Mein Mao

Went here with a friend after leaving Timber, my friend wasn’t a fan of the menu
The place looked nicely done, clean. good difference from BASE. I always got sick from eating at BASE, so not sad to see it gone
Menu was extensive. lots of items to choose from. and very decent prices
I settled on the combo with fried rice, soup, soft drink, and egg roll. Plus I ordered a spicy salt pork chop to share
My friend ate most of the pork chop, which means it was pretty damn tasty. and excellent value for the price. Much better than the pork chop at Dinesty
The fried rice was above average, not a fan of the soup. seemed gelatinous
Overall, a really good meal. Good service, too. very attentive

Dont ever order delivery from these guys. It was raining so i ordered from them, after a full hour they still havent arrived, so I called them and the lady on the phone barely spoke english for one thing, but secondly when I ask whats happening with the food, she said its been waiting for the driver. So i told her, that means the food is now cold because its been just sitting there, and her respond was «Yep. it will be».
thats it, no apologies, no nothing. then she actually told me that NEXT TIME, call them to find out where the food is, as if its my responsibility to track down the delivery rather than expecting it to be delivered within a reasonable time; not to mention she actually thinks there will be a next time.
Took me ages to get my money back. Oh yeah, get this they are 5 blocks from my house on the same street and she just made some lie up and said there was bad traffic when I can look out my window and see there is no traffic.

Not a bad place for an alternative to Hon’s or many of the other ramen places around. Depending on what you’re looking for, this place is probably better for noodle soup than the regular menu. Not bad overall but the laksa was pretty good. Also tried the fried flat noodles and it was ok. I found the service ok for lunch and did not find myself being over-​waited on. Got out of here within 45mins easily. I would come back again to try other items but do agree that this place needs to find something to warrant the $ 10-​$ 11 avg dish price. Otherwise I’d just go to Hons for decent but abundant food.

It was a nice surprise to find a new Chinese noodle house restaurant nestled in in an area proliferated with Japanese and Korean restaurants. Don’t get me wrong, I just love some of the Japanese and Korean food that’s available in the area. It’s just nice to have more variety along that stretch of Robson.
The place was nicely decorated in a simple but modern theme. The server was nice and was prompt and attentive. Overall a good feel.
The meal? The food though was a real mixed bag. Here’s a classic case of trying to do everything and ending up missing the mark in quality. They have Taiwanese and Cantonese dishes. They had made to order noodles much like Deer Garden. They didn’t have any specialty teas (HK tea, bubble tea, etc). Their Taiwanese dishes didn’t come with any side dishes.
Let’s start with the simple things like the Chinese tea they serve when you first sit down. The jasmine tea taste like the tea leaves sat in their big tea pot for hours as it was super bitter.
Next, the appy was their Taiwanese chicken nuggets — three nuggets to be exact. Three. I thought, «ok, these must be really good to make up for the minuscule quantity.» Wrong. They didn’t taste anything like what Taiwanese chicken should taste like. It was more like Church’s Chicken (which is not bad if that’s what I wanted).
My BFF tried the Hainanese Chicken. This was a big fail. The chicken tasted like standard steamed white chicken. The red chili sauce was sweet chili sauce out of a bottle. There was no ginger/​green onion condiment. The rice was plain white rice, which was old and dry.
Their only saving grace was the made to order noodle soup. That was actually pretty good. I had the dried fish soup base that was pretty solid in taste. This dish saved me from rating this restaurant a two star.
So, the only that is go here would be for the noodle soup. and only if I was craving it as the other thing they did wrong was to charge much higher than other competing restaurants. I know downtown rent is much higher but they could’ve made up for it by serving better food, more quantity, and including a specialty drink. All of these do not substantially add to the operational cost. Rather it would attract more people.

I must say this is such an interesting addition to the neighbourhood. We clearly do not have enough noodle places to choose from around this side of town.
In case the sarcasm wasn’t clear, there are a *lot* of noodle places within these few blocks.
So, Mein Mao offers up the Subway concept. Pick your soup, pick your noodle and pick 2 toppings. Vege spring rolls included. We decided to go with every «recommended» item — you’ll know from the little thumbs-​up next to each item. The Almond Watercress Soup was quite good, but the Dried Fish and Minced Pork Soup was better. Fishballs and Fried Fish Cake were both fine. If you don’t feel like having soup and noodles, they do have a full Chinese menu with other meat and vege dishes. We didn’t try those. The Make-​Your-​Own-​Noodle sets are $ 10.95.
The service was very enthusiastic but only from the manager (?). He wanted to know everything. At some point, his enthusiasm was borderline pushy. For instance, he kept pushing for us to order side dishes. We weren’t interested but he was adamant. So, we got the Taiwanese Chicken Nuggets and Lemongrass Pork Chop (because we couldn’t just order ONE; he insisted). Both were bland and not to our liking. What can I say… We would have walked away with a better impression of this place had we skipped the side dishes altogether.
The complimentary crackers at the beginning of the meal is a nice touch. Overall, it wasn’t bad. I think we’d be back someday.