ASIA SPECIALISTS SHANGHAI Zheng Yuan Hui Mian They toss your noodles right.

By CHRISTOPHER ST. CAVISH

Art by CHRISTOPHER ST. CAVISH

Location

247 Wulumuqi Zhong Lu, near Wuyuan Lu, Xuhui district ( 247 , ) Shanghai, China

What to order

Tossed noodles with red­braised beef ( ), garlicky cucumbers ( )

Zheng Yuan is a twenty­four­hour Henan noodle shop that’s in a blind spot for foreigners; it’s working­class and mostly Chinese, and is kind of a shithole. But don’t let that deter you. You are here for noodles: the fresh, wide noodles, similar to tagliatelle, made after a flat piece of dough that looks like a shoe insole is oiled, slapped, pulled into a flowing banner, and then torn into strands as wide as your thumb. In their namesake version —hui mian, or braised noodle—the wide noodles are tossed into a milky lamb­bone broth with quail eggs, wood ear mushrooms, and other friends. That version is restorative and mild, but the great bite of the pulled noodle is lost in the soup. The tossed version is where it’s at. Ordering is going to require at least an attempt at Chinese. The menu is a massive poster on the wall, and the extent of the “service” is a lady at the register shouting your order to the cooks. March up to the black podium, point to the cucumbers through the glass, and then give her your best shot at niu rou ban mian—something like “new roe bon mee­an”—or point to this on your phone: . For lamb, change the “niu” to “yang.” If successful, that’ll be met with “da wan, xiao wan?”—big (da) or small (xiao). If not, pointing works fine. Someone usually has a bowl on the table.

What comes to the table looks plain: a pile of red­braised lamb or beef, a handful of cilantro and sliced leeks, and the noodles. The good stuff is sitting underneath—a big puddle of oily Lao Gan Ma chili sauce with fermented black beans, Zheng Yuan’s dusty spice mix (Chinese black cardamom and ground olive kernels, among others), and fried­scallion oil. (The noodles get a perfunctory toss in the kitchen before they ladle the meat on top, but gravity and viscosity pull everything back down.)

The strategy is simple. Get a big watery beer from the fridge. Give the noodles a good couple of shakes of brown vinegar—which you’ll find on your table, in a grimy plastic bottle—and another spoonful of Zheng Yuan’s chili­and­sesame­seed paste. Eat enough of the meat so that you can toss everything up with your chopsticks without spillover, and start working your way down. The seasonings and oil will start to accumulate and, by the last few bites, you’ll be pulling what’s left of the noodles through a perfect mix of the oils, vinegar, chili, and whatever broken spice pods have fallen to the bottom.

For more China Atlas entries, click here. (http://luckypeach.com/atlas­ category/asia/)

BEEF, CHINA, NOODLES, SHANGHAI