The Noodle House is another restaurant operating in the luxurious Centria Mall in Riyadh. Despite its name, the Noodle House does not specialize exclusively in noodles. Its multinational Asian menu serves various dishes from Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Thailand.

Noodles are available in a soup form or stir-fried such as “Shanghai Noodles with Beef Tenderloin”, “Stir-fried Chow mien Noodles with BBQ Chicken” and “Singapore Noodles with Chicken and Prawns.” to name but a few.

Incidentally, noodles in Chinese gastronomy have not reached the degree of sophistication that we see with pasta in Italian cooking. But things are changing. Lan Guijun is one of China’s new breed of talented and inventive chefs who are bringing Chinese food to the attention of the world’s food aficionados.

Guijun makes his own noodles by slicing a dense yellow dough using duck eggs and containing no water, into hair-like strands. These noodles are served cold in a tangle of orange, white, yellow, green, and pink with a drizzle of an indescribable spicy, tingly, sweet, sour and nutty sauce. This creative and fabulous starter is part of a spectacular banquet that Guijun prepares for his privileged customers. Although you will not find these multicolored noodles on the Noodle House menu, you can order an interesting “Duck Wonton with Spiced Cherry Sauce”, a sign that things are starting to change and we are witnessing a revival of Chinese cooking.

In his small and exclusive restaurant located in the Sichuan’s capital Chengdu, Lan Guijun serves a Chinese haute-cuisine laced with foreign influences: one of his flagship dishes the “Crucian Carp Soup” for example contains olive oil.

The combination of Duck wonton with a spiced cherry sauce is new in traditional Chinese gastronomy but not in France were many fowl recipes call for cherries. A wonton is a kind of dumpling whose dough is made of flour, egg, water and salt. Its versatile shape is obtained by folding a square wrapper in half and then pulling together two opposite corners. Its flat profile allows it to be also pan-fried in addition to being boiled or deep-fried. There are many different kinds of wontons because each region of China like Beijing, Canton, Sichuan, Fujian, etc. has its own variations. If you are avoiding fried food, you might like to order those heavenly steamed dumplings, “Dim Sum” which literally means in Cantonese “touch the heart”. These delicious nibbles can be ordered as an appetizer or as a main dish.

The list of appetizers also features “Chicken Satay” served with a spicy peanut sauce. This dish originated in Java, Indonesia but Malaysia also claims it as its own. Satay is considered Indonesia’s national dish; it is served everywhere from street cars to restaurants. Naturally, Indonesia has the richest choice of satays. On the Island of Lombok you can even order ” Sate Pusut”, a refined sate made from minced beef, chicken or fish, shredded coconut and spices.

Incidentally, in the beginning, “satay” was not served exclusively with a peanut sauce but since the most popular recipes with satay is “chicken satay in peanut sauce”, today “satay” is fundamentally linked with peanuts.

Hiding in between the side dishes, I discovered a “Steamed Edamame” which can be ordered as a light and healthy appetizer. “Edamame”, the Japanese word for green soybean, has fifty percent more protein than peas, which makes them particularly appealing to health conscious people seeking low fat and high protein food. The pods are either steamed or lightly boiled and served sprinkled with sea salt; the seeds are then squeezed from the pods themselves.

Chinese Prawn Crackers are also a popular appetizer. These tasty crackers puff up when they are deep fried. They tend to be very greasy but awfully good and quite addictive too so there is a tendency to eat one too many with the result that you are no longer hungry for the main dish.

If you do not mind fried food once in a while you might also like to order the “Crispy Chicken with Plum Sauce”. This Chinese sauce is made with plums, onions, ginger and garlic. There is also a roasted duck served with Hoisin sauce, a black colored sauce, sweet, salty and rather pungent. It is basically made with soybean paste, garlic, red chilies, vinegar, sugar and starches such as sweet potato, wheat or rice.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, the Noodle House has a multinational Asian menu which features Thai dishes. Thai cuisine is characterized by the balance it strikes between, the sweet, sour, hot, bitter and salty flavors. Thai Fried Noodles known as “Phad Thai” reflect this palette of flavors. For this dish rice stick noodles are fried along with chopped prawns and flavored with fish sauce, garlic, fresh lime juice and traditionally garnished with crisp fried onions, and chopped peanuts.

The menu features Thai curries, which offer a surprising blend of hot yet subtle and distinctive flavors. There are basically two kinds of Thai curries, the red curry and the green curry named after the color of the curry paste. You can choose between a “Thai Green Curry with Chicken or Vegetables” and a “Thai Red Prawn Curry”. The green curry paste contains plenty of chopped fresh coriander leaves and green chillies that give it a bright green color but it also includes some unique ingredients such as chopped ‘galangal’, kaffir leaves and lemon grass. Galangal looks like ginger but it has a pinkish color and a rather peppery taste and the kaffir lime is a knobby, dark-skinned lime with a powerful lime fragrance and flavor.

If you chose a Thai curry, you will have to order Jasmine Rice, a fragrant variety of long-grain rice grown in Thailand. It has a light and fluffy texture (especially when it is steamed), a mellow nutty flavor, and a distinctive floral scent.

Asian cuisines do not have the choice of desserts available in western countries. In fact the desserts featured on the Noodle House menu are westernized desserts such as “Chocolate Sumatra”, “Coconut fried bananas”, “Mango pudding and Fried Ice Cream”. A typical Thai dessert with mangoes is “Sticky Rice with Mangoes”, an Oriental version of the rice pudding made with glutinous rice and coconut milk. On the other hand, I wonder why the dessert menu does not include a sweet dim sum. People are familiar with savory dumplings but often forget or ignore the existence of sweet dumplings like the “Sesame Seed Balls”, filled with red bean paste and delightfully addictive.

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