Mian

101 Best restaurants of Los Angeles

@latimes

"#45 Mian is a sleek, compact Sichuan noodle restaurant from Tony Xu, the chef behind Chengdu Taste. There is nearly always a wait to get a table, but your patience is rewarded with the excellent house zhajiangmian, hand-pulled wheat noodles overlaid with generous quantities of ground pork and chopped scallions. The lightly chewy, springy noodles are pleasurable on their own; stir in the chile oil sitting at the bottom of your bowl and you catalyze the dish’s spicy, heady, hypnotic qualities. (Order the dish Chongqing-style and your noodles are tossed with soft peas imported from China.) You can’t go wrong with anything on the menu: A bowl of the house beef noodles is intensely lush and meaty; hot and sour noodles are gleeful and pungent. Order the minced-pork dumplings; the well-filled slippery half-moons burst in your mouth with a blaze of tingly Sichuan heat. There are few dishes at Mian that don’t thrill in one way or another. No alcohol. Lot parking. Credit cards accepted."