Kanata Noodle House — Restaurant in Ottawa

Ten of us went to this restaurant a couple of days before New Year's, on the basis of numerous recommendations from friends and online. Unfortunately, on that day, it certainly didn't meet the expectations set by the recommendations and reviews.

The decor is casual, with multiple televisions located all around the restaurant. At the time we were there, there was a World Junior Hockey game playing, so our attention was often pulled to the game. Surprisingly, the restaurant wasn't overly busy. The service was very good - the staff were attentive and quick to address any questions.

Ordering is similar to other many Asian restaurants - you are given the menu and order by item number. Food was on the table very quickly after we submitted the order. Some items allow the choice of the size of the bowl - from what we could tell, the Large and Extra Large are similar in size, however for most meals, there is only a one dollar increase for each step up in bowl size, so it is easy to convince yourself to order more than you really need.

My youngest son is a strict vegetarian, so he ordered D16 - Vegetables and Noodles (I forget the exact names of all the dishes). He tends not to like overly spicy foods, yet he still found the meal somewhat bland. It was a large bowl, mostly noodles, with a small amount of steamed vegetables on top. While it did match what the description suggested, it certainly wasn't worth the price, even considering that vegetarian meals tend to be overpriced.

One of the other children ordered the Won-Ton Soup, with extra Won-Tons (S8). I didn't get to try the Won-Tons, however I was told that they were nothing special. On the other hand, they were quite generous with the extra Won-Tons, so I guess that makes up for it.

My other two children ordered B9 - they said that the meals were reasonably good, however they both said that there were too many noodles (not sure what they expected from a "Noodle House"....)

My sister-in-law and her husband ordered the pork chops and Pad Thai Chicken. Both were very good - definitely the best of the meals that we ordered.

Before all of the above, we did order a few apps. The spring rolls were typical, not anything special. The rice-paper rolls were also relatively simple. In both cases, they were satisfying, though not exceptional.

On the other hand, the Seafood in Chicken Broth (#32) was not good. The bowl smelled very fishy when it arrived, and it tasted like the fish wasn't fresh. The mussels were very fishy, almost inedible. We explained this to the server - she was very apologetic, and graciously provided the kids with complimentary dessert.

The total cost for the (excessive amount of) food that we ordered was about $150, though this includes a discount that was applied. Regardless, the cost is certainly reasonable.

I suspect that we would have enjoyed the dinner out had we made a few different choices with our meals, so we will likely try going back, though admittedly, this visit didn't meet our...

Kanata Noodle House on Hazeldean quickly became my wife’s and my favourite pho spot on the west end. We go through these phases where we become Pho-natics, and KNH consistently delivers. Until today. My wife, hella pregnant, has been bugging me to get pho for a few days now. Our 2 year old loves soup. Everyone everywhere is fed up with quarantining. The conditions are perfect, it’s Pho-time. We ordered our usual, medium rare beef pho for us, and some chicken/rice noodle soup for the kid with some veggie spring rolls on the side. We know that when you get pho for take out, it’s NEVER as good as when you eat it at the restaurant. Yet, we are still extremely disappointed in our experience. The pho broth had no flavour. None. Nada. It had a very offputting cloudy consistency, very similar to miso. I know it’s soup, I’m not looking for clear liquid, but It shouldn’t be completely opaque. The broth also wasn’t hot. Not nearly hot enough to cook the beef. It’s takeout, I don’t expect it to be boiling when we get home from our 6-8 minute drive, but in our experience it has always been hot enough to cook the meat. My now fuming pregnant wife had to microwave hers just to start eating. Once we both microwaved our food, we realized it was bland. That’s when we realized that KNH forgot to add the chilli oil (which, is our favourite). They DID give us a few packs of hoisin sauce, so there’s that. My kids soup was fine I assume, she seemed to like it. The chicken was cooked I obviously checked. The spring rolls were ok. We know that takeout isn’t exactly kind to spring rolls, so no real complaints there. All in all, we spent 45 dollars. Neither my wife nor myself finished our soup. We had to actually make something because we were still hungry. My pregnant wife is now incredibly disappointed/frustrated, so that means that I’m going to get yelled at sometime in the near future for something, which also sucks.

Please note: I know this review is pretty harsh, and this is a one off. we’ll give KNH another chance sometime in the future, but if we ever have an experience like this again they will lose us...

Maybe it was an isolated experience after having read many "excellent" reviews here however we were truly disappointed by the food - Chicken Pad Thai and Chicken Pho. Overall, the food was very average being bland in general, pad thai sauce which seemed as if it came from a can, overcooked noodles, and lack of chicken which were not entirely fresh.

What was more disappointing, somewhat embarassing really, was the attitude from the server when we requested that the Pho soup simply be served in two separate bowls (so we could season our own soups accordingly). We received not one but two lectures (first when it was served in a single bowl not as requested, and another when it finally came back in two bowls though uneven portions) from the obviously now "put out" server who felt that giving us an education in Pho was more important than giving the customer what they wanted - the result was a true "Pho-pas"! He made it quite clear that putting the Pho into two bowls really caused him and the kitchen a huge inconvenience and apparently isn't done and I guess he was so distraught with us that we never saw him again during service until we were done.

I was curious to see the manager's reaction after having shared our experience and gauging from his reply "well we are down a person in the kitchen" pretty much was the "cashew on the sprouts" for us that he really couldn't care one bit. Good food and great service keeps people coming back especially to a local restaurant which thrives on repeat local customers to keep it afloat. What a shame as Kanata doesn't have too many "noodle" houses to begin with and this experience was a total limp noodle and one where we...