Yang’s Beef Noodles, the Bay Area’s only Guizhou style restaurant, recently opened in Sama Uyghur’s original, smaller, location. The owner, a Guizhou native whose family is originally from northern China, said this was her first restaurant and I admire her willingness to focus— the thing to get here, well, really the only thing besides a few appetizers, is the beef noodle soup.
The soup comes either with brisket, tendon, beef flank, honeycomb tripe, or some combo thereof. Noodles are long round rice noodles by default, wheat available too (or rice plate). I got the combo bowl, and the soup was beefy from start to finish and had no MSG. A thin film of chili oil was on the top, and pickled cabbage and pickled mustard, added upon assembly in the kitchen, gave the soup a sour edge and possibly the main source of sodium. The owner said they will eventually ramp up the spiciness to approximate how it would be eaten in Guizhou, and hope to add more items to the menu.
Meats in the soup were all excellent. My favorite was the tendon, darkened and flavorful from braising, and that happy texture a few notches harder than gelatin.
As apps, they have four cold vegetable salads (black fungus, cucumber, bean curd stick, or seaweed; each $3.99) and two cold meats, similar to what’s common at non-Guizhou restaurants. Pink-hued complementary pickled daikon was very good—- I wish I’d taken them up on their offer more seconds.
