Description
If you've been to a local Sichuan or Yunnan restaurant, you've had most of the appetizers at JTYH: cold pig's ears and salted cucumbers, shredded-bean curd salad and smoked chicken legs. The waitresses will push you into ordering the pan-fried bao, and they're not wrong. The steamy buns, ringed by a crunchy, translucent fringe of fried batter, become fragrant and crisp-bottomed in the pan, also hot enough to sear craters into the roof of your mouth if you don't wait for them to cool a bit. But you're here for the knife-cut noodles, slithery and plump in lamb broth, or chewier pan-fried with seafood, tossed with bean paste and cucumber in an approximation of chachiang mian or served under a thin omelet sizzled with tree-ear mushrooms, dried lily buds and pork. The noodles are slippery and dense, but rough-textured enough to pick up flavor from spicy beef soup or a splash of vinegar; nicely chewy but heavy enough to be used as sesame-smeared bondage implements should the need arise. Their rusticity might make a Modenese grandmother reach for her rolling pin, but they are as delicious as they are formidable, so good that you may catch yourself nibbling them unsauced if you take an order to go.
