While the new (and wealthy) kid WF Central has opened in Wangfujing to much fanfare, people in the east aren’t just rotting at home. Hopson One, a brand-new shopping mall opened at the end of 2017, with 200,000sqm of shiny new retail space to the east of Jiulongshan subway station, a stop away from heavily populated Shuangjing.
Okay, checking out a new shopping mall, how hard could it be? When we faced the layout of this six-floor mall, we panicked – there are around 20 food and beverage stores on each floor, over 70 eateries in the B2, let alone another 62 restaurants stuffed in an area called 21st Block in the basement. It looked like we were going to have to lock ourselves into this mall and start to eat non-stop day and night for months to try them all out.
How could each of the places have business in such a mall? Looking at the busy crowds dashing into the mall, and disappearing into its vast depths made us realize. The daily footfall volume could reach 60,000 on weekdays, and almost 80,000 on weekends, reported eeo.com.
Should we give up and run away? No, that’s not the Beijinger style. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but let’s start. After following the crowds and getting lost in the maze-like B1, we stopped in front of popular eatery A Bu Noodles, which has people queuing outside, which was only opened 20 days ago. It’s easy to make a decision here, with only a yak noodle soup, and dry noodles with sauce (RMB 28) on the menu, alongside small dishes, such as thick-cut yak, naingpi, pickled daikon, and chuanr.
After we sat down and ordered through WeChat, the noodles were served shockingly fast – in less than three minutes. The broth of the noodle soup (RMB 25) was very flavorful, thanks to the eight-hours of boiling the yak marrow bones go through every day. The slices of yak were boiled until they were tender. We especially liked the dry noodles with sauce (RMB 28), which were covered with minced yak sauce. The noodles in both noodles were al dente which added extra texture to the meal, and might be the quite different from the normal Lanzhou lamian you may have tried.
If the noodles are not enough, you could go for chuanr. The yak chuanr (RMB 18) was huge with tender and tasty yak cuts, and the mutton chuanr (RMB 22 for 10) was covered with a decent layer of chili powder. To sooth things down, try the milk tea (RMB 16), which was served in a bowl. Similar to the ones in Tibet, the savory milk tea, a mixture of Qinghai local brick tea with milk, was surprisingly good. How good was that? We saw a customer in the queue secretly pouring the delicious milk tea into her plastic Starbucks cup. We nodded, and understood.
All the dishes we ordered were served within seven minutes, and we were told that the reason behind it was because “people who work nearby don’t have much time for lunch, so we are trying to serve as fast as possible, normally we can cater to two rounds of customers during lunch time,” said Shan. When we are nearby, and in a rush, we know where to go for a solid and heartwarming bowl of noodles.
Daily 11am-10pm. B1-D90-94, Hopson One, 21 Xidawang Lu, Chaoyang District
阿巭面道: 朝阳区西大望路21号合生汇B1-D90-94
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Photos: Tracy Wang,