Of course, not everyone buys into the notion that noodles lead to a long life, but the arrival of the lunar new year, the celebration of which ran from Jan. 29 through Feb. 12, made for a great excuse to visit Noodles & Dumplings, an El Paso-based chain that made its San Antonio debut last spring.
Seductively fragrant from a fistful of garlic, the bowl of Spicy Yo Pu Noodles that hit our table at Noodles & Dumplings seemed to imply longevity which stretched into infinity. At one point, my fellow diners and I were convinced that the dish consisted of a single broad and bouncy noodle with no end in sight.
But the endless noodle came by its length not through magic but from the hands of true craftsmen. Behind a cinematically broad pane of glass in the restaurant, a real master performed his aerial ballet of stretching, tossing and thwacking a formless lump of dough into silken strands…