Old Xian’s Food

As I mentioned in the Legendary Noodle House post, Grayson and I have been enjoying our Northern food lately so why not continue by going to Old Xian’s Food? The first time I heard about Old Xian’s was when I saw someone posting about their noodles and how amazing they were and being a noodle fanatic, I knew we had to go.

Old Xian’s Food locations

Old Xian’s Food has a few locations. One in Richmond, two along Kingsway and one in downtown Vancouver. We decided to go to the Richmond location because we were in the area.

Old Xian’s Food is located in Continental Plaza right beside yet another Northern Chinese restaurant so talk about competition! We went at 6pm on a Saturday night and it wasn’t too busy but by the time we were leaving around 7pm, the place started to fill up fast.

Menu

The menu at Old Xian’s offers quite a variety of items. After spending a good 15 minutes studying the menu, we both decided to go with a dry hot noodle dish. We were going to try one of their burgers too but I heard the noodle portions could be quite filling so we decided to hold off until later.

When you choose a noodle dish at Old Xian’s you’re given the option of three different types of noodles to go with your dish. They didn’t have knife cut noodles but they offer thin noodles, hand pulled noodles and their infamous biang biang noodle which is a thin thick noodle. We both decided to go with the biang biang noodle because we’ve never tried them before.

Noodle with soy sauce pork, tomato, and egg

★★★★

Grayson decided to go with the noodle with soysauce pork, tomato and fried eggs. It was priced at a reasonable $9.45 and they offer a spicy version of it for $0.50 more. The soysauce pork was made using ground pork and it reminded me of Japanese hayashi rice. The tomato and egg wasn’t flavored with any sauces but it didn’t need any because the sauce from the pork was so rich. Everything mixed well together and coated each ribbon of noodle nicely. Grayson who usually complains about not having enough to eat in his portion was happy with the amount of food he got.

Hot and sour pork noodles

★★★

I decided to go with the hot and sour pork noodles ($9.99). You can either get it with soup or “dry.” I usually don’t drink the soup from my noodle soups anyways so I decided to go with the dry version. The pork was fattier than I would have liked. But, it was very tender and soft so I didn’t mind too much. I wouldn’t say the sauce was hot or sour though because it was more tomato-y than anything.

Don’t get me wrong, the bowl of noodles was very enjoyable overall but the pork wasn’t the star of the show, the noodles were! They were about 2″ wide but paper thin so it was such an interesting experience! At first I didn’t think that it would be too filling since it didn’t look like much. However, once I mixed everything together, it was quite a bit of food! I got through about 3/4 of mine because there was so much of it!

Quick bites:

1. The sauces that go with the noodles are hit or miss but I’m willing to come back to try more!
2. Portions are worth the price
3. The biang biang noodles are a must.