Come for the noodles, stay for the show. At Corner 17 Chinese noodle shop in The Loop, a glass enclosure in the corner of the restaurant allows diners to watch chefs Wang and Yixiu Zheng expertly stretch wheat dough into made-to-order noodles. Noodle stretchers pull the dough and fold it in two again and again, doubling the number of long noodles with each fluid motion before throwing the noodles in boiling water. It’s mesmerizing.
Yi Yao, Corner 17’s manager, said the greatest challenge of the operation is getting the ratio of flour-to-water correct, or, she warned, the dough may turn out too thick and then rip during stretching. The feedback for the culinary performance has been so pronounced, she added, that Corner 17 is considering offering a class in noodle making.
This article appears in April 2014.