- Taste and quality of food 4/5
- Price for the amount of food you get 5/5
- Visible cleanliness 4/5
Located near Greta downtown, YunShang (10167 109 ST NW) is a new noodle shop in Edmonton.
Walking in, I was greeted by a friendly server holding the door open. The ordering process is a bit confusing for the unfamiliar. You don’t order at the counter, nor does the server take your order. You scan a QR code and place your order through the website. I was not a fan of this as I have a seafood allergy and usually like to talk to the server when ordering the item. After ordering tomato rice soup and adding superior beef strips and a diet Pepsi, I waited for the server to bring the drink.
When the server bought the drink, I informed him about my seafood allergy, inquiring if the food I ordered would be fine, and he stated that he would let the chef know. A few minutes later, he bought out the sides to go with the meal, removing any seafood items and replacing them with an extra quail egg and corn.
A few minutes later, the server brought a mini cauldron of soup, still at a rolling boil, and placed it in front of me with a side of rice noodles. It was delicious, and the tomato broth alone was flavorful. Better than any Campbell tomato soup. I put everything in the soup pot–the raw pork, corn, ham, sausage, mushroom, pickled cabbage and then the noodles. It tasted delicious with everything combined. But The soup was incredibly hot, and I am still nursing a burnt lip.
I could not finish it all and could not measure how much food I was given, but it would have been at least a litre and a half of the soup if not two litres. Seriously, this was enough food for two people; if you ever want to recreate the romantic spaghetti scene from “Lady and the Tramp” with rice noodles, go to this place. They do offer take-out containers if you cannot finish the feast provided.
As someone who worked in kitchens for decades, I was looking for areas that would show food standards not being up to par. The washroom’s cleanliness was spotless, which is usually a great sign of how the kitchen looks. I could not see the entire kitchen but was able to take a quick peek; what was seen showed the kitchen was clean as well. The Alberta Health Services website did not provide me with many more details about the cleanliness as the only inspection that was done was before they were open to the public. The comments on that report are easily fixable when a restaurant is still in the process of opening.
Visit this place before they raise their prices because I have no idea how much longer they can keep costs this low for the amount of food they serve. Also, they provide unlimited rice noodles, but I did not need to order more. The place also allows for substitutions of the sides at no cost. Call me old fashioned, but I’m not too fond of the QR code ordering process, however I will be back.
