(Beijing weekend)
Updated: 2007-05-15 10:58

Made in Heaven has long been known for its noodles, and continues to serve the popular snack in many guises, despite its adaptation to a Hong Kong-style cafe.

On the menu are 16 different kinds of noodles, divided into three sections including Shanxi, Japanese styles, and fried noodles.

Shanxi style knife-sliced noodles

Managing chef, James Gao, is a noodles master from Shaanxi who has taught four of the restaurant's chefs their noodle-making skills over the three years he has been there.

The kneading of dough is one of the steps most crucial to the quality of noodles, according to Gao. The chefs spend 20 minutes kneading a 4-kilogram dough, and then leave it to "wake" for more than an hour. The process will be repeated four times; eventually it takes a whole day to prepare the dough.

All the noodles are hand-made. Two most popular choices are oil-sprayed hand-stretched noodles with beef chops, and Qishan handmade noodles with spice and diced pork.

A personal favorite is the oil-sprayed broad noodles, which has a particularly tempting aroma and is topped with spring onion and chili powder

The Qishan handmade noodle is a narrower kind of noodle, with a lot of red chili, tasting both spicy and slightly sour, which helps whet one's appetite.

The Qishan noodles might be too spicy for some, but one can always ask to reduce the amount of chili in the noodles.

There is a non spicy version of the Qishan handmade noodles with tomato and egg sauce, if you don't want chili in your bowl.

Knife-chopped noodles, which is Shanxi style, come with fried brown sauce with pork, a Beijing-style sauce.

The restaurant also offers udon with beef, pork broth, miso soup, and in seafood soup. There are fried noodles of Japanese, Hong Kong styles, besides typical Hong Kong style noodles with shrimp wonton.

A bowl of noodles costs from 18-28 yuan. The restaurant is affiliated to a big hotel, with a clean, comfortable environment and good services. Presentation of the noodles is quite beautiful.

Opening hours: 11am-midnight.
Address: 1/F Temple of Heaven Beijing, 1 Anding Dongli, 300 meters north of Zhaogongkou Qiao, South Third Ring Road.
Tel: 010-6762-6688.