the largest group of international students at Cal<\/a>. Xuejian Han, co-owner of Li\u2019s Knife Cut Noodle, said opening near campus was a \u201cdeeply personal\u201d decision. \u201c(I) used to be an international student, and like many others, experienced a quiet but persistent homesickness,\u201d he said. He wanted to create a space \u201cwhere people, especially Chinese students, could reconnect with a familiar taste and a sense of belonging.\u201d<\/p>\nI ate like a Cal student and sampled all three restaurants. My baseline order was the standard beef noodle soup. Some stood out for the quality and mouthfeel of the noodles, while others shined when it came to the seasoning of the broth.<\/p>\n
Located opposite of campus, Impression of LanZhou shined for its noodle texture, less so for its overall flavor. You can watch as cooks pull flat bands from glossy dough as if they\u2019re about to break out into rhythmic gymnastics. The noodle options range in size from the thin \u201cangel hair\u201d variety to the wide, flat kind, favored for its chewiness. In a beef noodle soup, the latter was pleasing to chew, but the broth was thin and bland; even after I doctored the bowl with chili oil, black pepper and powdered chile, it lacked depth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ox9 Lanzhou Handpulled Noodles\u00a0<\/p>\n
Established in 2017, Ox9 has a half dozen Bay Area locations, consisting of both restaurants and mall kiosks. I\u2019ve eaten at Ox9 in the past, but my most recent trip proved to be the tastiest. Two kitchen windows reveal staff deftly making noodles \u2014 blink and you\u2019ll miss the moment they make strings materialize out of a wad of dough. Compared to Impression, the beef noodle soup at Ox9 was richer in beef flavor and spice. I opted for the belt noodles, the widest and most popular of the bunch, which were flowy, supple, ideal for picking up broth \u2014 and slurping.\u00a0<\/p>\n
2404 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley. 510-570-2139<\/p>\n
My favorite of the bunch was Li\u2019s Hand Cut Noodles. Its thicker noodles are made by slicing off cords from a ball of dough directly into boiling water. The scene is populated by students, face-deep in bowls, only coming up for air as they slurp noodles or check their phones. The broth of the beef noodle soup here had the most body, color and richness. The slippery, knife-cut noodles were distinguished by their bounce and chewiness, almost pulsing between your teeth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m envious of UC Berkeley students. Ox9 Lanzhou Handpulled Noodles fired the first shot, opening in October just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[764,413,143,145,144,412],"class_list":["post-234004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley","tag-food","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-restaurants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}