Well hello, you’re eyeballing Good Taste, a freaky weekly look at food phenomena in the Bay Area. Hope you like garlic!
This week’s column will teach you how to make a heavenly version of garlic noodles that pays homage to Thanh Long, the Outer Sunset restaurant where they were invented in the mid-’70s. Thanh Long’s garlic noodles, which I’ve been eating since the late ’90s (and are also available on Polk Street), remain my favorite, but I’ve got some other local garlic noodle recommendations for you to consider, too.
PPQ Beef Noodle House, PPQ Dungeness Island, Golden Crab House and Perilla all have the same owner and serve garlic noodles. It’s just a side dish at Golden Crab House, where Dungeness crab and Maine lobster are the highlights, but you can order garlic noodles as a plate with proteins like chicken, beef, or shrimp at the other spots. They’re only about half as dank as Thanh Long’s on the garlic scale, but that’s quite enough for a quick and less formal lunch or dinner.
Sunday Gather and Sunday at the Museum are Team Cheese for their garlic noodles—the former uses Parmesan, while the latter favors ricotta, and they totally work. Both spots offer the option to add chicken katsu, while Sunday at the Museum also offers prawns and pork. The noodles are slimmer than what you’ll find at Thanh Long, which also means you may accidentally slurp them up even faster.
Lily, which opened in October 2020, uses three kinds of garlic (including green garlic) as well as fresh veggies like peppers and asparagus for their garlic noodles so you get rocked by different textures and flavors. And the restaurant’s brilliant yogurt shakes (sinh tố) help keep the dragon breath at bay.
The 29-year-old Le Soleil goes in for the kill with extra crispy garlic chips on top of their garlic noodles. The restaurant’s rendition is darker in color than Thanh Long’s style, which suggests the use of soy sauce and oyster sauce. It doesn’t taste like butter is at play here. Le Soleil and Lily are neighbors in the Richmond District, so you could actually order them both for pickup and have a private showdown where you’re the ultimate winner!
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Garlic Noodles
By Tamara Palmer
Active prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 50 minutes
Servings: 2-3
I tried several iterations of this recipe until I figured out a version that reminded me of Thanh Long’s original, which is kept secret. Once I used the egg noodles from Tin Wah Noodle Co., which has been in business in San Francisco since the 1940s, it was a wrap—they’re perfect!
Though many recipes on the internet use soy sauce and oyster sauce, they took the dish too close to chow mein and wouldn’t make the final lineup. I’ve long heard the rumor that Thanh Long uses Maggi seasoning, which tastes like a super concentrated soy sauce to me, and found that a little of that gives me the umami I crave. And if sugar freaks you out, consider it optional.
Ingredients
3 small bulbs of garlic
2 Tbsps olive oil
½ cup unsalted butter, cut into 6-8 pieces
2 Tbsps Maggi seasoning
2 Tbsps sugar (I use cane sugar)
1 package (10 oz.) Tin Wah Noodle Co. egg noodles
Preheat the oven to 400°. Using your hands, rub and peel the top layers of skin off of two bulbs of garlic, then cut the tops of the bulbs off.
Place bulbs in a small foil packet and drizzle with 1 Tbsp of olive oil, then close up the packets and roast in the oven for 45 minutes.
Grate or mince as many cloves as you want from the remaining raw garlic bulb (I use 3-4) and set aside. Once the other garlic is roasted, squeeze cloves into a bowl with raw garlic, taking care to remove any errant skin. (I use gloves for this because I’m a princess.)
Boil noodles for three minutes. Remove from heat, rinse with cold water in a colander, and add to a large mixing bowl.
Start melting the butter and remaining 1 Tbsp of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add roasted and raw garlic and stir to incorporate, mashing the roasted garlic as you go. Add Maggi and sugar and stir until dissolved, about 3-5 minutes.
Pour mixture over noodles and stir well. Inhale deeply and get ready to party! PS: A spoonful of sesame oil after the meal takes the top layer of garlic breath away until you’re able to meet up with your toothpaste.
Extra credit: Sprinkle with grated Parmigiano Reggiano, chopped green onion, and/or fried garlic chips (Burma Love sells packages of them, or make your own by sizzling in hot neutral oil).
If you’re really hungry now, Tamara’s site California Eating has more bites to devour.
