Meetrice Noodle

 

Restaurant Review: Meetrice Noodle (Metrotown)

I saw in Meetrice Noodle's online menus a "Spicy Rutaceae Noodle". The restaurant's Uber Eats menu still lists it that way in English. “Rutaceae” is not a word I recognized, so before going out I actually looked it up, and it suggested the soup would be citrusy. That made me curious enough to try the dish.

At the restaurant, I showed the server the name I had written down and asked about it. She told me that it was now called Rattan Pepper Noodle. I assumed that meant the restaurant had changed the terminology and that “Rutaceae” was perhaps an older or alternate name. So I ordered it.

Unfortunately, the soup was nothing like what I expected. Rutaceae is the botanical family that includes citrus plants such as oranges. This soup was definitely not citrusy. The best description I can come up with is that it borderline smelled like scented dishwater. It had a strong, clear, perfume-like aromatic quality plus a woody hint. Toward the bottom of the bowl when the soup started to run out, it became beitter.

Afterwards I looked into the name more carefully. The Chinese name on the menu is 麻辣青藤椒米线, which refers to spicy rice noodles with green rattan pepper. “Rattan pepper” makes sense as an English rendering of 藤椒.

But Rutaceae is not another English name for rattan pepper. Not even close. Makes me wonder how that was ever a translation for it when even Google Translate on the Chinese name doesn't screw it up. And for it to still be on online delivery service menus (like UberEats) feels negligent when the restaurant evidently revised their own menus.

In any case, this is not a soup base I would recommend.

Other things about the dish/my experience:

• My simple noodle dish came in a huge bowl (soup volume about the size of a honey melon) but it's mostly soup. You'll feel full walking out because you just drank a vat of soup.
• You choose one soup/noodle base and one topping (basically $18, plus potential extra depending on the topping).
• I chose Pork as my topping.
• Somehow it also came with a few fish balls, some oriental mushrooms, one prawn, and some reddish meat that was certainly not the sliced pork that I asked for.
• Kind of curious if that's part of the soup base and they just scooped it out along with the soup because giving away a prawn doesn't sound like something a restaurant would do. If I were feeling particularly cynical and suspicious I'd say I got a bowl of someone else's leftovers topped up with soup and noodle. Did they get my order wrong and throw the pork on top afterwards?
• In any case, if you have preferences (e.g., you have gout and don't want shellfish), best to tell them up front even if you think you're not going to get any.
• Also really irritating to eat. Whether you are using chopsticks or fork, and even with the oversized spoon provided, the slippery spaghetti-like noodles tended to slip away because they were just too short.