Restaurant review: San Hou Restaurant

Address: Unit B1, 9 Gooch Place, Howick
Phone: 09 535 2222
Price: $
Style: Chinese
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Yesterday, mum and I dined at a Chinese restaurant in Howick called San Hou.  For a long time, we had been searching for an authentic Chinese dining experience and didn’t care if the restaurant wasn’t fancy.  We finally managed to find what we were looking for.

The menu is very extensive and to me, was a little confusing.  This was quickly sorted by chatting to the waitress, who helped us decide what to order. She said that basically any of the noodle dishes could be done exactly as we liked, which was a nice thing to hear!  There were so many choices though – beef, chicken, pork or fish?  Seafood? What kind of noodle? Rice? Crispy? Egg?   Or maybe you prefer rice? Soup or dry? You could visit this restaurant so many times and probably still not scratch the surface of what they have to offer.

After much deliberation, we decided on some vegetarian spring rolls ($6), vegetarian steamed buns ($6) and vegetarian dumplings ($8) to begin, followed by chicken rice noodles ($12).  The spring rolls were small, crunchy and very tasty.  The steamed buns were superb.  The texture was light and slightly chewy, and the filling contained some lovely vegetables, delicately cooked.  The dumplings were quite unusual and I was apprehensive to try them at first: green almost ravioli like in appearance but delicious.  I need not have worried.  They were superb, like all the starters.

The main dish, the chicken rice noodles, was divine.  The flavour of the dish could be tasted throughout.  The chicken was well cooked and there was also some bok choy, which was lovely.  At first, after ordering rice noodles I wondered if I had made a mistake and if I should have ordered egg noodles. I need not have worried.  The rice noodles were lovely and perhaps a little lighter in texture than egg noodle dishes I have tried at other restaurants.  In any event, there is always next time.  We will definitely be back for more samplings.