Noodle bar provides taste of Taiwan
If there’s a shorthand description for Taiwanese food, it’s this: Niu Rou Mian. “Beef noodle soup” in all its different regional moods.
In Taiwan, this comfort dish is big deal, enough to warrant an annual competition to find the best beef noodle chef in the land. So move aside, bubble tea, shaved ice or xiao long bao (dumplings), which may hope for such glory — Niu Rou Mian wins the heart and soul of the Taiwanese palate.
When chef Hung Taiwanese Beef Noodle opened in Richmond some years ago, the local Taiwanese community showed their love with constant lineups. The owner-chef, a winner of several beef noodle challenges in Taiwan, was lobbied by Taiwanese immigrants in West Vancouver to open one there, too.
Rhinofish Noodle Bar, on Main Street (formerly Ten Ren Tea and Gingseng Company), doesn’t go all-out on Taiwanese food as Hung does, but it is David Wu’s intent to hook newbies on his favourite food. Niu Rou Mian is the star of this hip modern Taiwanese café. As the name would suggest, it’s a new-school Taiwanese restaurant.
“It’s our signature,” Wu says. “Beef noodle soup is my favourite food. It reminds me of my dad. In Taiwan, we don’t eat much beef if you’re on a farm. My dad loved to sneak us out for beef noodle soup without my grandma and grandpa knowing.”
He opened Rhinofish in June in Chinatown to fan the flames of Asian flavours in the rapidly changing neighbourhood. “We were targeting Caucasian hipsters and local Taiwanese (who are) missing familiar foods, but we’re finding a lot of people from Mainland China, Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian people are coming,” he says.
The room (designed by Scott & Scott Architects) hits au courant chords with old-timey bricks, industrial stainless steel, a clean open space and wall-sized paintings by Angie Wu, a friend from high school.
“She flew in from Taiwan to do the paintings,” he says. “Monkeys are her signature.” You’ll find them and other creatures tussling for space on the canvases.
Wu is the chef and although he attended culinary school and cooked in restaurants locally, when it comes to Taiwanese food, mom’s kitchen was his classroom. “Every Chinese New Year, she’d cook for 30 to 50 people by herself, but I was her helper. That’s how I got into it. All my friends love her cooking and I have to say, I’m still not as good as she is.”
She helped him with the Rhinofish menu, but he has slanted it his own. The basis of his Niu Rou Mian comes from mom, but he uses red wine and vegetable stock instead of her rice wine, and he adds carrots, celery and cilantro stems to her broth base.
Along with wheat noodles, he uses beef short rib braised in a soy sauce, with tomato, carrots and fermented soy paste. (When cooked in soy, it’s called red braised beef, although it’s not red.)
There’s only one style of beef noodle soup so far. “It’s still a soft opening and I’m keeping things to a minimum as I want to make everything perfect,” he says. I liked the soup’s comparatively light, yet rich broth with wheat noodles, serious pieces of beef, some veg and Asian sauerkraut.
There are a few other noodle dishes ($12 to $14.50), including Hua Diao Ji Mian — rice wine chicken noodle soup with teainfused egg and sous vide chicken breast meat in a delicious broth. Liang Mian, a cold noodle dish with chicken, cucumbers, sesame sauce (with peanut butter, soy and vinegar) didn’t impress me — the egg noodles were starchy and broke down too quickly, but the chicken was nice and moist. I ordered an “add-on” — tofu skin wrap, a crepe-like roll filled with marinated veggies that I ate eagerly.
There’s also some “xiao chi” dishes, or Taiwanese snack foods. The wood ear mushrooms in sesame soy dressing with plum salt was bright and fresh. (The salt is ground sweet, sour, salty plum.)
Gua Bao, or Taiwanese steamed bun with pork belly, had a generous hunk of meat and Asian sauerkraut. He buys steam buns from the same suppliers used by T&T Supermarket (why not let the experts do it!) and the sauerkraut.
Yan Su Ji, or crispy chicken nuggets were fried nicely but the chicken was bland and the Nanjing sauce (with a sesame and soy base) wasn’t bright enough to lift it.
Dessert, oolong tea ice cream, was happiness in my mouth, a refreshing and simple way to finish a meal with lots of flavours.
Asked if he might succumb to serving bubble tea or shaved ice, he gives a definite no to the bubble tea (“not the image I want to give”) and was thinking about shaved ice for dessert. But right now, he’s simply overwhelmed and working from 8:30 a.m. to about 1 a.m.
“This is a startup restaurant and it’s obviously going to improve. I’m working really hard on that. I’m in the kitchen every day from 8:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. There’s a real lack of people in the restaurant industry,” he says.
There are a couple of good craft beers for drinks, but if you’re curious about the fruit vinegar (sparkling), I’d say, go ahead — it’s very Taiwanese. I liked the mulberry-flavoured one I tried. A little sweet, a little sour, but not too much.
A WILD CELEBRATION
Seven chefs from restaurants in Vancouver (L’Abattoir, Cinara, Ancora), Victoria (Zambri’s), Montreal (Maison Publique) and Toronto (Scout Canning, Chase Hospitality Group) will kick off the Chefs’ Table Society’s inaugural Wild Salmon Celebration with music and dockside dining at False Creek Fisherman’s Wharf on Saturday, Aug. 26 from 6 to 9 p.m. Tickets are $49. For more information and tickets visit chefstablesociety.com.