At 2:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, customers were lined up to place orders for plates of handmade noodles and sauce or steaming bowls of noodle soup.
These noodles are the star at Chen’s Noodle House, which owner George Chen opened 13 years ago. The homestyle dishes are traditional to cuisine in northwestern China, where Chen grew up in Lanzhou.
In 1999, Chen moved to the U.S. and worked for eight years as a sushi chef at an Austin restaurant owned by a friend, he said. Desiring to return to cooking the food he grew up with, he opened his own restaurant serving traditional Chinese cuisine, he said.
“I had been working [for others], and … I wanted to try and see if I could [do] it better,” he said.
Chen’s favorite dish is the combination noodle soup ($9) that includes pork, tofu, vegetables and dried lily flower. A dish he recently added is the mapo tofu noodles. The word “mapo” when translated refers to the aging face of a grandmother, a similar resemblance to pocked surface of tofu.
“Most people serve it with rice, but we serve it with noodles,” Chen said. “... [It’s a] little bit spicy with some ground pork in there.”
Noodles are not the only draw for customers. The Botello family of Elgin usually stops at Chen’s while running errands in Austin. They said they love the sesame pockets and green onion pancakes.
“You can watch them make the food, and they have good lamb,” Julie Botello said.
Chen’s Noodle House
8650 Spicewood Springs Road, Ste. 127, Austin
512-336-8889
Hours: daily 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
