Shanghai Daily news

In the city's latest noodle eatery, the pasta is in all shapes, sizes and lengths great lengths - to match the ages of the customers, writes Michelle Zhang

Chef Guo Yongxian, from Shanxi Province, makes yigen mian in the new “You Mian Zi” noodle restaurant. This type of noodle can be as long as 100 meters. — Shen Kai

The people behind the bar in this restaurant are not expert at mixing drinks but sure know everything there is to know about how to make noodles. That's what diners will find at "You Mian Zi," a newly opened noodle restaurant which boasts the city's first "noodle bar."
The bar area - in the center of the restaurant - is in fact a large open kitchen featuring different pots and steamers, in which a group of chefs are busy preparing a variety of interesting noodles. All the noodle chefs come from North China's Shanxi Province, the region that ranks first in noodle-making in the country.
Shao Bing, 21, has been making noodles for four years. The young chef is willing to show off his skills to curious watching customers.
He stands in front of a big pot of boiling water, with a piece of noodle dough in one hand and a special shaving knife in the other. He shaves off slices of the dough and drops them into the pot beyond quickly and accurately. The slices, all in a similar shape and size, fly into the boiling water and dance on the bubbles. Such noodles are named after the tool used to make them - daoxiao mian, or knife-pared noodles.
The restaurant offers a total of six types of noodles. Besides daoxiao mian, there are also jiandao mian (scissor noodles), tijian mian (noodles picked out by chopsticks) and xiaojiu pian (noodles in the shape of short, square pieces).
Indeed, the process of making noodles is a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds.
Noodles have been a culinary tradition in China for thousands of years and it is the practice for Chinese people to have noodles for birthdays because the long noodles symbolize longevity. The restaurant is making a name for itself by making the characteristic yigen mian, which can be a single noodle as long as 100 meters.
"Tell us your age and we can make a noodle to suit that age," Shao says. "Once we made a 70-meter-long noodle for an old man who was celebrating his 70th birthday in our restaurant."
He says the dough used to make the very long noodles has been specially prepared and is a carefully mixed combination of flour, water and egg white. It has to be placed in the bean oil for several hours before stretched into a long and thin strip.
The ingredients to make these noodles are the same except for one kind called kao laolao, which is made of coarse food grain from Shanxi. It doesn't look as white as others but is very nutritional and is served with three different sauces.
The restaurant owner, Mike Shiao, is an American-Chinese originally from Shanxi. Like every Shanxi native, he loves eating noodles and was greatly impressed by the noodle chefs at a restaurant during a trip in Beijing. He then decided to open a similar "noodle bar" in Shanghai.
Customers can order any variety of noodles they wish and there are more than 10 kinds of sauces to go with them. The prices range from 15 yuan (US$1.85) to 288 yuan.

Address: 971 Dingxi Rd
Tel: 5118-0158, 5118-0177