Simple Family Fare: Jenni’s Noodle House Houston

You can’t judge a book by its cover and you can’t judge a noodle house by its stark, warehouse ambiance.  While researching family friendly restaurants in Houston, Jenni’s Noodle House kept coming up again and again as a great place for families.  When we arrived, the strip mall exterior and the college hangout vibe inside made us skeptical that this would live up to the family friendly hype, but we were hungry enough that it didn’t matter.

Jenni’s is known for Vietnamese dishes with sassy names like “Stir Me Crazy” and “Udon Know Me” and for a menu that is considered fairly simple by Asian food standards.  While a typical Asian restaurant can have close to 100 dishes on the menu, Jenni’s just has about 40 choices, and even that seemed overwhelming to us.  Fortunately, the kids menu offered a great selection of $5 choices that would thrill the more sophisticated of kiddie connoisseurs, while still offering familiar options for those less adventurous.   JNH offers the free addition of an unlimited number of vegetables to any children’s dish, but my kids declined the extra veggies and probably even secretly wished they could do away with the included veggies altogether.  Chicken Fried Rice along with egg rolls and vermicelli were ordered for the kids easily, but the mister and I puzzled over the menu a bit longer.  I panicked and ordered a safe Super Fried Rice and the mister ordered Shrimp Curry.  Vegetarians would certainly be thrilled with the menu choices, although meat lovers are welcomed without guilt. 

Once we were able to settle into the atmosphere of the restaurant, what had seemed stark and sterile began to take on a quirky personable feel.  It is easy to see that the restaurant would cater to the college crowd, with its hip vibe and affordable prices, but the family friendly element is also strong.   It is a very mi casa es su casa (or however you might say that in Vietnamese) feeling that invites patrons to help themselves to drinks or napkins or chopsticks, but still has wait staff offering refills and supplies regularly.

Our food arrived quickly and the egg rolls disappeared almost immediately.  The crispy exterior contained a finely chopped and perfectly seasoned filling and they were just the right size for practicing our chopstick skills.  The kids were intrigued by the differing types of noodles that came along with our meals, although they resorted to slurping a bit too often for my liking.  The Shrimp Curry was excellent and presented so nicely in the bowl with giant udon noodles and a sprinkling of veggies.  The hastily ordered Super Fried Rice, was perfect in every aspect and was the favorite dish around the table.  The chicken was pan seared, creating a crispy exterior to seal in the juice.   That, along with the bean sprouts, made the flavorful dish a hit in the fun textures in your mouth department.

The kids were pleased with their dishes, but it was hard to keep them at the table once they discovered the giant concrete pipe that begged for exploration out on the patio.  After a morning in the museum district of Houston, you would have thought they were all played out, but finding ways to crawl around, through and on the giant pipe might have been the most fun they had all day.  Perhaps unassuming and simple has the greatest appeal after all.