Restaurant: Vien Huong Restaurant
City: Oakland, CA

My dad and I had lunch at our favorite noodle shop in Chinatown!

The name of the restaurant is Vietnamese, but the noodle soups here are actually Teochew cuisine. Teochew cuisine is also known as Chaoshan, Chaozhou, and Chiuchow cuisine. China has one writing system, but many different dialects that can sound completely different from each other. Hence, the transliteration of the name of the dialect or region is different. The name ‘Chaoshan’ appears to be a contraction of the names of two of its administrative areas, the prefecture-level cities of Chaozhou (潮州), and Shantou (汕头). Chaoshan is located in the eastern part of Guangdong, by the sea.  Today, a majority of Teochew people live all over Southeast Asia.

I had spare rib noodle soup, half ho-fun and half mien (wide rice noodle and egg noodle). My dad had the same soup but with just ho-fun.

In addition to the noodles, there was Chinese cabbage, bean sprouts, broccoli, green onions, and spare ribs in the soup. The soup was rich and just a tad on the thicker side, and the spare ribs were tender. To sum up, it was hecka good!!!