North King Noodle House 北皇饭店(Best Price on Website!) — Restaurant in Burnaby

We found this place for the first time today, completely by accident, and popped in for an early dinner at 3pm, with no idea what to expect. The server (proprietress?) was delightful - immediately complimenting my wife's fashion choice, which put her in a great mood for the rest of the meal :) She was attentive and friendly, offering good advice on what to order. I was leaning toward a particular rice dish, and she gently steered me toward a dish of pork with hand pulled spinach noodles, which was an excellent choice. Their noodles really are first rate - springy, chewy, al dente and just the right amount of bite. The pork dressing was deep and full of umami. We started with a cold dish of black fungus in a vinegar dressing, with LOTS of garlic, which was delicious and refreshing. We followed up with the Xinjiang chicken noodles, which were a revelation. Full of nuggets of crispy chicken and peppers, but it was all about the noodles, which were just perfect, beautifully seasoned and addictive. There were also mysterious sticks in there, which turned out to be french fries - which I am pretty sure you wouldn't find in Xinjiang, so I assume this is their own twist - but it works, strangely enough. It really is comfort food at its best. I really recommend trying this place. Great food, friendly service, reasonably priced - what's not to like? We will be back to try other...

My partner and I frequented this restaurant in the last few months and had great experiences with both the food and service. However, I recently decided to take my mom here for her birthday and had a very different experience. For starters, the service we got was visibly colder compared to most other tables around us. While the waitress frequently check in and made jokes with other tables, we had trouble flagging her down even though we were seated near the centre. The last dish also came out after we had finished the rest of the dishes. Many tables got free complimentary dessert at the end, which we didn’t get. I noticed another table with Chinese speaking guests politely asking about the dessert, and the waitress provided a menu instead of offering them the free dessert she provided to other tables. My mom spoke to the waitress in Chinese, whereas when I came here with my partner, we only spoke English. We ordered quite a lot of food to celebrate her birthday. The only common denominator for being on the receiving end of bad service here seems to be for speaking Chinese. I’m not sure what kind of internalized racism is at play here, but GVA is not at a lack of good Chinese food, I will cannot recommend supporting an establishment that discriminates based...

UPDATED:

The Missus and I returned for a nice dinner at the North King Noodle House. We had the Tofu & Vegetable Noodle Soup, Beef Noodle Soup (spicy) and the Black Pepper Beef Fried Noodle. The food was quite flavourful and the noodles cooked to the right texture. One wish though would have been a bit more beef in the soup. The fried noodle dish was excellent.

The Missus and I had dinner here in this recently renovated restaurant taken over from the old Paul’s Restaurant. The seating area is not overly large and nice service was provided by what looked like a mother/daughter team.

We had the Black Pepper Beef Fried Noodle, Spicy Garlic Pork Eggplant and the Sweet & Sour Pork. All the dishes were very flavourful and we liked the texture of the fried noodle. We found the batter on the S&S pork to be hard when the dish cooled down a bit. The prices were average for a noodle house and the dishes were of respectable size. As a relatively new restaurant, it would have been nice to offer takeout containers free of charge. We will try other menu items on...