Noodle Box is a takeaway and delivery kitchen on King Edward St in South Dunedin, built around a choose-your-own format: pick a base of noodles or rice, pick your protein, pick a sauce, and the kitchen woks it up fresh to order.
The menu roams across Asian cooking — Chinese-style honey and sweet-and-sour favourites over deep-fried battered meats, plus satay, sambal, Thai green curry, teriyaki, Mongolian BBQ, black bean, garlic and Singapore-style curry, and hawker classics like Fried Kuai Teow, Hokkien Mee and Mee Goreng. Soups include a homemade Malaysian coconut Curry Laksa, Thai-style Tom Yum and slow-cooked wonton soups with handmade pork wontons, alongside rice meals, fried rice and a short list of larger kitchen dishes such as Ma Po Tofu and Crispy Pork with Black Vinegar.
Ordering runs through the online menu, with secure payments and pickup or delivery (fees apply, $40 minimum order) across a wide sweep of Dunedin suburbs. Doors are open from 11am daily — until 9pm Monday to Thursday and 10pm Friday to Sunday — and many dishes are clearly marked gluten free.
On King Edward St in South Dunedin, Noodle Box runs on a simple, satisfying idea: pick your base, pick your meat, pick your sauce, and the kitchen woks it up fresh. This is a takeaway-and-delivery shop first and foremost — order online for pickup or delivery across a long list of Dunedin suburbs — and its menu stretches right across Asia, from Chinese honey and sweet-and-sour classics to Malaysian satay and sambal, Thai curries and tom yum, Japanese teriyaki, and hawker-style kuai teow and mee goreng. It's the kind of place that solves weeknight dinners, late cravings and end-of-week treats in the same breath.
Most of the menu is built as a template. You choose your noodles, or fried or steamed rice; you choose your protein — chicken, pork, beef, king prawn or fish; then you choose the sauce that ties it together. Want something deep fried and glossy? The honey and sweet-and-sour options coat battered pieces of chicken, pork, king prawn or fish in lemon-flavoured honey or sweet-and-sour sauce before piling them over your noodles. After heat? Chilli Box cooks your pick of noodle and meat in a homemade special chilli sauce, Sambal Noodle brings Southeast Asian dried shrimp sauce, and Mee Goreng leans on an Indian-style spicy sauce. Milder paths run through satay, Thai green curry, teriyaki, Mongolian sweet BBQ, black bean, garlic and Singapore-style curry.
Because everything is cooked to order, the format also makes it easy to eat around dietary needs — a good number of dishes carry a gluten-free tag, from Cashew Fried Noodle to Fried Kuai Teow.
The top sellers say a lot. Honey Chicken on Noodle leads the pack — crispy battered chicken tossed in lemon-flavoured honey sauce over your noodle of choice. Sweet & Sour Pork and Chicken on Noodle sit close behind, and Cashew Fried Noodle, finished with salted baked cashews, is a consistent favourite. Chilli Box rounds out the set.
Beyond the hits, it's worth exploring: Fried Kuai Teow for wide rice noodles fried in special soy sauce, Hokkien Mee with its garlic-flavoured chilli soybean paste, Singapore Noodle with a light curry sauce, and house numbers like Honey Box and Hut Noodle — the latter mixing homemade Mongolian sauce with a signature homemade sweet sauce.
Not everything comes from the wok. The soup list is a quiet strength: a homemade Malaysian-style coconut Curry Laksa, a Thai-style sour and spicy Tom Yum, and slow-cooked wonton soups built on handmade pork wontons — twelve in the Wonton Soup, six alongside noodles in the Wonton Noodle Soup. Rice meals mirror the fried-noodle favourites over fried or steamed rice, and the fried rice trio runs original, sambal and nasi goreng.
For a bigger table there's a short list of kitchen dishes — Ma Po Tofu, Crispy Pork with Black Vinegar, Pepper and Salt Deep Fried Prawn, Kong Po chicken and a simple Stir Fry Vegetables.
Everything runs through the online menu: build your order, pay securely — Visa, Mastercard and PayPal are accepted — and choose pickup or delivery. Delivery fees apply and there's a $40 minimum order value, but the drop zone is generous, covering suburbs from South Dunedin, Caversham and Saint Clair out to Andersons Bay, Maori Hill, North East Valley and beyond. The shop opens at 11am every day, closing at 9pm Monday to Thursday and 10pm Friday to Sunday.
A couple of things worth knowing before you order: read the allergen notes, as satay contains peanuts, the chilli and sambal sauces contain shrimp, and the laksa soup contains seafood. Few menus in Dunedin cover this much ground in one format — whether the craving is honey chicken, a fiery laksa or a simple fried rice, there's a box with your name on it.