Everyday Noodles

On Friday night, DB~ and I checked out Everyday Noodles in Squirrel Hill.  It's a Chinese noodle house that is known for their soup dumplings.  Amazingly, it is a dumpling with soup inside of different types of broth (we got pork and crab).  Even more amazingly, our server told us that these have only been typically available in either New York and California.

I will admit that there is a certain level of skill to proper make these.  But...c'mon.  Nowhere between the 3000+ miles of NYC and LA is there some Chinese person that can craft a soup dumpling?  There's over 1 billion Chinese people...I'm sure one in Kansas City could whip these up, right?

We were seated at a communal table with a family of four from O'Hara -- a wife, husband, 5th grade girl, and 2nd grade girl.  Each of the girls was given their own ball of dough to "make" their own noodles.  It certainly kept them entertained.  Watching these two girls (the older one was using chopsticks) attack their noodle bowls at dinner was really cool.  There's no way when I was 10 would my parents have taken me to this type of place and no way would I have enjoyed it.  Times they are a'changin'.

The great part about Everyday Noodles is that not only is it relatively cheap -- we got 3 things for $25 and could have just done two, probably -- but it is fast AND good.  We were seated, ordered, and finished our meals within 45 minutes.

Aside from the aforementioned dumplings, which are the picture at the top of the post, we ordered Five Spice Eggplant.  We were a little stumped how they made it:

We guessed the filleted off the eggplant skin, leaving just a little "meat" and then soaked them in soy sauce and five spice mix (star anise, chinese cinnamon, cloves, pepper, and fennel) to get them pliable.  Then they rolled them up and chopped them into sushi-esque bite size portions.  They were served cold.  The soy-five spice sauce covering them was delicious.

We also ordered a bowl of Dan Tzu Noodles with Minced Pork.  There was a little broth at the bottom that you stirred into the noodles and sprouts mix.  I avoided the brown egg, because I don't like eggs and it was brown.  I loved the noodle dish, but it wasn't DB~'s favorite.  She preferred the eggplant and dumplings.

I can't stress enough how awesome the dumplings were.  When you bit into them, the soup just oozed into your mouth.  It was a neat way to combine two great parts of Chinese cuisine.  I'm still not convinced that there's not a Chinese person in Colorado making soup dumplings right now.