Finding the top noodles in area
Amy Drew: Try some of my personal favorite places to get your carbs on National Noodle Day.
My mother, a fervent acolyte of the new-agey health and fitness uprising of the 1970s, was not much of a cook. In short, no kids wanted to grab snacks at my house, where bulgur wheat and steamed vegetables and bread that looked like horse feed pressed into a block was the norm and Devil Dogs only an occasional indulgence.
Mom was, however, quite skilled at delivering cobbled-together meals chock full of comfort that
I’d eat — often directly from the pot — off my TV tray. One of the best? Egg noodles with salt, pepper, a little butter and farmer cheese.
I haven’t had it in literal decades. And I may have just inspired myself to make my own farmer cheese, which back then we’d get straight from the deli counter: a fresh, wet block swathed in butcher’s paper — so delicious! But I still think about eating it whenever I am sick. Or sad.
“Noodles have always been considered comfort food,” says Quan Van of Kai Asian Street Fare, whose noodles are among my personal favorites in the 407. “We seem to have created a good mix of noodle dishes for everyone to try.”
This is fact, friends. And you’ll find two such picks below, alongside a couple of others in my hot nood roundup for National Noodle Day (Oct. 6).
Roast Pork Chow Fun, Kai Kai Dim Sum
I would start this Noodle Day celebration by saying I’m noodled out, what with all the heavy-duty “research” this story required, but since my pants would explode into fire at the sheer audacity of that hideous, hideous lie, I’ll be honest.
I’ve had a lot of carbs. I want to take a nap.
And if that were permissible at 1:06 p.m. on a workday, I might do so on a pillowy pile of Jerry Lau’s chow fun. You’ll find
several noodle dishes amid the delicacies of Kai Kai
Dim Sum, located inside the iFresh Supermarket on Colonial, but these are the only noodles he makes from scratch. It’s love and attention that shows.
The dish couldn’t be simpler, really. Starchy, spongy, sticky, soft — the noodles are steamed, stirfried and served to order, tossed with onions and bean sprouts and topped with a generous helping of Lau’s exemplary, rough-cleaved char siu — so incredibly fresh, so wonderfully fortifying.
Kai Kai Dim Sum: 2415 E. Colonial Drive in Orlando; 321-946-1380 or facebook.com/pages/category/ Dim-Sum-Restaurant/KaiKai-Dim-Sum
The snap of the onions and sprouts, the caramelized edges of the pork, give contrast to the noodles’ satisfying chew. I like mine spicy. It’s not a particularly pretty dish, but when a few of those noodles cling together in one thick stack — like a tiny crepe cake quivering on the end of your fork — it’s just perfection, in both flavor and comfort.
My family didn’t make chow fun, but I grew up eating it because the only food my dad ever wanted to go out for was Chinese. Upon leaving home, I didn’t see it on menus very often. When I met Lau, whose culinary career began in New York City, I joyfully reclaimed my childhood favorite and learned that it is enduring.
Kai Kai is my comforting, Cantonese taste of home.
Seafood Ho Fun & Uni Pasta, Kai Asian Street Fare
These two specials come and go on the menu at this Winter Park eatery — a stronghold for both wings and noods. Fans keep a close eye on Kai’s social media accounts awaiting their return. The following is cult-level.
The soft, satisfying seafood ho fun (Ho fun, hor fun and chow fun, by the way, are the same thing — a flat, wide rice noodle. The evolution of the dish’s name is “something that happened with its pronunciation over the years in America,” Kai Kai’s Jerry Lau explains) is stir-fried with a fine, crumbly mixture of beef and pork, along with squid and shrimp. Dried seafood and ham in the garlicky house-made XO sauce in which it is tossed adds a level of flavor that’s accurately described in that shamelessly lustful foodie noise that Homer Simpson makes.
What else is in it? Van is secretive. Sake? Dashi? Bonito flakes? I don’t know for sure. But it’s fishy. And delishy. And speaking of, have you ever had uni (sea urchin)?
It’s a divisive delicacy, often a love-it or hate-it prospect, and so a fun one to discuss. Uni itself is delicate. It all but melts in your mouth. And so, too, does it meld beautifully into sauces like Van’s, which is loaded with creamy, briny goodness that tastes like a billion buttery calories you’ll deem worth the experience.
I will venture that this dish is one of the softest entries into uni one could find, a beautiful ambassador to a Japanese delight where descriptors like “low tide” and “ocean bottom” are ascribed with both adoration and revulsion, depending on whom you ask.
I might catch flack for this, but as I tasted and contemplated, the following thought materialized so naturally, I can’t leave it out: The best fettuccine Alfredo in the world secretly wishes it were Kai’s uni pasta.
Kai Asian Street Fare: 1555 State Road 436 in Winter Park; 407-821-3430 or kaistreetfare.com/
Hitchcock Presents, Orlando Meats
The chefs at Orlando Meats get a lot of attention for butchery, burgers and the briny larder from which pickled-just-about-anything often shows itself on the menu. What some folks might not know is that they’ve always got a few noodle dishes going on, and that all the noods are made fresh in-house.
This is a new one — biang biang noodles with duck confit, Brussel sprouts and chili — about a week into its run and its quirky “Meatsian” name belies its simplicity. Also, it’s super hot. I loved it, but it’s something you should be aware of in advance.
“Biang biang noodle is a rustic, hand-pulled noodle originally popularized as farmer food in the Shaanxi province of China,” says Chef Eliot Hillis. “The texture variance afforded by its uneven surface and depth really make it something special. The finesse required to pull biang biang is in knowing what the dough can handle and when.”
It can handle a lot apparently. My dish — which seemed to overflow with noodles — was something of an optical illusion. There were only three, each roughly 65 inches long.
Orlando Meats: 728 Virginia Drive in Orlando; 407-598-0700 or orlandomeats.com/
Dan Dan Noodles, Taipei 101
I have a dan dan recipe I’ve been making for years that’s based on one from chef Joanne Chang, owner of Boston’s Flour Bakery. Friends love it and ask for it all the time. And this unassuming little UCF-area Taiwanese joint, presently take-out only, however, forced me to level it up.
Why? Their dainty noods come loaded with minced pork and the bright-green crunch of bok choy, but the real gamechanger is the powerful superfine shred of fresh garlic. Mixed together, it’s a flavor explosion that honestly made me wonder why they don’t put garlic in peanut brittle, so I Googled it.
And just like that, farmer cheese dropped to No. 2 on my to-make list.
I’ll get cooking and see where it takes me. Meantime, you all get to noodlin’.
Taipei 101: 3050 Alafaya Trail in Oviedo; 407-542-1528
Want to reach out? Find me on Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. Join the conversation at the Orlando Sentinel’s new Facebook forum, Let’s Eat, Orlando.