Most people walk right past the Robson Public Market.
But there is a new reason to make a visit!
A stall called Lagman has recently opened upstairs in the market, serving Uyghur cuisine off a hand-pulled noodle counter.
The name is the specialty.
Lagman is a hand-pulled noodle, wok-tossed with meat, vegetables, and spice, and the stall bills it as a taste from the Silk Road.
Its poster leans into that history, citing the 13th-century story of Marco Polo watching people across Central Asia hand-pull dough into long, thin noodles, a tradition it says lives on today as lagman.
The neon in the window already reads open, and the counter was firing on our walk-through.
The kitchen is halal, and the menu leans on veal rather than pork.
The soft-opening list runs the signature lagman, a spicy chicken lagman, and Uyghur soman, the diced hand-cut noodle.
There are bigger share plates too, a serves-two big plate chicken and stir-fried belt noodles, along with samsa, the baked beef pastry, and a Uyghur lamb pilaf.
The poster promises traditional recipes made with heart, the kind of line a family stall earns by cooking one regional cuisine well rather than a little of everything.
Where it opened is half the story.
The Robson Public Market has been quietly run down for years, and most people do not even know there are food stalls on the second floor at all.
That anonymity has been rough on the upstairs tenants, and several stalls up there have turned over.
The one that has survived the churn is Nine Dumplings, an award winner in its own right.
Now the upstairs is showing small signs of life, with Lagman arriving close behind Menya Tsuzuki, the ramen stall that opened in the same market earlier in July.
Two new stalls in one summer is not a turnaround for a market this quiet, but it is more than it has had in a while.
For a downtown lunch that costs less than a sit-down room and comes from a cuisine the city has very little of, the second floor is suddenly worth the detour.
Lagman now joins other recently opened Vancouver food spots like Menya Tsuzuki in the same Robson Public Market, Ramen Danbo on Main Street, and Buttercrumbs at Bentall Centre.
For more new and upcoming food spots in Metro Vancouver, take a peek at our tracker here, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.
Address: Robson Public Market, 1610 Robson Street, Vancouver BC