Loads of Clouds, a quietly fantastic bastion of Sichuan- and Yunnan-inspired plates on Capitol Hill, will quickly have a sibling institution devoted to noodles.
Noodle/Bar shall be situated at 422 Yale Ave N, the previous Feierabend house two blocks north of REI within the pocket of South Lake Union you possibly can nonetheless get away with calling Cascade. And whereas the restaurant’s identify is pretty simple, co-owner Travis Publish has some wide-ranging plans that contain Chinese language-inspired noodles, all made in home with Washington wheat.
Small-batch flour from native growers will energy a noodle lineup that focuses on types from central China. Publish guarantees “plenty of Sichuan, however we’ll department out a bit from there—north, south, and west.”
He is introduced in a particular machine used to laminate ramen. (“All the actual noodle nerds know that ramen noodles originated in China,” says Publish.) Roughly half the menu will encompass alkaline noodles—skeins that really feel barely springy to the chew, a la ramen or commonest Sichuan-style noodles. Publish’s plans additionally embrace the occasional hand-torn or extruded buckwheat choices.
Roughly six or eight every day noodle dishes shall be cut up between home requirements and rotating artistic riffs. A number of small plates and a rice bowl (aka a gluten-free providing) will spherical out the menu.
“We simply wish to broaden the number of what’s on the market,” says Publish. He and his spouse, Lisa Zak, opened Loads of Clouds in 2018, brightening a nook simply off Pike/Pine with noodles (cold and warm), ma po tofu, dry-fried rooster, and a few actually glorious dumplings.
Noodle/Bar will seemingly debut round April 1. Publish has been busy attending to know his new laminating machine, and testing recipes with numerous native flours. A web site is within the works, however you possibly can monitor progress on the Noodle/Bar Instagram.
Earlier than Loads of Clouds, Publish was the chef at Ethan Stowell’s beer-focused Bramling Cross. Connections made with native brewers will inform the eight-tap draft checklist, and he guarantees the identical caliber of cocktail program you discover at Loads of Clouds.
It feels like a really cool venture, alighting in a pocket of town that’s one way or the other densely populated and unexpectedly low-key. It’s underserved on the subject of native eating places, says Publish, “which provides us a greater probability to attach with neighborhood regulars.”
