Localand•Noodle Comfort 霁在自在面食

Article By Haytham

2F, D29, Glorious Plaza, No.305, Keji Road, Gaoxin District.
科技路305号西安大都荟D29栋2F
(029) 8864 7625
11:00am -9:00pm

Average Price per Person /人均消费: 48RMB

PROS: Everything

CONS: Nothing

Local Xianese people are extremely picky with noodles. This makes any attempt to create fusion or innovated versions of noodles a risky one.

Noodle Comfort is a collection of individual spaces in Glorious Plaza, featuring museums, book stores, bars and various types of restaurants. Ouyang-yingjie, a designer is the owner of this collective space. His taste is shown through the decoration of the restaurant, which appears more like a craft shop with exquisite daily objects on display and for sale. Sadly the menus are not yet translated and appear in Chinese only, but the font and layout have clearly been given a lot of thought. What surprises me is the price range; people are usually under the impression that careful design would mean less performance-price ratio. However, everything in Noodle Comfort is reasonably priced. They do not feature luxurious ingredients, but focus on producing fine versions of daily dishes. The appetiser, lotus root with sesame sauce, is astonishing. The texture of dishes does matter, and lotus root provides a crunchy feel just like celeries, but without any fibres to interfere with your teeth. The presentation is balanced and modest, and the sauce dips half of the lotus root chunks, which allows diners to appreciate both the light scent of lotus flowers and rich tone of sesame oil.

The spring onion noodles are a traditional Shanghai dish. Since war time in 1940s, many Shanghai professors transferred from the Jiaotong University to Xi’an. Growing up in that area, I had the opportunity to enjoy the additional benefits they brought: the standard of Shanghai dishes. The general flavour would be light, as opposed to the heavier tastes in Shaanxi, and the point of the dish is to stress the original flavour of ingredients. Noodle Comfort restaurant has obviously hired professional chefs with such experience, to bring the Shanghai flavour to Xi’an.

Haytham works for MI6, KGB, CIA and Beijing, reviewing for Xianease with every sexy assassin Trump sends by his side.  He can be reached at reviews@xianease.com

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