Description
Malan Noodle is a fast-food restaurant from another galaxy, a blank, gleaming space festooned with posters bearing its abstracted red-bowl logo and marked every few feet with signs reading “Warning: Hot Soup.” A few seconds after you order your noodles from a checklist, a guy in the open kitchen picks up a hank of dough, bangs it against the counter a couple of times, then whips it through the air in a frenzied yet precise manner, stretching it to arm's length and beyond, doubling and redoubling it until it almost magically falls into a skein of noodles. You can get your hand-pulled noodles fine as angel's hair or thick as telephone cords, flat or round, or even, should you request it, triangular. Most people order these hand-thrown noodles submerged in the allegedly Lanzhou-style beef soup, a tan broth hiding a few slices of brisket. But one of the best dishes here, translated as something like “special spicy chicken,” is an Islamic specialty from the northwestern mountains near Afghanistan, a hacked-up bird rubbed with a salty paste of fermented beans and fresh chiles, sauteed with leeks, onions and a few dozen cloves of simmered garlic, and tossed with odd, extra-wide noodles that have a disconcerting resemblance to universal fan belts. And the serving is enormous, easily enough to feed four hungry people with leftovers for lunch the next day.
