Dagu Rice Noodle Ottawa
Unit 1-3987 Riverside Dr. (at Hunt Club Road), 613-736-6503, daguricenoodle.ca
Open: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily
Prices: Soups from $9.99 to $12.99, additional items $2.99 each
Access: no steps to front door or washrooms
Maybe you think you’ve seen, and eaten, it all when it comes to meal-sized Asian soups in Ottawa.
There’s certainly no shortage of them, from the well-established bowls of pho and wonton soup not only in Chinatown but in malls from Kanata to Orléans, to the ramen and Lanzhou beef noodle soups that arrived here more recently.
But if you’re like me, you’ve had little exposure to “crossing the bridge” noodle soup, the pride of Yunnan province in southwestern China for more than a century. Well, there is a massive modern restaurant at Riverside Drive and Hunt Club Road that would love to better acquaint you with this style of soup, which involves not only dauntingly hot and bubbling broth but also trays stocked with tiny bowls of ingredients waiting to be dunked and then devoured.
The restaurant is called Dagu Rice Noodle, and it’s no one-off. Opened last fall, it’s an Ottawa location of a nine-year-old Shanghai-based company that has 400 locations in China. Since September 2017, nine Dagu Rice Noodles have opened in Canada, from Calgary to Montreal. A Dagu Rice Noodle is to open in Las Vegas later this month.
In the Riverside Drive mall that also houses Ottawa’s T&T Supermarket, finding Dagu Rice Noodle is a little tricky. The signage seems to suggest that the business is beside the hotpot restaurant Morals Village, which opened in the fall of 2017. In fact, the two eateries, which are owned by the same parent company, are under the same roof. When you arrive, staff will ask you whether you’re there for the hotpot or the soup.
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Having reviewed Morals Village’s hotpot fare in February 2018, I can say that Dagu’s soups are similarly diverse and filling. If you go for lunch, and don’t take half your bowl home for later enjoyment, then you’re a heartier eater than I am. In fact, if eating until you’re absolutely stuffed is your thing, then Dagu’s offer of unlimited refills of chewy, tubular rice noodles will appeal.
Dagu’s menu lists 13 soups, all of which feature rice noodles, and six of which are “crossing the bridge” style. A dozen of the soups are based on a deeply flavoured pork-bone broth (devoid of MSG, the menu notes), while the only recourse for vegetarians is the tomato rice noodle soup ($9.99).
Compared to a good tonkotsu ramen’s almost creamy and umami-rich pork-bone broth, Dagu’s bedrock broth is more straightforward, loudly sounding its pork-y note. It can arrive at the table unadulterated, in Dagu’s “signature” soup ($9.99), which also offers chunks of bone-in pork shank for a guest to grapple with, or overlaid with other flavours (sour, spicy, kimchi, tomato, mushroom).
Signature pork soup with stuffed meatballs at Dagu Rice Noodle
We preferred the more complex soups with bonus flavours. The evocatively named “mountain cliff mushrooms crossing the bridge rice noodles” soup ($9.99) — just say “B4” when ordering — brimmed with savouriness and a thick mouthfeel, not to mention the exotic mushrooms at the bottom of the bowl.
Mushroom cliff crossing the bridge rice noodle soup with meatballs, plus noodles and assorted add-ins, at Dagu Rice Noodle
“Spicy flavoured crossing the bridge rice noodles soup” ($9.99) packed the one-two punch of potent chilies and numbing Sichuan peppercorns, not unlike some even more potent and heavily loaded hotpots.
Spicy crossing the bridge rice noodle soup with shrimp, plus noodles and assorted add-ins, at Dagu Rice Noodle
With those “crossing the bridge” soups came mini-bowl after mini-bowl of ingredients: everything from corn kernels to cooked ground pork to bamboo shoots to stalks of imitation crab to ground, pickled mustard greens to a cooked quail egg. On the tray with those bowls were some slices of raw meat, which would cook in the piping-hot broth. Protein lovers could add sliced beef, lamb, shrimps or stuffed meatballs, each for an additional $2.99. The meatballs impressed us the most.
Of the other rice noodle soups, the sour and spicy flavoured rice noodle soup with pulled beef ($12.99) appealed with its moderate heat and tender meat. With the tomato flavoured rice noodle soup with “pork chop” ($12.99), the soup surpassed the served-on-the-side pork, which was a deep-fried cutlet not unlike the tonkatsu served in Japanese eateries.
Sour and spicy soup with pulled pork and noodles, at Dagu Rice Noodle
Tomato soup with pork cutlet at Dagu Rice Noodle
The kitchen’s deep-fryer also sends out breaded appetizers, such as the “salty, crispy chicken” ($6.99), which was more crispy than salty, and the crispy pork with Sichuan peppercorn ($5.99), which could have used more of that tingling spice.
Spicy crispy chicken at Dagu Rice Noodle
Crispy pork with Sichuan peppercorns at Dagu Rice Noodle
If the above two appetizers made you think Dagu had dumbed down its food for Western consumption, then opt for the spicy duck tongues ($6.99). Connoisseurs of this uncommon offal prize a crisp exterior and fatty interior, which must be gnawed off the bone. The omnivore among reported that Dagu’s duck tongues were like frog’s legs in terms of texture, and tasted “more medicine-y” as they grew cold. I liked the dish’s bed of spicy peanuts.
Spicy duck tongues and peanuts at Dagu Rice Noodle
The restaurant is unlicensed, but notable drinks included “super fruit tea,” a bubble tea-like concoction thick with pieces of fruit, matcha milk, which mixes green tea with milk, and strawberry and mango yakult, which are probiotic fermented milk drinks.
Oddest of all are the assorted “cheese drinks,” which top, for example, watermelon juice with a layer of what appears to be a tangy, foamy, thinned cream cheese. It wasn’t unpleasant, and apparently cheese drinks are very big in Asia, but I’ll stick to super fruit tea.
I should mention that Dagu, which means “big drum” in Chinese, was actually not the first place in Ottawa to serve crossing the bridge noodle soup. At the very least, the humble Vanier restaurant Fusion Yunnan was first to market here with that dish, which I tried one lunch hour more than a year ago. While I wasn’t knocked out, perhaps I owe that restaurant another visit, given Dagu’s arrival.
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Peter Hum’s restaurant reviews