Hot IPO: a pasta restaurant

What has been the hottest IPO of the year so far? Some new-fangled technology perhaps? Or maybe a trend-setting company from one of the coasts set to take their product offering national and then global? Nope, it was a Denver-based, pasta-centric restaurant chain called Noodles & Co. The company’s IPO bucked a lot of trends (including, it seems, the war on flour). Here’s The Daily Beast on how a pasta chain punked Wall Street.

[That’s Dave Pell’s take from Nextdraft, but I have to weigh in here. I’ve eaten at Noodles & Co many times. I ate there last week, actually. The restaurants do well because the service is friendly & responsive, your order comes out quickly, and the food is remarkably good for the money you pay (like at Chipotle). No one would ever mistake the Pad Thai or Japanese Pan Noodles for the authentic thing, but they are both delicious. I like the Steak Stroganoff so much that I crave it even when surrounded by the amazing and varied food choices of NYC. No idea if Noodles & Co would do well in Manhattan, but they’d definitely have one customer. -jkottke]

• finance
• food
• Noodles & Co.
• restaurants