LHK (aka Luong Hai Ky) Noodle Bar (Mira Mesa) Revisited

I waited a couple of weeks to do this post; mainly because I didn't feel like looking at photos of, nor even think about noodle soup while it was a zillion degrees out! Funny thing, it's almost instantly fall weather here, like someone pulled a cord, and suddenly, wham, it's like October! Anyway, I think this post will fall in line a bit better with the weather.

After my two mediocre visits to Tim Ky, I thought it would be good to start "making the rounds". This was of course, before all the record heat we had recently. Anyway, a few weeks after my last visit to Tim Ky, I made my way to Luong Hai Ky, ummmm..... LHK Noodle Bar. Man, it had been almost 6 years since my last visit. 

Now, the place seems to have rebranded itself to be "LHK Noodle Bar".

Upon walking in...well, I barely recognized the place, with all televisions, beer and wine bottles lining the walls it looked more like a sports bar-gastropub, than a noodle shop, and quite hipster with all the plant walls! 

The other big "change" threw more a loop. Remember the days when I was greeted with a command to "SIT" that would put Cesar Milan to shame when I entered the restaurant? Today, I was greeted with a "hello, please have a seat buddy". Whoa, did I just step into an alternate universe? I'm guessing it's not just the decor that has changed? The gentleman working was very nice.

Since this was a compare to what I'd recently had at Tim Ky, I ordered the Beef Sate Noodle "dry" .

    Like before, the bowl was delivered with a huge portion of iceberg lettuce. The soup on the side looked like a bowl of water which had some slices of green onion fall into it. It was very salty and other than a hint of white pepper really lacked flavor.

As for my salad noodle bowl.

 First off; I quickly determined that the simple squirt of sate sauce over the beef was all that was provided. There was nothing at the bottom of the bowl of the bowl. This meant that it was difficult, nay impossible to coat the noodles and even all the lettuce evenly. The basil was nice and fresh; but still attached to the thick and basically inedible thick stems. Now, I can imagine having this on the side and then one would tear off the leaves as necessary. Heck, even at the top of the bowl like this is ok; but having that all to precious sauce squirted on it. The customer would have to reach in and tear off the leaves and get sauce on your hands?

   Because of the lack of sauce; I ended up dumping the whole bowl of "soup" into the bowl to moisten the noodles; which kind of defeats the purpose of getting this with soup on the side? The noodles were decently cooked, nice and al dente, and the beef fairly tender, but the lack of the flavor producing items in the dish was it's downfall. 

Man and I thought Tim Ky was disappointing! 

Of course, since I wanted to do a comparison to my last two visits to Tim Ky, I needed to try the Won Ton and Dumpling Egg Noodle Soup. So, a couple of weeks later, right before all that hot and humid weather hit, I returned.

Same really friendly guy as working. Just to show how nice he is; there was a group of three older Vietnamese women enjoying lunch at the time I arrived. He took time out to take photos for them.

I did order the Won Ton and Dumpling Egg Noodle Soup.

  Which arrived to my table steaming hot. The soup had a bit more savory tones this time around, but was again, other than being a bit heavy in msg was fairly plain. The noodles were on the crunchier side overall, but not bad. The char siu was lean, tough, and though it had some decent porky tones, lacking in the sweet-salty-savory profile of said pork dish.

The won tons were on the hard side of the scale, but nicely flavored; the dumplings had a hint of seafood and more tender; with wood ear mushrooms. The strange thing about the dumplings is that after a few minutes all of the wrappers just came off in the soup....disrobed dumplings. So, I was left with won ton, meatball, and "two noodle" soup.

Sadly, overall, I think of this as being my "second strike", being that my last visits to Tim Ky weren't that great either. Hmmm.....I guess I really need to head back to Minh Ky. I wonder what the original owner of Luong Hai Ky back when they had a shop on Convoy, would have thought of the the food....and even the focus on beer, wine, and plant walls?

LHK Noodle Bar
10606 Camino Ruiz #3
San Diego, CA 92126
Current Hours:
Sun, Mon, Wed, Thurs 10am - 9pm
Fri - Sat                            10am - 10pm
Closed on Tuesday

Comments

[kat]

bummer

[Junichi]

Sad. When I used to work in Miramar (back in the early 2010s) this used to be a regular lunch spot.

[Kirk]

It was Kat!

Very sad Junichi.

[Sandy]

I clicked on your links about the old Luong Hai Ky. We used to go to the Convoy location quite often, the Mira Mesa location not so much. After your recent posts about Tim Ky, we went there a couple of weeks ago. Family enjoyed the won ton & dumpling noodle soup, I had beef chow fun. It was ok, and could have used some good wok hei.

[Kirk]

Nice Sandy! So, perhaps I'll give Tim Ky another try in a bit!

[MiikeC]

Man, this is sad. Back in the day when LHK was on Convoy it was on my work lunch group once a week rotation. Their dumpling soup was solid+. When they moved to Mira Mesa it dropped to a maybe once a month visit, but it was still solid+. I haven’t been there since pre-covid, but now I doubt I’ll ever go back. Really sad.

[Kirk]

Yes, I really enjoyed Luong Hai Ky's original location on Convoy MikeC. Things were never the same after they expanded.