Wang's Taiwan Beef Noodle House

Wang's Taiwan Beef Noodle House @ 8390 Granville St.

Sorry for the absence there for a bit. We got suddenly busy with other matters (especially the VIFF, as we're avid foreign movie fans) so we haven't had time to post anything in here. I know, it's bad etiquette for a food blog. We repent and will try to be more diligent from now on. But on the other hand, we've got a budget, too. I don't know how some food bloggers can afford to eat out every meal. It's an expensive way of supporting the blog-writing habit.

Anyway, as happens so often, yesterday we embarked on a singleminded quest to find a new Asian restaurant. We were starving, so we settled pretty quickly for an interesting-sounding candidate as we drove down Granville towards Richmond: A Taiwan noodle joint. We were so hungry we couldn't wait to get to Richmond. It looked good, too, with a nice spiffy new sign.

I thought it was kind of funny that they didn't even bother to provide an English title. Lucky for me I could read the characters on the sign. Only after we parked and walked up to the restaurant did we notice that the side of the restaurant perpendicular to Granville actually has the English translation. Strange way to do the sign. You don't really notice the English when you're driving by.

When we walked in we were pretty impressed. Very clean and modern interior. Obviously recently redecorated. Packed with people. Beautiful open-style wood grain finish counter.

The only negative about the interior is that the seats are packed quite close together, and the ceiling is high, so it feels kind of impersonal and uncomfortable, with people sitting right next to you on either side. Not a particularly friendly design, more just to pack the customers in as much as possible. It was indeed a very popular restaurant. Most seats were occupied while we were there.

Lovely new menu too:

OK, now onto the food.

Let's cut to the chase. Did we like it? No. I think we're just about the only ones in Vancouver who didn't like it judging by the many positive reviews at Urbanspoon. I'll explain why below. Just wanted to make my position clear. Sometimes you read a review that goes on and on and you come away frustrated because you can't tell, well did you like it or not?!

We placed our order with the waitress, who was obviously harried but still pretty friendly. For our drink we ordered a mango frappe. After about 10 minutes it came out. Slow service is the first complaint here. It took FOREVER for our noodle dishes to come out. We thought they'd forgotten about our order of XLB because they didn't come out until we were almost finished with our noodles.

As for the frappe, it came in this hilariously tall glass, which we thought was wonderful. It's a nice big serving. But the taste was too icy. It seems like they skimped on the ice cream. It tasted more like a mango slush.

For my main I got the classic beef noodle, which was about $7.

It looked quite beautiful at first sight. Nice big chunks of beef and lots of pickled greens on top, with great-looking handmade noodles underneath and nice aroma from the broth.

Then I tasted it. Something was off about the broth. It tasted like beef but nothing else. No body behind the beefy flavor. The noodles were quite good, and the beef was tender and delicious without having too much fat. Overall, this was inferior to the beef noodle I had at Beef Noodle King. Not bad by any means, but nothing to go crazy about or make you want to come again.

Kweepo ordered something called "Sour and spicy soup" for about the same price.

What came out looked at first sight like ordinary sweet and sour soup with noodles tossed in.

The noodles are beautiful! The thing is, Kweepo wasn't expecting sweet and sour soup. The phrasing on the menu was "sour and spicy soup", not sweet and sour soup. She knows what sweet and sour soup is, so she wouldn't have ordered this had she known this is what would come out.

What's worse, the sweet and sour broth had no taste. I thought Kweepo was exaggerating when she told me it had no taste, so I tried it myself, and I was shocked how little taste it had. Never in my life have I tasted a sweet and sour soup with so little taste. It's usually a reliable dish to get. You know what sweet and sour soup is going to taste like. There aren't many surprises. But somehow they managed to make this one taste like air. The noodles, as beautiful and good as they were, were completely wasted in such a bland broth. She could only slog through about half of this thing before giving up.

Finally after we were almost done this plate was thrown on our table.

I don't think you can tell from this photo, but the Xiao Long Bao (aka XLB to the cool kids) were miniscule. They're about half the size of the XLB I've had elsewhere. Not that that matters, of course, as long as they're good. And I've never seen XLB served in a dish like this. They're supposed to come served in a steaming basket, aren't they? As for the taste, they were almost cold when they came out, which didn't help. The skin was thick and doughy and hard. There wasn't much sauce on the interior. Hands down the worst XLB I've ever had. Maybe I just don't know XLB? Because apparently the XLB here are supposed to be good? I don't know but I just didn't find these very good.

Another complaint is that there seemed to be one server girl handling the whole restaurant, and so the poor girl was understandably curt.

I asked the server girl if the restaurant was new, and she told me they'd been around for 10 years. I was surprised by that. That's when she told me they'd recently redecorated. The redecoration was certainly successful. It's a pleasantly designed noodle place. Unfortunately from our cursory first visit, we found that the noodles leave much to be desired.