Dining Out: For Lunar New Year, eat noodles for longevity — and a full stomach

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Meet Noodle
160 Metcalfe St., 613-565-5555, meetnoodleottawa.com
Open: 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily
Prices: main courses $14.49 to $17.99
Access: Steps to front door

Merivale Noodle House
1519 Merivale Rd., 613-226-8812, merivalenoodlehouse.com
Open: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Prices: noodle soups $15.95 to $18.95
Access: No steps

Wei’s Noodle House
610 Bronson Ave. (downstairs), 613-230-6815, weis-noodle-house.business.site
Open: Wednesday to Monday 3 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., closed Tuesday
Prices: noodle soups $18 and $19
Access: restaurant is downstairs

If, as Chinese superstition holds, eating noodles confers longevity, then I’m afraid I’ll be outliving you, as I’ve been slurping bowls and bowls of the stuff during the past two weeks leading to Lunar New Year, which is Saturday.

Determining Ottawa’s best bowls of noodles was beyond me. There’s just too much pho, ramen and Chinese noodle soups throughout the city. But I did scout around for bowls that were interesting, if not always amazing, and here’s what I found at three eateries that accord noodles pride of place in their names.

At Meet Noodle, which opened in May last year on Metcalfe Street, I liked the brusque, spicy-savoury punch of the biang biang noodles ($16.49), which are also listed, perhaps too literally, as “chili oil spill noodles.” On one hand, the dish, which loads its bowl with wide, chewy noodles and earthy seasonings, is vegetarian. However, it also comes with a bowl of lightly beefy broth to slake your thirst.

Meet Noodle is one of several Chinese lamian noodle purveyors in Ottawa, along with, to name a few, 98 La La Noodle in the ByWard Market, which is a favourite of mine, and the recently opened AAA Noodles in Chinatown. At all lamian shops, fresh noodles are made by hand by a chef who twists, stretches, pulls and folds blobs of dough until they’re manipulated into strands that match a customer’s order.

Beef soups are also de rigueur at lamian shops, and my dining companion had Meet Noodle’s braised beef noodle soup ($17.49). In this hearty bowl, some bits of beef were tender and meaty, while others were more gristly. Another soup featuring slices of beef ($17.49) would likely have been less intimidating.

We preceded our noodles with two starters, the assertively seasoned cucumber with chili sauce ($5.49) and the equally rustic and flavourful steamed chicken with chili sauce ($9.99), which seemed to have a drizzle of peanut sauce that added another layer of flavour.

In the last week or so, I had two lunches at Merivale Noodle House, one of the city’s near-innumerable pho shops. This west-end eatery was crowded during both of my visits, likely with regulars familiar with its array of beef- and chicken-broth-based soups and vermicelli dishes.

Here, the item that leaped out of the menu and said “Order me!” was a bowl of bun cha ca ($18.95), a soup in which fried fish cakes are the featured protein and a mild broth is studded with chunks of tomato. This order jogged my memory that I’m a fan of the bun rieu, a similar soup in which crab is the star, available at the Authentic Vietnamese Pho House locations in Barrhaven, Stittsville and on Greenbank Road.

Merivale Noodle House’s bun cha ca won me over with whitefish cakes that were meaty, well-fried and plentiful, floating in a clean-flavoured soup chockful of slippery noodles.

At a second lunch, another winning soup pleased me with its fresh and tasty thin-skinned shrimp wontons and extra-thin egg noodles ($15.95). My friend’s vermicelli bowl ($17.95) had the right attributes, including expertly deep-fried spring rolls and grilled chicken that was appreciably charred, juicy, and bolstered by lemongrass.

Appetizers here were also on-point, including a slab of nem chua, a Vietnamese charcuterie of fermented pork ($2.95) with surprisingly complex flavours.

Finally, I went twice to Wei’s Noodle House, which before the pandemic was located in Chinatown but is now cached away in the basement of the RE/MAX Hallmark Realty Group building on Bronson Avenue.

While you can eat in Wei’s very utilitarian space, the eatery seems more focused on takeout, and especially on pleasing customers who don’t eat meat. Wei’s isn’t exclusively a vegan place, but its many vegan options, which often feature “vegan chicken” or “vegan beef,” headline its menu.

I tried the vegan ramen ($19) this week, and have to say that I preferred the porky tonkotsu ramen ($18) that I sampled side by side, even if the tonkotsu was basically middle-of-the-pack for Ottawa, with average broth, better-than-average toppings but very ordinary noodles. However, I could see someone on a plant-based diet enjoying the tofu-based soup and its salty, slightly viscous broth.

The soup I preferred was Wei’s spicy peanut rice noodle soup ($18), which I ordered with slices of chicken rather than shrimp. It was thick, somewhat curried and nutty, and comforting. A staffer told me that its vegan analogue was a brisk seller, as was the vegan-ized coconut hot and sour soup.

I took three starters home from Wei’s, and preferred the morsels of grilled lemongrass chicken ($5) and pork ($5), especially after a bit of reheating, to the pork wrapped in betel leaves ($9), which felt too dense to me.

So, that’s three noodle shops down, and many more to go. I may have to go out for noodles all through the Year of the Dragon.

phum@postmedia.com

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