As noted in the comments of this post, Luong Hai Ky's second location has finally opened in Mira Mesa. And about a week after their opening I found myself in the area, so I thought I'd check out the home of, ahem, "The Original Chinese Noodles". I'm pretty sure I don't need to elaborate…..
The Owners have done a pretty nice job with the interior…..down to having the now standard plasma televisions mounted on the walls….
I could tell that the level of disorganization was still running pretty high, I was asked for my order three times, by three different Servers. My hot tea didn't arrive until I was almost done with my soup (though this was not as bad as what happened later), and so forth. Being in the midst of a "grand opening" make such problems reasonable……
I stayed with my usual, the Won Ton & Dumpling Egg Noodle Soup ($5.75):
After making a brief stop at another table, the bowl of egg noodle soup arrived. The soup was piping hot, but much like my last visit to the Convoy location, lacked the nice rich flavor that I had encountered on previous visits. I'm guessing this is the standard broth at LHK now…bummer. The won tons were a bit softer than the norm, and the dumplings even better, toothsome, but not hard, and the shrimp flavor came through.
Still, this was enough to warrant another visit, this time with the Missus in tow. On this evening the Missus ordered the Combination Fried Rice ($7.50):
We both thought the shrimp were excellent, the rice had been cooked well, with a nice caramelization. But for some reason, the rice had an overly sweet taste. The Missus had to add fish sauce and soy sauce to balance out the flavor.
I ordered the Combination Crispy Noodle ($7.95):
Not enough sauce…which again ran on the sweet side. This meant instead of the nice combination of crunchy, to chewy, to soft and tender textures, I felt I was eating stuff from a can.
The veggies were done perfectly, nice bit of crunch and weren't overcooked, and much like the fried rice, the shrimp was the best thing about the dish. The accompanying soup was fine, if a bit heavy on the sodium.
And than there was the tea…or lack thereof. We ordered hot tea with our meal, which never arrived. We inquired about it when our food arrived, and were assured it was on the way. I figured it was going to be like my previous visit, and end up at the table later on, but it never made it. When our check arrived, I asked what happened to our tea. The Server gave me a puzzled look, looked at the bill (even though it was written in Vietnamese, there were 3 line items). Seeing that they had forgotten the tea, we were told: "that's ok, no charge for tea anyway!" And walked away….. I guess because tea is free it's ok to not serve it when ordered? Having been caught off guard by that answer, we couldn't help but laugh……..
One other thing, it does seem like prices are going up rather quickly. I noticed that both locations of Luong Hai Ky share the same take-out menu. So if this is accurate, I paid $5 for Won Ton and Dumpling Egg Noodle Soup around November 19th, of last year. It's now $5.75, these "Mi Gia" noodle houses are getting out of the zone of cheap eats rather quickly. In the end, even if I don't believe that Luong Hai Ky is "The Original Chinese Noodles", I sure received a pretty original excuse for forgetting part of our order!
Luong Hai Ky Restaurant
10606 Camino Ruiz #2
San Diego, CA 92126