1919 Lanzhou Beef Noodle — Restaurant in Brisbane City

Food Poisoning restaurant. A restaurant we will never go back. After being Australia Brisbane for 20+ years, the very first time my husband and I had food posioning diagnosed by two different GP. We dined in on 20 February 2021 at 5.30 in the afternoon with our 11 months old baby. We ordered the top 2 meal set, signature meals from the menu and fed our baby as well. The next day, both of us threw up and had diarrhea so badly, and even our baby girl had white poo and diarrhea and she's not even 1 year old... It was devastating for us, as we had no one here to help us with our little one, being the only carers for our little girl here, it was a true tradity... My husband couldn't get up out of bed till late afternoon and I was taken to hospital by my neighbour very late at night. It took a week for three of us to recover. My husband had days off work and he is the only breadwinner in the family. Not only we had financial losses from work and medical bills but also, those days only God knows how hard we got through them. After complaining to the restaurant owner, the response was, you cannot approve the food posioning was from us. Of course, we wouldn't have any prove as we didn't intend to collect evidence/samples to sue them for food posioning in the first place but want to enjoy a proper meal at the restaurant. And who would think of collect evidence when we threw up so many times so badly. Only people who wanted to do bad will collect samples. Later, I found out there are actually a number of people who had food posioning at this restaurant and some were even taken to hospital emergency. A restaurant we will never go back to and we would like to remind others as well. The bottom line of a restaurant is its food safety, no matter how tasty it is, without safety, you don't know what you ate and you could be the next...

The handmade and hand stretched Lanzhou beef noodles are part of that region's food culture and famous throughout China and beyond, but I have to say it's not really my cup of tea (or bowl of soup as the case may be).

The newish local 1919 Lanzhou Beef Noodle has been pretty busy since opening a few months ago and we dropped by recently to see what the fuss/buzz is about. I've seen some fairly long queues there which has deterred me from trying, but at the time of this visit (around 1pm on a Wednesday) there wasn't much of a wait.

Our order: Lanzhou handmade beef noodle soup (兰州牛肉面) paired with the thinnest noodles (毛细), $12.80 Pickled cabbage beef noodle soup (酸菜牛肉面) paired with thick noodles (二细), $12.80 pork cabbage steamed dumplings (猪肉白菜燕饺), 4pc $4.80

Total bill was $30.85 by card, so looks like there's a 1.5% credit card surcharge which I don't recall being informed of. The noodles soups were ready in about 3 minutes, but the dumplings took a fair bit longer at around 15 minutes.

There are 7 types of noodles to choose from in a variety of thicknesses / shapes: thinnest, thinner, thin, thick, thicker, prism, and wide. The thinner is recommended as most popular, and the thick as chewy and satisfying. We found the thinnest noodles to be quite thin but also too soft, whereas the thick was indeed nice and satisfyingly chewy.

The flavour profiles of the soups are not something we typically enjoy/crave, but we suspected as much beforehand... and figured we'd try them at least once! On the other hand, we were pleasantly surprised at how good the dumplings were - good texture to both the skin and filling, tasty, and juicy.

Would be keen to return and try some of the other noodle dishes, more dumplings, and I've also heard their sodas are pretty good so might...

Good atmosphere and there are always a lot of people lining up. It’s definitely a popular restaurant. It’s also in a good location, not too open to traffic but not too difficult to get to either.

When we went, the line was huge (probably took 20-30 minutes to order). It was also very difficult to get a seat!!! Once we sat down, it took a long time for the meal to come. It was 30 minutes from the time stamp on the receipt to the time our buzzer went off to collect the food.

I like how you can choose what sort of noodles you want them to make (thick, thin, wide, etc) and if you want dry or soup noodles. There is a decent amount of choice on the menu, including dumplings. The food itself wasn’t amazing but it did the job.

I also like the vibe of the restaurant. It has a big tv showing you how they make/prepare it all. You can also see the chefs through the glass window, making the food.

I’d say that the food isn’t too bad but there are better chains of this. The wait time is a bit too long (waiting in queue and then to get the food), and I’d be giving a 3.5/5 for the entire experience. There isn’t a huge amount of interaction with the staff as most things are self service (water, tissues, collection...