Full House Asian Cuisine
1766 Carling Ave., 613-798-5697, fullhouse1766.ca
Open: Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m to 10:30 p.m.
Prices: most dishes $10 to $17
Access: Steps to front door can be avoided by using walkway from the parking lot behind the restaurant
Late last month, after meal after meal of roast turkey, turkey barley soup or turkey shepherd’s pie, we craved something different.
We decided to reset our palates at Full House Asian Cuisine on Carling Avenue, just east of Maitland Avenue. The eatery, which is almost six months old and has been nicely renovated, takes the all-embracing approach that’s common with most new Asian restaurants in Ottawa.
Its main, multi-page menu seeks to please with North American Chinese hits (chow mein, orange beef, some dumplings), Vietnamese dishes (pho, vermicelli), Thai items (red curries, lemongrass stir-fries) and more. Meanwhile, a separate, Chinese but bilingual menu intrigued the turkey turkey-fatigued spice-hounds and culinarily curious among us with Szechuan and Northern Chinese dishes as well as more daunting items. (We resisted the spicy blood in chili oil.)
Pork dumplings at Full House Asian Cuisine
Shrimp har gow at Full House Asian Cuisine
The soups offered here have been strikingly diverse but all had in common house-made stocks. A meal-sized bowl of wonton soup lacked noodles but its dumplings and broth satisfied. The meat in the barbecue duck soup made for much chewing and wrangling.
Wonton soup at Full House Asian Cuisine
Barbecue duck noodle soup at Full House Asian Cuisine
Simon Xu had emailed me about a massive, urn-like crock that the restaurant had imported from China to help make some more esoteric soups. We tried two single-serving bowls that were crock creations. Black chicken with Codonopsis Pilosula, a woody root, struck us as a more of a warming, healthful tonic. Minced pork and pear soup surprised us with its unbroken clump of meat.
Black chicken soup at Full House Asian Cuisine
Pork and pear soup at Full House Asian Cuisine
Among the main dishes, the more cautious eaters favoured crispy orange beef with its broad sweet notes. Pork stir-fried with lemongrass, featured lean meat and had clear, punchy flavour. Stir-fried lamb with cumin balanced heat and spiciness well, even if its meat had too much tenderized mushiness to it.
Orange Beef at Full House Asian Cuisine
Lemongrass pork at Full House Asian Cuisine
Stir-fried lamb with cumin at Full House Asian Cuisine
Morsels of fried spicy chicken with Szechuan pepper, garnished with an unnerving amount of dried chilies, were pleasantly meaty, and they delivered the wished-for heat and tingle.
Fried Chicken with chilies at Full House Asian Cuisine
The Szechuan-pepper tingle was just as pronounced with Full House’s rustic ma po tofu (tofu cubes with minced pork in a spicy sauce). Spiciest of all was a bowl of tender white fish fillets in spicy Szechuan oil, garnished with more dried chilies.
Ma Po Do Fu at Full House Asian Cuisine
Fish in Szechuan chili oil at Full House Asian Cuisine
Eggplant with minced pork and spicy garlic sauce, also known as fish-fragrant eggplant on other menus, was chunky and oily but tender, and pleasantly sweet and sour. More rustic were chunky of sweet-salty braised pork belly. Braised beef brisket was flavourful but best appreciated by connoisseurs of texture who like rubbery tendons and membranes as well as pliant meat.
Eggplant in Garlic sauce at Full House Asian Cuisine
Braised Pork Belly at Full House Asian Cuisine
Brisket Dry Pot at Full House Asian Cuisine
Jiangxi noodles with pork were toothsome and spicy, although the fish and beef brisket that followed them were significantly spicier. A more gentle, starchy choice was fried rice with soft-shell crab, which even had a current of sweetness to it.
Jiangxi noodles with pork at Full House Asian Cuisine
Soft Shell Crab Fried Rice at Full House Asian Cuisine
After the jangle of flavours at Full House, I’ve never felt the need for dessert beyond the fortune cookies offered with the bill.
For Chinese food fans, and that would include the predominantly Chinese clientele that I’ve seen during two of my visits, there would seem to be no shortage of hearty dishes that reassure, thrill, and perhaps even challenge at Full House.
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Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews
