Beef Noodle Soup Links L.A.-Beijing

In the heart of Beijing, across from the China Airlines building, there’s a great place to get a bowl of Sichuan-style beef noodle soup. And what a buy. It costs only 70 cents.

Why mention this far-away bargain in a review column that focuses on Los Angeles? Because you can get that same bowl of beef and noodles here. True, it costs a little more--$2.95--but think of the savings in air fare and travel expenses.

The restaurant in China is the Beijing-California Beef Noodle King. Its equivalent here is the Mandarin Chef in Canoga Park. The link between the two is China-born chef-restaurateur P. C. Lee. Lee opened Mandarin Chef this summer. It’s the latest in a series of eating places that he has operated in and around Los Angeles. Lee is also general manager of the Beijing restaurant and travels frequently to that city.

The soup in question is a big bowlful of noodles, juicy chunks of beef shank meat and spicy orange broth flavored with hot bean paste, ginger, dried orange peel and Sichuan peppercorns. It’s a hit with Mexican customers in Canoga Park as well as Chinese habitues, Lee said. In Beijing, the soup sells at the rate of 1,500 bowls a day.

Lee, who is from Sichuan Province, is an expert in beef noodle soup, having served it at a succession of eating places in Taipei and California. The noodles for Canoga Park are made to his specifications at a plant in downtown Los Angeles. Lee is so fussy about the dish that he has fired chefs for taking such liberties as adding spinach to improve the color. There is one acceptable variation.You can have the beef and noodles dry rather than with broth.

The Mandarin Chef is a curious place. It doesn’t look at all like a Chinese restaurant. Blue-sprigged wallpaper, European-style art works and a fountain for coin-tossing are holdovers from the Italian restaurant that previously occupied the premises. The salad bar is still there, but the containers hold such Chinese-style relishes as boiled peanuts, shredded seaweed, napa cabbage marinated in water, wine and salt, Sichuan preserved vegetable and spicy cucumbers. Lee uses the one-time coffee maker to brew tea and pours it from the carafes formerly used for coffee.

There is more to the menu than beef noodle soup, although this dish is the star. Bon bon chicken--cold shredded chicken and cucumbers in peanut sauce--and shredded beef tripe with green onions in hot peppercorn sauce are other dishes that you can have either in Canoga Park or Beijing. In addition, there are several entrees and a nice selection of dim sum (much better dim sum than the dumplings I tasted at one trendy Westside place, where quality was shaky and prices high).

Good examples are dainty shui mai filled with pork, bamboo shoots and straw mushrooms, Sichuan-style pork dumplings in a sauce colored red with chile oil, fried potstickers to eat with vinegar and soy sauce and shao bing-- cold aromatic beef and cilantro wrapped Beijing style in sesame-sprinkled pastry.

Chicken Salad

Lee also offers a Chinese chicken salad, which he admits is a concession to American taste. And sometimes he’ll substitute for a hard-to-get Chinese ingredient, managing at the same time to maintain the integrity of the dish. An example of this juggling act is fried rice prepared Shanghai style (listed on the menu as ham-and-egg fried rice). Lee uses American ham instead of Chinese ham but adheres to such principles as not coloring the rice with soy sauce and adding no more than one green vegetable. He substitutes peanut sauce for Chinese sesame paste in bon bon chicken because the sesame paste imported here tends to be stale.

Mandarin Chef’s prices are low. Shrimp with fried walnuts is $6.50; beef in orange-flavored sauce is $5.75, and the ham-and-egg fried rice is $2.95. Dim sum ranges from $1.65 for one shao bing to $2.95 for the potstickers, shui mai or Sichuan-style dumplings. Lee holds a tight rein on prices. In 1982, he charged $2.80 for the beef noodle bowl at All Lucky, a small fast-food restaurant in Chinatown. In more than seven years, the price has risen just 15 cents.

Mandarin Chef, 20021 Roscoe Blvd., Canoga Park, in Roscoe Center (near corner of Roscoe and Winnetka). Phone (818) 882-8550. Open daily from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Reservations unnecessary. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Park in shopping-center lot.