After rolling into a taxi, a friend tells the driver to head towards Changning Lu near Huayang Lu to go to a noodle shop there. “I know this great place. It’s a cheap noodle shop, but the noodles are great!” The taxi driver tells him he already knows where this place is. If the taxi driver knows about this place, it is an excellent sign.
Before us is Zhēng Zhēng Yǐnshí峥峥饮食, an unassuming hole-in-the wall kind of place with bare formica tables. The pinyin translator I used told me that zhēng zhēng yǐnshí means “lofty (soaring)” and “food and drink.” Next to the dining area is the kitchen and prep area where a guy is pulling noodles in one window and passing them through a gap in the divider to the guy standing over a boiling vat of water to cook them in the next window. The hand-pulled wheat flour noodles or lā miàn 拉面 is commonly made in the Lanzhou style (Lanzhou is the capital city of Gansu province in northwest China), but the noodles here are made in Hunnan style. The dough is stretched and twisted until long, thin noodles are produced.
My friend quickly asks if we want beef and if the noodles will be in soup or dry. I opted for the soup option and they request their noodles dry. The noodles were cooked to perfection and the broth was meaty and slightly spicy. Even dry, the noodles were not too oily or dry enough to stick together. The coriander or cilantro, cumin, and scallions gave the noodle soup a nice fresh zing. However light the meal appears to be, the noodles are actually really heavy and oily and you can feel the weight in your stomach after forking out the 6RMB.
Wow. That was tasty. Definitely going back there again. That taxi driver must really know what he’s talking about for great cheap eats in Shanghai.
峥峥饮食Zhēng Zhēng Yǐnshí. No. 3, Lane 484, Changning Lu, Zhongshan Park (near Huayang Lu), Shanghai, China
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