There were three of us who went out looking for lunch a week ago. Nanzaro was away with the playing host to a group of cadets from PEI. So we went to somewhere near home … just to grab a bite and then get home quickly to work on chowtimes.

I had been doing a lot of tweaking on the blog lately and I just wanted to plonk myself down getting it over with. The blog is getting too big and each time I make a change, it takes so long to do impact analysis and testing before I actually execute the change. This is beginning to feel like a full time job already! And am enjoying every minute of it.

We went to the Beijing Noodle House which is located on Buswell (at the intersection of Cook) in Richmond. I feel that the Beijing Noodle House is not as well known as the many good Chinese restaurants in Richmond. It is because of it’s location behind the busier No 3 Road. There are no cluster of restaurants here and is surrounded mainly by apartments and business offices.

There is a plus point for this … parking is abundant here.

We like this kind of restaurants … it is enclosed with glass walls throughout. We want to see how it is inside. The Beijing Noodle House serves authentic Northern Chinese dishes. The chef, who came up to greet the customers, speaks authentic Mandarin … you know, the unique melodious official sounding kind of Mandarin.

Their customers seems to be mainly Mainland Chinese customers which perhaps enforces the perception of the authenticity of this restaurant.

For a place this this, they had obviously put in effort in creating a nice hard cover menu — one that you only see in more established restaurants. Even the take out menu was printed in high quality glossy paper.

Service was good and helpful. They helped us with the selection. Seeing that it was a wet and cold day, they suggested the Meatball, Vegetable Vermicelli in Soup. It was an excellent idea as we always love soup with rice. They had over a dozen choices of soup on their menu ranging from $5 to $12.

This $12 bowl was more than enough for the three of us. It is a simple but delicious dish with the primary ingredients consisting of suey choy, tofu and minced meat ball. The bowl is is packed with the ingredients.

We also noticed the milkiness of the soup which is quite flavourful.

Steamed Rice is $1 for each bowl. It was not a big bowl and packed loosely. It seems like they assumed you do not need rice and they did not even asked if we wanted it. We assumed that for this kind of a meal, one must have rice.

The Fried Pork Intestines was $9. It was actually a choice between this one or the Pepper Salt Fried Head-On Shrimp ($14) which I fancy. Suanne thinks this is more “yeh mei” and prawns are so common and so we settled on this. This is is fried with fresh cooling cucumbers … which gives this a very nice balance. Arksensen ate a lot of this … he obviously enjoyed the soft texture of it.

The total came up to $25 which is pretty good. Not surprising, the Bejing Noodle House takes only cash.

I find that the name “Noodle House” is a bit misleading in that it is not just noodles that they sell. As a matter of fact, I see most people having anything but noodles here. We like the prices with most of the dishes below $10. If you like authentic Northern Chinese food, you need to check this place out.