No 1 Beef Noodle House

I don’t know how they can call themselves “Number 1” when they had the worst bowl of beef noodles I’ve ever had. Even when I lived in Calgary, a city where they don’t offer nearly as much satisfying authentic Asian food, had better beef noodles.

We would have been better off cooking our own beef noodles at home, and that’s saying something because none of us know how to make it. Our visit to No 1 Beef Noodle House was really disappointing, from the service, to wait times and noodles. I can’t think of a single redeeming quality of this “restaurant”. Let’s start with the review…

When the four of us got inside, we were quickly seated. They gave us tea and it took longer than usual to flag down a server for hot water instead. When we were all ready to order, again, it took us awhile to find service. Keep in mind that the restaurant was not that busy, it was probably 3/4 full.

My friend’s chicken nuggets and rice dish came first (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture, sad face). He thought that the dish was okay, it came with a few other sides too. If we ever came again, I would order that instead.
Standard beef brisket with wide noodle: When we were ordering, the server was asking us which noodles we wanted and I asked for the wide ones, like at Wang’s or Chef Hungs.

The bowl of noodles were really disappointing. The “chopped” noodles were gross extremely soggy. The soup was really bland and had no taste to it. They also give you thinner slices of beef brisket than other restaurants (More on the beef brisket below..). The portion here was also smaller than usual, so I wasn’t particularly full or satisfied.

Oh wait! It gets worse! Initially, when the two of us got our noodles & fried chicken dish, we were waiting for the other two to get their dishes before we started eating. So, we waited… and waited.. 20 minutes came by, my friend and the boyfriend still didn’t their noodles.

They ordered the same thing as me, except with different noodles so we weren’t sure why it was taking them so long. After waiting for a long time, my friend finally decided to ask a server about their food. Of course, it took her another 5 minutes to actually wave down a server. At this point, everyone was pretty hungry and getting frustrated at the restaurant.
Spicy beef brisket with noodles: After waiting another 30 minutes for the rest of us to get our food, it finally came! I don’t understand why theirs took so long when it was similar to mine, and it wasn’t even that busy. I didn’t take a picture of my friend’s because it looked the same.

With his first bite, he didn’t taste any “spicy” soup even though his bowl cost $1.50 more. He told me to try it, and I didn’t taste any spiciness at all. Soup was bland, just like mine. Luckily, we had a side of chili paste so he ended up dumping the whole thing inside to salvage it. Of course, it gets worse, again!
This piece of brisket in the boyfriend’s and my friend’s was so hard that it was impossible to chew. They both tried to eat it but gave up after awhile because it wasn’t worth it.

Of course, finding a server was hard and when we told her that we wanted to split the bill, they didn’t understand what we meant.

No 1 Beef Noodle House was disappointing in terms of their food, service, and overall experience. After reading the reviews on Urbanspoon, I noticed that people had the same experience as us. When you read the reviews from oldest to newest, they slowly get worse and worse.

-Carmen