From China’s Far North, a Paradoxical Noodle Lands in Queens

The roasted cold noodles at Followsoshi in Flushing aren’t cold and don’t look much like other noodles.

The first thing you notice about roasted cold noodles, a favorite street food in the far northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang, is that they are not cold. We are not dealing here with a dish that will give you relief from swampy August days, like cold sesame noodles; or like Korean mul naengmyeon, a bowl of beef broth in which spaghetti-like strands of vegetable starch lie below shards of floating ice; or like buckwheat soba coiled on a bamboo mat beside their chilled dipping sauce, tsuketsuyu. Roasted cold noodles are meant to be eaten hot, right off the griddle. They don’t much resemble noodles, either. In form, they are more akin to a rolled, filled omelet, as you will see if you watch them being made through the front window of Followsoshi, a stall inside a Chinese micromall in downtown Flushing, Queens.