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| - I know sod-all about Lanzhou-style noodles, but when I stumbled across Christina X.'s review of this place earlier this week, I immediately made up my mind to try it for lunch this weekend. The verdict? I want to put Christina X.'s face on a stamp.
This is an unpretentious eating-house on a block of Saint-Laurent known for its unpretentious eating-houses. The decor is institutional, and the menu is one of the simplest I've ever seen- one sheet of paper naming a half-dozen noodle soups, and another half-dozen choices of noodles sans soup. A separate page has bubble teas and fruit drinks. That's it.
I went with the BBQ pork noodle soup ($7.50), based on Chris B's photo of same, and a glass of water. The soup took quite a while to arrive, but it gave me time to fully appreciate the appetizer. I generally loathe the seaweed at Japanese restaurants, but the seaweed salad appetizer I got served here was a total knockout. Tasted more like garlic and ginger-marinated green beans, sliced lengthwise and served at caviar temperature. Not a hint of fishiness. That silly little free appetizer was one of the tastiest, best-made things I've ever eaten.
Normally, in Montreal's bargain-priced subterranean lunch dives, I'd expect an appetizer of that quality to be followed up by a supremely sub-par main course. Not in this place. This was one of the best bowls of soup I can remember eating. Rich, broad-shouldered broth, a surprisingly generous amount of sliced BBQ-ed pork, roughly half a head of bright green bok choi, and a good helping of chewy, nicely-elastic noodles. The whole thing together equated to a noodle soup with the inscrutable perfume and particular mouth-feel of a topnotch bowl of pho, crossed with the deep, intense flavors of a good Clark Street Cantonese chow mein. Just fabulous.
Service was uniformly courteous, professional, and quick. Everybody on the floor was hustling, even though the place was only a third full. Water glass got refilled before it emptied. Tables were bussed to a Swiss standard of cleanliness.
Restroom: Much nicer that than average for Chinatown. Broken faucet, some inexplicable clutter, but clean and usable .
Cash only. No cards or Interac.
Lunch, tax in, was eight bucks and change, and was ridiculously tasty for the money. Colder weather will see me darkening their doorstep again. In fact, cold weather will see me making excuses to do so.
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