I Tested The World's Best Noodles

For thousands of years, noodles have been at the heart of countless cultures. It's street food, comfort food, and in some places, even a symbol of luck and longevity. But with so many legendary versions, which one is the best? Is there even such a thing as the best? So today I'm traveling across Asia to try the top 10 most popular noodle dishes in their most authentic state according to Taste Atlas, to see if they actually earn their spot. We are starting things off in Xi'an, China, the birthplace of noodles. We are literally on the ancient city wall with my friend Eyal, travel expert, and he's gonna be showing us all over Asia. We're taking you to some places that are hidden gems, some places are more well-known. That doesn't matter at all. What matters is that they make the highest quality noodles possible and that they represent their culture with honesty. And we're starting with arguably the grandfather of all... noodles on planet Earth: Biang Biang Noodles. And they're called that for a specific reason. Supposedly it's the sound that the hand-pulled noodle dough makes when it's stretched and slapped against the table properly. Okay, here we go. Oh, man! This is cooked to perfection. Wow! You didn't see that. They're so big! That's the biggest thing I've ever put in my mouth. It's actually so perfectly balanced in flavor. There's a lot of sweetness here. Every single ingredient in this bowl is cooked to perfection. The very first thing I notice is the presence of the noodle. It takes the center stage of this dish. Perfectly tender, yet perfectly chewy. Al dente in a way; I don't want anything to be any less... than this. So a lot of noodle dishes in general are sort of the noodle is meant to carry the sauce. It's a vessel rather than the main character. It's 100% the main character in this dish! Salt level is perfect. It's seasoned absolutely perfectly. But this is the perfect heat level. It's like a three or four out of ten on heat. Addictive level of spice. You don't want to stop. All the noodles that we eat all originated here in this area. It's fast food. You make it fast, you eat it fast. It's kind of like the ancient Chinese drive-through. You go around the Silk Road, you see a guy making it on the side of the road, you eat it very quickly, you go on your merry way, and it's absolutely freaking fabulous! This is setting a tough bar because now everything after this kind of has to look behind itself and be like, "Am I as good?" And that's what we're here to find out. I know what you're thinking. These noodles aren't on the top 10 of the list that we're following. But these set the baseline because they are the dish that gave birth to almost everything we're about to eat. Before we left, we met the owner, the Noodle King, who let us into the kitchen to see how their magic is done. Not only are they doing long hand-pulled noodles, but look at the speed for the torn noodle version! I gave it a go, did alright. He approved. And Eyal got us kicked out. We have our first official noodle dish on the list, which is located in the night market streets of Xi'an: Chow Mein. Chow Mein in Chinese basically means fried noodles, so it could be any fried noodle. There is always an egg inside. They're usually bean sprouts, there's always green onion, and it's always fried. I think this is the mother of all drunk foods. We're not drunk right now, so is it wrong to eat this and then get drunk? We'll probably have to come back for another one. I think that's inevitable. Well, let's have our first. Oh, yeah! Before you even say anything, this is very interesting because you can find it all over China in different versions. There's cumin in this, and there's cumin in this because we're in Xi'an. I think it's great. I can eat so many of those. I'm with you on that. I love the little flecks of spice. It's just something that delivers every single time you get it; you know what you're gonna get. You're not gonna get a Michelin-starred meal, but you will get a massive plate of chewy noodles that are lightly spiced. Got a little bit of that cumin fragrance. It's nice, I like it. A lot of people love to, like, look down upon this dish. I think you said it just right. It's not meant to be the greatest noodle dish you'll ever have. It's just meant to do what it does, and it does it extremely well. It's like when you eat toast with a little bit of butter. Not a lot, just a little bit. And you're like, "Oh, wait a minute, I love this!" Simple, easy, delivers every time, and it's cheap. And apparently they told our street vendor my thoughts on how it needed more seasoning. And so in response, he put me to the test. I'm not one to back down from a challenge, but I'll be honest, I'm a little nervous. And all of a sudden, now that I'm having to perform this, I've forgotten how to use a wok. Will my noodles be able to compare to his? A triumphant moment! A real good sport of a chef. We love him and his noodles, but now we move on. Now we're moving away from Xi'an and headed to Chengdu in the Sichuan region of China, home to the Sichuan peppercorn known for its numbing properties, which is the heart of our next dish: Dan Dan Noodles. Now, the spot we're eating at has been open for over 100 years. So let's see where traditional Dan Dan lands. We're in a very, very traditional place. This is not the kind of spot that you'll see tourists, evidently by all the staff taking photos of us. One of my favorite things about China is if you show up anywhere and you are clearly American, especially if you're taking pictures of stuff, the second that you stop taking pictures, they're taking pictures of you! This is Dan Dan Noodles, very much like boat noodles in Thailand. People think, "Oh, why? What about it is boat-like?" It's the vessel, not the noodle. Imagine a guy carrying a pole on his shoulders. On one end, there's the pot; on the other end, there's all the ingredients. Dan Dan was sort of the nickname for that pole that people were carrying on their shoulders. And if you just need a quick fix, that's what you get. And that's also why the bowls are small. It's kind of disappearing. Places like this are harder and harder to find. Very bold, oily Sichuan pepper flavors. I'm very curious to know what you're gonna think about it. Let's go for it. This is fantastic. Sorry, I'm like my mouth is like watering. This is fantastic! It's got, like, all of the incredibly deep, rich Sichuan pepper flavors, incredibly strong, numbing spice. The starch and the sauce kind of become one. It's kind of almost dry in a way, and then it emulsifies as you eat it. And that's what I like about it. It's, like, thick. So these noodles are like a little bit more like a—not quite wide noodle, but just sort of like a flat wheat noodle. It's not an elastic chew like some of the other noodles that we've had. Like, this is like a soft, al dente, closer to almost a pasta-like chew. A super underrated noodle dish. It's not gonna be like the typical in-your-face chili oil noodle, where it's super, super, super, super, super salty and super umami. Instead, you're getting more flavors that you don't normally see these days. You're getting an emphasis on not just saltiness, but you're also getting a little bit of bitterness from the intense amount of Sichuan chili flake. You're getting a strong Sichuan fragrance, perfume in your mouth, and intense numbing spice after that. I think it makes sense to be served small like this. I wish that there were more places serving it. There's a reason it's on this list, and I hope that it stays around for years and years to come. I don't want to see it disappear. We need more people making good Dandan noodles. So if you're out there and thinking of doing it, do it. Answer the call with your noodle. What? Take that anyway you want. Onto our final stop in China where we're trying Zhajiangmian, a noodle dish originating in Beijing. So we have Zhajiang. This is a fermented bean paste with a very deeply flavored oil. So the oil goes in, that gets mixed, then the paste that gets mixed in. You have an array of different things: Cucumber, turnip, almost like watermelon radish, sort of a soybean, and then also mung bean, bean sprouts. There's also celery and green onion. Think of it kind of like a ragù alla bolognese. That's kind of the vibe. It's very hearty. It's very warm, very home-style cooking, and it's very much Beijing. It's good. It's not my first pick, if I'm being honest. Yeah, I'm with you completely. The noodles have an incredible texture, though. The oil, the sauce, you've got bits of saltiness. You've got a deep, deep, deep, funky umami from the sauce. I like it. It's just like not the most flavorful that we've had out of everything, if I'm being honest. I think that the quality and the chew in these noodles is better than the sauce. I wish they were carrying something better. That said, it's still delicious. I do think that there's far more exciting out there, and we're going to go and uncover that. Now we're moving this noodle train over to Thailand, where we're joined by the legendary Mark Wiens to get what just may be one of our top contenders. You guessed it: Pad Thai! And so we're at Pad Thai Thipsamai. This is probably the most famous Pad Thai in Bangkok, in Thailand, maybe in the world. This is a dish that unified Thailand. It originated in the 1930s. There was a shortage of rice, and the government wanted to come up with ways to reduce the consumption of rice. The government literally handed out recipes to restaurants. This also became the first ambassador of Thai food around the world. So it's very, very interesting in that sense. So we're getting two variants: Pad Thai Hor Kai, which is wrapped in an egg—essentially a scrambled egg in a way— And then the more traditional original version, which is what you would expect, right? Goes on a plate, has some crunchies on top. Wider noodle. Let's try it! Fun fact: while we were filming this, completely unbeknownst to us, Mark Wiens was also playing in the background. So great to have two of him in this shoot. And let's start with the egg version. Out of this world! It's pretty good. I love this. It is very sweet. It's, like, shockingly sweet. This has depth. It's like layering to all of it. You just take a bite and you get this, like, almost umami seafood flavor. And then you've got a little bit of acidity from the tamarind. The egg skin to this, like, really makes it. It almost is like a tofu skin kind of texture. We'll go to the non-egg skin, simpler version. Much more acidic. And these type of noodles have a different texture. They're, like, a little less chewy. They're both delicious. I like that this one's a little more balanced. It's not so aggressively sweet. You're getting a little bit more of that acidity coming in and leveling out the sweetness. And it's a little bit more savory-leaning, which I really enjoy. Pretty much every dish in Thailand, it's always a balance of sweet, sour, spicy, and savory/salty. In pretty much every Thai restaurant that you would go to, there will be chili flakes, sugar, and there're going to be, like, pickled chilies in vinegar. Depending on your own personal taste, it's super common to just, like, add more of what you want. If you like it more sweet, add sugar. You want it more spicy, add the chili flakes. I blindly seasoned, so we'll see how this goes. Cheers... Oh, my God! A little more heat. It makes sense that they do that then, because you can kind of season it to your taste. You can create the different variations, and the depth of flavor is already where it needs to be. One of the things I love about Thai culture—Thais love to eat noodles because they're customizable. So there's some cultures where noodle dishes do not touch the original flavor from the chef. Thais, on the other hand, the mentality is they want to eat noodles because they can make it however they want it. It's like, totally up to you. And that's one of the great things about noodles in Thailand. I've eaten many Pad Thai in my life. I'll be honest with you: this is my first Pad Thai in Thailand, and it's the best Pad Thai I've ever had! So this raises the bar so substantially that now it's in that playing field of like, "Well, wait a minute..." "...this actually might be one of the best noodle dishes in the world." The question is: what else is out there? Next up, we travel to Vietnam, where we're met with a crazy contrast. We just ate at one of the most popular, famous spots for Pad Thai in Thailand, but our next spot is quite possibly the most unassuming place for Pho you could ever find. Tucked away in an alley, up a flight of stairs... Eyal is taking me to somebody's house. This is someone's home, literally. There's a bed over there. I was delighted and shocked. A public restaurant fully in someone's home. I almost felt nervous being here, like I was intruding, but simultaneously "at home," dare I say? Eating in a situation like this usually means you're gonna have a good meal. There are a lot of theories about how exactly Pho developed. Pho started around here in the north during the division of Vietnam—we're talking 1954—so a lot of people from Hanoi immigrated south, and then that's what caused Pho to spread. But this spot specifically, I've been coming here for so many years, and it's by far my favorite that I've tried. It's only open for four hours a day, so it's kind of like an afternoon snack. Let's talk about this broth. So this broth is way more clear than any of the other broths I've seen. I mean, it almost looks like water. On one end, I'm like, "Wow," and on the other end, I'm like concerned. There's no color. How could there be flavor in there? But I haven't tried it yet, so I'm excited. We walked in, we sat down, we didn't even order. There was no like, "Hey, what would you like?" It was like, "Here's the Pho." Yeah, I'm also at a full depth squat right now in short shorts, so enjoy that, I guess. So... just the broth by itself. Whoa! It's, like, so clean, perfectly salted. And the beef flavor is, like... it's as present as it should be, and yet it is so clean and just subtle and nice. And that's without even trying anything. It's just the broth alone. So this is pickled chilies, there's sugar, salt, vinegar. Take one quẩy. Put it inside. You can break it if you want, you don't have to. I'm having pho for the first time. Everything I had before back home in America is clearly, like, bouillon. They're not making stock back there. This is actually properly boiled. They're taking whole beef bones and they're boiling stock with unbelievable technique, especially to get this broth this clear! You have to pay so much attention to it. These noodles are a little more cooked than I would like them personally. But at the same time, I think that if they were cooked less, they wouldn't have absorbed this incredible broth. I mean, it's not taking away from the experience by any means. That's the thing about pho like this. A lot of places will add stuff to it to hide the imperfections of it. There's only two variables: the beef and the noodles. If you mess one up, I mean, the whole bowl is, like, done. This is incredible. The flavors are really direct. It's beef, it's a little bit of fish sauce. It's just this, like, clean flavor, this very singular... I mean, you can come back and eat this again and again and again. And I think that kind of encapsulates what pho is. It's really this sort of, like, healing broth. And when you're sick, you have it. When it's cold, you have it. When it's hot, you have it. It's a year-round, magical dish, man. It's going to be tough to move on from here, but... we move on. Next up, we head to South Korea for japchae. Traditionally, this is served as a side dish and isn't really considered an entree. But despite that, it made the list as one of the most popular noodle dishes in the world. So in theory, it could be punching far above its weight. To properly test this, we'll be tasting it in two different settings: as a side dish alongside Korean barbecue, and on the street as a main. It looks good. I love the fact that this guy is tossing this in a hot pan with his hands, bro. Doesn't give a fuck. I like that! Oh, yeah. Japchae when eaten traditionally, it's usually a part of a big set of a lot of dishes where you go as a family and you share that set. This one costs about... $4. So you eat a street version of this. It's filling, it's nice. Great drunk food! I would have wanted... This is making me drunk! Yeah, exactly! It's great. It's fantastic. Makes me want to take my pants off. What do you think? Think about the value for a second. $4! Back home, $4 doesn't even get you a side of mashed potatoes, let alone a beautiful bowl of japchae. The noodles are chewy and stretchy and nice. The stir-fried flavor, the two different types of onion that are in it, and then the soy helps kind of bring it together. I like this a lot. It's very satisfying to eat. It makes sense. It's one of the world's most popular noodles. It should be. I like it so much, I want to give it more credit. I wish it didn't have such strong contenders in this video. So we've had the street version. Delicious, lovely. But how good is it in a restaurant? Honestly, Eyal and I were pretty disappointed. It was clear that it was meant to be more of an accompaniment to Korean barbecue than stand-alone. The street japchae was more affordable, better tasting, and faster to get. So it earns our vote. Moving on to our next dish: laksa. It was tough to nail down the exact country we needed to go to, so I called up an expert, Uncle Roger, for his advice, and he steered our ship towards his home country of Malaysia. Despite the dodgy sign that literally just said "Laksa", we ended up with what is titled Penang Road Famous Laksa. We're here with Jarvis to walk us through this. This laksa is actually a broth made from fish. This particular shop, they use sardines. One thing that's different when you use sardines is the fishy smell is not so heavy. So apart from that, you've got a lot of greens there, you have onions, mint leaves. Assam laksa is different than the laksa you would have imagined because it was born from fisherman's scraps. Basically, you have two different kind of fruit that goes into this: one is this thing which they basically call "asam", and tamarind. And this is what gives it the very distinct sour flavor. And it's really sour, by the way. I tried a piece of that dried fruit and it's like biting into a lemon, but double the amount of sourness. This could go one of two directions. It's either absolutely incredible, or it's not good at all. Wow. Oh, my God! So good. So balanced. Sort of sour, acidic-leaning. There's a light sweetness to help kind of round that out a little bit. Little tiny, tiny, tiny bit of heat in the background. And to your point, it's not... it's not really fishy. It's just this, like, umami, rich seafood flavor. Oh, and the mint in there, too, adds a really nice fragrance. What is this? This is actually shrimp paste, or we call it "Otak Udang". Direct translation is "The Brain of Prawn". It depends how much you want to add in, so you add more flavor to it. Me being local, I can go as much as I can. Try maybe a bit first. I wasn't expecting it to be sweet like that. It's almost like the sweet version of a fish sauce in the sense of... it adds funk, but not in the direction of salt, but actually in the direction of sweetness. But let's talk about these noodles, though. They're a very thick rice noodle. It adds this really nice sort of, like, chewy texture without it taking away from all the nice crunch from the raw onion. The little bits of cooked fish that are in this... that add a nice chew. This is phenomenal! This is unlike anything I've ever had before. I love this, and it doesn't exist anywhere near me, unfortunately. It's almost reminiscent of, like, a minestrone and a tom yum, which seems kind of, like, weird because neither of those ingredients are in this dish, but it's somewhere in there, comparatively. A lot of brothy noodles... You kind of get tired of. This on the other hand, as you eat it, the broth is changing. It's becoming a little bit more acidic because it's becoming more concentrated. You're getting a little bit more of the fish as you go to the bottom. It's one of those dishes where, like, you want to go back for another bite and another bite and another bite, and then all of a sudden the bowl is empty and you're like, "What the fuck!". Really, really, really phenomenal. Moving on. Now we move on to Tokyo, Japan, and we have a competition on our hands. We're picking the top three styles of ramen from this list and having a showdown to find our favorite. After that, we have a few other Japanese noodle dishes, but let's hit our first stop in the streets of Shibuya: one of the most popular tonkotsu ramen chains in the world, Ichiran Ramen. This place is sick! And a lot of people say that it's overrated, blah, blah, blah. But it's cool! You walk in, you order through a vending machine, you get the tickets, you circle your preferences, and you can customize everything: how spicy it is, the firmness, the richness of your broth. This is great! They seat you at your own private booth. You actually can't even see your server. Is this truly as overrated as everybody says, or can this chain live up to the hype? Insane! I can't yell because everyone's very quiet in here. I know there are many ramen places around, but immediately, top five bowl of ramen of my life! The noodles are so fine yet firm... they're like coated in that broth. They're rich, savory, umami. They just play so well. I see why they say "order extra noodles". The one key thing here... If I didn't have those extra noodles, I'd be sad because I would have eaten all of them before I had all the broth. Unreal! Super elastic! I don't know why they recommend medium. I think firm is the way to go. They're like a bouncy chew, and then like the sort of "stick to your teeth" like glutinous chew after you chew for a little bit. The noodles have salt in them too, so they're not diminishing the flavor of the broth as you eat them. Insane, top tier noodle. Onto the next. Next up in our ramen showdown, we are trying shoyu ramen in the first ramen spot to ever get a Michelin star. So it's gotta be good, right? So this is a step up. It's definitely a bit more refined. They hand mill the noodles here on-site every day. It's really... they take it very, very seriously here. My expectations are high. It should be better than Ichiran. So let's dig in. It's so beautiful. The broth... like the little golden floating globules of fat on top. The noodles are what I'm really excited about here. I mean, look at this. That is glorious! Whoa! Yeah, the noodles are... serious... Crazy! So these are like totally different than the noodles that we had in the previous bowl of ramen. These are more of like a slippery noodle. I would say that this is kind of like the texture that you expect as default for ramen. So it's like it's very, very easy to overcook this, and that just never happened here. The firmness is there, it's al dente. It's just a more slippery, more fluid noodle. It's almost less starchy, it's more fresh. I mean, it's phenomenal. Worth a Michelin star. Easily worth a Michelin star. But the question is: hand-milled, stone-milled in-house daily. But is it the best ramen we're going to have comparatively to Ichiran? I actually thought Ichiran was better. I enjoyed Ichiran more. I thought it was seasoned a little bit more aggressively. But this was still phenomenal. Top tier, world-class ramen. But if we're comparing the two, I preferred my experience at Ichiran. Moving on... Shockingly, Ichiran is in the lead in our ramen showdown. But we have one last challenger, which is Tsukemen. We're at Rokurinsha. Iconic place, Tsukemen. Which It's worth noting it was invented in the 1950s or the 1960s. This place is known for being the first place that pioneered the thick dipping sauce. It's a very, very important spot and I'm glad we're trying this. So you have these beautiful cold noodles, soft-boiled egg, and then you have essentially a condensed ramen soup. So it's extremely thick, it's extremely hearty and fatty. So we have our prepared base. Go in for our noodles. These are much thicker. Dip the noodles. You want to heat up the noodles in this, but also soak them in that broth. Oh yeah, that's very good! Insane flavor. So the noodles are cold, but the broth is so hot. But the second that it enters the broth, the noodles go from cold to the perfect temperature. Not hot, not cold. And the broth is so reduced that it coats the noodles almost like a sauce. I think it's just important to note this is a seafood and pork-based broth. So it gives everything just like really strong, rich flavors. Super salty, super rich. Fatty, but it's not too fatty. And there's so much depth of flavor. I mean, not, not just the roasted pork flavor, but also like the little back-notes of seafood. And you have all these sort of toppings too, right? You can put a little bit of what smells like dried yuzu peel. And so now as you're eating it, the eating experience is changing while you're eating the dish. So by the time you get to the end of this, you may be eating something completely different by the time this bowl gets empty. Because the noodles are chilled, they're like the chewiest noodles we've had so far in the best way possible. I like a dense, almost mochi-like chew and these... really hit the mark texturally. By far, these are my favorite noodles so far. Honestly, between tsukemen and tonkotsu, I just can't decide either way. We're not done yet. We don't have our final favorite. Onto the next place, which is an udon spot in Tokyo. So we ordered these noodles that had an insane texture, outrageously flavorful broth, with even more added richness from that plump egg yolk. So good! I drank it straight out of the bowl. But if I'm comparing it across the whole board, it might rank high. But I don't know that it's the favorite out of everything... So we move on to our final noodle dish: yakisoba in Osaka, Japan. We've had some heavy hitters around the country, and this is a very, very basic one. Could this be the biggest upset on our entire list of noodles? All it is is a basic dish cooked on a flat-top. We had to wait a full hour just to get in, and I'm gonna be honest with you guys: if I see a line, I walk the other way. But I fought it out for this place. It better be worth the hype. This originates in the 1930s, '40s. It was all... after the war, rice was not available... they were really trying a lot from very little. People know soba noodles... this is not buckwheat noodles. This is wheat. Like a lot of things in Japan, it's based on Chinese dishes. So this is based on chow mein, and you can see the same kind of vegetables in it. This place is maybe the most popular one in Osaka. When you make yakisoba, each person... they have their own take on it. We have here sort of the origin, the original one. We have katsuobushi shaved on top. Looks like dried parsley. It came out done. They just threw it on here to keep it hot, I guess. They're cooking mostly the vegetables now. Okay, let's do it. Oh my God! Why is it so good? This is crazy good! This is crazy! A lot of Japanese people, you ask them, "Where's your favorite yakisoba?", they'll tell you, "Oh, the one that my mom makes". People have like very strong, nostalgic feelings about this dish. You can tell why. I'm gonna be honest, there was a lot of waiting in line to get in here, and I was like, "All this for yakisoba? Like, come on. This is not worth waiting in line for." I was wrong. God, the texture of the noodles, they're starchy. The chew! The sauce is so, like, salty yet sweet. It is perfectly seasoned. I've been eating all day. This brought my hunger back! It's so goddamn good. It's not about what's fancy. It's not about how many ingredients went into it. I'm eating something, and ultimately, how delicious was the item that I ate? It's worth noting. It's very simple. It's whatever, but it's still a traditional dish. This is a family business. Four generations. It's in the culture. And there's so many textures. It's not just chewy; the crispy noodles at the bottom... There's so many layers of flavor and texture in this big fan. Yeah. Zero notes. This has been a lot of traveling to find a favorite noodle. And thank God we're about to get there. But I have to say thank you to Eyal, the man who made this possible. Thank you. Thank you for having me. If there's one thing that I think should be your takeaway from this is that travel as much as you can. Traveling changes your perspective on life. If you travel with respect and with your eyes and minds open, you will experience... amazing things. And I think we've experienced some quite amazing noodles on this trip. Eyal does this stuff privately. He's made guides so that anyone can kind of follow what we follow today. So you want to find it? It's on his website. But... more importantly, let's talk about the favorite noodles. So I'm gonna be honest. No cop-outs, not gonna say, "Oh, they were all my favorite." There was one that really stood out, and it was the Biang Biang noodles by far. I know they weren't on the list. I feel wrong for picking it, but that's what I like the most. God damn it! That goes to show that even the most popular dishes aren't necessarily the best. It comes down to your own personal taste. So you're gonna find out which one you like, depending on where you go. So that goes to show that the list of great noodle dishes is far longer than any noodle ever could be... So subscribe, and I'll see you next time.