Using their noodles

>>Le Roi du Wonton is an
unadorned Chinese delight

by MARK SLUTSKY

Is there anything more exciting than the sight of a completely unadorned and plain-looking Chinese restaurant full of happy-looking diners? It’s no secret, of course, that the best Chinese restaurants are usually the least flashy, the least elegant, the most basic and simple.

So when we met outside Le Roi du Wonton on a recent Tuesday night to see it crowded and completely devoid of anything resembling decoration besides a trellis with some fake ivy hanging off it, I knew we were in for a treat.

Le Roi du Wonton is a bright and busy restaurant, the kind that has menu items posted on an illuminated board and taped to the wall. It’s located on the street level of a forbidding-looking concrete apartment block in the area around Concordia now informally referred to as “Chinatown 2,” right next door to a Vietnamese banh mi shop that I’m also looking forward to checking out someday soon.

I’d heard that not only do they make their own noodles at Le Roi du Wonton, but they make them to order. I tried to figure out whether they were or not over the course of the meal but I couldn’t tell. To be honest, the food took long enough to get to our table that they could have been making the plates and cups too. For the most part though, the food was so good when it did come that everything was forgiven.

Well, most of the food. We were a little alarmed by the hot and sour soup ($3.99), which was neither. It tasted of fresh coriander and sesame oil, but not much else; it was the meal’s only real disappointment, and luckily it didn’t foreshadow things to come.

From then on in, our meal proceeded as in reverse: the complimentary cookies came first, and the fried dumplings, which we’d ordered as a starter, were the last to arrive, almost half an hour after the penultimate dish.

Ordering, we emphasized noodle dishes for obvious reasons, and we never regretted it. The cold noodles with spicy chicken ($6.99) was delicious; days later, I still daydream about it. The noodles, as in everything we ordered, were the house’s own, a thick and tasty Shanghai-like strangle. Thin slivers of boneless chicken were served over the noodles in a creamy, spicy peanut sauce, the thrilling heat of which revealed itself slowly. The soup aside, they don’t mess around here when you order your dishes spicy.

The twice-cooked pork with fried noodles ($7.99) also packed a kick. Boiled, then stir-fried with carrots and peppers, the pork was tasty but the real attraction was the noodles themselves, infused with heat that lingered on the tongue. We also tried the “Home Style Dry Noodles” ($5.95), which were terrific.

The noodles—the same as the other two dishes—were topped with a semi-sweet, aromatic pork mincemeat and steamed vegetables. Mixed with some chili peppers, the flavour was deep and rich, with a hint of cumin. A really nice dish.

One non-noodle plate we ordered was the coriander shrimp ($9.99—chicken, beef or pork versions of this dish are $7.99). This was also a revelation: a fresh-tasting, invigorating, and yes, totally spicy dish made with lots of chili oil. Highly recommended.

There’s plenty more on the menu I’m looking forward to trying next time I return—and I will return. The wonton soup, for one, or the chicken leg, which I regretted not ordering when I saw it sail by my table. The service was slow, yes, and weirdly backwards, but friendly (and apologetic). Furthermore, the server went over our bill at the end of the meal and made sure we got everything we ordered, which was a strange but definitely honest touch.

Le Roi du Wonton is definitely, along with Maison des Nouilles, one of the better bets in the Chinatown 2 area, where quality can vary widely, but which is producing some of the island’s most interesting new Asian restaurants. Noodle-lovers, take note.