Slurp City: Where to eat Chinese noodles in the East Bay.

Good piece by East Bay Express’ Luke Tsai, includes a quote from yours truly.

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Good list. I also like Vien Huong in Oakland Chinatown, which I believe serves Chiuchow style Chinese noodles. Favorites are the beef stew ho fun which has a spicier broth than the usual Cantonese version, and the chow jew ho fun. Have been going there since I was a kid. SF has a place that has similar items - Hai Ky Mi Gia in the Tenderloin, but I don’t think it’s as good as Vien Huong.

Luke may have had a problem classifying the noodles at Vien Huong as regional Chinese, since Chaozhou (and Hakka) are what I would call Chinese diaspora cuisines, particularly as he was even loathe to classify Taiwanese as Chinese.

Does Vien Huong have better duck legs than Hai Ky Mi Gia? :wink:

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Ah ok, are these versions of noodle soups not originally from the Chiuchow/Chaozhou area? I’m unfamiliar with Chiuchow cuisine.

Hai Ky Mi Gia’s duck leg noodles are good and I don’t think there’s anything like that really in Vien Huong. I do prefer VH’s beef stew ho fun and chow jew noodles though.

What do you recommend at Vien Huong if I want soup on the side? I haven’t been able to navigate the menu and gave up rolling the dice.

With the exception of Guilin Rice Noodle, I generally prefer the Vietnamese noodles in Chinatown. I did recently try the handmade noodles at China Village and thought they were excellent.

I’d like to find a place that makes Taiwanese rice noodle soup, particularly for breakfast. It was a weekly staple in preschool in Taiwan and my favorite dish at school.

Is the soup you are talking about of Taiwanese origin, or an import?

I’m thinking here of one of my all-time favorite food-centric movies, My Rice Noodle Shop, where a group of refugees from Guilin recall their past lives over bowls of rice noodles at a shop in Taipei run by Do Do Cheng.

I don’t know for sure, but I asked the mom of one of my Taiwanese friends, and she nodded and knew exactly which dish I was referring to, and then responded, “That’s a dish you cook at home, not at a restaurant.” If it is an import, she wasn’t aware of it.

When I get a craving, these instant noodles usually do the trick:

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The only thing I’ve gotten there with the soup on the side is the chow jew noodles dry, which are good but I usually order them in the soup. I think you can also get it with a mix of egg noodles and rice noodles.

Nice contribution, Souperman!

I haven’t been to Vien Huong in many years so I guess it’s time to go back.

i ordered these and did not realize it is $20 for a single package! I expected a box of packages for that price. Oh well.

Oh no! Return them. They are under a dollar each at the local Chinese grocer.
Amazon had the best picture that I could find on the internet which is why I posted the link, but I have never bought them through Amazon. I assumed that it would be for a box of 20 or so. Having bought a lot of other items through Amazon, they have a good return policy.

Is that what you received? It must be an error, since Amazon shows a 30-pack for $52.80 and a 5-pack for $13.99 of what seems to be the same item.

yes that is why i assumed it would be a package of 10 or 20. i assumed wrong. for that price i can order a serving of stir fried hakka noodles with clams from Hakkasan.