Explore China Through Regional Noodles at LA Restaurants

At Sea Harbor, try the Assorted Seafood Fried Crispy Noodles. The crunchy egg noodles are mixed with seafood freshly plucked from chilled tank waters such as squid, fish, shrimp and octopus - each nicely soft on the inside yet firm on the outside. Seafood is a focus in Cantonese cooking since Guangdong faces the Pacific. In contrast to other styles, the light transparent sauces of Cantonese food, especially of this dish, let the ingredients speak for themselves.

Guangxi, the home of Guilin with green karst mountains of sharp peaks and ragged edges, is known not so much for its distinct flavor, but for borrowing elements from neighboring regions. Still, Guangxi cuisine is famous for its rice noodles. At Guilin Noodle, the Ultimate Noodle is sprinkled with a layer of fried red pepper to give it a punchy spice, while still light enough to let the ingredients do the talking. Although spicy, the sauces are relatively restrained compared with Hunan and Sichuan cooking. The smooth, slightly slippery rice noodles are slathered with handpicked prime Australian beef, bacon and homemade pickled string beans. A shower of crunchy peanuts adds texture.

The most famous noodles coming out of Henan, a landlocked dusty province in central China, is the Lamb Noodle Soup. Located in Monterey Park, Liang’s Kitchen serves an excellent version of this dish. Meaty yet tender layers of lamb are placed over thick and chewy hand-made noodles. Simmered lamb bones permeate the soup base. Mixed in are a forest of black fungus, sliced tofu and parsley in an otherwise protein-packed noodle soup.

Try the spiciest of Chinese dishes at Hunan Mao. The intense humidity of Hunan promotes the liberal usage of spices meant to restore equilibrium in the body. Hunan cuisine tends to make your eyes water and squint. The extremely sour and tangy Soybean Rice Noodle is no exception - mixed with peanuts, green beans, red pepper and green onions in this otherwise soupy dish swirled with sesame oil, vinegar and chopped pepper sauce. The rice noodles are slippery and soft, contrasted by the hard crunch of the peanuts.

Wheat noodles prevail in northern China. Perhaps nowhere else in China are noodles done with more precision and complexity than in Shanxi, where more than 1,000 types of pastas can be found. Home to Shanxi pastas, Laoxi Noodle House serves Wife’s Special Noodles, which are smooth and round flour strands topped with pork belly, tomato, egg and ground pork. The noodles have a firm chewy texture. The sauce coats each strand nicely, bathing each with a tangy saltiness.

At this authentic restaurant in San Gabriel, the Shanghai Thick Noodle perfectly melds saltiness with sweetness through a mixture of soy sauce and sugar, a typical combination used in Shanghai cuisine. This dish has a freshly seared aroma that comes from being perfectly flash fried in a pan, sealing in the natural flavors. The veggies that accompany the noodles are bright green and crisp, which contrasts nicely with the bouncy texture of the noodles.

Along with Cantonese, Sichuan is the most famous Chinese cuisine. It’s also one of the spiciest because of the heat-dispelling peppers used in a province that’s encircled by mountains, trapping the fog and heat-inducing humidity. The spices are meant to restore equilibrium. The Dan Dan Noodles at Meizhou Dongpo does that perfectly, with flour strands slathered with spicy pork, and dusted with green scallions and sprouts. These noodles are also swimming in a soupy pool of pepper-packed chili oil to give them a punchy kick.

Located in far western China, Xinjiang is a cross-section of East and Central Asia, blending in Chinese cooking with Middle Eastern spices. Most of the population there is Muslim, so expect the food at Omar, a Xinjiang restaurant, to be served without pork. The Lag Man is exceptional, with thick chewy strands of hand-stretched noodles, doused with meat-flavored soup, chunks of falling-off-the-bone lamb, all simmered with red bell pepper, onion, cabbage, celery and tomato. Hanging on the walls are handcraft and art imported from Xinjiang, such as Arabic calligraphy and carpets depicting camels.

With its picture-perfect greenery, Yunnan in China’s southwest has cuisine that borrows elements from neighboring Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam in the south; as well as from Sichuan and Tibet in the north. Yunnan House Special Rice Noodle Soup is a dish with influences from the south. The slippery rice noodles bathing in broth has a taste and feel almost equivalent to Vietnamese pho, only thicker and chewier. At first, the noodles are encircled with a kaleidoscope of sides like dried tofu, bok choy, pickled veggies, pork, bacon and green onion on a white plate. Later, they are all dipped into a piping hot golden broth of boiled chicken bones.