Monday 10 February 2014

Xi'an Noodle House

西安麵食館

No. 115, Shengli Rd, Zuoying Dist
高雄市左營區勝利路115號
(07)588-1517

Monday-Sunday
10:30am-8:30pm

English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 50-150NTD

You might think I have already eaten every type of noodle sold in this city. Well, you are wrong! Or at least, you were wrong until last Sunday.


The Xi'an Noodle House is hidden away beside the giant parking lot off of Lotus Pond. It is thus the perfect destination for those who would like to enjoy an exotic Chinese lunch followed by a nice stroll around the lake etc. etc. There were lots and lots of people here that afternoon, all of them probably having had that very same idea.


The menu is concise and enticing. They have two main choices for noodles: 麵疙瘩, the "goosebumps noodlestuff" I discovered (to my delight) last year, and 皮帶麵, the new form of noodlestuff you are about to discover in a second. You can get these noodles in a variety of ways, most of them mysterious to me. They also have fried rice and soup, but, like, why?


Neither of us ordered this, but they accidentally sent it to our table so I took a picture of it before we sent it back. I do believe this is 哨子麵 or "whistle noodles", so named for the chopped meat and vegetable salsa-stuff you see on top. They also accidentally gave us a plate of noodles covered (and I do mean covered!) in scrambled egg and tomato, which is why I'm saying this place is vegetarian friendly. I don't know what it was, but it looked delicious.


But of course the whole reason I came here was for this: 皮帶麵, or "belt" noodles, with beef in soup. The origin of the name should be pretty obvious...


 ...Just look at that! Magnificent. These noodles were exactly as wide as I hoped they would be--and really, I think this is the perfect width for noodles--but they were a little too thick for my tastes. As my friend remarked, it really didn't feel like eating noodles anymore. Though they were most definitely made in-house, the texture was a bit lacking. I think being flatter would have helped this. Or maybe I just wished they came fried, instead of in soup.

The soup itself was good! (It could have been saltier, but I've pretty much given up expressing this viewpoint by now...) And the beef was absolutely delicious. Really, remarkably so. Each chuck, except the random chunk of tendon that I couldn't bite through no matter how hard I tried, was completely melt-in-your-mouth bursting with soupy flavor. (The soup was a little bland, but still.)

In conclusion, this place was cool! It was nice to have a taste of that northern Chinese flavor--it is pretty exotic in these parts. I would like to go back soon and try their other dishes!

OVERALL RATING: 3/5

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