Happy Valley

Ordered the fish fillet in hot chili oil, pan fried dumplings, stir fried noodles with beef, and the homemade pancake with green onion. Definitely good flavors but I wouldn’t say it was exceptional. Favorite part about this place is the price and portion — about 6 servings of food for 30 $! I’d come back here if I was taking a group of people.

Ate here for dinner with a friend who came back from UT Austin for labor day weekend.
First off, the place is actually called Qin’s Noodle Kitchen. This restaurant is a self-​order type of restaurant. You look at the menu first and whenever you’re ready, you go to the front counter to place your order. Soups are complimentary. They include: Hot and sour soup, and egg drop– seaweed soup. We also had to get the food utensils, drinks, and bowls ourselves. (They’re right next to the counter where you place your order)
My friend and I ordered the Mongolian beef (large bowl of noodles topped with beef, did not say it came with noodles) the curry chicken, and the eggplant. The food was all okay, did not have a truly authentic Chinese taste. The curry chicken and Mongolian beef noodles were too bland, not enough salt. The curry chicken had mostly vegetables (carrots, celery, onions) containing only a couple pieces of chicken. The eggplant tasted the best out of the 3 entrees we had ordered. The eggplant was sauteed skin on and had the right amount of flavor unlike the other 2 entrees we ordered.
Overall, the quality of the food is okay. Price of the food is about $ 8 per entrée, not too expensive. The portions of the food are pretty generous. Will I come here again? Maybe, based on what I ordered, don’t really mind not coming back. Will probably come back to try other entrees.

very very casual and bustling. looked and felt very authentic. i was the only Caucasian guy there the entire 1 hour i spent there enjoying every single dish i had. Heard only Chinese spoken at all other tables and among hosts. some very adventurous items on the menu, which i promise i will try next time (pig feet, tripe and blood!:). excellent value for the experience to boot. oh, yes, it is the same place as Qins Noodle Kitchen.

It has been awhile since we’ve visited this place but the food is as great as I remembered! A family owned business, when you walk in you are greeted with a smile and an invitation to please sit. Menus are brought to you promptly and practically everything on there is really good! Now this is the style of cooking that I am used to. My parents cooked this way and being born and raised in the USA I’ve never lost my taste for the truly authentic chinese style of cooking! This is one of the best in Bellaire’s Chinatown IMHO! I would come here for the hot and sour soup alone! All you can have! You can’t beat that! For under $ 25 you can feed a family of 4 with leftovers to spare. The dishes are generous in size and the bottomless soup alone is worth it alone! The seating area is very comfortable and there is a TV in the background where you can practice your mandarin listening skills as it is always tuned to Chinese TV! Check this place out! Friendly folks who serve up some delicious Chinese food at an incredible price!

*** SAME PLACE AS QINS NOODLE KITCHEN ***
Complementary egg drop and sour spicy (Idk what it’s called in English) soups.
I believe if you order more than $ 50 worth of food, you get a free appetizer. This is a great family restaurant.
Some recommended orders:
Gao Li Cai (taiwanese cabbage?)
Niu Rou zhuan bing (some beef wrap. C4 on the menu) is to DIE FOR. Seriously.
Gan bian si ji dou (green beans)
The spinach that’s not actually spinach… It’s like related to spinach and marinated in crack or something.
This is Grandmother approved. Need I say more?

This place is still my favorite niu rou jian bing in Houston, which keeps me coming back time and time again. As others have mentioned, it’s somewhat hard to find this place as the sign on the building/​brick says Qin’s Noodle, but the restaurant is actually called Happy Valley.
You order at the counter, and menus can be obtained at the front of the restaurant. There is self-​serve soup, usually hot&sour soup or some seaweed/​tofu concoction — nothing spectacular, but it’s complementary so who doesn’t like that :) Hot tea and water is also self serve at the front of the restaurant. The place has a very similar setup as Yummy Kitchen (for those who are familiar with that place down the street). Some of my favorites are the ma po tofu, nian gao (it’s stir fried rice cake with mustard greens), and the sweet&sour fish fillets. But the one dish that I always end up ordering is the niu rou jian bing — basically it’s beef wrapped in a green onion pancake (see pic). Other places sell this around Chinatown, but this is my favorite so far. Not as good as what I’ve had in Taiwan or some other places in California, but still tasty. Prices are very reasonable too.
Recommend this place for anyone looking for decent Chinese food at cheap price.
TLDR;
— decent food on the cheap
— niu rou jian bing!

What the heck is up with the salt??? You trying to kill us??? Holy cow we ordered kyung pao chicken and some pork rice noodle. SALTY!!! I have high blood pressure too. YIKES!!! Is this Chinese food supposed to be like this?

A little confusing, I’m guessing Happy Valley is also Qin’s Noodle House? I’m only rating their beef noodle soup, it’s one of the better ones I’ve tried. Soup is very tasty and beef shank is tender. I would prefer thicker noodle than the spaghetti noodle though. Nevertheless still tasty after 20 mins drive home!

An awful experience.
We ordered wonton soup, kidneys, special tofu soup.
The wonton soup was so salty that it was not even edible. My husband ate the tiny wontons but It was way too salty that he could no longer eat it. tasted bitter because of the salt! When we told the waitress, she said she would make us a new one. When taking the bowl away, a customer knocked the bowl out of her hand and a lot of the noodle and soup spilled out. When she brought the soup back, it was NOT a new bowl. She saved the noodles and put no wontons in it because we ate the wontons before we complained. She went on to saying she put new broth in the noodles. Ok, fine. i tasted the broth and it was just msg water. I did not touch that dish after words.
The kidneys were blanched and served with scallion and chilies loaded with oil. We end up draining the oil before we ate it.
The special tofu soup was also awful. The pork in the soup was extremely fat. We just picked them all out. On tasting a piece of pork, it tasted old, rough and hard. The broth was loaded with msg. I just drained the brother.
There were two types of complimentary soup. The egg and seaweed soup was loaded with msg. The hot and sour soup was edible.
The dining area was small and overly crowded and noisy. Although this can be overlooked if the food was better.
We paid $ 27 total for the bill and left unsatisfied and felt sick.

This place is another one of my favorites in Chinatown! I love eating here. Yummy and cheap food! They also have free soup!
I love to get the fried fish, stone pot seafood soup, Taiwanese cabbage, house special fried rice, tofu and meat and fried fish (not sure all these specific names).

Dinner on saturday evening. Crowded little hole in the wall. Ordered sesame chicken, stir fried spinach and shrimp fried rice. Large portions but the sesame chicken took ages to arrive. By mistake they also gave us steamed rice which we did not order.
— Free soups were ok not great.
— Sesame chicken was nice and crisp.
— fried rice strictly ok
— spinach nothing great
Overall ok experience. Enough food left over for tomorrow’s lunch:)

I was not impressed with double names. So I’ve heard about owner changed and kept the old name «Qin’s Noodles» on the building. But the only valid name «Happy Valley» on the door.
I kind of like the self-​serve style. But being a newbie, I sat there like a dummy. The staff repeatedly shouting, «Place your order up front» in Chinese. I thought that was so unprofessional. Why not just put a sign somewhere. Then, there are free soups: lighter color with seaweed and darker color. They tasted about same, bland. After a while, I realized why the prices were so cheap — the self-​serve station. Get your own water, iced tea, to go box, utensil and soup bowl, but no napkins.
When I ordered a sesame noodle, I was forewarned about being meatless. I also ordered my favorite side dish «fuqifeipian» — spicy sliced meat. The flavors were tasty and just right. Noodle had a good volume, but side dish didn’t.
I like this hole-​in-​the-​wall eatery with hometown-​friendly staff and quick service. They had a steady flow of customers. However, I rated it «just ok» because my overall experience was average and there were rooms for improvement. Although this was a pure self-​serve, I left tips anyway. Because it will be one place I don’t mind coming back.

This place is awesome. my family wanted to try the new Sichuan place next door but that place needed waiting and our little one is about to tear the place up if she doesn’t eat soon (yeah 2 year olds are like that sometimes.)
we saw Happy Valley and the prices looked good so we said why not let’s give it a try.
at first we didn’t know the place that well so poor us sitting there for almost 10 minutes and wondering how come no one came to help us and then we realized that we need to go up front to order duh! We got the Ma Poo tofu (which is off the chain, my wife loves it and the portions are HUGE). We also ordered Mayi Shang Shu and it tasted very good as well.
Overall, this place is very cheap and the food is excellent, we are definitely coming back.

This place might be a little hard to find since their sign above the store says Qin’s Noodle House but on the door it says Happy Valley.
Love this place for their cheap cheap cheap food! Everything comes with free soup that you can get yourself, there’s usually 2 kinds: sweet&sour egg drop and a lighter simple vegetable soup. You order at the register and then seat yourself. Don’t forget to grab water or tea and your utensils.
My favorite dish here is their house special sauce noodle. One order can last me 3 meals! Thats how big the portions are! Their beef noodle soup is delicious too.

Hey… this IS the same place as Qin’s Noodle… right?! Ehhhh I guess just look for my review at Qin’s Noodle Kitchen! =P

Happy Valley isn’t an American-​Chinese establishment… it’s an authentic Chinese restaurant and you don’t come here to order General Tso’s chicken or fried rice… so don’t. What you do want to try is of course, the free soup (the egg drop was a nice appetizer… and hey, it’s free), the dried tofu and pork dish (the sauce on this dish was AMAZING. seriously, I don’t even like dried tofu but it was so freakin’ good!), and their giaaaant clay pot soups. Huge portions for super cheap prices, polite service, self-​service, and free soup. What’s not to like?

Easy way to find this place is to look directly underneath the Qin’s Noodle Kitchen sign.
Prices are definitely cheap but there’s a reason for it. The combo rice or noodle meals are pretty skimpy on the protein. To make up for it, they’ll pile on the carbs to fill you up on. For example, I ordered the pork noodle soup which came with two paper thin BBQ pork slices and a teaspoon of the ground pork mix. All in a large phở sized bowl. The other entrees though are more evenly balanced.
My favorites are the green onion pancakes and pancake rolls with beef. They’ve got a nice flaky crust and chewy interior. Other menu items are okay but not great.

I really enjoyed Happy Valley. Their food tastes great, and the prices are extremely cheap. We ordered the Chicken Broccoli for $ 6.49, and the House Special Sauce Noodle Soup with Seafood $ 7.00. The Noodle Soup had 3 huge shrimp in it, and heaping amount of seafood. They brought it out very quick, and the seafood tasted very fresh. The Chicken Broccoli was also made quickly, and it has so much chicken and broccoli that I had plenty for dinner. You could not prepare these dishes yourself for the amount they charge for them. Everything is self serve including the utensils, water and napkins. They offer free complementary soup to eat while you are waiting for you food. This day they offered complementary Hot and Sour, and Seafood soup. You have to go to the counter to order, and after this experience I realize why this place is constantly packed for dinner. The people that work there are friendly, and professional. I give this place 5 stars and you should definitely try it.
Thanks!

Very delicious, inexpensive spot in the new Chinatown complex. I would say the average price of dishes are about 6 dollars.
Get the smocked duck under chef specials, it is infused with flavor. Any of the fish fillets give large quantities and go well with rice. They also give complimentary tea and soup. There is no tipping required.

Located 3 stores down from Banana Leaf. The sign on top of the restaurant reads Qin’s Noodle Kitchen… however, the name on the door reads Happy Valley. (I’m pretty sure this is because the owner was too cheap to change it out). It is a very asian restaurant (you’re supposed to order at the front counter) i’ve seen people walk about because they weren’t greeted by a hostess to be sat down. However, don’t be intimidated! There is english on the menus… and they can speak some english.
I really like this place because it reminds me of Taiwan. The main focus is on noodle dishes (I like the fried sauce noodles), but you can order meat and vegetable dishes as well. A really good dish is stir-​fried rice cake. I also like this dish called fried steam roll.
A perk is you get free soup (spicy sour)…and the water is flavored with lemon =) haha