I would think that if uneven cooking were a problem, chefs in China would have adopted a different method by now! Perhaps the continual adding of cold shaved noodles is a mitigating factor, retarding a full boil until all noodles are added. Or, perhaps the chefs “skim” the cooked noodles as they rise to the top. You have to assume they know hat they are doing.
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Any video I’ve seen, Hand cut, knife-shaved, and other Chinese wheat noodles (SFBA/Norcal) , has shown a big pot, no skimming, and a quick technique so I don’t think the temperature of the water changes much— a full serving takes around as long as it takes me to submerge a pound of spaghetti into a pot.
I’ve witnessed the same at a MY China. It’s not the same type of noodle, but my inexperienced hands at making Then thuk noodles aka Amdo noodle squares aka Tang fan 汤饭 aka Mian pian 面片 require me to use small batches otherwise it’s sog city.
Have you ever had a bad serving of knife-shaved noodles in China?
No, but I have had bad ones here where each noodle was roughly the same shape and size, but some noodles were overcooked and others had uncooked dough
Hi, I recently went to Noodle Time on the San Antonio / ECR junction where Los Altos, MV, and PA intersect. I had only one dish, but I was pretty blown away. All the reviews say it’s proper hunan, and the place smells different than most other restaurants I’ve been to. It seems to have a long line at lunch.
No real takeout menus, so I snapped photos at the front door. THere were two more pages to the menu - this is just highlights.
Do tell what that dish is. We have a dedicated discussion for the restaurant too:
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I made lots of little changes to the Original Post
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Northeastern Chinese Guan Dong House has closed
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Shang Cafe (Fremont) opens a Sichuan restaurant in the former Shao Mountain space. Some Chongqing style noodle dishes.
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I’ve deleted Apple Green Bistro from the Northeastern section— as far as I can tell, they’ve ditched their northeastern specialties and now are more Sichuan focussed. Since January (I got sidetracked), they’ve have Langya potatoes (街邊瑯琊土豆), toothpick lamb, and a few other dishes that have only recently become available in the Bay Area. A few other, mostly Sichuan, dishes that jumped out at me (Milpitas’s Chile Garden has some of these too) :
Golden spicy soup with lamb 金湯酸辣肥羊
Sliced beef golden soup 金湯肥牛
Numbed and hot duck head 麻辣鴨頭
More spicy water boiled pungent fish (pola yu) (with noodles) 水煮潑辣魚
Mapo sea cucumber 麻婆海參
Lamb giblets soup 羊雜湯
Whole Fish Spicy Broth (green sichuan peppercorn) 青花椒沸騰魚
Healthy Lamb Soup with Goji Berries and Mountain Yam 淮山紅棗枸杞羊排湯 (Yam red dates goji berry lamb chops)
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Taste of Shandong Alice Chinese Bistro is reported closed according to Yelp. There have been false alarms here before, but this may be for good-- they are not accepting orders via Uber Eats and their liquor license expires this month.
That’s another jinxed location. Since the turn of the Century, 420 Judah has been:
Shanghai Restaurant (大上海飯店)
Dragonfly
Dash Cafe
Sapporo Ramen
Alice Chinese Bistro
Shandong Alice Chinese Bistro
As “Great” Shanghai, it had excellent cheap Shanghai homestyle fare. When the owner took it over, it hat been a nondescript Cantonese Restaurant, and, as is often the case, he added its menu on top of the existing dishes, which included some chop suey dishes. As a joke, I asked the server to describe one to me. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll ask the chef.” When she came back, she said “He doesn’t know either. I guess we don’t have it.”
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Miao’s Deli (Fremont) Liang pi and Rou jia mo, no wide hand-ripped noodles. Also owns Cupertino’s Roasted Coffee Bean
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Curry’s N More (Sunnyvale) Desi Chinese
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Tasty Pot has a new location in Daly City
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@Souperman , – Alice has been replaced by an Izakaya place. The saga continues.
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Jiuding Flavor Restaurant replaces the Milpitas location of Beijing Duck House. Menu has Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles, some Beijing specialties (holdover from previous restaurant, chef too?), lots of Sichuan
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Lan’s Garden (Taiwanese) has closed
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Golden Garlic @ 1530 S De Anza Blvd San Jose, CA 95129 has closed
- Jiuding Flavor Restaurant is closed.
- Smile House Cafe on Taraval is closed (not on the list, but FYI)
Openings
- Xian Kitchen (Milpitas) reopened
- Shanghai Mama (Newark) opens
- Chan’s Kitchen (Newark) Taiwanese opened in March
- Little Taipei Cafe (Fremont) overlooked
- Added East San Jose and SF location of Tasty Pot (Taiwanese hot pot)
Closures
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HIT Milpitas is closed
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Village house in San Francisco temporarily closed
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Little sheep in Union city temporarily closed
Categorizations
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I added a section called Shenzhen 深圳市 or Hong Kong style chicken pot, and listed two restaurants, one based on the restaurant’s info, another based on a Chihuo write-up. Lemme know if something has been miscategorized.
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I added Hanoi Chicken Noodle (San Leandro) as Vietnamese Chaozhao. Is that accurate?
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Boiling Hot Pot (SF Outer Richmond, Fremont) and the Pots (Inner sunset) I added to the hodgepodge hot pot category
Upcoming
- Z & Y Bistro ( SF Chinatown) hand-pulled noodles, “rice, yakitori, beer and wine”
Bai Xing Jia Hunan Fusion in San Jose is flying the Hunan banner. Their name says fusion in English but only Hunan in Chinese.
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- Shihlin Taiwan Street Snacks just opened
- Root, a Jiangxi style restaurant in South SF closed. Only remaining Jiangxi restaurant is Noodles Fresh (El Cerrito), whose menu has a few Jiangxi items.
How should I characterize Bing’s Dumplings 麵香 and Din Ding Dumpling House?
Both places specialize in xiao long bao
, steamed rather than boiled
Dumplings, and hand-pulled noodles. Their menus (see Yelp links above) aren’t Shanghainese and I’m not noticing that many Taiwanese items, though I get a Din Tai Fung vibe from both. Any insights? Would you call this “xiao chi”, and if so, is it possible to associate that with a region or are we in pan-regional territory?
I just contacted the owner of DD, but wanted to see others weigh in on both.
Lanzhou hand pulled noodles (beef) opening next week around the 20th according to someone in the still-to-be-finished store. Two doors down from Noodle Hut in Milpitas.
There is a chain with the same name in China.
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Lanzhou Niu Rou La Mian is not so much a chain as a product description, like “Philadelphia Cheese Seatk.” There are in fact small chains like Muslim Boutique Beef Noodles:: and large conferacies like “兰州正宗牛肉拉面” “Authentic Lanzhou Hand-Pulled Beef Noodles” that dominates Shanghai, and whose owners are mostly from Qinghai that use similar menus and signage but no central management. They do, in fact, operate at the pleasure of sort of protective cartel, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Treaty…
Their Chinese name has a ‘Zhong Wah’ preceding the lanzhou niu rou mian. ‘Zhong wah’ just means Chinese. There happens to be a chain with that name in China. But we’ll see whether its related, since the name is still very generic.
Apologies, I have never seen the name. Is it in Guangzhou? Why the “China” qualifier? Maybe it’s pushback against Shanghai’s venerable “California Beef Noodle King USA” 
