Tasty Noodle House

While the street's Chinese spots cast wide nets — dim sum here, Cantonese there, a token mapo tofu — Tasty Noodle House goes deep on Shanghai hand-pulled noodles and Sichuan wok work. It's been packing tables in this Convoy strip for years, the kind of place where weekend lunch means circling the lot twice and possibly walking from the overflow across the street.

The **house curry noodles** are the move: springy noodles in a curry broth that's richer and less coconut-forward than what you'd find at a Thai spot, with your choice of protein. The **cilantro fish dumplings** overdeliver — funky, herbaceous, polarizing in the best way. The **house spicy chow mein** brings proper wok hei and enough heat to justify the name. **Curry-flavored beef buns** (steamed or pan-fried, though recent batches lean machine-made rather than hand-crimped) are solid drinking food if you're working through the beer list.

Service moves fast, which matters when you're on a business lunch or feeding a group of kids who won't sit still. The **vegetarian dumplings** use a filling that diverges from the standard cabbage-mushroom default, enough to register with regulars. The **eggplant vegetable soup** trends salty — ask for soy sauce on the side if you're sensitive.

Downsides: parking is a blood sport on weekends, and quality can swing depending on who's working the wok. Some traditionalists grumble about the shift from handmade to machine-pressed baos, a cost-cutting move that shows if you're paying attention. But for the neighborhood's go-to when you want Shanghai noodles without driving to Kearny Mesa, it holds.