beef noodles – Michael Eats

Location: 100 City Centre Drive, Mississauga (inside Square One)
Website: https://lanzhou.ca/

There’s something both delightful and bizarre about the presence of Gol’s Lanzhou Noodle in Square One’s food court. It’s hard to imagine a place serving legit Chinese hand-pulled noodles — nestled between a KFC and a cheesesteak joint — being able to exist in a suburban shopping mall like Square One even just a decade ago.

But it’s here now, and it’s surprisingly great.

I had the beef noodle soup, and I was shocked at how good it was. It’s not the best bowl of noodles you’ll ever eat, but it’s seriously tasty for something in a mall’s food court. It’s not even in Square One’s fancy new “Food District” — it’s in the plain old food court, right near places like A&W and Manchu Wok.

(Sorry, I know I’m harping on its location, but it kinda blows my mind.)

And yes, they serve real-deal hand-pulled noodles; they’re freshly pulled to order, and you can watch them do it (which is always an oddly hypnotic display).

It’s a tasty bowl. The soup is a bit too salty, but it has a clean beefy flavour with a nice hit of freshness from the cilantro. It comes with a healthy amount of chili oil on the side; I wish this stuff were spicier (it’s just barely hot), but it has a fantastic smoky/savoury flavour that really kicks up the flavour of the soup.

The sliced beef had a slight leftovery flavour, but was otherwise tender and enjoyable.

And the medium-thick noodles are great. They were ever-so-slightly on the soft side, but they were nice and hearty, with a satisfying level of chew.

Location: 3255 Highway 7, Markham
Website: None

Though there are a ton of amazing restaurants in the First Markham plaza, you’re going to have a hard time topping Mei Nung Beef Noodle House, which specializes in Taiwanese beef noodle soup.

The beef and beef tendon noodle soup is where it’s at. You can choose from rice noodles, glass noodles, or homemade noodles, and the choice is clear — you’ve gotta get the homemade noodles. They’re thick and hearty, with an amazingly satisfying level of chewiness. They’re so good.

But then everything about this bowl is so good. The broth is ridiculous: it’s beefy, zippy, and immensely flavourful.

You think it can’t possibly get any better, and then you add a spoonful of their wonderfully smoky chili oil, and lo and behold — it gets better.

The chunks of beef are super tasty and enormously tender, though the tendons are the real star of the show. They’re so perfectly cooked that they’re essentially like meat butter. They’re soft and unctuous and amazing.

They’re also super tasty; they do an impressive job of absorbing all of the seasoning in the soup. They’re squishy, melt-in-your-mouth flavour bombs.

It all adds up to a bowl of noodle soup that’s easily one of the best in the GTA. I challenge you to find a substantially better bowl of beef noodle soup — even with a plane ticket to Taiwan.

Tag: beef noodles

Tasty Hand-Pulled Noodles at Gol’s Lanzhou Noodle

Outstanding Noodles at Mei Nung Beef Noodle House