Soviet-style noodles
Anyone who has been to Suzhou knows that Suzhou is full of noodle restaurants, and both time-honored and nameless restaurants are popular. Suzhou people love to eat noodles, will also eat noodles, just look at a ball of fine noodles steady and neat, in the soup slightly exposed like the back of a crucian carp, you can get a glimpse of Suzhou's exquisiteness. It is no exaggeration to say that if you have never eaten Suzhou-style noodles, it is equivalent to a trip to Suzhou for nothing.
In the 2018 pastry competition just held in Suzhou, the judges finally retained the "Suzhou Ten Bowls of Noodles", and each bowl of winning noodles can be called a high-quality noodle. What's more, Su-style noodles successfully set a new world record for "the world's largest variety of toppings in the original soup noodles" - 518 kinds of toppings are neatly arranged in a capital "Su", and the scene is shocking. Even on a daily basis, there is a wall of wooden menus hanging in the time-honored noodle restaurant, and there are a variety of flavors, and those who are new to Suzhou may not know where to start. To quickly choose your favorite flavor, you can simply divide the sinister noodles into red and white soups, and then choose cold toppings or freshly made hot toppings.
If you want to know more about Suzhou-style noodles, they can be divided into five aspects: noodles, dew, soup, pouring, and green.
The first is noodles. Suzhou people love to eat fine noodles, and the fine noodles produced by this machine are not as good as the northern gluten, and Suzhou people don't mind this, mainly focusing on the smooth noodles. The bigger the pot of hot noodles, the clearer the soup, and the more skillful the master's hands, the smoother the noodles will be. If you go to the noodle restaurant at other times, the locals must also eat the freshly caught noodles, which will become "swollen noodles" if they are scalded for too long, and the noodles left over from the previous pot will become "mandarin duck noodles", and the taste is poor. Individuals can ask the master to blanch hard or soft noodles according to their preferences. Noodle restaurants generally also prepare a small amount of wide cold noodles, which can be served after ordering, so there is no need to wait, and there are few people who eat them.
The second is dew. Dew is the small spoonful of sauce added to the noodle soup, which is made up of various spices and spices that determine the taste of a bowl of noodles and is the foundation of a noodle restaurant. Dew is generally made by the boss himself, the recipe is not easy to change, and it is not open to the public, an old Suzhou can easily eat whose noodles this is, legend has it that the dew of Zhu Hongxing, the largest noodle restaurant in Suzhou, contains the juice boiled with eel bones. Now most noodle restaurants only make white soup noodles, such as Zhu Hongxing and Lu Changxing only have white soup noodles, Tongdexing red soup and white soup have them, and Wei Ji Ao stove noodles only make red soup noodles. The red soup of Su-style noodles is very clear, unlike the Tuan'er River in Hangzhou, which is cloudy, but the red soup generally contains a small amount of sugar, and it is best for diners who are not used to the sweet taste to eat white noodle soup.
The third is soup. Dew is the essence of the taste, and the soup is a general dashi, and most of them are not particular. The uniqueness of the famous Fengzhen noodles lies in the noodle soup, which is boiled with pork bones and eel bones, and then brewed with wine, the soup is clear and colorless, mellow and fragrant, and there is rarely a bowl of noodle soup that will be as particular as Fengzhen noodles. Generally, the default amount of soup in the store is moderate, and most of the customers eat according to the store, if the customer wants to have more soup, they should remind the master to "wide soup", and if the soup is less, it is "tight soup". The cold noodles are dry mixed and no soup is served.
The fourth is pouring. The toppings are side dishes, and the ones without side dishes are called Yangchun noodles, and now there are almost no Yangchun noodles in Suzhou, but the toppings are becoming more and more abundant. There are forty or fifty kinds of daily toppings, the simplest is pickles, shredded meat noodles, among which stewed meat is the pride of Suzhou people, the white and thin belly meat is stewed and simmered for at least four hours, the meat shape is intact, but the entrance melts, there is no greasy feeling at all, a piece of silent white meat will be the technique of "stewing, stewing, simmering" of Subang cuisine to the fullest, many people are captured by Su-style noodles because of this piece of meat. Tongdexing's Fengzhen white meat noodles are a combination of excellent soup and dishes, and they deserve to be "the first bowl of noodles in Suzhou", priced at less than 30 yuan, so don't miss it. The seasonal three shrimp noodles are also very expensive, the three shrimps are shrimp, shrimp brains, shrimps, pure manual peeling, a piece costs about 100 yuan. There are also stir-fried vegetarian toppings, poached eggs, shredded cabbage and pork, etc., and there are always more than a dozen kinds of noodle restaurants in general restaurants. The toppings are divided into cold pouring and hot pouring, and the white meat mentioned above is one of the cold pourings, which is made in advance; The hot pouring is made freshly after ordering, and it is recommended that tourists try the popping eel, which is full of local characteristics. If you don't want to dip the toppings in the soup, you have to say "Pour over the bridge" when you hand over the toppings, and the chef will put the toppings on a separate plate.
The fifth is green. Green is a garlic leaf, which is placed in the noodles for spices. Enlarge the garlic more and call it heavy green, and don't put it called free green. The garlic should be freshly cut, and the garlic cut in the morning will not be fragrant in the afternoon. Therefore, some people see that the enlarged garlic bowl is almost empty, and some people ask for another cut, or simply avoid green.
In addition, the Suzhou-style noodle bowl is also very particular, clamp the noodles, twist the wrist slightly, ask not to drag the water, not to splash the soup, shake over to be like the head of Guanyin, into the bowl to show the back of the crucian carp. The delicate, delicate and small mood of Suzhou people are all infiltrated in this bits and pieces. Among them, the traditional Austrian cooktop should be filled with a hot porcelain bowl, but in fact, the cold bowl has no effect, so it is not so strict now.
Understand these aspects, and you will know some ways when you go to Suzhou to eat noodles. If necessary, use the noodle phrase and the kitchen will serve you a satisfying noodle according to the requirements. Occasionally, if you hear someone shouting something like "hard noodles in tight soup are poured over the bridge", the chef should be careful, and the customer who makes a mistake will have to withdraw the noodles.
By the way, Suzhou people call noodles noodles, and what they call "noodles" is something else, which refers to the noodles that resemble Sichuan fish, much like the knife-cut noodles of Shanxi, but it is far less than the knife-cut gluten, which is generally eaten by Suzhou people at home.
Recommended stores
Tongdexing boutique noodle restaurant (Shiquan Street store)
Business district: Shiquan Street/Phoenix Street
Price: 46 yuan
Address: No. 624 Shiquan Street (northwest corner of the intersection of Shiquan Street and Phoenix Street)
Phone: 0512-65165206
Business hours: 07:00-13:00
Qionglin Pavilion Noodle Village (Shuyuan Lane Store)
Business district: South Gate
Price: 26 yuan
Address: No. 20-4, Shuyuan Lane, Renmin Road (near Shiquan Street)
Phone: 0512-65207355
Business hours: 06:00-13:30
Yuxing Ji Noodle House (Performing Arts Center Store)
Business district: Shilu area
Price: 71 yuan
Address: Phase II, Romance Center, No. 523 Jingde Road
Phone: 0512-66321977
Business hours: 07:00-14:30 16:30-20:30
