So I ate a lot of stuff in China. ALOOOOT of stuff. One of the first I remember being introduced to was near where I worked. What was referred to as the rest of the foreigners as, ‘the Muslim noodle shop’. Which was most likely because the people who worked there, were actually from a Muslim part of China, the women even wore headscarves and such.
These are pretty much exactly the noodles in question, nabbed the pic from a thread of deliciousness. Can’t think why I didn’t take photo’s of this… it was early enough in my stay after all. So anyway. Lanzhou Niu Rou La Mian. I always just ordered it as Niu rou la mian, and they knew. Though they did this hand cut style noodle, and a hand pulled noodle, more like the west is used to I spose.
This is how I remember the hand pulled noodle dish pretty much, grabbed image from here.
I liked both. In the savoury, light, slightly spicy broth, which came in two sizes, you could order the regular(8 yuan I think), which was big enough for anyone, or the large(10 yuan, I *think*), which was too big for me. There was like 2 yuan(20p) in price difference though. And this place had a vast menu, I always had one of 4 things though. This, the hand pulled noodle version of the dish above, tudou niu rou gaijo fan(potato and beef on top of rice) or tudou niu rou gaijo mian(potato and beef on top of noodles). I also had the green onion pancakes there too, greasy yet satisfying lol. Always a great sidedish, or snack. I preferred the doughier kind you got on the street, and in other shops though. Their pancakes were flakier. I like doughy things.
Why is this a safe food for me?
I can’t pinpoint why it’s a safe food for me. But I never had any problems eating it, unlike times I noticed niggles from certain veggies and very VERY spicy food. (I mean insanely hot here, cos I like my food pretty spicy if it’s gonna be) The noodle soups were almost just that, noodles in soup, with a little garnish and whatever meat you ordered, be it beef or lamb or whatever. The tudou niu rou gaijo fan/mian had peppers in too, which I usually left, just eating the rice/noodles, potato and beef. I did eat some of the pepper, as it was flavoured with whatever delicious sauce they cooked stuff in, China can do that. Make you eat things you don’t like just because of yummy sauces. They’re trixy like that…
Overall it’s just simple cheap, hearty food at very good prices. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that. And it’s all freshly made. And you could even see the men in the front of shop making the noodles for crying out loud!!
The shop in this post has the exact same sign as the one I used to go to, so it MUST be a chain! Like the pacman noodle joint… which I will mention later on.
And another post with a very similar wall menu, shame the image is so small though 😦
fafcai 