Licious Noodles & Bao on Southside Boulevard. | Hanna Raskin
Published on November 10, 2026 at 10:54 am
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Your childhood and culture may dictate what you consider comfort food, but the characteristics of what people want to eat when they’re too exhausted to deal with one more provocation are nearly universal. It doesn’t matter if it’s kasha in Kiev, soondubu in Seoul, or mac and cheese in Jacksonville. Comfort food is rich and supple and hard to count: Who’s to say where chocolate pudding begins and ends?
Typically, comfort foods are also served hot, or at least at room temperature, since cold amounts to one more shock that weary eaters aren’t seeking.
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Yet the allure of warming dishes is fading as the ozone is shrinking. A steaming bowl of soup can’t help when what got you down in the first place was the hottest summer in recorded history, with August averaging 75.6 degrees Fahrenheit across the continental U.S., an area that spans from coastal Maine to the Washington Cascades.
Thankfully, Licious — the newly opened third branch of a family-owned noodle-and-bao parlor with locations in Orlando and Rockledge — is serving a slate of chilled specialties that restore and reassure just as reliably as pozole once did. Its double-sided menu draws inspiration from various regions of mainland China and Taiwan, with flaky Shanghai-indebted scallion pancakes offered alongside sliced chicken jolted into gee-whiz territory by Sichuan peppercorns. Really, though, the restaurant’s phenomenal dishes are grounded in time, not place: Licious’s lane isn’t Jiangnan cuisine or Chongqing cuisine. It’s cooling cuisine for the apocalypse.
Which, to be fair, feels very far away from Licious’ squeaky-clean space in a Southside Boulevard strip mall. The furnishings are functional, with bench seating stretching almost the length of the modest-sized room, but everything’s exceedingly tasteful, from the Chinoiserie latticework in the windows to the muted pendant lighting overhead. Additional warmth comes courtesy of the attentive servers, who only once on my two visits struck a nominally judgy note. Surveying what remained of the dozen dumplings, half dozen chicken wings, and dinner portion of beef noodle soup that I’d ordered for a solo lunch, my server cocked her head and asked, “Too much for you?”
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She then adeptly packaged the food into to-go containers, using the non-business end of my chopsticks.
In retrospect, she was right to question my failing to finish the meal straightaway. Honestly, I’m not sure how I resisted the last of those wings, fried as cleanly as what’s found in a Publix chicken barn box. Unlike their supermarket counterparts, though, the wings at Licious are studded with Sichuan peppercorns, their signature sting woven into the firm crust.
The wings, justly billed as “spicy crispy,” would be a welcome guest at any picnic, same as all the standouts I encountered at Licious. Take, for instance, the captivating edamame salad, pictured on a “seasonal limited edition” specials sheet in September. I’m very much hoping the menu means the season for bean brilliance, since I’d hate to see this starter follow summer out the door.
While the mantis green hue of the al dente edamame is visually striking, what makes the dish work is the interplay between the pods and ribbons of preserved mustard greens. Every bit as funky as the edamame are fresh, the pungent greens provide an ideal counterfoil for the brightness of the beans. Seasoned with sesame oil and thoughtfully topped with crunchy bits of red cabbage, this assertively cold appetizer is the kind of dish that in a previous generation would have sparked letters to Gourmet’s “You Asked for It” recipe request column.
Even a recipe wouldn’t help most home cooks execute what Licious lists as “Spicy & Tangy Beef Chilled Noodles,” a complex combination that showcases the kitchen’s noodle-pulling skills. The tangle of vinegared noodles supports a phalanx of paper-thin braised brisket slices, soy sauced and sesame seeded; the peppery meat is joined in the bowl by just enough raw carrot shreds and corn kernels for the cold dish to qualify for “colorful” status. It’s terrific.
My other forays into the noodle and dumpling sections of the menu were less memorable, probably because I strayed into what’s served hot. For fans of Sichuanese beef noodle soup, Licious’ rendition hews closely enough to tradition to cure any unmet cravings: The savory broth bobs with hunks of shank and pickled cabbage. As for the constituent noodles, I only learned when researching the restaurant after my visits that the “free refills” touted at the top of its menu refers not to soda, but noodles. Patrons have their pick of thick, thin or rice noodles; since I never made it to the bottom of a bowl, I’m not sure if you can switch midstream.
In the face of that generous policy, maybe it’s not consequential that the soup itself is weaker and flatter than what I consider the Sichuanese beef noodle standard. My serving lacked the earthy robustness I anticipated. I might call it a polite soup specimen.
Similarly, the pork soup dumplings — typically the showstopper at any restaurant engaged in the xiaolongbao trade — each held a mere smattering of under-salted broth. While the pliant skins, just thick enough to fulfill their containment task, were nice, the components didn’t add up to the whole-body experience I associate with soup dumpling consumption.
On the dumpling front, I preferred a neat set of spinach juice-tinted dumplings filled with pork, shrimp, and chives, but my opinion might have been swayed by subliminal advertising: Where the dumpling’s crimped, an English wordmark reads “Xiang,” which means delicious, or to entertain with a feast.
That’s the perfect description of what unfolded at the table near mine when two women ordered what’s perhaps Licious’ crowning cold dish: a veritable glacier of condensed milk ice block shavings, popularized in Taiwan a few decades ago as “snow ice.” Topped with hefty cubes of mango and mango jelly, the dessert is fun and it’s fluffy, and the customers squealed when it was set down in front of them. After all, what could be so wrong with the world?
Licious Noodles & Bao | 904-575-9774 | 4160 Southside Blvd., Jacksonville 32216
