liangs village

Jen, Jan’s friend from way back, served the Taiwanese beef noodle soup into the little upside-down cone-shaped bowls. A piece of beef, a pile of the hand-pulled wheat noodles, ladles of delicious steaming broth, and an offer for a couple of drops of the “super spicy chili crunch”, optional, but recommended. And then, almost forgot, a chopsticks full or two of the sour cabbage topping. These are Jen’s home flavors, and she’s very excited to be having a whole weekend of Asian foods. There are not very many options in Santa Rosa, where Jen and Davey live, and a weekend trip down to visit Jan and Jeff is an opportunity for festive eating. Jen and Jan, they’ve got big plans this weekend, and we’re along for the ride! Davey was wearing his sunglasses indoors to keep his cool about all of this, until Jen reminded-asked him if he had brought his other pair.

We ate all the things family style, prepackaged smashed cucumber salad and seaweed salad, fresh made little pork dumplings served in just enough broth. Jeff’s order of chicken sesame noodles, mixed and shared out, trying not to eat too many carbs. Jan’s wide, hand-pulled dan dan noodles, tossed and dressed extra, jazzing them up a bit. They seemed kind of flavorless no matter what we did, until we added the leftover broth from the bottom of the dumplings dish. Jen loved how we could do that, mix the Taiwanese flavors together to make something new, they all went together. The first bowl of Jen’s double order of beef noodle soup arrived and she served it out. A debate sprang up about the quality of the noodles, Jeff critiquing delicately, noting seasoning and internal mixture, and Ali and I puzzling over if we had been served the same noodles despite us watching them all come from the same bowl. There is another hand-pulled noodle place that we should try sometime; sounds good to me. Jen served out the other bowl of noodle soup, with beef tendon this time, and it’s all so good again. The broth is amazing. Oh, and a pancake.

We try to get to the bottom of some internet topic, jackrabbit fights or some such random thing. Jen and Jan, sitting next to each other, catch up about something in a smaller, quieter conversation, briefly. Davey, his meter getting about full on Asian flavors, declines the second bowl of noodle soup, and we’re reaching about the end of ordering, we had done it just right, ordering a thing here and thing there, and then ordering some more until it was enough. After the bill, we regrouped in front of the restaurant for a group photo. Initially, there had been lots of open tables, now there was a small queue waiting for tables to free up. The group didn’t want to disperse, we stayed on chatting about height and osteoporosis, spurned by platform shoes and aging, and discussed the likelihood of truth in old wives’ tales about sneezes. When we parted, it was unclear if Davey really would be stopping at Burger King on the way home for a bit more non-Asian flavors, but his remark at the time that he hadn’t actually eaten Burger King in years made it seem unlikely that that particular foodery would be his actual choice.

jg

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