HeHe Chinese Restaurant (和和美食)

Hehe is an unpretentious Chinese eatery in Budapest's Chinatown (Monori Center). The place's claim to fame is the Lanzhou-style hand-pulled (lamian) and knife-shaved (dao xiao mian) beef noodle soups. Anyone can peek through the kitchen door and watch Chinatown's legendary noodle chef – Gu bácsi – swiftly transform a pile of dead dough into pliant and perfectly uniform strands before depositing the spaghetti-like coils into the boiling broth. No pasta machine here, just a few energetic motions of the hand and decades of experience.

I am partial to the knife-shaved version, which I sometimes order as a “dry” base for a noodle dish. Hehe's other specialty is spicy Sichuan fare. My favorites include the boiled beef (shui zhu niu rou); the sweet-sour shredded pork (yuxiang rousi); the dan dan noodles; and the double-cooked pork belly (hui guo rou). I usually also order a plate of stir-fried rice cakes (chao nian gao). Bigger groups can opt for the whole carp served in boiling chili oil and drizzled with Sichuan peppercorns (shui zhu yu). Hehe is reachable in about twenty minutes from the city center by public transport.