Terra Cotta Warrior Reboot: Xifu Biangbiang Spicy Pork Noodles Have Silk Road Written All Over Them

I was a bit dismayed last summer when Terra Cotta Warrior closed temporarily "for innovations" even though they promised to reopen "under new management" on a specific date. They did indeed reopen on schedule, and I became warily optimistic when no "downhill reports"surfaced, yet was somehow hesitant to revisit. Then came the news from an impeccable source that David Deng, apparently still the owner, had spent the hiatus beating the bushes in Shaanxi for new recipes for his menu, followed by some blurry Yelp photos of TCW's new menu indicating that he had added some new noodle options, including the missing link on his 2014 menu, biangbiang mian! Needless to say, I was on it, like white on rice.

A comparison of Terra Cotta Warrior 2.0's menu with the original fare indicates a significant fattening out of the "Restaurant Special" portion of the menu, with a dozen items added. There's a new "pita bread" (paomo) option, Hulutou paomo with pork intestines -- no dumbing down there. There are now seven "burger" (rojiamo) compared to the previous three and, best of all, six new hot noodle options, including three in the  biang biang category.

For my first shot at Terra Cotta Warrior's biang biang noodles, I chose "Xifu Biangbiang spicy pork noodles," 西府裤带面 in Chinese, literally "Xifu trouser belt (kùdài) noodles." This is a semi-dry (sauced) noodle dish served in a bowl. A generous mass of robust, irregular "belt" noodles sat in a thick sauce, topped with thick shards of smoky roast pork (reminiscent of Hunan roast pork), spring onion tops and cilantro.  The sauce, red from tomatoes and containing bits of scrambled egg, was more smoky than spicy and slightly sweet. It had a definite Silk Road quality to it, similar in flavor profile to the sauce used in Xinjiang laghman.  So thick was the sauce that it tended to glue the noodles together, making lifting them a chore, like lifting weights.  The noodles themselves were properly cooked and toothsome enough, and I found myself wanting to taste them in a thinner sauce or a more naked form (the noodles, that is).  That said, the dish was tasty enough that I would repeat it, in rotation, to be sure.

If you think tomato and egg seem odd in a dish from the interior of China, you have another think coming. Another dish added to the menu, "Fufeng minced pork noodles soup," according to my server, contains tomatoes, potatoes, tofu and egg." I'll get to that one, sooner rather than later.

Where slurped: Terra Cotta Warrior, 2555 Judah St. at 31st Ave., San Francisco