Chi Men 吃面: Lanzhou noodle soup in Vancouver

Chi Men 吃面 specializes in Lanzhou noodle soup on the West End in Downtown Vancouver. What makes it Lanzhou noodles are the hand pulled noodles of various thicknesses. I wasn’t planning on coming here for dinner with friends but their decor caught our attention.

Interior

I really love the murals of noodle slurpers and it shows what the restaurant is all about. The space isn’t very large, but has enough spots for smaller group. Since it was a cold rainy night, it wasn’t very busy.

Charcoal BBQ Wings

Each order of chicken wings comes with 4 pieces. The taste of the charcoal penetrated deep into the chicken wings.

Traditional Beef Noodle Soup

The broth is clear and not super strong. You can add some chilli oil to add an extra kick of flavour. There are slices of beef, daikon, greens, and a lot of noodles. They didn’t have a lot of noodle options even though it was listed on the menu, so this is the 1.5mm noodles.

Soy Bean Paste Noodle

The soybean paste noodles has noodles topped with soy bean paste, tomatoes, beef, egg, cucumber and green onions. This also has the 1.5mm noodles. My friend found this dish a bit bland and needed more flavour.

Chilli Sauce Noodle

This is a dry noodle dish and it has beef, chilli sauce, mustard greens and green onions. I got this with 1.5mm noodles as it was recommended by the staff. The chilli sauce did pack a little punch. This is one of their most popular items on the menu.

Final Thoughts

The food was good but we wished there were more varieties on the menu for noodle thickness as there should have been 7. The top items to get here is the traditional beef noodle soup and chilli sauce noodle. The prices here are a little higher than what you expect, but given the area, its ok.