Tengzhou Braised Pork Noodles 滕州大肉面
Tengzhou Braised Pork Noodles is featured among the local specialties of Shandong.
Tengzhou Braised Pork Noodles (滕州大肉面) are a bowl of noodles in soup topped with a piece of darou (大肉, 'big meat'), eaten in Tengzhou (滕州), Zaozhuang (枣庄). A Tengzhou culture and tourism bureau notice, republished by the Zaozhuang bureau, describes the noodles as smooth and tender in the mouth and lists them among the local foods chosen by Tengzhou's tourism office together with its 21 towns and subdistricts.
How it is eaten
In an essay on Tengzhou food published by the city's media centre, the writer Zhang Guige describes the noodles as a breakfast dish: for many people from Tengzhou living elsewhere, the first breakfast after coming home is a hot bowl of darou noodles. His preference is for hand-rolled noodles cut with a knife, always with a piece of darou added.
He names the noodle shops Chaiji (柴记), Wang Xiazi (王瞎子), Douwan (斗碗) and Yuzhu (玉竹) as places whose noodles stay in the memories of students who left for Shanghai and Beijing.
Flavour and texture
Zhang Guige sets the dish apart by its broth. Compared with it, he finds Xi'an's saozi noodles carry a layer of fatty oil that makes them greasy, and Beijing's zhajiang noodles too dry, missing the moist, soupy quality of the Tengzhou bowl.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and fact-checked against them on 2026-09-24. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.