FEER(8/7) Shanghai's Noodle Chain Builds On Secret Recipe
In China, as with so much else, noodles have undergone "reform and opening up," and nowhere more so than in its most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai. State-run old favourites are franchising to private entrepreneurs and modern, stylish noodle chains are springing up to wrest customers away from foreign fast food like McDonald's.
"Traditional noodle stores used to be dirty and old, so we thought that if we could give people a good atmosphere and fresh tasty food, they would be happy to go back to noodles," says Shanghai-born restaurateur Fiona Wang , a Canadian returnee, or haigui ("sea turtle"), as the Chinese call natives returned from abroad.
Wang and her brother Young Wang bought the rights to open a franchise from a popular, 50-year-old state-run noodle chain that by the late 1990s had become a rundown brand with a dozen branches. "When we were kids, we used to go to Shanghai's first famous noodle chain, Cang Lang Ting," Young Wang recalls. "The noodles there were excellent -- a secret recipe, they said. So once we had decided on noodles, there was no use reinventing the wheel."
Their first Cang Lang Ting outlet, opened in 2001 round the corner from the American Consulate, was an instant hit, with lunchtime queues for the chewy wheat noodles flavoured with toppings like crispy eel. "The noodles are the best in Shanghai," says a young woman diner. "They're not as soft as regular noodles." Now the Wangs have three shops in the city centre that use the state-run chain's name and noodles.
And while they didn't reinvent the wheel, they've given it a new spin. Their outlets feature Qing-dynasty carved-wood reliefs suspended from wires like objects in an art gallery. The food too is old-meets-new. The fresh noodles come daily from the central Cang Lang Ting kitchens -- "the recipe is still a secret," says Young Wang -- but the soup and toppings are made in-house, with new twists like sesame-coated pork ribs, steamed yellow-fish slices and sweet and sour eel.
"Most of our customers are young," explains Fiona Wang , "and they're looking for something new. But we still get old customers who remember Cang Lang Ting from the early days and want to see if it tastes the same."
"It was never like this," recalls a diner in his 50s who patronized the old Cang Lang Ting (which means Surging Wave Pavilion). "This place is much cleaner. There's even air-conditioning. The food is still good, but it's a lot more expensive. We used to buy noodles for 2 or 3 jiao [one-tenth of a renminbi] a bowl." Prices at the new-look Cang Lang Ting start from 10 renminbi ($1.20) a bowl.
上海面馆老树发新芽
中国的各行各业正在经历改革开放的沧桑巨变
