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.

Taiwan Fest Vancouver (Sept. 4-6)

http://taiwanfest.ca/

Today was the last day of this mini festival, which consisted of food stalls and other attractions along the three blocks of Granville just south of Georgia, and a stage behind the Vancouver Art Gallery featuring indie Taiwanese bands.

They had nice weather up until today, and unfortunately we didn't find out about it until today. I was curious to see what kind of Taiwanese street food they might have on offer. I've had stinky tofu at the Chinatown night market, but I wanted to see if I could discover any other typical dishes.

Unfortunately, the weather put a damper on the event. There were people milling about miserably in the cold and drizzling rain and seeking refuge beneath the overhangs of the stores on Granville, but far fewer than there would have been. We got cold pretty quick after looking around the various stalls and eating a few things and went home.

Some of the stuff didn't seem particularly apropos. Like this Xin Jiang BBQ stall:

Still, the BBQ technician's booming voice hawking his dishes made a nice ambiance, not to mention being nice and warm by the flame.

Kweepo ordered a lamb stick, which was good but not really what I came here to try.

I ordered one of these bun-like objects, the likes of which I'd never seen before. They could have been a little fresher. They were a little hard. But still decent.

The following stall was one of the only ones that seemed really specialized in Taiwanese food. They advertised "TW Traditional snacks". I had to try some of those.

I didn't try these candied strawberries, though they looked tempting.

They had this mushroom and rice noodle soup that I'm wishing I'd tried.

Kweepo got this oyster and rice cake omlette:

It was really interesting. The rice cake was extremely gooey and the sauce nice and savory. The oyster taste wasn't overwhelming at all. A nice warming dish for a cold day. This is supposedly a classic Taiwanese dish. I'd be interested in exploring the various permutations of this.

I saw this sign and had to try it out:

I was confused when I saw these sausage and was told one was sausage and one was sticky rice. In fact, the top one is sticky rice packed into a sausage shape. What they do is slice it in half like you would a bun, and stick the darker sausage on the bottom row into it, like a hot dog.

They put some cucumbers between the two and drizzle on some sauce. It was very awkward to eat, especially standing up, because the sausage doesn't fit into the 'sticky rice sausage' at all, so you have to sort of grab both and eat them at the same time. But it was very good and unlike anything I've had before.

Here's a cross-section of the sticky rice sausage.

The iPhone photo sucks, but you can basically see that it's made up of rice inside. It reminds me a bit of the sticky rice dish I had at Long's Noodle House, though they're completely different traditions.

It was worth going just to experience the Taiwanese hot dog. I wonder if there's any place that sells these in Vancouver.

The wiki entry is called Small sausage in large sausage (literally "small intestine in large intestine" - lovely). That is apparently the actual name, not just a description. I think it could use a new name. How about: Taiwadog.

Taiwan Beef Noodle King

If Vancouver is good for one thing, it's ethnic restaurants, particularly Asian restaurants. I don't think I'd ever tasted authentic Chinese food before moving to Vancouver. So much of what passes for Chinese food in the US, where I lived before moving here, is nothing so much as a sad comment on how disinterested most Americans are in authenticity, quality cooking, other cultures, and the rest of the world in general. I myself was content with "Chinese Food" before becoming enlightened as to what that term really means.

And really, it means nothing. And a lot of things. There is no such thing as "Chinese food". Chinese food is, rather, an umbrella term for some of the most diverse and inventive cooking traditions in the world. Tibetian food could not be more different from Beijing food from Yunnan food from Shanghai food from Hong Kong food from Hunan food from Xinjiang food. Vancouver is the first place where I had a chance to taste the specificity buried in that vague term. In Vancouver, where the population is seemingly majority Asian, there is not only cognizance of the difference, the difference is lived and expected. The people who frequent the many dim sum joints that dot the city are not the same people who frequent the mandarin restaurants, and their taste buds are attuned differently.

Although I enjoy some dim sum, I have found over the years of experimentation that I gravitate towards Mandarin style cooking as opposed to Cantonese style cooking. My experience at restaurants of the Hong Kong tradition has been hit or miss at best. One of the most reliable restaurants in the city to experience this culture is Kirin on Alberni. At restaurants of the Mandarin persuasion such as Lin's and Peaceful (both within a few blocks of each other on Broadway between Cambie and Granville), however, my taste buds have rarely been happier.

Several days ago I had dinner at Congee Noodle House on Broadway at Main. This is the restaurant that several months ago introduced me to the wonderful world of congee. Congee, or rice gruel, is enjoyed in many parts of the world. It was the traditional food of peasants in Japan in the middle ages, and is still eaten in the Philippines, Burma, Taiwan, Indonesia and elsewhere. In China, my impression is that congee is a star dish primarily in the Cantonese-speaking areas.

Congee is a great dish on a number of levels. A $5 bowl is nutritive and filling and tasty, is quick to prepare, is reliably tasty in its various guises, is not greasy like much dim sum, and is authentic to a specific tradition without being excessively weird. Congee Noodle House is a great place to discover the Hong Kong vein of this tradition in Vancouver. There are a few other congee places in Vancouver, but the congee at a few of these restaurants I've sampled doesn't measure up to Congee Noodle House in any way - they are either watery or parsimonious with the filling.

The other day, for the first time, we ordered something other than congee, and it turned out to be a big mistake. Notwithstanding the restaurant's nomenclature, let it be proclaimed forthwith that Congee Noodle House shall hereinafter foreshorten its name to Congee House, as its noodles are inedible. Let me count the ways in which the dish of pork noodles I ordered was disgusting. The wheat noodles were hard as shoelaces, but less savory. The broth was a black oil spill with, mysteriously, no taste at all. The saving grace was that, Proust-like, the pork brought back a flood of childhood memories of a dish I had forgotten in the meantime but whose unmistakable combination of rank beany sweetness with porkiness could apparently not be wiped from the olfactory area of my memory banks despite my best efforts to do so and the tide of many decades. Pork and beans is what it tasted like, and I don't mean that as a good thing.


I bring this up because last night we had the opportunity to dine at another authentically Chinese restaurant of a different tradition whose noodles were absolutely heavenly, and among the best I've sampled in Vancouver. Taiwan Beef Noodle King is a little hole in the wall buried in a miniscule, neglected strip of commercial property on the barren wasteland that is Oak Street between 70th Ave and 12th Ave.

So diminutive and unassuming are its proportions, in fact, that we almost missed it. The interior is bare and plain, the tables cheap Wal-Mart affairs. The menu is spare and to the point without being obfuscating with page after page of endless variation as is the case in other restaurants bigger, fancier, more expensive, and far less good. There are about 15 noodle dishes on the menu, each priced between $5.25 and $7.50.


I ordered the Wonton and Stewed Beef with Noodle in Soup at $7.50. It arrived quickly within 5 minutes and proved to be a big appetizing portion. We also ordered a side of spicy cucumbers and spicy wonton, and even after sharing those two dishes I was able to finish the big portion. It's a perfectly sized portion - just what you want to pay, a perfect value. Everything about this dish was a pleasure. The beef pieces were substantial and numerous, cooked to a perfection and savory. At some other restaurants I've been too, such as the Cambodian restaurant in Chinatown, the been noodle dish I ordered was inedible, the beef not so much animal meat as tasteless, fat-laden pieces of rubber. The noodles at Taiwan Beef Noodle King, quite unlike the careless, store-bought garbage I was served at Congee Noodle House, were thick and soft to the bite and uneven in shape - the trademark of the handmade noodle. Peaceful also makes their own noodles in house, and you can see them spinning the noodles out right behind you in the open kitchen. The wonton was delicious, with a thin but tight skin, and the broth was a heavenly balance, not too salty and not too sweet. A truly satisfying dish, and I suspect that the other noodle dishes are well worth the effort to sample over repeat visits.


This is the dish of spicy wonton we shared. It was perfect, the slight crunch of the green onions and the mild sour bite of the vinegar balancing out the red pepper spiciness to just the right level.


They had some funky Chinese soft drinks in the fridge to sample, and this apple soda drink was the perfect companion to the meal - quintessentially Chinese and down-to-earth and authentic in its artificial saccharine sweetness. (and don't worry, this one is "without chemical ingredients")

Overall, the visit was a very satisfying experience, doubly so due to the spontaneous discovery of the restaurant. How wonderful it is when a spontaneous find turns out to be a hidden treasure. To all the lovers of authentic Chinese noodles out there, I heartily recommend making the pilgrimage all the way into the middle of nowhere at least once to sample the handiwork at Taiwan Beef Noodle King. I only wish they were located closer to home so that I could visit more often.