Scratch cooking at The Noodle House

• Name + address: The Noodle House, 775 Gladstone Ave.

• Diet: Meat, seafood, vegetarian, gluten-free

• Appetizers: $7-$13

• Mains:$15-$22

• Wheelchair accessibility: No

• Website: www.thenoodlehouseottawa.wordpress.com

I wasn’t expecting to be here but I’d seen The Noodle House many times in passing and I thought it was time I stopped in.

As owner Paul told me, they opened in 2017 but remained closed during COVID and I did wonder, on the times I drove past, if The Noodle House would be yet another casualty of the pandemic. Now it appeared their customers were delighted to find it reopened and firing on all cylinders.

Those who love Vietnamese cuisine appreciate its lightness, its lower calorie count, and robust mix of spices and herbs. It also, quite organically, offers dishes for almost any diet with gluten free noodles, tons of veggies, and savoury meats and seafood. 

Vietnamese soups however can be a little heavy on the sodium so I was curious when I read on their website “We pride ourselves in not serving salt laden dishes.” Well alright then.

Another curiosity was the inclusion of two classic dim sum items: pork and shrimp shumai and shrimp har gow. I opted to give them a try to see if they were housemade.

The shumai was very good with the pork and shrimp given a rough-chop treatment that made for a more interesting textural experience when compared to the smoother minced versions.

Less appealing were the shrimp har gow dumplings. They’d been left in the steamer a little too long and the rice wrappers had become mealy. The shrimp itself was also not the best grade and I would have gone with a better quality. The shrimp flavour was just too fishy.

Why am I including something as ubiquitous as Singapore's Tiger beer? I think it’s because this may be the most attractive branded glassware I’ve seen in years and because it goes to how much care The Noodle House puts into serving beer: they frost theirs. When a restaurant does this, customers are immediately won over. Respect goes both ways.

When the pork spring rolls arrived I anticipated that I would be enjoying a very fine example. Just their appearance convinced me that long experience was behind how they’d been rolled.

On first bite, I found they were tightly rolled and generously filled with a larger pork to taro root ratio. They were amongst the best I’ve had in Ottawa and I told Paul this. I mentioned that they were on a par with my favourites at Saigon Boy on Somerset.

He gave me a broad smile and pointing at his chest he proudly announced, “I was the original owner of Saigon Boy.” Things now made sense.

One of the cooks came out of the kitchen to serve me the chicken saté soup. Immediately the intoxicating fragrance of the broth hit me and I expected to taste a stock made with actual chicken. I was not wrong.

Not only was it slow-cooked chicken broth, the shredded chicken meat in the soup was super fresh. This is not nothing. It’s rare in my experience to taste cooked chicken meat, in a soup that doesn’t taste of the fridge. This was chicken breast cooked expressly for the soup on this day.

I may have been agitated when the Thai restaurant didn’t work out but at The Noodle House I was quickly put into a state of zen. I felt embraced by the kind service, the attention to details and the damn good food coming out of the kitchen. 

If you haven’t been, go and enjoy yourself and don’t forget to hoist a frosty Tiger for me.

Suggested stories

• Pho Thu Do produces great Vietnamese food and some of the best spring rolls in the city.

• Kanata’s Chez Lam gives us some of the most memorable Vietnamese dishes in the region and their Imperial rolls are worth the drive.