I'm Only Here for the Food!

Lao Shan Dong Homemade Noodle House
105-4887 Kingsway
Burnaby, BC V5H

Although in my About page, I wrote “I hope to be able to write about cooking, restaurants, news/reviews and local events”, I have barely written anything about food here. Instead, I have written food related entries in Jessica’s blog as a guest blogger. However, in the last couple of weeks, when food bloggers have written about noodles or requested suggestions, I have mentioned Lao Shan Dong. I guess I should put money where my mouth is and blog it myself; yesterday’s cold, rainy weather gave me a good reason to go there. So, here is my blog of Lao Shan Dong.

I arrived around 8:30 p.m., way past my usual dinner time. I was not starving nor hungry but I still had to eat something! Ah, the life of a blogger… I was given the menu and then a cup of tea. Well, it is not your usual “cup”…

Not fancy glassware or anything on those lines but, then again, this place is on the lines of a family restaurant, not fine dining. As for the menu, it is as simple as it can get: two thirds of a page for noodles (regular and “thin”), the remaining page for dumplings and other dishes and half page for appetizers. That’s it! This might be a let down to some; however, in my opinion, this is not necessarily the case. I think it is better to specialize in some dishes rather than have a large, almost unmanageable menu. But, other prefers variety. Oh, well.

Despite I was not overly hungry, I could not help myself get an appetizer. In this case, pickled cucumber.

I have made pickled cucumbers before. Slice or cut into chunks an English cucumber, then sprinkle some salt on it. Let it stand for 30 minutes or so. In the meantime,in a sauce pan at medium/high heat, add a cup of vinegar (rice vinegar preferably, otherwise, white vinegar should do) and half a cup of sugar (more if you like the final result to be sweeter). Once it boils, set it aside to cool. In the meantime, chop garlic and thai chili pepper. Drain the cucumber and pat it lightly with towel paper. In a bowl, mix the cucumber with the cooled vinegar/sugar mix, garlic, thai chili pepper, some sesame oil and marinate for 30 minutes (or more, depending on the thickness of the sliced cucumber). To serve, put the cucumber on a serving plate and drizzle it with some of the mix (not the whole thing, though!).

As for this dish, it was crunchy, sweet and manage to keep a light hint of the garlic. At $2.50 (or $2.00, don’t remember very well!), it was good but, I would not order under other conditions, since it is a dish I can make at home. Now, the main dish…

I ordered the #1 dish (as item #1 in their menu; just under $7): Noodles with well done beef brisket (I am not mistaken, I am so used to order this item I don’t look at the exact description anymore!). The other option would have been beef tendon but I wanted to keep it basic. I had the option of mild or spicy; I went for the spicy version. It is served with some green onions and pickled mustard. The beef itself was OK; however, the main ingredient is not the beef, but the noodles…

It had the required al dente texture and, at the same time, not too starchy. I could easily slurp it if necessary! However, there is one caveat of this bowl of noodles, the soup. Unlike Pho, which has a light broth, or wonton noodles, which has also a light soup, here, it was not so light. Instead it had more complex flavours and the crunchiness of the pickled mustard gave it a different twist. Oh, on that note, despite I ordered spicy, it was not really that spicy (I can easily gauge it because I tend to sweat a lot when I eat spicy food).

So how does it compare to other noodle places? Well, it is a bit difficult to say. See, noodle is a really complex business. Each noodle variation plus their own cultural background will result in something completely different, not to mention personal taste. As a result, each person will rate it differently – in my case, Lao Shan Dong would be rated among my top 5 in Metro Vancouver. However, the key here is the willingness to try something different. So, to anybody who has not tried it before, I will encourage him/her reading this to give Lao Shan Dong a try (*).

(*): No, I am not paid for writing this!