On days when the thermometer spikes (and, let's face it, in LA, that's pretty frequently) a steaming hot bowl of ramen is out in favor of something cold. Noodles, perhaps.
"Summer in Asian countries, and any sort of semi-tropical area of the world, gets pretty muggy and humid," Darren Sayphraraj, the chef and owner of We Have Noodles in Silver Lake, tells Citizine. "Ingredients and cooking are adaptive to that."
Darren Sayphraraj, image courtesy of We Have Noodles
For Sayphraraj, cold noodles are his favorite. "I like Korean nyangmeon, mulnyangmeon or any variation on that," he began. "I like cold soba and cold udon in the summer or for lunch. I like things that are acidic and cold and have texture."
Since opening in 2017, We Have Noodles has always kept some variant of cold noodles on the menu—the green noodle being one of the more popular.
"The green noodle started off as a joke when we wanted to make a vegan dish with a bunch of green things in it," Sayphraraj said. "Its based off of a dry wonton style noodle that you find in South East Asia. Soupless noodles usually are dressed with a soy sauce base and then you put whatever accouterment on top. Sun Noodle (where we get some of our noodles from) has a great spinach noodle. We serve everything chilled and dress the noodles in a soy, black vinegar, and garlic oil dressing. Seasonal vegetables make up the garnish: kale, snow peas, garlic chives, etc. Whatever is in season. We put fried broccolini and shallots on top for more texture and also to make it less healthy sounding. It toes the line between healthy and fun to eat. It is one of our most popular dishes."
If the green noodle sounds like a complete invention, Sayphraraj makes sure to design his dishes with a footing in tradition. "Our clientele can be unfamiliar with the idea of a cold noodle dish," Sayphraraj concludes. "Our job is to bridge the gap somehow. We use ingredients from a wide range while still maintaining the original idea or dish that it comes from. It may look and sound different, but it is based on tradition."
We asked Sayphraraj where he goes for cold noodles around town:
Lacha Somtum
Thai Town, $$
Darren Sayphraraj: This one is for very adventurous eaters. So, Lacha Somtum does a lot of things well, but you go there for its namesake: somtom, which is green papaya salad. A cold noodle dish that I find myself going back to is their tum sua, which is essentially a green papaya salad with rice noodles mixed in it. The rice noodles soak up the sauce and add a nice slippery texture. You can get it Laotian style with crab paste and fermented or raw crab.
They also have an off-the-menu somtum platter that comes with all sorts of noodles and cured meats with a mound of papaya salad in the middle. Great for sharing.
Pho Ga Bac Ninh
Monterey Park, $
DS: This next dish would fall into the dry noodle category. Bun cha is a cold rice vermicelli dish that's served with a fish dipping sauce (nouc cham). Typically made with pork, this is the dish Obama and Tony Bourdain (R.I.P.) ate in Hanoi. You can get a bun at any Vietnamese restaurant in LA, but this is one restaurant that serves it deconstructed—like Obama and Bourdain ate.
This is also one of the O.G. pho ga (chicken pho) places in the SGV that specializes in the dish. The word on the street is that a bunch of the aunties that worked here branched off to open their own pho ga shops. You can see the similarities in a lot of other pho ga spots, but this is the OG plug. I usually just get a pho ga and a plate of chicken offal on the side.
Yu Chun
Multiple locations, $$
DS: This is perhaps the standard when it comes to Nyangmeon in LA. There are, again, a lot of other spots that perhaps are better and serve other variations. This is a good standby. You can get either mulnyangmeon (in a broth) or bimib nyangmeon (in a gochujang sauce), and they use an arrowroot starch noodle that is chewy and bouncy. You can get it with beef or, if you are feeling adventurous, with preserved skate. What is nice about Yu Chun is that they have a big hot beverage station that is self-serve, and thats filled with a milky beef broth. You can fill up mugs of it as an accompaniment to your noodle.
Kim Ky
Multiple locations, $
DS: Another spot for dry noodles. Anything on the menu can be had dry. Kim Ky specializes in Chiu Chow-style noodles, which are from southern China. There are a lot of things on the menu but when in doubt at a place like this go for the house special or the #1. It will usually consist of pork products, squid, imitation crab. The broth, which you can ask for dry, is a pork broth usually flavored with a dried seafood such as squid or salted fish, preserved cabbage and white pepper. The default is rice noodles, but you can get egg noodles or yin-yang which is both noodles.
Yabu
Sawtelle, $$
DS: This is a soba spot. The owner runs Sushi House down the street, as well. They make their soba in-house, and have a great lunch special where you can choose what kind of soba (or udon) and get a sushi or chirashi set. If you pay in cash you get a 10% discount.
I like to order the cold soba with mountain yam (yamakake). The mountain yam is slimy and helps the sauce adhere to the noodles. You dip the noodles into a tsuyu, which is a dashi and soy sauce mixture. This is a light dish that is all about the noodles. It is easy to fuck something this simple up, but Yabu does it the way it is supposed to be. You should slurp these noodles without fear of being loud. If you are not slurping then you are weird and a fuckboy (as with any noodles on this list, or anywhere for that matter). I think [you should slurp] even more so for soba or anything that you dip, as it is the most efficient way to get the sauce and noodles as it is supposed to be.
Image courtesy of We Have Noodles
Header image courtesy of We Have Noodles