Jinweide Beef Noodle Wellington — Restaurant in North Island

Mixed feelings about this place. We went there for a late lunch. I had hand pulled noodles with tomato and egg. Very nice noodles, great texture. The tomato and egg topping was surprisingly room temperature, which I've never had it like that before. My friend had the beef hand pulled noodles, which she absolutely enjoyed. We shared a third dish, squid with vegetables, plenty of squid which I appreciate because it's quite a pricey dish. Plenty of mixed vegetables, beautifully crunchy fresh beans, red onion, and capiscum. Would definitely order our meals again. What I did not like was the service, well lack of personal service to be exact. We were encouraged to use a QR code to order our meals, which I did not like. I wanted to ask a question about the menu, but no waiter about. Also noticed that the menu did not have any skewer options... but my friend pointed out to me, that there were about 10 different types of skewer entrees, as well as a couple of other entrees. Too bad for both parties, the business, and customers. If the customer is not using a QR code to order, then they are missing out on the entrees. In turn the business is not having the potential for more business. I am totally not interested in having to order via a QR code. I much prefer a human being, being able to order my meal, and question anything. Would definitely come back to try the many other meals on the...

We ordered the braised beef noodle soup, tomato and egg noodle soup, juicy soup dumplings, 3 side dishes (shredded potato salad, wood ear mushrooms and daikon salad) and 2 fizzy drinks.

The noodles we picked was “jiu ye” this is supposed to be the more chewy textured noodles, however it wasn’t very chewy and could hardly tell it was handmade (it was indeed handmade as we could see the noodle makers making it). The beef was however nice and tender. No vegetables was part of the noodle bowl, the only non meat ingredients were spring onions and coriander.

Although the menu had “tomato and egg noodle soup” however when it was served it was dry noodles with no soup. We pointed out the English menu said noodle soup, the waitress had given us a separate bowl of soup after we asked. However worth noting that translation in the menu might not be 100%.

They were very busy, clearly understaffed. Our side dishes and drinks came after one of us already finished our main (noodle soup) and that was also after we checked with one of the waitresses.

The three side dishes 2 of them were tasty (the potato one and mushroom one). However the daikon one which was recommended by one of the staff were very spicy. I normally have asian medium spicy level. I’m sure the northern Chinese would enjoy the daikon very much as the lemony favour were refreshing just it was too...

We collectively ordered the beef bone noodles soup (mild chilli/default), traditional beef noodle soup(no chilli) and special sauce beef noodle (dry) with no chilli. We also tried a variety of noodle widths, the beef bones comes with bones on the side and a glove for you to wear while chewing the meat off the bones. I like the soup, on the salty side but if you drink it together with the noodles it's not too hard. Recommend getting at least the default chilli oil, the one without didn't taste very special. Don't recommend the dry one (I got B5) it was very basic small scoop of stewed mince with some shaved cucumber and Bok Choi, wouldn't say it's worth $22. The hand made noodles are of course good texture and was more worthy. Can easily find comparable if not better ones in Auckland and overseas but in Wellington this is probably one of the best place for Chinese noodle soup ATM. Also tried their soup dumplings (Xiao long bao), having lived in Taiwan for so many years means that I was able to eat these dumplings as often as I liked, so I had a few in my mind that I could compare with. The flavour was quite nice and there is definitely soup in there, but the skin is on the thick side, and honestly I have tasted pretty much identical ones from the frozen section from the Asian supermarket. All in all not disappointing but...