Life Bites: Peaceful Restaurant: Awesome Mandarin Cuisine and Hand-Made Noodles

I’ve been wanting to hit Peaceful for some time now. I’d read some positive buzz about cheap and delicious food and hand-made noodles, and finally, with a scheduled lunch with Asian superdirector and Jewish superproducer, it was time to make it happen.

Nestled in the busy Cambie/Broadway corridor, Peaceful features mandarin-influenced dishes and handcraft noodles made in-house, and authentic specialties (from dim sum to tapas to hot pots) from Northern China. The signage isn’t huge and it kinds of blends in with all the coffee shops, pho places, flower and book shops…you could miss it easily if you were driving by. It stands out more if approaching from the sidewalk with except a wooden chef-lady cut out beckoning you to come on in for some grub.

Peaceful Restaurant is small, pleasant, and clean. It was packed (usually a good sign) with a mixed crowd of people eating a variety of delicious looking dishes. After a short 5 minute wait, we were seated and got down to the business of ordering. The superdirector and I take our ordering very serious, so after some deep discussion, we were ready and order.

Since I’m a nerd, I’d done some research, and asked our smily server about their spicy cucumber salad. Turns out its only on their dinner menu but she said we could order it. YES!
The Szechuan cucumbers (6.95) is chopped fresh cucumbers tossed in spicy szechuan dressing and garlic. Simple, fresh, extremely flavourful and delicious. An awesome start to a meal and an amazing way to wake up your tastebuds and prep them for a savoury meal.

Next up, the Xiao-Long Bao Steamed Buns/Dumplings (8 pieces for 6.50) filled with minced portk, ginger and savoury sauce. I thought this was pretty good but not amazing. Superdirector is more of a expert in the matters of Xiao-Long Bao and thought the skin was too thick.

The Peaceful Beef Rolls (6.50) Five-spiced beef rolled in crispy green onion flatbread with sweet hoisin sauce were a huge hit at the table. The crispy flatbread was quite crispy and flaky with a bit of crunch and the hoisin taste was strong but not over-powering. I loaded this with chili sauce and was pretty impressed. Going into this meal, we had all been discussing how delicious the Beefy Beef Noodle Beef Green Onion Pancake Roll was…but Peaceful’s version is now my dining companion’s new favourite. I’m going to stick with the BBN as my #1- but I think I just prefer its doughy, softer texture.

We couldn’t NOT order a noodle dish at this place. They have an open/glass-walled kitchen where you can actually see workers pulling, throwing, cutting these noodles from dough. It’s a nice bit of side entertainment with your meal. We ordered the Peaceful House Noodles (9.95) an assortment of seafood, meat, and vegetables with a touch of chili-garlic sauce. This was kick-ass. These noodles tasted like fresh, hand-made goodness…..warm, chewy, thick, but not too thick and perfectly complimented by the meat, veg, and chili-garlic sauce. They have sooo many delicious sounding noodles- I can’t wait to slowly work through that menu one noodle dish at a time.