Everyone goes to Dallas for the hand-pulled noodles and soup dumplings, right?
Ever since I found out we were heading to Dallas, I knew that any spare time I had in the city would be planned around meals. And after learning that the rehearsal dinner was at a Tex-Mex restaurant, I didn’t feel the need to scope out the best of the best Mexican joints in town. I figured we had to try something different. So I checked out the Eater: Dallas Heat Map for hot spots to eat lunch and discovered the Monkey King Noodle Company. I was intrigued. Like really intrigued. Then of course I Yelp’d, Google’d, and hardcore scoped out their menu to find out what I must eat. I became obsessed.
We jumped out of the cab, made some small talk with a few folks we met on the sidewalk, dropped our bags at The Magnolia, and hit the road… because I assumed we could walk the mile and a half it took to get to this place. My plans were set in stone. I was not going to budge on eating here. I would have gone alone, but Charles acquiesced. Then as we walked, the streets became a little sketch and it looked like we may need to cross underneath a big highway to get there. After it got a little more uncomfortable, I remembered that Uber existed and we requested one to take us to our Monkey King.
We had our driver meet us outside a (not sketchy at all) 7-11 where we bought a six-pack for our upcoming BYOB restaurant experience. Apparently this is a thing in Dallas and I’m a fan. The car then took us the last mile of the journey through the quirky, hipster neighborhood of Deep Ellum, which a later Uber driver told us was “cool, but like tattoo-and-piercing kind of cool.”
I love a short, cheap menu.
Once we saw the line of people outside this little place, we knew we had arrived. Based on my research, there are always lines. It smelled damn fantastic too. The place is a former taco stand that’s been redone and you can’t sit inside. After waiting a not-too-bad amount of time, I gave my memorized, strategic order (that of course I fumbled before correcting myself) to a curt woman taking orders through the window. All the food comes in to-go container form, either on trays if you want to eat there on the sidewalk or roof, or in a bag in you want to take it home. God, if I lived in Dallas, I would get this shit to-go every hungover Sunday of my life. But we took ours to the roof with our booze-packs…
Charlie enjoys a longneck on the rooftop. I love BYOB.
Since so many people all over the Internet had expounded its virtues, I really had no choice but to try the Spicy Beef Noodle Soup. The Monkey King cooks the beef shank overnight to make it super tender and the owner pulls the noodles by hand, sometimes resulting in different thicknesses in each strand, which is part of its awesomeness. The soft but firm texture is great and there’s lots of chili oil, but not enough to make Charlie miserable or sweat too much (oh well). The savory, meaty broth is wonderful. I will say it could have been a little saltier, and I did empty some of the gingery dumpling dipping sauce into the soup later on. It was garnished with fresh scallions and cilantro.
Spicy Beef Noodle Soup
And the hand-pulled noodles that dwell beneath
Then, because I had never had them and because it’s been one of my goals in life to try them, I also got the soup dumplings. I have read about these things and looked at many pictures of them online like a crazy person, but they are even better than I could have imagined… though actually just as hard to eat as I had imagined. Monkey King’s soup dumplings are filled with a hot salty broth and pork. Their wrappers are thin, almost chewy, but so delicate. Charlie really made a mess with these. Apparently there is a technique to eating them. I tried my best to nibble a hole in the side of one, suck out the broth, then eat the rest of the dumpling, while also narrating this process out loud to Charlie. While I was definitely not a pro, I’m not sure he ever got to experience the broth from all the spillage trouble. You cannot stab them with a fork, jeez.
Just full of goodness and waiting patiently
The porky inside of the soup dumpling and the aftermath of broth on the container below.
After the slight struggle to get to Monkey King Noodle Company and irritating Charlie along the way, the food (along with the rooftop BYOB set-up) made it well worth it. Plus it was cheap. We sat up on the roof and finished our six-pack, I drank the spicy broth from the container, and we surveyed Dallas until the noodle-maker and cooks quit at 2:00 to go grab some ice cream from the Uber ice cream truck, also a new discovery on this trip. A solid afternoon.
Me eating noodles in a not-staged-at-all photo. Please notice my handmade tassel necklace. Maybe one day that will be a post in itself. Maybe.
I wish we’d had room to try their Dan Dan Noodles too, but at 32 oz. you really don’t need a whole container of noodles and dumplings to yourself. I highly recommend Monkey King Noodle Company. So delicious. I wish there were anything like it here in Raleigh. I’d go back here in a heartbeat to hang out and chill or to get take-out and be fat on my couch.
