Ordering a bowl of noodles at Wan Kwai Chuen Fu Mei, a popular Yunnan-style rice noodle restaurant in Tsuen Wan, often turns into a long conversation with owner Yu Yau-chun about your choice of soup base and toppings.
Located on a quiet corner at Sze Pei Square, the shop boasts a sour-and-spicy soup base that comes in six levels of spiciness, as well as generous portions of rice noodles (mi xian) and a choice of more than 20 toppings, such as braised pork belly, fermented bean paste and salted sour cabbage. Similar fare can also be had at restaurants nearby.
Yunnan noodles, known as guo qiao mi xian, or 'across the bridge noodles', are said to have come into being when a wife, carrying noodles across a bridge to her husband who had isolated himself on an island to study for exams, discovered the food would stay hot if she poured a layer of oil over it.
Opened more than 16 years ago, Wan Kwai Chuen Fu Mei is one of Tsuen Wan's oldest Yunnan-style rice noodle shops. Many others have opened in recent years, mostly by immigrants arriving from mainland provinces, especially Yunnan.
Hailing from Mengzi, in southern Yunnan, this style of soup noodle is growing in popularity because it is more flavoursome than cart noodles, says Brian Lam, who opened Yui Gui Kitchen with his elder brother 14 years ago. 'A quality soup base is not required for cart noodles but it is the soul of Yunnan-style rice noodles. The toppings are also more interesting than those in cart noodles,' Lam says.
Fion Wong, a Mengzi native whose husband opened Wan Mai Ka four years ago, says the popularity of the style has been fuelled by local interest in regional mainland cuisines. 'It used to be the only cuisines Hongkongers seemed to know about other than Cantonese were from Shanghai and Beijing. People are now more adventurous about food from the mainland and they know more than just Peking duck or Sichuan dan dan mien. That's what makes it exciting.'
Since first trying the noodles in Tsuen Wan 10 years ago, insurance agent Christine Ngai says she could not imagine going anywhere else to eat them. 'I love it because everything from the soup base to the toppings are excellent, especially the braised pork belly,' she says.
