Sometimes my living room feels like the Earth’s core, the walls seething with a relentless heat that penetrates my soul. This summer has been especially brutal. I have not consulted any actual weather data to make this conclusion, just the number of times a week I feel like all the droplets of sweat clinging to my clothing are merging into a pool of hot lava I can’t escape. I find solace in the air-conditioned homes of sympathetic friends, and in the icy cold booths of Bistro Na’s restaurant in Temple City.
It’s a restaurant I frequent for the crispy shrimp, fried and lacquered in a sticky glaze made from sweet hawthorn. And for the spicy chicken, the gelatinous slivers swimming in chile oil good enough to sip.
Thanks to a recent recommendation from deputy Food editor Betty Hallock, you’ll now find an order of the Beijing Yanji cold noodles on my table.
It’s a tangle of buckwheat noodles in an ice-cold broth, with sliced beef shank, beef tongue, kimchi, watermelon, boiled egg, shredded cucumber, pickled radish and chile sauce all arranged over the top like a color wheel.
This dish is influenced by Korean naengmyeon, cold noodles with a history that dates to the Joseon Dynasty in Korea (1392-1910) and includes myriad preparations. There’s mul naengmyeon in a chilled broth. Hoe naengmyeon with raw fish and chile pepper dressing or yeolmu naengmyeon served with fermented baby radish.
The preparations vary throughout the country, with distinct styles in Pyongyang and Hamhung among others.
A city in northeast China’s Jilin province, Yanji is located near the North Korean border and serves as a sort of gastronomic crossroads, where the culinary landscape bears the imprints of its neighbor.
“What makes Yanji cold noodles so distinctive is their chewy texture and refreshing taste,” says Bistro Na’s executive chef Tian Yong.
The chef grew up eating Yanji noodles as a boy in Xidan, Beijing. He lived on a hutong, or narrow alleyway near the original Huatian Yanji Restaurant, a place that specialized in Yanji noodles.
On his walks home from school, he would catch a whiff of vinegar-tinged broth wafting from the restaurant and find himself wandering in for a bowl of noodles.
“Decades later, I still crave that exact bite,” he says.
Now, the noodles are featured on Yong’s seasonal menu, a collection of more than a dozen dishes that shift about four times a year.
To make his broth, Yong simmers water, beef and beef bones with apples, pears, carrots, ginger, garlic, a variety of Mexican chile peppers, scallions, soy sauce and yellow soybean paste for three hours. Then he steeps more fruits and vegetables in the broth for a full day before serving.
My server instructs me to first take a few sips of the broth, then dig into the noodles.
There’s an initial shock of refreshment as the cool liquid hits my lips. The broth is suspended in perfect equilibrium, just sweet enough, with a meaty backbone and a slight tang.
Instead of the more traditional apple, Yong uses watermelon to garnish his noodles. The squares of fruit, already nearly entirely composed of water, act like little sponges, each piece glutted with the tangy broth.
The noodles are long and springy, with an earthy, nutty flavor that only intensifies as you make your way through the bowl. The bits of hot pink pickled radish are nice and briny. The ribbons of cabbage kimchi hot and sour. Every bite delivers a striking array of textures and flavors.
It’s a dish at odds with the formality of the Bistro Na’s dining room, ever regal with its ornate carved wood and crimson trim. But it’s a bowl of noodles that begs to be slurped, the sound cutting through the refined atmosphere and the broth soiling my stark white tabletop. The combination of the icy broth and the fully functioning air conditioner is simply exquisite. Though I suspect I’ll feel the urge to keep slurping after the summer temperatures dip.
The noodles, and the rest of Yong’s seasonal menu, will be available through November. The stir-fried beef with naan, laced with cumin and crowded with deep-fried strips of bread, is also not to be missed.
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