Noodlosophy in San Mateo is a choose your own adventure style noodle shop – – choice of
- Ramen, thin noodles cranked out of the machine, or wide what they call “biang biang” 扯面 (technically hand ripped noodles)
- soup or dry
- toppings
- level of spiciness
To my knowledge they are the only restaurant on the peninsula that has wide ripped noodle, so I went with the wide noodles with cumin lamb, at the highest level of spice.
The noodle ripper is stationed right next to the cash register, so it is a nice opportunity to observe these things made. Each piece of dough is premeasured into a little brick that looks like a slab of tofu. He rolls each brick into a flat rectangle, does two horizontal slashes with a plastic scraper, Pulls the sheet outward with both arms while flapping his hands up and down, and then rips the 3 1-inchwide noodles apart from each other.
On the plus side, the noodles had a consistent height and were evenly cooked. Although I found them either too thick or dense compared to, say, the ones at terra-cotta warrior, making these can’t be easy and I prefer these to the stiff or undercooked ones I’ve had at Liang’s.
The cumin lamb, even though I ordered it at the highest spice level, could’ve used a jolt of cumin seeds and was neither as fiery nor as fragrant as I was hoping. I did like the presence of onions and jalapeños. Lamb pieces were gristley and some pieces tough from overcooking.
