Hand Shaved Noodles and New Menu @ Su Hong Eatery, Palo Alto

This week I stopped by Su Hong in Palo Alto with crab XLB in mind for a quick lunch. But I shifted gears when I saw the new expanded menu. That is, expanded in the sense that the “secret” Shanghainese specialties have been translated into English! The English version of the menu now has 275+ items, whereas it had been much shorter than the Chinese language one in the past, and now makes Su Hong’s best dishes easily accessible to everyone. I asked the hostess about the change, and she replied that “non-Chinese like to come here for our xiao long bao, so we updated the menu in English for them.”

New to me was the section of “hand shaved noodles”, and I ordered the seafood version. These noodles were much different in texture and form than the knife-cut noodles we’ve been exploring elsewhere. Rather than doughy, uneven in width and thickness, and pointed on the ends, these hand-shaved noodles were dense to the bite, quite uniform in thickness (thin actually) and rounded on the ends. At first glance I thought that I’d been served Shanghainese rice cakes by mistake. But no, while they’re somewhat ovoid, these are a bit longer and narrower than the rice cakes. And, they’re much chewier and firmer in texture.

Not that much wok influence, but tasty from the thinned down version of slightly sweet Shanghai-style brown sauce, fresh spinach and napa cabbage, and pieces of scallop, fish, and shrimp. Some of the shrimp had a slightly metallic aftertaste, yet, I liked this dish and would order it again.

Stir Fried Hand Shaved Noodle with Mixed Seafood, $9.25 -
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Su Hong Eatery
4256 El Camino Real, Palo Alto, CA 94306