Chow mein with hand-shaven noodles
Dish: Chow Mein
Place: La Bu La, Bellevue
Price: $10.95
On the plate: Hand-shaven noodles with chicken, green onions, carrot, cabbage, and bean sprouts.
Supporting cast/What to do: Just eat and enjoy.
Noodling around: You can order this dish with hand-shaven noodles or egg noodles, and a choice of chicken, pork, beef, seafood, or vegetables. You definitely want the hand-shaven noodles. In the kitchen, the chef holds a block of dough on his arm, and with a free hand, uses a knife to expertly flick strips of dough into boiling water.
Making hand-shaven noodles
Boiling is where the noodle-cooking ends if you order the Cheng Du Hand-Shaven Noodle dish. But for the chow mein, the boiled noodles are brought over to a wok station to be stir-fried with the rest of the ingredients, along with garlic, regular and dark soy sauce, and some oyster sauce. The result: slightly chewy noodles with just a bit of smokiness from the wok.
If you want more: As the Chow Mein is a very mild dish, you’re almost obligated to balance that with something spicy at this Sichuanese restaurant. I strongly suggest you “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” by selecting something from the more interesting “Wild Side” menu. Items like Young Bamboo Shoots in Chili Oil ($8.95) or Fiery Cucumber Pieces ($7.95) will give you something fresh and fiery, but if you’ve got the appetite, try a platter of Chong Qing Hot Chicken ($14.95) for some addictively numbing and spicy (and a little sweet) deep-fried chicken morsels, plated with a scattering of blistered green beans.
Chong Qinq Chicken
Tender Fish Morsels in Fiery Broth of Two Kinds of Chili Peppers (I enjoy all of these fiery fish dishes)
My favorite dish at La Bu La: The Other Parts of a Pig (with pork blood, intestines, etc.)
Be aware/beware: Here’s the backstory of La Bu La, as I recently reported for Eater Seattle:
Bamboo Garden, the beloved Chinese restaurant previously located next to an adult toy store in a Bellevue strip mall, quietly reemerged as La Bu La on April 25. Just feet from its former site, La Bu La is in the new Soma Towers development, where it trades the darkness of its previous cave-like locale for a light-filled dining experience, thanks to floor-to-window ceilings. The ambience is contemporary but with classic Chinese touches, such as the antique chests scattered throughout the dining area, as well as the soldier statues towering above the bar.
The new bar (photo courtesy of La Bu La)
Translating to “spicy not spicy” (as in, “How do you want your food?”), La Bu La opened with a new sit-down bar replete with expanded beer, wine, and cocktail options, and the same trust food offerings from Bamboo Garden. While part of the menu deliberately appeals to diners who don’t want to dabble in the typical heat of Sichuan cooking, true fans will want to turn to the popular “Walk on the Wild Side” menu, which basically takes the typically inaccessible Chinese language menu and makes it available—and appealing—to non-Chinese clientele. Favorites include “Fire Swimming Fish,” “The Other Parts of a Pig,” and the restaurant’s most popular dish: “Chong Qing Hot Chicken” that’s both numbing and spicy (ma la, in Chinese).
Gorgeous new digs (photo courtesy of La Bu La)
Bamboo Garden was featured as part of Eater Seattle’s Chinese map back in September—a high honor since Sichuanese is the Chinese cuisine which Seattle does best. With improved atmosphere and service (as well as private dining options) added to its previously popular menu, La Bu La is even more of a destination-worthy drive from Seattle for Chinese food. And that’s not even mentioning the xiao long bao (soup dumplings) coming to the menu in the weeks ahead…
