Dining Out: In Kanata, Harbin Restaurant and La Noodle serve overdue authentic Chinese fare

Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant
591 March Rd., 613-693-1525, harbinrestaurant.com
Open: Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday noon to 9 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: most dishes from $11.99 to $17.99
Access: no steps to front door

La Noodle Kanata
790 Kanata Ave., Unit M2A, 613-599-0880, lanoodleca.com
Open: Daily from 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Prices: most dishes from $12.99 to $18.95
Access: no steps to front door

“Kanata,” a colleague who lives there recently said to me, “is a wasteland when it comes to Chinese food.”

It was my pleasure to correct him, as I’ve recently been eating at two Chinese eateries tucked into the western suburb’s malls, Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant on March Road and La Noodle Kanata in Kanata Centrum.

Both restaurants are franchises of China-based businesses that offer authentic fare and attest to the continuing influx of Asian eateries across the breadth of Ottawa.

Harbin is the newer — and frankly, better — of the two. It opened in September, remaking the space where the Indian restaurant Urban Turban had been as a clean, bright dining room filled with blocky wooden tables and chairs, a wall-sized faux Chinese ink drawing and imitation brickwork. Here, Mandarin pop or rap might be soundtrack to your dinner, obscuring the roar of the kitchen’s gas-fired woks.

Harbin takes its name from the metropolis in China’s northernmost province. The restaurant’s evolving menu includes, in addition to some more common stir-fries, fried rices and appetizers, a dozen Sichuan dishes, some Northeastern Chinese dishes, clay pot dishes, some intriguing casseroles said to be traditional in Harbin, and plenty of chef’s specials. I’ve not been let down by anything I’ve eaten here.

The two casseroles that we tried were straightforward and easy to like. One featured plump but lean hand-made pork meatballs, spinach and vermicelli in a comforting broth. Another casserole of lamb, lightly pickled cabbage (called “sauerkraut” on the menu) and vermicelli appeared a little more daunting but pleased with its lean, thinly sliced lamb and clean broth that grew more lamb-y as we finished it. Both casseroles nicely offset spicier fare that we’d ordered.

Pork meatball casserole at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant

Lamb, sauerkraut and vermicelli casserole at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant

Chunkier pieces of lamb appeared in a cumin-tinged stir-fry that was more saucy and sweet than iterations of this dish I’ve had elsewhere. This dish, along with sweet-spicy but complex kung pao chicken and appealingly crisp deep-fried but toothsome pork sirloin with eggplant, would be good entry-level fare for diners wary of more spicy food. Crispy side pork ribs were alluringly flavoured nuggets of meat, fat and bone.

Stir-fried lamb with cumin at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant

Kung Pao chicken at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant in Kanata

Crisp fried pork sirloin and eggplant at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant

Crisp-fried pork side ribs at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant in Kanata

Mapo tofu, a reliably comforting and warmingly chilied dish of tofu and ground pork, provided savoury satisfactions and notes of earthy funkiness and Sichuan pepper tingle.

Mapo tofu at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant in Kanata

For heat-heads, one of the three-chili dishes should offer a challenge. We liked the deep and mammoth dish of sliced beef in Sichuan chili oil, which hid tender meat, tofu strips, noodles and more submerged in its sludgy, steaming, dauntingly dark red sauce.

Sliced beef in Sichuan hot chili oil at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant

The restaurant’s owner, Hang Yu, told me in an email that while other restaurants use pre-packaged hotpot seasonings, Harbin makes its equivalents and other seasonings from scratch. The beef and chili oil dish did strike us as not just laceratingly hot but also rounded by other flavours, with a hefty contribution of Sichuan pepper, both ground and whole.

Harbin’s menu makes a point of noting that its beef is Canadian AAA-graded and its tenderness is more appreciable in the chef’s crisp-then-chewy deep-fried creation called “fish-flavoured” beef (the beef tastes not of fish but of a Sichuanese sweet-sour-spicy combination more often applied to fish and even eggplant.

Fish-flavoured beef at Harbin Chinese Casserole Restaurant

The restaurant is not licensed and does not serve desserts. It does adjoin a Presotea bubble tea location, whose myriad cold and fruity beverages can tamp the heat of a chili-heavy meal next door.

Several malls to the west of Harbin is La Noodle, which opened two years ago in the restaurant sector of Kanata Centrum near the Landmark Cinemas.

There are other La Noodles in Ottawa, in the ByWard Market and on Clyde Avenue. But the Kanata location, which took over a long, narrow space with a dark, lounge-y vibe, has a strikingly large, pan-Chinese menu (which might even be too extensive, given that a few items we’ve wanted haven’t been available).

Still, during several visits here, I’ve found that the best items featured its signature hand-pulled noodle dishes.

The traditional beef noodle soup, native to Lanzhou in Northwestern China, brimmed with fresh noodles (made out of sight in the kitchen) and thinly sliced beef, floating in a meaty but salt-forward broth. Dan dan noodles, with their spicy, salty, peanut-y sauce, topping of ground pork and scallions and ring of bok choy, made for a hearty, flavourful lunch. The vegetarian biang biang noodles offered a simpler chili-powdered kick.

Traditional beef noodle soup at La Noodle in Kanata

Biang biang noodles at La Noodle in Kanata

Dandan noodles at La Noodle in Kanata

Other dishes, while generously portioned, ranged from alright to disappointing. The rustic plate of “Grandma’s” pork belly (known elsewhere as red-cooked pork, I think) was simple, salty and pleasing. The same could be said of soft-shell crab fried rice, that we had to take out because the dining room was being cleaned.

Grandma’s pork belly at La Noodle in Kanata

But we picked out more flaws with the pepper-salt soft-shell crab (no pepper-salt flavour, very oily), spicy crispy chicken (not spicy or meaty enough, too dry), mapo tofu (one-note in flavour, scant Sichuan pepper tingle), seafood with XO sauce (bland), a “Chinese sandwich” of dice, braised pork (OK filling but sub-standard bread) and barbecue lamb skewers (sad, chewy, meagre, insufficiently spicy bits of meat).