[Eat It]: SH'nese Clam Noodles
By Christopher St Cavish, May 15th, 2009 | In Dining
Eat It is a new regular feature that cuts to the core of a given restaurant's menu, highlighting a specialty, favorite, or otherwise good thing to eat.
Lan Gui Fang sells luxury noodles. It's their specialty, the noodle. The menu tops out somewhere just below 200rmb. But the shop itself is a humble space, a split-level storefront crowded with large round tables. At lunch, there's a whiff of aggression. The waitresses are too busy rushing around with steaming bowls to care about helping you find a seat. The tables are communal. You pick a mark and stand behind them, sending rude messages with your mind until they hurry up and leave. Look for single, silent diners. They're easier to intimidate. A long unblinking stare at the back of the head helps.
Once you sit down, you want the clam noodles with garlic sauce (geli baimian). (Unless you don't, in which case there are about fifty other choices. Cashier has the hidden English menu.) They're simple, 38rmb, and nothing to look at. But they're great. Tiny chopped clams and copious amounts of garlic blanket and completely obscure the bed of soft noodles. If not for the mince of ginger and a splash of yellow wine, it'd be able to slip into an Italian restaurant undetected. It's already got the parsley. With the subtle local touches, Lan Gui Fang's clam noodles become something more.
The clam noodles aren't the most popular variety at Lan Gui Fang, though. That award probably belongs to some of the fish-broth varieties, or the vegetarian one with shitake mushrooms, bok choy, globes of fried tofu puffs, and a thickened, viscous soy sauce (pictured). The single most popular is, by far, their scrawny fried pork chop (zha zhupai). Pick yourself up one. It's the thing to do. After being marinated in fermented tofu, it's funky. Tastes a little bit like lipstick or wax. You might not like it. But the pork chop isn't about you. It's a key, a code, a message to the greater masses and the grandmotherly cashier that you know their deal. You get it. Splash a bit of the Shanghai Worcestershire Sauce onto your chop. They like that. And then get back to your clam noodles.
Lan Gui Fang, 417 Loushanguan Lu, near Xianxia Lu. Map & Taxi-Prinout
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swissair, May 15th, 2009
Nice but rather too much Ajinomoto and get dehydrated after meal!!!Not my choice of healthy food!
Beast of the East, Jul 8th, 2009
Went for the Clam noodles as suggested (had the fish noodles last time and loved it). Tasty, but not blow your head off flavours, and I confess I did not fall in love with them. Also, your picture has a lot more clam sauce than mine. My clam and garlic sauce definitely did not merit the description "blanket"...My dinner comnpanion swears by the plain noodles with sesame sauce, claims its like eating peanut butter with noodles. In fact, even the fish noodles were disappointing...the result of having been spoilt by the wondrous fish noodles at FU1039. Having said that, spotted a RMB 128 bowl of fish noodles...wild yellow fish apparently. Maybe, just maybe I'll go for them.
On the other hand, there was one thing that had me addicted like a crack addict: the fried pork chop. They had some fermented magic going on there, and with the "Shanghai Worcestershire Sauce" (leave the Lea & Perrins at home!!), I was wolfing them down by the dozen. Ok, I had two. You seriously prefer the clams over the noodles?
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