JBC Rice Noodles and Ramen, Frederick MD

JBC Rice Noodles & Ramen is a brand new spot in Frederick, MD that offers predominantly Chinese, chicken stock based soups with various topping options as well as tom yum, udon, and ramen.

The new, Frederick location sports a clean modern interior like most of the other stores in the chain, and looks like this-

From a quick look, this little chain seemed to have originated from upstate NY and trickles down to Maryland by way of Ohio, but a further look points towards “JBC” being 集北川 aka JiBeiChuan which is a huge Chinese chain that made it to our US soil predominantly around the North Eastern coast, including a location in Germantown, MD. The mystery to me is whether this is a sub-brand or a point towards the large brand of the restaurants since logos used are completely different despite the menus looking very, very similar with the main difference being the food imagery.

From my experience, every major Asian brand takes care of uniformity in their presentation and franchise locations typically receives the base marketing material from the brand itself, so seeing discrepancy makes me wonder as to what’s happening with JBC here. Regardless, my corpo clients sent me over to produce their own set of images and now you can see what I witnessed during my visit.

What can you expect to find at JBC? A modest collection of curated iced tea, unlike most Chinese and Asian restaurants today as a whole –

Then there are a few lighter appetizers that resemble Japanese karaage aka crispy fried chicken typically served with a dipping sauce instead of the flavors being embedded into the crust –

And finally we get to the soups, which are all based on a variety of chicken and vegetable stock that makes an interesting combination with the choice of fish for main protein –

And then addition of ramen and udon offerings as well –

And the taste? While my cohort and I only got to try the sliced fish and the golden chicken broth soups, both tasted light and fresh without any heavy oil or overwhelming richness. This was a nice break from the usual, heavy soups you’d expect to see at most restaurants. Appetizers also looked pretty good, and we sadly never got to see the dry noodle dishes.

Overall, JBC Rice Noodles & Ramen is a nice new spot just enough away from the bustle of downtown Frederick and offers a little bit of everything without the typical, country-specific fare you would find at other places.