It’s a fact of life that different people have different tastes, and that fact makes itself clear in the literal sense when it comes to the discussion of food. Though you may avoid tomatoes like the plague, maybe I’m the kind of person who puts ketchup on everything I eat—but that isn’t the kind of difference that sticks out to epicures. Ever been to a restaurant where you can’t stand the way they prepare your favorite dish? A feeling of revulsion always accompanies the startling revelation that not all meals bearing the same name are created equal; but you are the pickiest of connoisseurs who will only taste the very best of everything (how privileged!). So what’s the fastest way to determine the quality of a restaurant relative to other institutions if there is so much variety in the product offered? Well, in China, you can walk into just about any old place on the street and you can bet that they will have hong shao niu rou mien on the menu: braised beef noodle soup. The Chinese definitely love their noodles. Fortunately for me, the signature dish of the spendthrift’s meal also happens to be my favorite food. The obvious line of play, therefore, was to spend one week eating out in China and order the noodle soup from every place I went to.
I learned more about what constitutes a superior noodle soup in that week than I could have ever hoped to doing things in a normal way (and at the same time, I developed something of a contempt for those restaurants that failed to get a passing grade for their noodles—what does that say about the rest of their menu?). Somewhat surprising, establishments that boasted their specialty in noodles in the name or that served only noodles didn’t always trump regular places that just happened to offer them. Then again, the universality of braised beef noodle soup in particular must encourage all to try their best on that dish, which makes the supposition I began this journey on all the more valid.
Braised beef noodle soup will always contain a fairly consistent amount of parsley and noodles alongside variable amounts of the actual beef, Chinese cabbage, and spices within a heady soy-sauce broth. So what factors stand out the most when evaluating its quality? I would have to say the sweetness of the noodles and its juxtaposition with the flavor of the beef. The noodles should have some amount of sugar, but if it gets to the point where it’s as sweet as udon, the broth gains this sickly flavor that ends up mildly nausea-inducing. Because the soup is always very hearty and spicy (the spicier the better, really, but that’s definitely more subjective than the following point), how the beef is prepared is also critical. Often, I found that the noodles were not sweetened, but the beef for whatever reason was—a very jarring combination with the other elements that is not delectable at all. In extreme cases I was forced to manually remove all the beef before consuming the noodle soup. I don’t understand why some restaurants do this to their meat and I can’t imagine anyone prefers it that way to a more traditional manner of preparation involving salt and blending more with the broth. I cannot emphasize this more; any restaurant that makes overly sweet braised beef noodle soup is probably exceedingly mediocre.
If I’m sounding saturnine about what I claim to be my favorite dish, that may be because even I get sick of something after eating it every day for a week. But honestly, a soup with a healthy dose of spice, small and chewy chunks of beef, and plenty of noodles with just the right amount of soy sauce is something to be cherished. If someone offered me an iteration that fits that bill, I’d gladly eat it for them.