Get your cameras ready! North America’s largest rice noodle chain brings something so Insta-worthy it’s worth lining up for! Yunshang Rice Noodle was founded in Toronto back in 2016, and with its huge success at its original location at the intersection of Warden and Steeles in Toronto, it has now grown to become the biggest Chinese rice noodle brand in North America with locations now in Vancouver, Montreal, and even in New York.
As I lived fairly closely to it’s first location in Toronto, I remember various weekends going to Yunshang Rice Noodle for lunch on many occasions. What drew my friends and I to this place back in 2016 was their flavourful soup broth, the affordable price, along with their promise of unlimited noodle refills! Yes, for people with large appetites like myself, having the option of refilling your bowl of noods for a second (or even third!) helping at absolutely no extra cost was incredible.
For those that may be unfamiliar as to what “Crossing The Bridge” Rice Noodles means, it has over a hundred years of history. According to a popular fable, it was invented by the wife of a scholar who had to cross a bridge to bring him lunch while he worked. To keep his soup from getting cold along the journey, the wife added a layer of oil at the top to insulate it, and carried other ingredients such as rice noodles, thinly sliced meats, and tofu skin separately so they wouldn’t get soggy. She would assemble everything upon arrival, and as the soup was steaming hot and the meats were so thinly sliced, everything cooked immediately in the soup. This Chinese fable was passed on by word of mouth and over time has come to symbolize affection, endearment, and admiration.
That’s why when you come dine at a Yunshang Rice Noodle restaurant, the various toppings for the soup is provided to you separately. Once the steaming soup base is ready and served to you, then you will manually mix in the noodles and toppings one by one to ensure your bowl of noodles is as hot and as fresh as it can be. Each bowl of noodles comes with broth boiled for more than 12 hours to use on the same day with no MSG or other artificial flavours added.
With its newest location that has now opened up in North York, Yunshang Rice Noodle is celebrating the launch with an exclusive “Yunshang Bridge Rice Noodle”, a never-before-seen rice noodle containing all kinds of premium seafood placed upon an actual wooden bridge! For only $19.99, each set of this “Yunshang Bridge Rice Noodle” comes with Canadian Atlantic lobster tail, fresh French Kiss oyster, sea scallop, shrimp, and crab sticks. Other accompanying ingredients include beef slices, fish cakes, ham, enokitake mushrooms, Chinese lettuce, egg tofu, and quail eggs. This all of course comes with a selection of their signature soup bases such as Signature Bone Soup, Tomato Soup, Coconut Curry Soup, or Spicy Pickled Pepper Soup. My go-to is always either the Tomato or Coconut Curry base. Can’t go wrong with either!
This exclusive “Yunshang Bridge Rice Noodle” will be available now until March 31st, 2019, and only a limited quantity per day will be made available at their latest North York location (5285 Yonge Street). It’s first come first serve so if you don’t want to miss out make sure you come early starting at 6PM each night.
Whoever said noodles are boring eh?