Sula Wok
184 Main St., 613-890-7852, sulawok.com
Open: Monday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 11:30 a.m. 8 p.m.
Prices: All items between $7.50 and $12.95
Access: front door is wheelchair-accessible
Almost a decade ago, the husband-and-wife team of Andrew Lay and Xin-Hui Su were running the Yak Café, a two-storey Tibetan-themed restaurant and handicrafts store in the southern Chinese town of Yangshuo, about 600 km northwest of Hong Kong.
These days, the couple still sells freshly cooked Tibetan momo dumplings and other Asian dishes, as well as Su’s jewelry on the side. But now, their business is Sula Wok, which opened in late January on Main Street.
The couple’s brand, spun from Su’s nickname, Sula, should be familiar to many Ottawa foodies, thanks to the Sula Wok food carts that have been stationed in recent years at various locations and festivals in the city, selling Asian tacos, dumplings and more.
The couple’s Main Street location is the latest example of an Ottawa-area Asian food-cart business branching out to open a bricks-and-mortar location. (Raon Kitchen, the tiny Korean eatery on Laurier Avenue, was spun from a food cart, while the Taiwanese bun food cart Gongfu Bao can’t open its shop in Centretown soon enough.)
Andrew Lay and his wife Sula own Sula Wok on Main Street in Ottawa. They live above their restaurant.
However, in true mom-and-pop style, Lay, Su and their three sons live in the floors above their business. After the couple bought the previous property at the Main Street address, they demolished it and built the custom-designed building where they work and live.
For a fast casual/takeout restaurant, Sula Wok is more sympathetic and personalized than most. It’s decorated with drawings by the couple’s children. The reclaimed-wood tables made by Lay are also glass-topped showcases for Su’s jewelry. The eatery only seats about 15 now on metal stools, but will seat a few more people outside of its garage doors after the weather warms up.
The enterprising, likeable couple run the eatery with just a bit of part-time help. “We’re in desperate need of more employees. We’re working every night ’til 11 doing prep,” says Lay, a 47-year-old who before he met Su in Yanghsuo famously served gourmet sausages from his Sunnydays hot dog cart at Bank and Sparks streets during the 1990s.
Su, 39, is Chinese on her father’s side and Tibetan on her mother’s side. But she serves dishes of varied backgrounds and inspirations, from Tibetan to Thai to Sichuanese to Vietnamese to Chinese-Canadian, relying of seasonings and sauces made from scratch. The eatery expands on the food cart’s menu, offering about 30 items in different categories, from dumplings to sides to salads to fried rice dishes to Asian tacos to curries to stir-fries on rice or noodles. All dishes come in takeout containers, and those who dine on site, but wish to share dishes will likely want an extra container or two to facilitate sampling.
Carryovers from the Sula Wok cart were reliably delicious. Of Su’s dumplings ($11.95 for 12) I’ve tried her generously filled and savoury Tibetan beef or pork and chive momos. They were quickly and happily polished off, sometimes with squirts of house-made ginger or peanut sauce. Pro tip: If you visit when some dumplings have been freshly made and have not yet been frozen for later cooking, you’ve lucked out. Order a dozen, which will be extra succulent (not that the frozen specimens, at most a week old, have degraded that much).
Tibetan momo dumplings at Sula Wok
Asian tacos, made with Tibetan beef or sweet and sour pork, were a little trickier to eat, but both packed tasty meat and assertively pickled veg into their tortillas. A bao bun made with Vietnamese barbecue pork and a store-bought (but still fine) steamed bun, was at least as good, if not better. Less trendy, but just as pleasing, were crisp, old-school, open-ended and pork-stuffed egg rolls ($7.50 for four).
Asian Taco at Sula Wok
Vietnamese pork bao bun at Sula Wok
Egg rolls at Sula Wok
Of four salads, we tried a very punchy, crunchy Thai green papaya salad ($11.95) that left our mouths thrumming with their potent heat. A different and almost as bold flavour experience came with the Sichuanese Hui Guo Rou (twice cooked pork) on rice ($11.95). For that dish, which Su also cooked at the Yak Café, I asked Su to go heavy on the Sichuan peppercorns so that the slices of pork belly, which had been simmered and then fried, inflicted extra tingling when I ate them. More comforting, but not boring, was a chicken and cashew nut stir-fry ($11.95).
Spicy green papaya salad at Sula Wok
Sichuan Hui Guo Rou (twice cooked pork) at Sula Wok
Tibetan fried noodles ($11.95) was a full-bodied winner of diced vegetables, bits of beef and the mouth-filling flavours of a spice blend that included curry powder, turmeric, coriander, ground ginger and more, infused into the dish’s thin noodles.
Tibetan noodles at Sula Wok
Pad Thai ($11.95) was not bad. Despite its sweet leading note, the dish impressed with freshness and lingering tangy and hot notes. The only dish that underwhelmed was a bowl of rice noodles topped with chicken-and-tofu coconut curry ($11.95), which was a little watery and bland.
Pad Thai at Sula Wok.
Thai coconut curry with rice noodles at Sula Wok
Shrimp fried rice ($10.75), studded with plump, toothsome seafood and slivers of black Chinese mushrooms, delivered more satisfaction and complexity that a lesser, soy sauce-drenched version of the same dish.
Shrimp Fried Rice at Sula Wok
Sula Wok is not built for lingering. It serves no desserts and has no liquor licence. Still, house-made lemongrass ginger tea was a soothing and even seemingly restorative beverage choice.
Having interviewed Lay and Su in person for a 2015 story, I can say with certainty that they knew me and my mission. That said, they greeted other customers just as warmly, often by their first names, and I would see no reason, why I, they or you would receive anything less than tasty, wallet-friendly food and kind service with heart to it.
phum@postmedia.com
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Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews