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Photos by John Park.
Crave-worthy Japanese ramen and Chinese noodles share top billing at this Cave Spring slurp shop.
There’s something undeniably smile-inducing about a bowl of brothy noodles. It’s happened every time I’ve visited Noodle Factory, whether for solo rainy day ramen, an impromptu family lunch at the counter or a full-out feast with a friend where there’s scarcely enough table real estate to contain all the plastic bowls and paper boats, let alone our giddy gustatory enjoyment. Whether you’re seeking comforting tonkotsu, a cure-all shoyu broth or a transportive bowl of braised beef, Noodle Factory delivers soul-satisfying Japanese-inspired ramen and Chinese noodle dishes in a spare yet inviting shop in Cave Spring.
My favorite dish is the Spicy Shoyu Ramen, which gets its deep, nuanced savory flavor from four kinds of soy sauce: dark, light, kombu and Chinese. Think of the broth as chicken soup on steroids, a sort of Japanese-Chinese penicillin, if you will. I could drink a whole bowl of just the liquid elixir, but the medley of toppings, including a pitch-perfect ramen egg with a jammy yolk, char siu pork belly, spring onions and narutomaki (fish cake), work in concert to alternately augment and offset the richness of the broth. (Despite its moniker, the spice level is moderate but there’s also a non-spicy option.) The shoyu broth also serves as an alternative but equally savory base for the vegan ramen, which comes standard with a miso broth bolstered by dried Chinese mushroom powder.
Noodle Factory’s owner, Heng Zhang, says that first-time ramen diners either opt for shoyu or tonkotsu, crafted with a creamy, pork-based broth. If you’ve sampled tonkotsu before, Noodle Factory’s version veers from tradition but it still vies for top-seller status here. Zhang achieves a robust pork flavor by simmering baby back ribs and pork bones for eight to nine hours until they’re soft and fall-apart tender, then blending it three times for a cohesive, creamy consistency. Zhang skims the oil from the broth, then blends this liquid gold with black garlic, deep-fried until flirting between crisp and burnt, to make a heady black garlic oil, a small portion of which is ladled into the tonkotsu prior to serving. It gives the dish a certain je ne sais quoi factor that keeps you eagerly slurping to determine the source of the flavor.
Zhang first had the idea to open a noodle-centric restaurant eight years ago, after a transformative experience at a Chicago ramen shop that offered traditional Japanese ramen and original noodle dishes featuring a variety of handmade noodles and deeply flavorful broths.
Back in Roanoke, he shelved the idea while continuing to work at his family’s restaurant, Café Asia and later Café Asia 2, where he gained formative experience working as a chef, server and bartender before working his way up to supervisor and manager. Zhang started to entertain the idea of opening his own noodle shop again in the post COVID restaurant landscape and once he and his wife, Jing Xu, had started a family. By the time their daughter was eight years old and their son two, Zhang was ready to take a leap of faith and open Noodle Factory.
Prior to opening, Zhang estimates that he and Xu (who designed the digital menu and helped take orders in the restaurant’s early days), tasted between 20 and 30 kinds of ramen before selecting one he describes as “Tokyo-style straight.” Zhang says these thin, narrow noodles are typically associated with shoyu ramen, but he found that their shape, weight and neutral flavor allowed them to incorporate well with the different broths and styles he planned to serve. (The exception is the Vietnamese-inspired Beef Pho which is made with rice noodles and makes for an excellent gluten-free option.)
If Zhang has an original, signature creation, it’s the Red-Braised Beef Noodle, listed under the menu’s Chinese Noodle section. Zhang shares that people often associate this dish with Taiwanese cuisine, but regional variations are prepared across China too. Zhang, who grew up in Zhangjiakou, a city in Northern China near Beijing, braises the beef Beijing-style with a soy-sauce forward profile. He incorporates Taiwanese flourishes like tomato, grilled vegetables and daikon radishes, the latter of which are cooked low and slow until they absorb the beefy broth and achieve a silky texture. When I first tasted the dish in the depths of winter, it warmed me to my bones.
Come summer, I might opt for Black Vinegar Mian, a cold noodle dish that also has roots in Northern China, served here with thinly sliced raw veggies (cucumber, cabbage, carrots, lettuce) and tender pieces of white meat chicken. It pairs well with a side of the vinegar-sluiced Japanese sesame cucumbers, though I found that both the noodles and cukes benefitted from a liberal daubing of the excellent house made Chinese chili oil (which adds a pleasing, layered heat to just about everything on the menu). Zhang wanted to offer Chinese noodle dishes not typically found on area Chinese restaurant menus, though he does reprise staples from his Café Asia days, including the Cantonese Wonton Noodle, bobbing with dumpling-esque wontons filled with shrimp, and Zha Jiang Mian, which features Beijing-style pork and a savory, lightly sweet sauce that makes it a hit with his kids.
Beyond noodles, menu highlights include fluffy bao, Chinese buns sandwiched around proteins such as crispy chicken (my favorite) or pork belly (a close runner-up), as well as the must-order Chinese-style shishito peppers pan-fried with a glossy black garlic sauce. I also love that you can order a side of noodles for $2; although the ratio of broth-to-noodles is perfectly dialed in for the composed noodle dishes, my daughter loves to order just ramen and pair it with a crispy chicken bao.
In case you prefer rice, there’s a menu section called Fun Box (Rice Only), though the dishes are served in the same take-out ready bowls rather than bento-style boxes. The fan-favorite is the Chicken Katsu Curry, a comforting medley of potatoes, carrots and panko-crusted chicken prepared in a rich, mild yellow Japanese-curry style sauce. It features the same crispy chicken used in the bao, and I found myself wishing the strips were served on top of the rice and curry to better appreciate its crispy texture. Zhang is a fan of the Beef Bulgogi, which features Korean-style marinated slices of grilled beef and onion with kimchi in a lightly spicy sauce; it’s a flavorful, approachable dish but I’d love to see the heat kicked up a notch or two (to match the chili pepper denotation) and taste a more pronounced jolt of the fermented funky, tangy flavors of the kimchi.
There’s no dessert menu, but the beverage cooler is stocked with sweet-leaning drinks like Ramune, a brand of fruity Japanese sodas (think: lychee, strawberry and peach) and O’s Bubble Gummy Boba Latte, a brand of canned bubble tea available in flavors like Thai tea and matcha, each of which will extend your noodle-induced happy haze just a little longer.
The story above is a preview from our May/June 2025 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
