I tend to think the volume of noodle business the shop does is an important determining factor on the freshness. If a shop has a small noodle section on the menu and doesn’t move a lot of noodles, I am skeptical about the hand-made claim in the first place and probably don’t particularly trust the freshness. On the flip side, I don’t particularly mind if there isn’t a person making noodles on site if the place moves a ton of noodles.
Supermarket noodles are sub-optimal. They have preservatives and so by definition they aren’t the freshest.
Forgive me for my Trumpish self-congratulation, but this video finally made a big splash almost a year after I posted it here. MAKING NOODLES GREAT AGAIN
I remember another noodle-making video from the early-90’s TV show, “The Nineties”. It showed the chef starting out with a ball of dough, stretching it out again and again, but once the noodles were formed the video went in reverse, until there was just a ball of dough again. I played it many times looking for the reversal point. Sadly, I can’t find it online, and I have a videocassette copy but nothing to play it on.
I went to their original location 2-3 years ago and found the broth to be outstanding in two noodle dishes (one was a pickled something with pork IIRC). The rice noodles were advertised as their specialty, so I skipped the wheat noodles, which, at least at the time, were not hand-made/pulled according to someone I spoke to.
