從新竹到紐約，臺灣“快樂牛肉面”飄香美國

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“快樂牛肉面”(Happy Stony Noodle)的店面里，每張桌子上都擺著一碗酸菜，這是一種經(jīng)過腌制的芥菜葉，黑黑的，帶有礦物的味道，酸菜發(fā)酵好后再放入鍋內(nèi)，加上芝麻油、大蒜、干洋蔥和一小搓糖翻炒。主廚許遲申(音)說這是“中式泡菜”。這是一種佐料，可以放一勺在湯里，或蓋在肉上，能增添一份刺激的酸味和爽脆的口感。但我是直接吃的，就和這家餐館的名字承諾的那樣，吃得很快樂。

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歲的許遲申在臺灣的“戒嚴(yán)”時期出生在北部城市新竹。孩童時期的他常常饞一口“快樂牛肉面”的湯，這家簡單的店面，是共產(chǎn)黨在大陸取得勝利之后，一位逃到了臺灣的國民黨退伍軍人開的。長大后，他接管了這家面館，和妻子許玉蘭(音)一起經(jīng)營了20年，看著他們的家鄉(xiāng)從鄉(xiāng)村轉(zhuǎn)變成了大都市。

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，他們移居美國，把“快樂牛肉面”也一同帶了過去，他們先后在皇后區(qū)的法拉盛、新澤西州的愛迪生試開過餐館(均已停業(yè))。兩年半前，他們在皇后區(qū)艾姆赫斯特百老匯街旁的一條安靜街道安頓了下來。現(xiàn)在在招牌里寫著的“Stony”，是許遲申讀大學(xué)時一位教授送給他的英文昵稱。

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.

這家餐館的核心和新竹的那家一樣：許遲申每早5點就開始熬制的牛肉面湯。他會將牛脖骨和八角茴香、枸杞、豆瓣醬、花椒，外加半打能兼作中藥的草本香料一同放在水里煮沸，再換成小火，不斷攪拌高湯直至夜幕降臨。

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.

湯在第一口看似平淡，但一口一口肉味逐漸濃郁，卻又絕不過度，藏著一種微弱而提味的甜。湯里有大塊牛肉，軟硬適中，柔而勁道，而最后才加在一旁的整片菠菜葉仍舊新鮮油亮。酸菜是必須的，濃郁的味道能抵消油膩。

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.

有四種面條可供選擇，均是唐人街一家作坊當(dāng)天制作的，20年來他們一直按許遲申的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)制作面條。要說牛肉湯面的話，我喜歡白色的寬面，滑溜而有一絲彈性。

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.

一心制作直截了當(dāng)?shù)氖嫘氖澄锏牟藛问亲畎舻摹１热琨u肉飯，就是用豬腿肉切碎成塊，炒成焦糖色，加上冰糖和紹興料酒長時間煨燉，再蓋在飯上讓香味往下滲透。為了質(zhì)感，旁邊還放了一塊有彈性的方形煎豆腐，配著一顆剝了皮、沾著醬油的實心水煮蛋，又再多放了一些讓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.

大塊的鹽酥雞在臺灣俗稱雞米花，外面裹著一層輕盈、膨化的炸土豆淀粉，叫這個名字再適合不過了。里面的肉因為在沙茶醬——用蝦米和比目魚干末制成的咸味醬汁——里滾過而汁水豐盈。還有一種叫做雞卷，菜單上的英文給的是“豬肉卷”，嚴(yán)格來說反而更加準(zhǔn)確——餡料是碎豬肉和魚滑，外面緊緊裹著豆腐皮，經(jīng)過油炸外層看上去和炸雞的粗糙金色表皮一樣。

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.

至于別的，只有很少的一點負(fù)面的地方：在一道叫“蒼蠅頭”的菜里香蔥太多(但這道菜上撒著的豆豉我想多放一些);三杯雞里的肉太肥，邊角呈果凍狀，通常用來增添香味的、深色帶有皺褶的九層塔葉放得不夠。

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.

對于我桌前一位剛從臺灣來美的思鄉(xiāng)者來說，只有一道菜值得關(guān)注：四神湯。這是一種用上了四種有藥用功效的草藥熬制的濃稠高湯，人們認(rèn)為它有提高免疫力、促消化、養(yǎng)顏、抗衰老的功效。最后還要加以一截淺白色的豬腸和少量米酒。在煮出了豐富的油脂并且被煮爛后，嘗起來幾乎沒有什么味道，而這正是你需要的。