Location – Markham, Ontario Canada

Cuisine: Asian

Would I Return? – ✔  YES

Would I Recommend? – ✔  YES

At a glance, Big Beef Bowl looks like just another joint in a vast sea of Chinese Restaurants in the area…but this place is good…hit the spot good. It’s a place I visit when I’m in the area and looking for affordable, quality food.

Once you’ve had fresh noodles it’s pretty hard to have any other kind and once you’ve seen how Hand Pulled Noodles are made, it’s an experience you’ll never forget. Trust me on this one! Fresh noodles have such beautiful texture, they’re bouncy, chewy and so silky on the tongue. They take to sauce as bread takes to butter and they can be served in soups, splashed with peppery chili oil, or served with meat sauce. Big Beef Bowl offers up a relatively small selection of noodle dishes, but their noodles are hand pulled and made fresh per order and they serve one of my favourites: Noodles in Meat Sauce.

Appetizers

On this particular visit I started off my meal with Shanghai Pan Fried Bao and Cumin Lamb Skewers for a little variety. The Pan Fried Baos are meat and soup filled dumplings that are shallow fried in a pan to give a crispy bottom. I’m a big fan of soup dumplings and I always order them when on a menu. Big Beef Bowl’s Baos came to the table, four per order and were hot and definitely satisfactory. The Lamb skewers arrived at the table, two skewers per order, and tasted noticeably spicy and earthy from the cumin but they weren’t really memorable (I even forgot to take a pic).

Special Feature

Hand Pulled Noodles

Next, I had the Noodles in Meat Sauce with Flat Thick Noodles…cuz you know…I’m in a noodle place and I ain’t noodlin’ around. And FYI those noodles were lovely – chewy, bouncy and very reminiscent of a home-made Tagliatelle. Speckled with meat and coated with sauce, they were good, really good, lip smacking good. The meat sauce was a savoury, well-seasoned brown sauce with lots of garlic and a little chili heat. Cucumber slices added a touch of cool and refreshing to the entire dish and mellowed out the flavours slightly.

Now here’s the best part about this place: you can choose the size of noodles and shape- round or flat noodles can be made thin, regular or thick. I like choices, don’t you?

Other Options

As the name suggests, Big Beef Bowl offers other beef options like braised beef brisket, classic beef noodles in soup, beef with pickled mustard and mushroom in soup but if beef is not your thing there’s also lamb, pork and vegetarian noodle soup options.

The Verdict

Big Beef Bowl is a simple place, nothing fancy but they offer quality, quantity and affordability…which is kinda a rare find these days…

So if you’re ever in the area, stop on in and if you see me there, don’t forget to say Hi!