chinese: i strongly recommend SHAN XI DAO XIAO MIEN

SHAN XI DAO XIAO MIEN (Shan Xi Knife Cut Noodles)
No. 2, Lane 118, He Ping An He Road
near the Technology building(科技大樓)
(02) 2378-7890

Lunch: 11AM- 2 PM
Dinner: 5 PM - 8:30 PM

$

Kid friendliness: no high chairs spotted and crowded space during busy lunch hour.

Visit reviewed: 6/26/2007

If you've never really heard of knife cut noodles (or dao xiao mien), then you're in for a treat. I'd heard of fresh noodles, rolled and cut by hand, but never really eaten the kind that is slivered off a block of dough by a flat piece of metal right before it comes to your table. The knife cut method is famous from Shan Xi, a part of China where they love noodles.



But everyone loves noodles right?



Here you can choose dark beef noodle soup or the lighter tomato-infused clear broth, you can even get the beef noodle soup with tomatoes, which is what our friend recommended. She had been coming here since she was a kid, so it was evident that it was a neighborhood favorite as the small restaurant was packed with locals.



The menu is the kind that you check off the boxes, only in Chinese, so don't expect pictures. But if you don't read Chinese and still want to try it out, you can just point to a dish that looks good at the table next to yours. Everything on the menu is very very affordable at under NT$150.

I found the soy sauce beef broth to be a wee bit salty, but I still drank half of the bowl. The noodles are chewy (very QQ) and slippery, piled in the bowl in uneven thicker and shorter pieces than you'd find from a cut noodles place. It also comes with a large spoonful of the pickled vegetables that I like and plenty of beef pieces.



You can also grab the cold appetizers such as tofu and thousand year old egg, cucumbers or green beans. There is also green onion pancakes made in the front, though I found that it was too thick and doughy for my liking.



No matter- you are here for the beef noodle soup! Although I think I remember people at other tables eating rice and other dishes, everyone at our table had noodle soup (NT$90). While I was trying to find the address for this place (before getting it from my friend), I found that actually there are quite a few Dao Xiao Mien shops, and also some with the same exact name. So maybe they are all worth a try, if you see a sign like this near you. But if you want a sure thing, I strongly recommend that you head over to this Shan Xi Dao Xiao Mien shop.