Our absolute favorite part of the Las Vegas Taste Tour was the noodle-making lesson with master Chef Li Yu, who started learning the art in his teens–about 27 years ago. He started with a demonstration where the ease of his movements show that for him, it is second nature by now. We, the bloggers, watch mesmerized as we prodded him with questions, none of which disturbed his rhythm one bit. When I say “we”, it was mostly me, because I have tried pulling noodles with my mom at home before and had queued up many questions.  Plus he only spoke in Mandarin.  My homemade noodles always taste good, but my process looks nothing like his seamless martial art motion that quickly creates several bowls of noodles. Then there’s also the shaved noodle technique where a block of dough is shaved into noodles by a sharp blade. It is another quick and deceivingly seamless process. I was dying to know all the secrets.

In our video, I try to outline some key points we learned in the subtitles. We’ll be experimenting at home too, so there will be a follow up post….one day.

We got to try our hand at the two techniques and soon realized how hard it really was.

Lon shaving noodles

The shaved noodle dough feels a bit like Play Doh and it’s hard to get long strands vs. my short slug-like shapes.

shaved noodles

I think I managed a little bit better with the pulled noodles and covered my belly with flour.

Jessica pulling noodles 2

In the future I’ll see if we can re-create this at home.

Jessica's Pulled Noodles Lon and Chef Li Yu

After the lesson we wrapped up our afternoon of noodles.  We got to sit down at Beijing Noodle No. 9 3570 Las Vegas Blvd S, Las Vegas, NV 89109, where Chef Li Yu is the executive chef. The noodle dishes are the specialty here and really worth a trip to eat. Skip the dim sum (really not a Beijing thing) and get two bowls of noodles because you have to have both: the shaved noodles and the pulled. They both have amazing and different textures.  You may not get to make the noodles, but you can watch their master craft in the front window.

Knife Shaved Noodles with Egg Sauce 2

posted by jessica at 03:45 PM Filed under Asian, Chinese, Recipes, Restaurants, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.