Seattle has so many (more) delicious Chinese restaurants

Seattle food writer Hsiao-Ching Chou used to lament how there wasn’t much variety when it came to Chinese restaurants; they practically had the same menu.

But now new restaurants have popped up in Seattle and they’ve abandoned beef broccoli and other standard dishes for more regional cuisines. I met with Chou for lunch recently at Xi’an Noodles in Seattle’s University District to ask her if she had changed her mind. She has, she said, as her bowl of spicy, tingly beef in noodle soup arrived. “It’s steaming delicious and it smells wonderful,” Chou said. “I can’t wait to tackle it.” The bowl was filled with wide, flat noodles and shredded beef. The broth was topped with chili oil and finished with a crown of cilantro.

Credit: KUOW Photo/Ruby de Luna

Just several years ago, most Chinese restaurants catered to their mainly Western customers. You could tell by their menus, which have a lot in common, but they tended to focus on the cuisine from the Pearl River Delta region of China. With the influx of tech workers and students from China, the newer restaurants have shifted their focus. “We are seeing some of the more regional cuisines represented because they know the audience is there,” Chou said. And instead of toning down the flavors to appeal to a wider audience, they remain true to the region; they’re unapologetically Chinese.

Chou said access to certain ingredients, like Szechuan peppercorns, for example, is easier these days in the U.S. But not back then. “If that is a key ingredient to a lot of this type of cuisine,” Chou said, “then it’s hard to recreate those flavor profiles.”

Credit: KUOW Photo/Ruby de Luna



Wearing a vintage Seattle Sonics T-shirt, Lily Wu, the 35-year-old owner and chef of Xi'an Noodle, took a break to chat with us. Wu hails from northeast China.

Wu started opened her restaurant because she craved noodles from her home country. “I choose this noodle because I love the texture, and big, flat, and easier to make,” she said. Wu was living in Seattle at the time, and took some classes at South Seattle Community College. To truly learn the noodle craft, though, she returned to China. Learning to make noodles, it turned out, was easy. Sauce was a different story. “The good flavor they never want to teach you no matter how much you’ll pay,” Wu said. “So I create my own flavor and do a lot of research.”

Wu said she wants people to enjoy her food, even those who aren’t familiar with Chinese spices, but without compromising the flavors. Her restaurant has a sauce bar so people can adjust the seasonings and heat to their liking. “I want to teach people ... how to eat this food," she said. "I want to spread this culture to American people.” Wu told us about plans to open a second noodle restaurant in downtown Seattle in May. (Westlake Mall, second floor: You read it here first!) Chou and I returned to our bowls and discussed other Seattle Chinese restaurants. She said she doesn’t go out for Chinese food because she cooks it at home. But these are the places she frequents for specific dishes, and because the food is consistently good. Chou emphasized this is not a ranking of the “best” restaurants in Seattle: Boiling Point, Bellevue, Edmonds, Tukwila, Seattle, Redmond Open Christmas, regular hours.