The Noodle Café

Yum yum yum yum yum!
Pleasant, if somewhat close and noisy interior and also a charmingly European style outdoor area with umbrella tables.
Food? Food, you ask? Ahhh. .. Delicious, freshly home made pastas and your choice of sauces at reasonable prices. Right sized portions of soup or salad included in the meal price, along with a few pieces of perfect homemade garlic bread. Tomato basil is always excellent, creamy and satisfying; seasonal gazpacho bursts with salsa-​y, vegetable-​y live food deliciousness. Freshly ground mozzarella cheese. Superlative Italian sausage. Meat, fish and shellfish dishes are fresh and always perfectly prepared.
Surprisingly large and well considered wine list. Cold Peroni beer in bottles, among other, more typical choices.
Have a look at their menus through their site. We’ve been happy with every meal we’ve eaten.
Polite, knowledgeable, cheerful, reasonably attentive staff.
They close fairly early in the usual suburban manner.
We are regulars.
Best,
Peter O. and S.

Best tomato basil soup on this planet! It’s very fresh and is a lovely family owned restaurant. They make their own pasta on site and their seafood is also delicious. It’s family friendly but they don’t take reservations unless it’s over X amount of people. It’s my favorite go-​to place on the North Shore.

Tiny and easier with outdoor seating BUT This is the best restaurant on the north shore of Chicago. Trust me (but go very early). Carry out is great too!

One of our family’s favorites for years! Perfect for birthdays and special occasions. I just took my mom here for Mother’s Day. The amount of food you get for the price is incredible, having soup or salad come with your pasta or entrée is a great idea. The garlic bread is to die for and I’ve never been able to make it remotely close at home. Maybe it’s just a lot of extra butter! :) During our most recent visit we both had Caesar salads and pasta with scallops, shrimp and mushrooms in a white wine sauce. Hopefully it will start to get warm soon so we can enjoy their outdoor seating!

Amazing food. From the garlic bread and soup to the main courses. Small restaurant, so call ahead. Worth the wait. Best during spring or summer since downtown Wilmette is nice to walk around.

I’ve never been disappointed with any selection ordered here, including desserts. Highly recommended. I’ve given this place one less star because of the noise level. It’s a very small place, perhaps holds 30, but just the sound of all that talking in such a small place truly detracts from the dining experience. Best to eat up, enjoy the food and exit. Or, take ear plugs. Suggestion to the owners: get rid of the market next door and make the restaurant bigger. Also, add sound proofing materials. Otherwise, great.

My favorite restaurant when visiting the folks! The garlic bread is amazing.

We just arrived from there and were delighted to have a great dinner with great service! I loved the scallop special and my husband loved his pasta. They didn’t disappoint us. The wine added delight to the taste. The garlic bread, salads, soup were delicious. We truly enjoyed our meal there. I think that the chocolate cake however was not great and in the future will skip on it, it was a bit stale.

We stopped here for dinner tonight. I was stoked over a seafood and pasta. Both Christopher and I were rather disappointed. The soups and garlic bread were very good, but neither of us enjoyed our entrees. Christopher had fettuccini with their special of the day sauce. made with peas and prosciutto. It was not a pleasant taste and neither of us could pick out even a hint of the flavor of prosciutto He ended up adding quite a bit of salt to it, which is something he never does. I had the seafood trio with a side of pasta with their shrimp, scallop and mushroom sauce. The pasta and sauce was warm, but the salmon was lukewarm and the shrimps and scallops were almost room temperature. I sent it back and they heated it up, but it was just kind of bland. I added lots of lemon to it. It didn’t help much.
Christopher had a beer. He finished it and was never asked if he wanted another one or something else. He drained his water glass and it sat empty for quite a while before being refilled. Not a big deal, but not good either. I doubt we will be back. From other reviews, it seems like ours was an isolated experience, but it turned both of us off.

Fantastic pasta, excellent desserts and a great place to catch up with friends. Service was ouisanding. A wonderful find.

When in Wilmette be sure to have a meal at or from The Noodle Café. A variety of fresh pasta and the creative tasty sauces in nice portions are delicious. The spinach pasta with either the fresh basil pesto or marinara sauce are wonderful meatless meals. Fish and meat eaters won’t be disappointed with the many available tasty choices. We have been going to this little gem of a restaurant for many years and it has never disappointed.

The noodle is always a reliable choice! The gourmet salad is my go to meal, but u can’t miss with the soups or daily specials. It’s a small place which might be its only downfall, but they do carry out as well. Yum!

Craving fresh homemade pasta? This is the place to go! Located on 12^th street, you’ll notice the red and white striped awning with outdoor seating. Plenty of free street parking.
We ordered the chicken romero with spinach fettuccine ($ 14) and the spicy italian sauce with garlic angel hair ($ 14). At first, I thought the prices were too high, but changed my mind immediately after seeing how large the portions are. You start off with a soup or salad, and we went with the chicken gumbo and the roasted pepper with spinach. The chicken gumbo was delicious and very filling, since it had rice in it as well. The roasted pepper was a little too cheesy for my liking, but others might enjoy it. You also get complimentary garlic brrad which was honestly the best garlic bread I have ever had. We polished off the bread so quickly that we were almost full before we even got out pasta! The pasta comes beautifully presented on huge colorful bowls, and as mentioned before, the portions are huge! We both barely made a dent in our pasta before we had to wave the flag and get it to go. They also brought us more garlic bread, which was nice.
You can watch them make the noodles, which is kind of fun. Keep in mind that each person has to order their own entreè or there is a sharing charge.
Definitely a place to check out if you are hungry!

Wonderful food! Fresh pasta, great seafood, yummy desserts! Friendly and attentive service, family friendly

Be prepared to bring all of your money if you’re going to their carryout store. I stopped in here after they opened to help out their new initiative and support Wilmette. The veggie lasagna is $ 75!!! Crazier. I paid it! I don’t know what I was thinking. The noodle itself is pretty good and has been in Wilmette forever, but the cost of the carryout items is insane. Plus, it wasn’t even that good, we ended up throwing most of it away.

Best restaurant in Wilmette! Of course you may have to wait but they take reservations now! The salmon is always the best and with roasted veggies it was amazing as usual. Make sure to have some garlic bread! Had a glass of Pinot and it was a perfect meal.

The food here is not even memorable. I had the white sauce lasagna and garlic bread, and the Side of roasted Brussel sprouts. I would not recommend at all.

Maybe the best restaurant on the North Shore. Seriously.
The homemade garlic bread is reason enough to go, but the homemade pasta is reason to stay. The soups are always incredible, never skip them, the only excuse to do so is to try one of their amazing salads (but seriously, try the soup), and never, ever turn down the pasta side dish; you pick the flavor of pasta, the cut, and the sauce, either as a side (try the salmon! Or the filet!) or as a main dish (you can even try two different sauces).
This place is quaint and cute, don’t let the fact that it’s sometimes crowded bother you, and in the summer, don’t miss the outdoor seating.

Honestly, I order take out at least once a week if not twice from here and it’s always awesome. If I get the chance in the summer to sit outside and eat, it’s always a bonus. As everyone else stated previously, yes the tomato basil soup is ridiculously good, especially with the garlic bread all up in it. They have great specials but the BLTA and basil pesto steak sandwich are my standards. If I’m looking for something lighter, I’ll do the shrimp caesar salad or the basil pesto steak salad for lunch. Dinners are great too. My fiancé is gluten free and they have a bunch of options for her as well. Service is always great and attentive and they always get my order right when I call in. Keep up the good work!

Great food and excellent service at a good price point. Only problem when families come with noisy children can ruin the ambience.

Food: 3 stars
Ambiance: 3
Service: 3
This is a casual local place with outdoor seating. I wish I had something really interesting, but the food was merely okay. Don’t get me wrong, the food wasn’t bad, it was perfectly okay; just not memorable or compelling.

Everyone in our large carry-​out group thinks this place has the wrong name, not reflecting the selection of fish and meat dishes that are better than their pasta items. Two in our group had the filet and loved it. The rest of us had different pasta and fish entrees and everything was enjoyed. It’s a funky and cramped location, so you may decide as we did to order take out over the phone and then pick it up. Another winner in the expanding, quality restaurant scene in Wilmette, except Noodle Café has been here for 22 years! Garlic bread was terrific. So were all the different soups.

The restaurant is about a 20 drive from my house and I always fight my family about going. They love it so I always cave but once I get there I love it. Food is great, healthy and quick. The wine is moderately priced and the food is a bargain. I’ll probably argue again next time but it’s worth the drive.

Let me borrow the sentence from Mr. Just Me E. ‘Was I eating at the same place as the folks who gave 4 and 5 stars?’ because it perfectly explained my feeling when I took the first bite of my pasta dish.
Noted the garlic bread is good, and it is sadly the only good thing I ate there. and it’s supposed to be a free side dish.
My boyfriend had it worse. His fettuchine with seafood tasted like a bad Chinese noodle. He barely touched the dish and we decided to comment on it to the waitress. She politely said ‘oh, you should have told us earlier so that we could have fixed it for you’ But what we thought was that we just did not know how to fix it. It’s just THAT bad. The pasta was soggy, the sauce was bland, the seafood was overcooked.
I have tasted the real handmade pasta. Both from Italy and from here, this is not what the handmade pasta should taste like. I would trade it for a box of Barilla any day. and this place is supposed to be a pasta restaurant?

Was I eating at the same place as the folks who gave 4 and 5 stars?
Food was just ok, (tomato basil soup was very good) service was kind of indifferent and mostly absent, prices a little on the high side for what you get.
Yeah, it’s the North Shore, blah, blah, but even the leafy streets and rarified air couldn’t elevate this to anything other than 2 stars.

Ten minutes to kitchen close, I stopped in here yesterday for a business meeting and left knowing I’d be back again. There was absolutely no rush for us to order, and the service was excellent though they were closing for lunch. Also, what an adorable spot!
Not super hungry I opted for the gourmet salad, and the person I was dining with ordered the veggie sandwich wrap. Knowing the kitchen was about to close, and having worked in the restaurant industry for several years, I opted for something light, quick and simple (in truth I really wanted some good old noodles).
My salad returned with giant beautiful sun-​dried tomatoes and a side of house dressing with a lemony, garlic zest, and perhaps some basil in it. It was really deliciously strong, so I only needed a small dollop for the entire salad. Overall, the salad was exactly what I expected (fresh and yummy), and if they have goat cheese, perhaps I would consider having then throw it on there. Feta would be fine too. Garlic bread available upon request.
Lucky to be able to try the veggie sandwich wrap, with just one bite you could taste the flavor of each individual vegetable, though they were all mixed together. Instead of a side dish, the sandwich came with oranges. Very interesting.
Another observation while dining was the fact that there was a wine tasting taking place a few tables down. Perhaps the owner was selecting wine for the restaurant. Cool and impressive.
Next time I come here I plan to be hungry so I can order noodles… since it’s first and foremost a noodle shop. Now the difficult part will be deciding what type of sauce I want!
Stay tuned for a noodle update!