过桥米线 Yunnan Rice Noodles

Pinyin: Guò Qiáo Mǐ Xiàn

It seems as though more often than not when you go to eat out in China you also have to do at least a little cooking. Case in point is this dish of Yunnan Rice Noodles. The waitress brings around a tray of food stuffs as you can see in the picture, and soon follows up with a bowl of nearly boiling broth and noodles. The responsibility is yours to put all the stuff into the nearly boiling broth. Including a quail egg, a slice of raw fish, a small piece of mostly cooked chicken and a variety of other things. It's important to move quick here and get the egg and raw fish into the broth quickly so that they have sufficient time and heat to properly cook.

After everything is in the soup, the real enjoyment can begin. By the time you put everything in the soup and convince the waitress to take away the empty trays, everything inside the soup is cooked and you can begin eating. You not to soft and not to firm, and there is a variety of goods in the soup. The brot won't be disappointed. The noodles are done just righth is a slightly salty yet ever so tasty chicken stock with undoubtedly a month's worth of MSG, but such is the price one must pay for that salty deliciousness.

Price is not bad either. Depending on the tray of goodies to throw in with the noodles a serving will run between 15 and 30 RMB. I don't actually remember the price I paid but it wasn't outrageous. One of these restaurants exists near the top of Grand Gateway Mall in Xujiahui and another resides in the basement of Raffle's City. It's a chain, but I haven't found any other place to get Yunnan style food in Shanghai.