Sha-lin Noodle House

Occasion: Post-figure-skating-practice and pre-women's hockey lunch
Location: Sha-lin Noodle House on W Broadway between Cambie and Ash
Edibles: stir-fried cutting noodles with tofu and vegetables; xa jiang dragging noodles; potstickers, half pork, half vegetarian (with a cabbage and carrot filling, like a cooked coleslaw); sautéed bok choi with garlic

Musings: Love this place!! Fresh noodles are among my favorite things to eat, and they do a really good variety of styles (and corresponding textures) at Sha-lin.

Cutting Noodles: The chef takes a block of refrigerated dough and uses a special triangular knife-tool thing to shave off noodles, shooting them straight into a pot of boiling water. Sort of like how you make spätzle, but with a much firmer, denser dough and much larger noodles. I really like the heft of these noodles, and they're excellent for stir-frying. The oily, fried noodles can be slippery little suckers - tricky to eat with chopsticks.

Dragging Noodles: The chef REALLY develops some gluten by repeatedly stretching the dough, and then twisting it back on itself. Sort of like how pulled taffy is made. The noodles themselves are made by doubling up one fat rope of dough, stretching it out (thus reducing the thickness by half), and repeating until the strands are about the thinness of spaghetti. The trick to this method - not that I've mastered it or anything - is getting a really good, elastic texture of dough, or the strands will break before they're thin enough. I like these noodles with a ground meat and bean sauce known as xa jiang. (Sha-lin does a nice sauce, but my mom's version with Chinese pickles and diced shiitake mushrooms is truly spectacular.)

Pushing Noodles (which we did not have): The chef rolls and folds up a sheet of dough, and cuts the noodles by hand. Similar to the soba method, but the chef cuts away from himself instead of slicing, hence the name.

The potstickers were a real hit with Karen and Josie. Sha-lin makes theirs with a yeasty, risen dough, and develops a nice crispy, golden brown crust on the bottoms. The quality of the fillings could be improved, but it's hard to complain when you're in the middle of chowing down on a piping hot plateful.

If memory serves, four dishes plus two beers apiece came out to under $25 a person. Good stuff!

[Note: This will be the only other Vancouver post. I also took Karen and Josie to old favorites Sun Sui Wah and Tapastree, and met up with Emily at Adonia to pass off some extra hockey tickets, but you can check out my old reviews using the links. Back to NYC for the next post.]