Taiwan Today

A steaming bowl of niu-rou mien, or “beef noodles,” is Taiwan’s equivalent to America’s burger: easy to find, quick to make, and loved by everyone from starv­ing students to businesspeople wanting to treat foreign clients to a taste of China. In its many guises, the tasty noodle soup can be found at outdoor vendors’ stands and upscale hotel dining rooms alike.

Many Taiwan restaurants specialize exclusively in this dish, with down-home names such as Old Chang’s Beef Noodle Restaurant or Mama Lin’s Beef Noodles. And each shop boasts a secret family reci­pe. The basics of the dish may remain the same from cook to cook—a savory beef broth poured over thick, chewy wheat noo­dles and topped with large chunks of tender beef—but beyond these guidelines, the possibilities are endless. The salty, spicy Sichuan variety features beef stewed in soy sauce, and it is so full of chili peppers that the broth is an eye-watering brick red. The Cantonese variety is sweeter, the Shanghai-style is spiced with curry, and new, health-conscious varieties boast low-fat, low-salt content.

For decades, the best place to experi­ence the full range of beef noodle options was along western Taipei’s Taoyuan Street, better known as “beef noodle street.” The narrow lane was crammed with about a dozen hole-in-the-wall restaurants. But in 1993, most of these were torn down during the expansion of neighboring streets. According to one senior waitress at Old Wang’s Restaurant, the most famous of the original shops and the only one still standing, beef noodle vendors first appeared along the street in the late 1950s. A number of government agencies had been built nearby and the area was fast developing into a busy shop­ping area. Mealtimes bustled with hungry shoppers and civil servants.

In recent years, the title of “beef noo­dle street” has been adopted by Lane 38 off Chengchou Road, near the Taipei Railway Station. From the noontime rush through dinner and into the late-night snacking hours, the stands along the alley are crowded with high school students in matching uniforms, mothers with hungry children, and dark-suited businessmen toting cellular phones. All are looking for an empty metal stool at one of the crowded shops where they can slurp down a savory US$2 bowl of beef noodles.

The most popular varieties of the dish are named after the particular area in Mainland China where the recipe origi­nated. The best-selling of these regional varieties are from Sichuan, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. The exception is Muslim­ style beef noodle, which follows the strict food-preparation practices of the religion, and is known for its more delicate flavor and for using top-quality beef.

One eatery specializing in this dish is the Muslim Chinese Beef Noodle Restau­rant along Taipei’s Chunghsiao East Road. Owner Chung Chih-wei (鍾枝葳) stresses the importance of using top­ quality meat. “The only secret for my Muslim-style beef noodle is the beef it­self,” he says. Chung’s family has been in the beef and beef noodle businesses for thirty-five years and has become expert, he says, in selecting the right meat for the dish. At Chung’s five shops, patrons consume a total of 90 kilograms of meat each day.

Chung refuses to buy imported meat from Australia or New Zealand. Such beef makes for good steaks because of its tenderness, he says, but it loses its flavor during the long stewing process used in beef noodles. He uses only local beef, but says finding Taiwan-raised beef has be­come more difficult in recent years be­cause the island has begun importing cattle to build up its livestock herds. In ad­dition, the best-tasting meat comes from cattle raised on large ranches rather than in pens, he says. The reason? Cattle that exercise have meat with a higher muscle content, which affects flavor.

For years, Chung has purchased beef from a Muslim-operated slaughterhouse and has hired a Muslim advisor to ensure that it meets sanitary standards and that cer­tain religious rituals are carried out, such as chanting during the butchering process. One reason that Muslim food preparation rituals are especially strict in Chinese com­munities is that much of Chinese food is made with pork, a Muslim taboo. Thus, Muslim-style beef noodle shops are one of the few restaurants where followers can be sure of a pork-free meal. Chung’s shop has become such a favorite among the small but close-knit Muslim community in Taipei that when he once raised prices, he received letters of protest from the local Chinese Muslim Association.

The cut of meat also makes a differ­ence. Chung prefers rib meat and tender­loin. “The meat in these two sections includes tendon mixed with muscle, which makes the beef tender and keeps it from drying out,” he says.

The cooking process follows a strict system. First, Chung puts large chunks of beef in a pot of cold water and brings it to a boil. The meat is then plunged into a second pot of cold water for thirty min­utes. This helps separate the tissue and blood from the meat and improves the flavor and texture. Next, he puts the meat into another large pot of water flavored with green onion, celery, garlic, and gin­ger, where it simmers for three hours. Fi­nally, it is chopped into large oblong chunks and stir fried. The beef must be prepared well ahead of meal times.

A rich, tasty broth is the second vital component in a good bowl of beef noodles. “It’s the broth that makes the beef noodles delicious,” says Liu Cheng-hsiung (劉正雄), manager of Old Tung’s Beef Noodle Shop in the basement of the Asia­ world department store in eastern Taipei. Liu uses a “secret weapon” in preparing his broth—an NT$200,000 (US$7,400) steel pot measuring two-and-a-half feet across and standing over three feet tall. The pot is fitted with five small colan­ders inside, which are used to hold soup bones. Because the bones become soft and fragile during the twenty-four-hour cooking process, the colanders allow them to break apart and release marrow without sending bits of bone into the broth. When the broth is ready, it is creamy with marrow.

The rest of the ingredients in Liu’s Sichuan-style recipe are fairly standard. “Most Sichuan-style beef noodles are prepared with similar ingredients—chili pep­pers, soy sauce, soybean paste, rice wine, sugar, star anise, garlic, green onions, and ginger,” he says. “The difference comes from the amount of each ingredient.”

Liu also stresses that the beef itself is vital to the flavor, and he adheres to his own purchasing criteria. “Cattle raised in Tainan county have a better flavor be­cause they graze on sugar cane stalks,” he explains.

Old Tung’s serves several variations on the standard dish. The Sichuan-style version using half beef, half beef tendon is very popular. Another big-selling variety features curry-spiced Shanghai-style beef and fried tofu served over thin, delicate noodles made of mung beans rather than the standard wheat noodles.

Noodles are the third major ingredi­ent in niu-rou mien. Thick, handmade wheat noodles are especially suited to the dish because of their chewy texture. While most restaurants have quit making their own in favor of less labor-intensive pre-made varieties, a few shops still go through the daily process of rolling, fold­ing, and cutting mountains of dough. One example is the Muslim Yellow Cattle Noodle Restaurant on western Taipei’s Yenping South Road, where cooks whip up 300 to 400 servings of noodles each day. (“Yellow cattle” refers to local rather than imported cattle.)

The restaurant keeps another long­ time tradition alive as well: there is no ex­tra charge for additional servings of noodles and broth. The free refill policy has been in place since the restaurant opened thirty years ago. The founders, six veterans from Mainland China who had recently retired from the military, had all experienced severe hunger during the war years. They decided not to charge more for seconds. Today, their children have kept the policy alive. “The record is one customer who asked for four servings,” says Chang Li-chin (張麗琴), daughter of one of the founders.

Yellow Cattle restaurant also invites customers to help themselves to top their Muslim- or Sichuan-style noodles with homemade pickled cabbage, a favorite condiment among beef noodle connois­seurs. Customers can also help themselves to extra ground red pepper or pep­per sauce. Another favorite side dish is chopped fresh, boiled, or toasted garlic, which is eaten plain for jolt of flavor.

One of the biggest challenges to mak­ing beef noodles is that the cooks must pro­duce a steady stream of steaming bowls fast enough to satisfy a crush of hungry custom­ers. At Old Wang’s Restaurant, the two mealtime cooks have the process down to a refined system. Since the stewed beef and the broth are prepared ahead of time, when mealtimes hit, they concentrate on the noo­dles and final preparation.

The two stand over a set of burners set up directly at the entrance of the res­taurant. Customers can watch as the duo works with two-fisted action. One cook mans a huge pot of water in which he boils batches of twenty portions of noo­dles at once. When the noodles are just cooked through, roughly five minutes, the second cook uses his right hand to ladle large dippers full of piping hot broth into a row of roughly twenty large bowls. He then uses his left to sprinkle chopped scal­lions atop the broth. The first man then uses a pair of footlong chopsticks and a strainer to scoop a single portion of noo­dles into each bowl of broth. As a final step, the second cook adds half-a-dozen chunks of stewed beef to each bowl. Voila! Twenty bowls of beef noodles are ready for serving in about six minutes. During the two peak noodle-eating seasons of the year—January-February, because of chilly weather, and July­ August, thanks to the hoards of students free from school—most small, two-man operations dish up more than seven hundred bowls of beef noodles per day.

Beef noodles were introduced to Taiwan forty-five years ago as one of the culinary imports brought with the roughly two million mainland residents who came to the island with the Nationalist army. Chung Chih-wei of the Muslim Chinese Beef Noodle Restaurant remembers how his father introduced the dish to local resi­dents. At the time, few people were in the habit of eating beef. “In the 1950s, a lot of people were farmers and used water buf­falo in the rice fields,” Chung says. “To show their respect, they didn’t eat beef.” He adds that many Buddhists also refused to eat it. When Chung’s father opened his shop in southern Taipei, he took to mak­ing the beef stock near the shop entrance, which was located near a busy outdoor market. “Forty years ago, living condi­tions were not so good,” Chung says. “During the cold winters, that beef broth smelled really good. My father offered people a free bowl. The first step was the most difficult. But after they tried once, they found the taste was pretty good, and they tried it again.”

One change in beef noodle shops in recent years is that more owners are pay­ing attention to their dining environment. Wang Tsung-yuan (王聰源), owner of Papa Steer’s Beef Noodle Restaurant on Taipei’s busy Chunghsiao East Road, emphasizes the pleasant atmosphere of his shop. He points out that most beef noodle shops are noisy, crowded, and dirty. “They are just places to eat, then leave,” he says. “Customers never con­sider lingering there to relax.”

Wang says he decided to emphasize the look of his restaurants after living in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he studied and worked for fifteen years. There, he visited a beef noodle restaurant that impressed him with its clean, pleasant surroundings. When Wang opened his first restaurant in Taipei, he adopted the style, even adding extra touches such as live plants. He prides himself that some customers stay in his restaurant after they eat to read newspapers and magazines.

Wang has also developed a special health-conscious recipe for his beef noo­dles. “Most beef noodles in Taiwan are too salty and greasy,” he says. Wang skims off the oil when making his broth. “My niu-rou mien is lean, healthy food. At first try, people may not like it. Some have even complained that it lacks flavor and that the broth is as light as water. But if they try it again, they’ll like it. It’s good for you.”

Amidst Taiwan’s vast array of popu­lar foods, beef noodles have attained a firm position and seem to be holding fast despite the continual influx of trendy new foods and the fast-changing de­mands of Taiwan diners. Chung Chih­-wei proudly claims that the dish can compete with popular Western-style fast food, even among teenagers. “I recently opened a shop in a department store food court where a dozen restaurants are crammed together,” he says. “At first, I was worried that beef noodles couldn’t compete with fast food, the favorite of the young generation. But soon I discov­ered that although young people like burgers and pizza, they like my beef noodles, too.”