The word "noodle" comes from the Latin “nodellus,” meaning "little knot,” maybe because of the way they get all twisted up in the bowl. But noodles have come to mean many things to many people, most of them pretty cheerful. For those who can’t get enough of the stuff, here's a guide to the many incarnations found around town.
Japanese Noodles
In Japan, noodles are a way of life, and a great place to get a taste around these parts is Yabu. Both soba (the thin buckwheat noodles) and udon (the chubby wheat flour noodles) are served, either hot or cold, and amendments include egg, thinly sliced Japanese mushrooms, chicken and onion, and tempura crispies (which are so good, they should be released as a breakfast cereal). Extra broth is brought to the table in cube-like pitchers called yuto. The cold noodles are served atop a bamboo platform, with a small bowl filled with soy broth kept nearby. The drill is to lift the noodles into the bowl, then slurp them out of the broth. It's considered wholly appropriate to make lots of noise while doing so. And do wear washable clothing – this can be a sloppy process.
Chinese Noodles
Though no one is entirely sure of where and when noodles first saw the light of day, we do know for a fact that in 1279 Marco Polo brought a to-go order of noodles from China to Venice. Noodles are part and parcel of any proper meal at a Chinese restaurant, and Mandarin Deli (in Northridge and Monterey Park) is no exception. About a third of the menu is dedicated to noodle dishes, many of which are served in soup – pickled vegetable and shredded pork noodle soup, the special square flour noodle soup and the noodle with pork corn starch soup. Then there is the unutterably simple cold noodles with spicy chili, a big platter of thick, rich-tasting noodles tossed with the sort of chili sauce that opens your eyes – wide.
Thai Noodles
There's hardly a Thai restaurant that doesn't serve a wide assortment of noodles dishes, usually including the crispy creation called mee krob. The textbook rendition is the one served at East Hollywood's always-crowded Jitlada, which manages to make one of the few mee krobs in town that isn’t so sugary it could double as dessert. Oddly, mee krob is very hard to find in the restaurants of Bangkok, where restaurateurs point out that it's too complex a dish to make in a restaurant. Be that as it may, the mee krob served at Jitlada is a perfectly balanced creation, very crispy, with little flavor explosions in every bite of lime juice, vinegar, garlic, shrimp, pork and chicken. It's another clean-plate dish, which never survives long enough to to be eaten at home the next day.
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Vietnamese Noodles
Written on the menu at Pho Café: "Bu Bang, a famous Vietnamese writer and also a food connoisseur, ranked pho as the best Vietnamese dish...To appreciate pho requires more than just loving to eat it...A good bowl of pho should stimulate all your senses...A good bowl of pho is one you can smell before you see it." And Pho Café should know, as folks pack the place to indulge in bowls of noodles in soup, flavored variously with steak, flank steak, tendon, brisket and tripe, with bowls of bean sprouts, fresh mint and coriander, lime slices and chili slivers along with soy sauce, vinegar and two types of hot sauce. These are DIY noodles, flavored to your personal needs.
Jewish Noodles
Outside the dairy restaurants of New York's Lower East Side, it's doubtful that you'll find a lot of lokshen kugel (noodle pudding), kasha varnishkes (noodles with kasha barley) or any of the other many filling noodle dishes that are part of the basic canon of Jewish cooking. You will, however, find a chicken noodle soup of excellent breeding at the venerable Nate 'n Al's in Beverly Hills, a deli that's managed to withstand the stings and arrows of all sorts of rude competition, and still emerge from it all smelling like, if not a rose, at least a pastrami. Instead of the clear, amber liquid found at most delis, the version here is almost opaque, a soup that looks like it was made with a real chicken, by someone's mother, with plenty of soft and fragrant noodles floating within. It's Jewish penicillin, Beverly Hills soul food.
Breakfast Noodles
Perhaps the most popular breakfast dish, or at least the most memorable, at Hugo's is a dish called Pasta Mama. It's a ridiculously filling scramble of eggs, spaghetti, garlic, parsley, sautéed onions and Parmesan cheese – sort of a pasta carbonara turned inside out. Add bacon, chicken sausage and scallions, and you've got Pasta Papa; make it with avocado and tomato, and you've got Pasta Emilia. What we have here are noodles as comfort food, eaten at the beginning of the day, before you even know you needed comforting.
– Merrill Shindler