Eden Noodles started out in this Mount Eden shop, number 105 on Auckland’s Dominion Road, which opened in 2006 as Eden Noodles Cafe, and the same sign still hangs over the door twenty years later. The business grew from one young Chinese cook’s dream of running her own noodle shop in New Zealand. She trained as a cook while young and never left the trade, and her first customers were mostly fellow Chinese until Kiwi neighbours found the door and kept coming back year after year. The brand has since grown to many stores around Auckland and further afield, yet this original shop remains a humble eatery serving affordable Sichuan food.
Her approach to flavour was to keep three parts Sichuan and adapt seven parts for the people eating here, a balance that still shapes the cooking. Each store makes its own chilli oil and pork topping in its kitchen. The oil is made the traditional Sichuan way in a large pot: spring onion and aromatics are fried slowly to flavour it, and then the hot oil is poured over ground chilli three times, while the pork mince is fried until golden and crisp. A bowl of dan dan noodles is built in a set order, with chilli oil and sauces first, a ladle of broth to loosen them, noodles cooked fresh that day, and finally that crisp pork on top.
Dan dan noodles are the first thing most people order. Tradition traces them to a street vendor in Zigong who sold them from a shoulder pole, the dan, in 1841, and here they arrive as thin noodles in chilli broth under a crunchy layer of pork. The dumplings in sweet and spicy sauce are the other signature, a Chengdu snack first made by Zhong Shaobai in 1893, with pork dumplings wrapped in store and dressed in sweet soy and chilli oil. Spicy beef noodle soup with slow braised beef is a favourite when the weather turns cold, and a cucumber salad with chilli oil and peanuts cools things down beside anything fiery.
Beyond those, the printed menu runs to many pages. Noodles come thin, wide and knife cut, thick and hand cut, or swapped for rice or kumara noodles, served in soup or dry with mapo tofu, braised pork ribs or chicken mince with fresh chilli. Cold starters include slobbery chicken, spiced beef shin with ox tripe, and a super spicy green bean jelly known as sad jelly, while wontons, dishes on rice, Sichuan pita bread and hot pot bowls, including one you assemble yourself, fill out the list. Vegetarian and spicy dishes are marked, diners are asked to tell staff how hot they like their food, and the noodles are not gluten free.
Address: 105 Dominion Road, Mount Eden, Auckland 1024
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