By Daryn Wright
The race for the title of best ramen in Vancouver has been going on for a while now, the West End being the hub through which all noodle-spokes meet. Some of these Denman and Robson-housed establishments require long, but worthwhile waits. Ramen Santouka of Robson St. often features hordes of noodle seekers huddling outside in the rain, and Kintaro Ramen of Denman St. (only a couple of blocks away) is usually filled with steaming bowls and slurping mouths late into the night. Evidently, Vancouverites love their ramen noodles, and Japanese chefs are forever trying to one up each other in creating the very best bowl.
Newly opened in Gastown, at the corner of Cordova and Carrall (in the old Boneta spot), No. 1 Noodle House has set itself apart from its West End competitors. The concept’s brainchild is Mark Brand of beloved Save on Meats, The Diamond, and newly anchored Portside, to name a few. Having only opened its doors in the past week, the joint is running on a soft opening, meaning that menu items are still being worked out and, most unfortunately, there is still no liquor license. So while you can’t enjoy your noodles the right way — with a frosty bottle of Asahi — the service was incredibly friendly and made up for the lack of alcohol by giving us cards for free beers at Portside, to which we immediately scampered afterwards.
This reviewer, accompanied by two equally eager noodle-aficionados, decided to order from an array of offerings on the menu, which is small but not limited to ramen noodles. First came the green salad, accompanied by pickled cukes, carrots and daikon, with a sesame miso dressing. It was sweet and flavourful, with a bit of a tangy kick, although it was too ordinary and lacking in creativity; we would have preferred if it had focused more on the pickled vegetables than the greens.
Next came a stack of crispy pork spring rolls, which won our hearts immediately. The pastry was crispy and salty in the best way, and the entire roll was bursting with flavour. The dipping sauce accompanying it was spicy and sweet, a perfect addition to the rolls. These were so good they’d be worth the visit alone.
Next came the two steaming bowls of ramen, one of each kind currently offered on the menu. The pork tonkatsu was a miso-based soup, topped with half a hard-boiled egg, a thin piece of crispy seaweed, a tender piece of pork, and a few arugula leaves. The noodles were springy and done perfectly, but the broth was disappointingly bland in flavour. Even with some added spices, we found it to be less flavourful than desired, and a tad too oily.
The Shoyu ramen replaced the spicy chicken on the menu for the day, and had a much more flavourful broth than the tonkatsu, being soy-based and consisting of a mixture of both fish and pork broth. Upon the bed of noodles sat an egg-cake, a thick slice of pork, and more arugula leaves, which was a nice peppery addition. The flavour combinations were much richer and more complex than the first bowl, but it still didn’t live up to our previous experiences at Ramen Santouka on Robson.
Not yet satiated, we finished off with an order of the chicken wings, the crowning achievement of the night. These deep-fried salty morsels were topped with cilantro and perhaps the best spicy sweet sauce I’ve had. The chicken remained crispy while maintaining the perfect amount of sauciness, and the balance of salty to sweet was like a great caramel. These babies beat out the noodles, sadly enough, but we still left satisfied and hankering for our free beers.
Despite the less than award-winning ramen and the lack of alcohol, the service was friendly and the food was very affordable, meriting No. 1 Noodle House another visit in the near future. I’d recommend the pit stop for those sniffing out noodles far from the West End, and particularly for those with a hankering for wings — which I, for one, always have.
