Spicy Noodle House - Aveage Northern Chinese

Going through a relatively busier time of residency affords me less time to dine out and even less time to update this blog. Seeing the lack of posts over the last month is troubling and something I want to change as soon as possible. Given the undulating ups and downs of residency, I do want to maintain an even keel with respects to the blog as it is one of my major non-medical releases. Therefore I vow to maintain a standard of 15 new blog posts per month going on forward.

When stressed or busy with work I always go back to the classics, the tried and true cuisines that I know will offer me a solid meal at affordable prices and are reasonably authentic tasting. Spicy Noodle House fits that bill perfectly. It caught my eye on one of my first trips down Osborne Village when I first arrived here and even with the large number of underwhelming reviews and mediocre pictures on Urbanspoon/Zomato, it nevertheless piqued enough of an interest.

The bright flourescent green sign stands out in the clout of busy Osborne Village. Importantly so because the restaurant itself is in the basement of a three story building with little to no exterior window spacing. The drab exterior though is contrasted nicely with the spacious, albeit minimalistic, interiors. One does wish the lighting improved especially with the ambient sort at short supply.

The helpful waitresses immediately provided the spacious and sprawling menu. Akin to their namesake, Spicy Noodle House offers a nice collection of traditional Northern Chinese noodle soups ... and all at less than $10 a bowl. On top of the soups are a bevy dim sum items and main dishes categorized by the main protein of choice. This area of the menu more resembles a westernized Chinese restaurant with every permutation of meat with vegetable available. More exciting are the Chefs Suggestions which approximate authentic Chinese again with various Hot Pot and fried noodle dishes.

Ground Pork with Peanut Noodle Soup is a Northern Chinese classic featuring a creamy peanut soup stir fried in a nice mix of crunchy vegetables and ground pork all served on top of chewy flour noodles. This large bowl had a nice contrast between the silken noodles and the creamy soup with the crunch of celery.

Ordering a hot pot dish is a standard measuring stick for Chinese restaurants and so I went with the Chicken with Chinese Sausage Hot Pot this time. Chock full of fatty Chinese Sausage, the initial impressions impressed more than the actual taste and flavour. While I liked the dichotomy of sausage and Chinese mushroom, the aroma and sharpness of the large pieces of mostly raw onion took away from the dish.

Comfort food always comes to reign when I am stressed or tired and so I gravitated towards the Dim Sum Combo. I found it curious that a Northern Chinese restaurant would offer dim sum, something known more in the Cantonese regions. And while this should have set off alarm bells, I unfortunately had to sit through this mess of a dish.

Clearly originating from a frozen variety, the Sticky Rice with Meat had a laughingly tiny amount of tasteless ground pork enveloped around a mound of also tasteless sticky rice. And to top it off, the portion size is one that leaves much to be desired.

These Yu Tee Gow Dumplings are a close approximation of Shark's Fin Dumplings in most dim sum restaurants. Unfortunately these dense dumplings were filled with fatty and bland meat that was tough and sinewy to chew through and were covered with a thin and friable wrapper that was prone to ripping open.

And to end up the trifecta of poor dim sum showing, these Haa Gow Dumplings take the tiniest shrimp and covers them with the seemingly thickest wrapper available. Needless to say the overall taste was an outcry to proper shrimp dumplings.

Spicy Noodle House offers average Northern Chinese cuisine and below average dim sum fare. For those wanting an affordable meal on Osborne should look to their noodle soups and ignore everything else on their sprawling but overall disappointing menu.