LeNu

Le Nu Taiwan Beef Noodle Bar, located on the 2nd floor of VivoCity, was empty when we visited on a weekday for lunch. It opened last year but either not many were aware of this restaurant or the food was expensive and/or tasted bad. Anyhow, we went ahead to save ourselves the hassle of squeezing with the lunch crowd at other places. Similar to Vietnamese Nam Nam Noodle Bar, we indicated our choices on the order chit before proceeding to the counter for payment and waiting for food to be served to our table. Instead of choosing firmness of noodles and amount of oil like Keisuke Takeda's Japanese restaurants, we chose from three types of broth and noodles each. The former included authentic beef broth, authentic beef broth with pickled cabbages, hot and spicy broth while the latter had options of broad and thin noodle or hor fun.

Translated as Happy Cow, Le Nu promised "true goodness and happiness of what a bowl of authentic Taiwan braised beef noodles" – an affordable street dish commonly found at Taiwan's night market, should be. It is part of the Paradise Group with Taste Paradise, Seafood Paradise, Canton Paradise, Paradise Dynasty and Paradise Inn among others. My dining companion had the sliced beef hor fun in authentic beef broth with pickled cabbages while I ate the waygu beef hor fun in hot and spicy broth (came with pickled cabbages as well). We also picked up a chilled tofu with century egg from the open display refrigerator by the counter. Could not see and taste the difference between both beef slices that were not tender enough for my liking. Preferred the hot and spicy broth, which was a tad spicy but not overly so, as the gamely taste of beef was masked.