole “Would you rather encounter a bear in the woods or a man?” thing?

First, does that sentence need two question marks? Second, did you know the man vs. bear thing is a thing? How have things gotten so bad that most women prefer a bear over a man? We blame all those Netflix documentaries about serial killers. Oh, and as always, we blame F1.

Anyway, California Noodle House is back, and Boyd continues to have its finger on the pulse of this niche market, and delivers their favorites at a solid value.