Whenever a celebrity chef opens a restaurant in Vancouver, expectations naturally skyrocket. Korea Noodle House, newly opened at Crystal Mall in Burnaby by Chef Lee Won Il, is one of the most talked-about restaurant launches this year. Social media buzzed with photos of noodle bowls and lines of eager diners queuing before doors opened. With all that anticipation, I walked in ready to be wowed. They are currently in their soft opening phase and serving a limited number of diners per day. My friend and I arrived at 3:30 PM to wait for their 4:30 PM dinner service. We were 3rd in line. The restaurant only serves ten tables at a time so we got seated in the first round. Check out my full review of Korea Noodle House Burnaby below to see if it’s worth waiting for!
Korea Noodle House Burnaby Menu
The menu is all on one page with a variety of noodles, meat and pancakes to choose from. For our visit we decided to get Combo for 2 ($74) which includes your choice of 2 noodles and 6 pieces of their ‘Galbi Me Tender’. We chose:
- Double Decker – Pork Bone Broth Noodles ($22.00)
- Very Shroomy Creamy – Creamy Perilla & Mushroom Noodle ($18.50)
- Galbi Me Tender – Beef Rib Steak with Soy Glaze (9 pieces for $45.00)
Marketed as the heart of their menu, the Double Decker – Pork Bone Broth Noodles should have been a standout. The broth was flavourful with spice, but it lacked the kind of layered depth that sets a true pork bone broth apart. The noodles were great. Freshly made with a nice texture.
The pork bones were also very large and had fall off the bone tender meat. The bowl was flavorful at first sip, but forgettable halfway through.
The Very Shroomy Creamy is a noodle dish I have never had in Vancouver so I was very excited to try this. This was the most intriguing for me because I love perilla and mushroom. But overall I found this dish incredibly bland. I didn’t really taste any mushroom flavour and the predominant flavour was the injeolmi powder that they sprinkled on top. The soup was heavy and flat and I didn’t taste any perilla at all.
The noodles themselves were good and clung well to the sauce but this dish is definitely a skip for me.
The highlight of the meal was the Galbi Me Tender. The galbi was very tender and flavourful and I was a huge fan of the soy glaze. The ‘finishing touch’ of this dish is supposed to be freshly ground sesame seeds but for us they had it in the pestle and mortar but it was really just for show. They ended up just tossing full sesame seeds on top of the dish.
Worth a Try?
For me, it is a no. The food we have definitely does not justify the wait time. Overall I found the meal to be quite flat and one dimensional. The galbi was the highlight of the meal but there are a lot of other excellent Korean restaurants in Vancouver that do great galbi without a 1 hour plus wait time. Perhaps we went on a off day but overall the meal left a lot to be desired.
Service wise, I appreciate that they handed out bibs for the diners (to prevent splashes) but the service was a bit slow and confused at times. Additionally, they didn’t present us with a bill and just handed us the machine to pay. Because of this, we didn’t realize until afterwards that they had overcharged us for an item we did not order.
Unfortunately I just don’t understand the hype for this spot and I don’t think I will be making a return visit anytime soon.
Korea Noodle House (고려면관)
Address: 4500 Kingsway #1812, Burnaby, BC V5H 2A9
Website: https://www.instagram.com/koreanoodlehouse/
