Cool with a cold bowl of noodles in the San Gabriel Valley

Sometimes my living room feels like the nucleus of the earth, the walls boiling with a relentless heat that penetrates my soul. This summer has been especially brutal. I have not consulted any real weather data to reach this conclusion, only the number of times a week I feel that all the drops of sweat cling to my clothes are merging into a hot lava pool that I cannot escape. I find Consuelo in the houses with air conditioning of comprehensive friends and in the icy cabins of the Bistro Na restaurant in Temple City.

It is a restaurant that frequents for crispy shrimp, fried and lacquered in a sticky glaze made of sweet thorn. And for spicy chicken, gelatinal splinters that swim in chili oil good enough to drink.

Thanks to a recent recommendation from the Betty Hallock Food Editor, you will now find an order of Beijing Yanji's cold noodles at my table.

It is a tangle of Sarracene wheat noodles in an icy broth, with sliced ​​stem of beef, meat tongue, kimchi, watermelon, boiled egg, grated cucumber, squad radish and chili sauce, all arranged on the top as a color wheel.

This dish is influenced by Naengmyeon Korean, cold noodles with a story dating from the Joseon dynasty in Korea (1392-1910) and includes innumerable preparations. It is mul naengmyeon in a cold broth. Hoe Naengmyeon with raw fish and dressing of Chile or Yeolmu Naengmyyeon served with fermented baby radish.

Preparations vary throughout the country, with different styles in Pyongyang and Hamhung, among others.

A city in the province of Jilin of Northeast of China, Yanji is close to the North Korean border and serves as a kind of gastronomic crossroads, where the culinary landscape carries the traces of its neighbor.

“What makes Yanji cold noodles so distinctive is their chewable texture and their refreshing taste,” says the executive chef of Bistro Na, Tian Yong.

The chef grew eating Yanji noodles when he was a child in Xidan, Beijing. He lived in a alley or a narrow alley near the Huatian Yanji restaurant, a place specialized in Yanji noodles.

In his walking walks from school, he captured a smell of broth dyed of vinegar floating from the restaurant and was wandering through a bowl of noodles.

“Decades later, I still yearn for that exact bite,” he says.

Now, the noodles appear in the Yong season menu, a collection of more than a dozen dishes that change approximately four times a year.

To make its broth, Yong over low heat, beef bones and beef with apples, pears, carrots, ginger, garlic, a variety of Mexican chili peppers, onions, soy sauce and yellow soybean paste for three hours. Then light more fruits and vegetables in the broth for a full day before serving.

A bowl of cold noodles by Beijing Yanji of the Bistro Na restaurant in Temple City.

(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)

My server tells me to first take some sips of the broth, then deepen the noodles.

There is an initial shock of soda when the cold liquid hits my lips. The broth is suspended in a perfect, sweet enough balance, with a fleshy spine and a slight sting.

Instead of the most traditional apple, Yong uses watermelon to decorate its noodles. The squares of the fruit, already composed almost completely of water, act like small sponges, each buttock with the spicy broth.

The noodles are long and elastic, with an earthy and nut flavor that only intensifies as it advances in the bowl. Straight pink branch pieces are pleasant and splashed. The hot and sour Kimchi Col Kimchi tapes. Each bite offers a notable variety of textures and flavors.

It is a dish in disagreement with the formality of Bistro Na dining room, always give with its adorned carved wood and crimson ornaments. But it is a bowl of noodles that asks to be sipid, the sound that crosses the refined atmosphere and the broth dirty my white table scabies. The combination of the ice cream and the air conditioning that works completely is simply exquisite. Although I suspect that I will feel the need to remain sips after summer temperatures decrease.

The noodles, and the rest of Yong's season menu will be available until November. The meat sauteed with naan, mixed with cumin and full of fried fries of bread, cannot be lost either.