Noodles, Mussels, Fries

[[Catherine]] and I, unable to stomach any of the movies playing in town on Saturday night, ended up enjoying a dinner at [[The Noodle House]] followed by an exciting tour through the Charlottetown Mall.

The menu at The Noodle House as been dramatically expanded over the last few weeks, and now runs to almost a dozen pages. In addition to a whole new range of Cantonese dishes, the back page features two new categories: “sizzlers” are served on sizzling-hot cast iron platters and “sizzling hot pots” are boiled-not-fried concoctions served in a small clay pot. On Saturday Catherine had the “ginger beef sizzler” and I had the chicken one. Both were very tasty, and a welcome addition to the menu. The only downside to the meal is that we forgot to tell the new owners to hold the MSG (the original owners had our non-MSG preference memorized years ago); they were very nice about this, and told us that they will cook without MSG if requested.

On Sunday we headed to Summerside with visions of Belgian-style french fries dancing in our heads. Ever since said fries were promoted by a [[Compass]] feature on Flex Mussels a few weeks back, I’ve been dreaming about the day I might make it all the way to Summerside for a sample. I should mention here that I didn’t actually know what “Belgian-style” french fries were, and I don’t really like mussels; I’m just addicted to the notion of anything novel.

It’s hard not to like Flex Mussels: they’ve got such a clever little brand, a cute website, and a setup on the water in Summerside that’s very “Ikea in Stainless.”

The Belgian-style french fries turned out to be thin-cut, about the size of McDonalds’ fries, but, unlike McDonalds’ fries, they had a recognizable connection to potatoes. Mine were a little on the cold side, and somewhat too salty (which might have been Catherine’s fault, as she supplemented the house salting with some of her own) but were otherwise very tasty, especially when dipper in the optional mayonaise; I’d rank them just behind those from the [[Water Prince Corner Shop]] in [[Charlottetown]] in the Panetheon of french fry excellentness.

Catherine said the mussels were excellent too; I sopped up enough of her tasty ” ginger, lime, indian curry, fresh mango puree, and cream” sauce with the thoughtfully-provided baguette to see where she was coming from.

In addition to the fries, I ordered a lobster roll, which is the only other non-mussel item on the menu. This was plesantly unlike the “lobster bits with celery and mayo” lobster rolls we’re used to: it was a deep-fried battered lobster tail served with mayo (one of five varieties; I choose wasabi) on a bun with lettuce. While I appreciated its iconoclastic qualities, and it was well prepared, something didn’t come together in the end; I’m not sure what it was, but it needed an extra oomph. But I’d order it again.

When added to the (transcendent) blueberry pancakes that [[Catherine Hennessey]] served us on Sunday morning, the chocolate-covered potato chips we sampled at Avonlea and the chocolate-covered ginger we had on the way home, we probably took 4 years off our lives this weekend. But it was worth it, I think.