从新竹到纽约，台湾“快乐牛肉面”飘香美国

On every table at Happy Stony Noodle sits a bowl of suan cai, pickled mustard greens, dark and minerally, fermented and then flopped in a wok with sesame oil, garlic, dried onion and a flick of sugar. The chef, Chih Shen Hsu, calls it “Chinese kimchi.” It’s a condiment, to be spooned into soup or over meat, lending a sour frisson and crunch. But I ate it straight and was, as the restaurant’s name promised, happy.

在“快乐牛肉面”(Happy Stony Noodle)的店面里，每张桌子上都摆着一碗酸菜，这是一种经过腌制的芥菜叶，黑黑的，带有矿物的味道，酸菜发酵好后再放入锅内，加上芝麻油、大蒜、干洋葱和一小搓糖翻炒。主厨许迟申(音)说这是“中式泡菜”。这是一种佐料，可以放一勺在汤里，或盖在肉上，能增添一份刺激的酸味和爽脆的口感。但我是直接吃的，就和这家餐馆的名字承诺的那样，吃得很快乐。

Mr. Hsu, 65, was born in Hsinchu City in northern Taiwan under martial law. As a child, he often lingered over soup at Happy Beef Noodle, a no-frills storefront opened by veterans of the Kuomintang’s Nationalist Army who had fled to Taiwan after the Communists’ victory in mainland China. When he grew up, he took over the noodle shop and ran it for two decades with his wife, Yu Lan Hsu, while they watched the transformation of their country from rural society to megalopolis.

65岁的许迟申在台湾的“戒严”时期出生在北部城市新竹。孩童时期的他常常馋一口“快乐牛肉面”的汤，这家简单的店面，是共产党在大陆取得胜利之后，一位逃到了台湾的国民党退伍军人开的。长大后，他接管了这家面馆，和妻子许玉兰(音)一起经营了20年，看着他们的家乡从乡村转变成了大都市。

They moved to the U.S. in 1997 and brought Happy Beef Noodle with them, trying out iterations of the restaurant in Flushing, Queens, then Edison, N.J. (Both have shuttered.) Two and a half years ago, they settled on this quiet side street off Broadway in Elmhurst, Queens. The “Stony” now on the awning is Mr. Hsu’s English nickname, bestowed on him by a professor in his college days.

1997年，他们移居美国，把“快乐牛肉面”也一同带了过去，他们先后在皇后区的法拉盛、新泽西州的爱迪生试开过餐馆(均已停业)。两年半前，他们在皇后区艾姆赫斯特百老汇街旁的一条安静街道安顿了下来。现在在招牌里写着的“Stony”，是许迟申读大学时一位教授送给他的英文昵称。

The heart of the restaurant is the same as it was in Hsinchu City: beef noodle soup, which Mr. Hsu starts making every morning at 5 a.m. He sets beef neck bones to boil with star anise, goji berries, doubanjiang (fermented bean paste) and prickly ash, along with a half-dozen herbs that double as Chinese medicine, and keeps stirring the broth over a low flame until nightfall.

这家餐馆的核心和新竹的那家一样：许迟申每早5点就开始熬制的牛肉面汤。他会将牛脖骨和八角茴香、枸杞、豆瓣酱、花椒，外加半打能兼作中药的草本香料一同放在水里煮沸，再换成小火，不断搅拌高汤直至夜幕降临。

The soup is deceptively mild at first, gaining carnality with each spoonful but never growing too forceful, held in check by a faint, ameliorating sweetness. It comes with rough cuts of beef, only half-pliant, putting up gentle but firm resistance, and whole spinach leaves added at the end so they’re still vivid. Pickled mustard greens are essential, the tang offsetting the velvet cling of liquid fat.

汤在第一口看似平淡，但一口一口肉味逐渐浓郁，却又绝不过度，藏着一种微弱而提味的甜。汤里有大块牛肉，软硬适中，柔而劲道，而最后才加在一旁的整片菠菜叶仍旧新鲜油亮。酸菜是必须的，浓郁的味道能抵消油腻。

Four types of noodles are on offer, all delivered daily from the same factory in Chinatown that has been making them to Mr. Hsu’s specifications for 20 years. For the beef noodle soup, I liked the flat white bands made of rice flour, slippery with a bit of stretch.

有四种面条可供选择，均是唐人街一家作坊当天制作的，20年来他们一直按许迟申的标准制作面条。要说牛肉汤面的话，我喜欢白色的宽面，滑溜而有一丝弹性。

The menu is best when it focuses on forthright comfort food, like lu rou fan, pork leg broken down into caramelly hunks, long simmered with rock sugar and Shaoxing wine, and heaped over rice so the flavors trickle down. For texture, there’s a spongy rectangle of fried tofu on the side, along with a hard-boiled egg, shucked of its shell and stained with soy sauce, and more of those beautifully bracing pickled mustard greens.

一心制作直截了当的舒心食物的菜单是最棒的。比如卤肉饭，就是用猪腿肉切碎成块，炒成焦糖色，加上冰糖和绍兴料酒长时间煨炖，再盖在饭上让香味往下渗透。为了质感，旁边还放了一块有弹性的方形煎豆腐，配着一颗剥了皮、沾着酱油的实心水煮蛋，又再多放了一些让人口感舒爽的精致酸菜。

Hunks of salt-and-pepper chicken are colloquially known as popcorn chicken in Taiwan, the name justified by airy, bubbled coats of fried potato starch. Here, the meat inside is juicy from a wallow in sa-cha sauce, with its briny payload of dried shrimp and ground brill. Another snack, chicken roll, is identified on the menu in English as pork roll, which is technically more accurate — the filling is ground pork and fish paste, wrapped tight in tofu skin and crisped until the outside evokes the rugged golden armor of fried chicken.

大块的盐酥鸡在台湾俗称鸡米花，外面裹着一层轻盈、膨化的炸土豆淀粉，叫这个名字再适合不过了。里面的肉因为在沙茶酱——用虾米和比目鱼干末制成的咸味酱汁——里滚过而汁水丰盈。还有一种叫做鸡卷，菜单上的英文给的是“猪肉卷”，严格来说反而更加准确——馅料是碎猪肉和鱼滑，外面紧紧裹着豆腐皮，经过油炸外层看上去和炸鸡的粗糙金色表皮一样。

Elsewhere, little notes were off: too many chives in a dish called flies’ heads (for its scattered dots of fermented black beans, which I wanted more of); in three-cup chicken, overly fatty meat with jellyish corners, and not quite enough of the dark, creased leaves of Thai basil that traditionally give it fragrance.

至于别的，只有很少的一点负面的地方：在一道叫“苍蝇头”的菜里香葱太多(但这道菜上撒着的豆豉我想多放一些);三杯鸡里的肉太肥，边角呈果冻状，通常用来增添香味的、深色带有皱褶的九层塔叶放得不够。

For a recent arrival from Taiwan at my table, missing home, there was only one dish that mattered: four spirits soup, a cloudy broth steeped with four curative herbs, with the supposed power to bolster immunity, ease digestion, bring a glow to the skin and defy time. It’s finished with pale curves of pig intestine and a splash of wine. After all the lush fat and crackle, it tastes like hardly anything at all, and exactly what you need.

对于我桌前一位刚从台湾来美的思乡者来说，只有一道菜值得关注：四神汤。这是一种用上了四种有药用功效的草药熬制的浓稠高汤，人们认为它有提高免疫力、促消化、养颜、抗衰老的功效。最后还要加以一截浅白色的猪肠和少量米酒。在煮出了丰富的油脂并且被煮烂后，尝起来几乎没有什么味道，而这正是你需要的。