Xita Cold Noodles 西塔大冷面

Xita Cold Noodles (西塔大冷面) are the Korean-style cold noodles of Xita Da Lengmian, a restaurant in the Xita (西塔) area of Shenyang (沈阳), Liaoning. A China Daily column dates the restaurant to 1952, calls it one of Shenyang's first time-honoured brands and says it is reputed to serve the city's most classic cold noodles.

How it is made

The noodles are pressed fresh. Xinhua describes the care taken over each stage, from choosing the flour to kneading, pressing and rinsing the noodles, so that they come out springy. Zhang Licai (张立财), named by Xinhua as the sixth-generation inheritor of Xita Cold Noodles, says he has spent more than 20 years at the restaurant making cold noodles with traditional methods.

Flavour and texture

The China Daily column says the noodles keep the flavour of traditional Korean cold noodles in the Pyongyang style (平壤冷面): chewy yet easy to bite through, in a specially simmered broth that is cool and full of flavour. A regular quoted by Xinhua says the taste has not changed in the more than 20 years she has been eating there.

Where it comes from

Xita, 'West Pagoda', is named after a white Tibetan-style lama pagoda first built in 1640 beside the southern end of Xita Street (西塔街), which lies in central Shenyang, slightly to the north-west. The same column describes the street as the largest ethnic Korean community in the Northeast outside the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture (延边朝鲜族自治州). Under the impact of the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War and the Japanese occupation of Korea, large numbers of Koreans moved to Shenyang and settled around Xita, many of them making a living from Korean foods such as rice cakes and kimchi. In 2024 the Liaoning Provincial Department of Commerce named Xita Cold Noodles among Shenyang's 18 entries in its list of 196 Liaoning landmark foods (辽宁地标美食).