Nestled into the cup of your extended-handled spoon, draped with threads of ginger and drizzled with black vinegar, the soup dumpling is pure prospective, unidentified and unknowable till very first bite. When you puncture its thin outer pores and skin, the dumpling pretty much explodes, flushing your palate with warm broth, spiced pork and sweet malty vinegar, the sensations too pleasurable and far too crushing to check out to account for them all.
You can experience Chinese soup dumplings, or xiao very long bao, as most diners do at Yu Noodles: for the delirious, leap-scare blast of flavors, textures and contrasts. But you can also practical experience them as Yiying Lu does: as a metaphor for anything larger and additional cosmic than a Shanghai-model dumpling.
Lu is an artist based mostly in San Francisco. She’s one thing of a dumpling savant, not only coming up with the impression that would provide as the basis for dumpling emoji across the social landscape but also studying the historical past of the doughy bundles. She may well not be the first to attract a linguistic parallel involving the Chinese word “hundun” — which can characterize “primordial chaos” or a mythical creature that appears to be like like a plump dumpling with wings and feet — and the assortment of stuffed deals commonly recognised as wontons. But she was the to start with to convey the relationship in a way that spoke to me like a poem.
“Every time we acquire a chunk, metaphorically we open up up a new universe,” Lu once claimed.
I acquired about Lu’s function though scouting Yu Noodles, a trio of institutions that focus in Chinese avenue food items, with an emphasis on individuals from Chongqing, that sprawling municipality in southwest China. Yu, as you could possibly know, is the formal abbreviation for Chongqing.
I observed it unachievable to ignore the synchronicity between Lu’s study and the a lot of prospects I had to open up new universes with just about every steam bun, pan-fried dumpling and spicy wonton that I popped at Yu Noodles. Ingesting, I was reminded, is a sensual pursuit, but a person deepened by that organ acknowledged for far more summary imagined. That another person, someplace, experienced the creativity to draw a line involving the major bang and the explosion of a soup dumpling filled me with a pleasure that no wonton alone could match.
Yu Noodles is anything of an growing universe, much too. Its two principals, Andy Qiu and Tony Cai, opened their initial place in 2018 in Rockville. They have due to the fact debuted areas in Fairfax and Herndon, with plans to launch possibly 10 extra stores in the long term.
You may possibly marvel how a position devoted to housemade noodles, dumplings and wontons can discover more than enough expertise to fill those kitchens, primarily when the hospitality task market is tighter than Questlove’s snare drum. The respond to lies in automation, devices that stamp out prolonged, fragile noodles and even clean, completely composed soup dumplings, just about every just waiting to explode into new galaxies. (I should really observe that the smaller Rockville location does not serve soup dumplings.)
The gods that form issue at Yu Noodles, it would seem, are mechanical.
The god who develops the flavors at Yu Noodles, having said that, is very human. A previous chef and husband or wife at Bob’s 88 Shabu Shabu in Rockville (a location that died way, way much too youthful), Cai studied at a culinary faculty in Chongqing whilst he and Qiu worked on opening their first Yu Noodles. Cai is a learn at layering flavor, usually applying Sichuan’s characteristic spicy and numbing sensations to accentuate a dish, not define it.
Cai’s design and style is in all probability ideal experienced by way of his Yibin spicy dry noodles, a bowl in which ground beef and pork are mixed with chewy wheat noodles sporting the thinnest sheen of chili oil. The spicy anesthesia of the ma la oil is current and accounted for, but it occupies a kind of center floor, surrounded by sesame paste and housemade soy sauce, their nutty and umami traits handled as equals in this terrific dish.
The chef utilizes a lot of of the very same flavors in the Chongqing noodles but adjusts the ratios to give the chili oil more room to roam, great for these who find warmth even in the canine times of summer months. The splendor of Cai’s noodle menu, although, is its range: the barnyard funk of the flounder with sour pickled cabbage, the five-spice undercurrent of the incredibly hot and bitter foon, and the supreme sesame-seed nuttiness of the Yu village cool noodles, a dish served exquisitely chilly.
Even with its devotion to Chongqing, Yu Noodles does have a wandering eye, as evidenced by Cai’s compact line of soup dumplings, with their roots in Shanghai cuisine. The chef injects a minimal Sichuan into his peppercorn spicy soup dumplings, whose salmon-colored skins are courtesy of carrot juice in the dough. As soon as you pierce the membrane of the dumpling, its heat is gradual to arrive, but when it does, it will cling to you, like humidity.
Cai features robust snack and appetizer menus. I have nevertheless to experience a dish on either that I wouldn’t buy yet again, and yet again. To start with amid equals are the pan-fried chive and pork dumplings, their perfume leaning, with no apology, to the onion side of the spectrum. But I also marveled at the siu mai, that dim sum staple stuffed not with pork and shrimp but with chewy glutinous rice. And if I have experienced a far better scallion pancake, a crisped and layered matter, I can not try to remember when.
If you’re not in the mood for noodles, I’d propose the rooster leg about rice, a dish with a somewhat deceptive description. The darkish meat — marinated in oyster sauce, soy and black pepper prior to roasting — is deboned and layered atop the rice with a poached egg. The dish cries out for acid, which you swiftly find is by now provided, with some frivolously pickled greens buried in the grains.
The only dish I just cannot advocate is the potato tower, a spiralized spud fried and served on a skewer. The next time I attempted to get one — to ensure that it was as bland as the initial — the server tried using to stop me. He reported I would not like it. He known as it children’s foodstuff. I afterwards questioned Qiu about this. His reaction amazed me.
“Even young children really don’t like it,” he explained.
An operator honest enough to diss his individual food stuff. Communicate about obtaining my brain blown.
Observe: This story has been updated to increase that the Rockville site does not offer soup dumplings.
368 Elden St., Herndon, Va., 703-480-0326, yunoodlesherndon.com. 11217-C Lee Hwy., Fairfax, Va., 703-877-0818, yunoodlefairfax.com. 9 Dawson Ave., Rockville, Md., 301-978-7693, yunoodlesrockville.com.
Several hours: 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. everyday for all a few areas.
Nearest Metro: Only the Maryland site has a nearby Metro, the Rockville station, found about 50 percent a mile from the restaurant.
Rates: $2 to $13 for all things on the menu.