Upper Manhattan isn't the typical go-to spot for Northwest Chinese cuisine. But that's what attracted Andrew Ding to Hamilton Heights to open his first restaurant, the Handpulled Noodle.

Mr. Ding, who also co-owns nearby cafe the Chipped Cup, said he became frustrated by not seeing the food he grew up with offered in New York. He learned about the area as a real-estate agent, trekking along Harlem's streets, from building to building.

The Handpulled Noodle, which opened in late February, gets its flavor from an area of China along the Silk Road. Mr. Ding's parents spent many years in the area, although he grew up in Australia. Many of the passed-down recipes are flavored with cumin, cardamom and cinnamon.

Located a few blocks north of the 145th Street stop on the 1 train, the restaurant has a simple design and an even simpler menu. Patrons can build their own meals from a base of ribbon, lagman (which are like spaghetti) and ding ding (chopped) noodles.

From there, the noodles can be paired with a choice of meat, vegetable stir-fry or soup ($11 to $14.50).

There are scallion pancakes ($5), stewed pork or cumin lamb Chinese sliders ($3.50) and a variety of dumplings ($7). Guests have the option of mild, medium or hot in terms of spiciness, and they should expect a little kick even to the mildest flavors. The eatery has soft drinks as well as lightly sweetened teas like chrysanthemum ($3) that can help cool the palette.

Though the kitchen is small, Mr. Ding says he has a "production lab" in the restaurant's lower floor where he works out recipes, like a new offering of chicken-and-shiitake steamed buns ($4). Mr. Ding suggests guests eat at one of the shop's countertop seats, lest the noodles become too chewy on the way home.

Ding ding noodles do not look like noodles. A better description may be nubs, knots, lumps: on a spectrum with spaetzle and frascatelli, but rougher, more unpredictable in shape and fantastically chewy. They come from Xinjiang, in China's far northwest, as does Andrew Ding (the name is a coincidence), who opened The Handpulled Noodle, a small, counter- seating- only restaurant, in Harlem in February. Here ding ding noodles start out as a snake of dough that is folded in half and half again, then looped around the backs of the hands, stretched, slapped on a counter, chopped at approximate quarter-inch intervals and tossed in boiling water.

Unchopped, the same dough may wind up as lagman, long strands slightly thicker than Japanese udon, or they may be flattened into ribbons as wide as rodeo belts. All three types of noodles are denser than the Lanzhou-style hand- pulled noodles found in Chinatown, whose extra extensibility traditionally derives from peng hui (mugwort ash). Without peng hui in the dough, the noodles can't be pulled to a cook's full wingspan or achieve Rapunzel length.

Instead, they're rugged, which is part of their appeal.

Mr. Ding, a classical violist without professional culinary training, moved to New York four and a half years ago. (His first apartment was a fifth-floor walk-up with slanting floorboards on 149th Street, around the corner from where the Handpulled Noodle now stands.)

Mr. Ding, a classical violist without professional culinary training, moved to New York four and a half years ago. (His first apartment was a fifth-floor walk-up with slanting floorboards on 149th Street, around the corner from where the Handpulled Noodle now stands.) Born in Urumqi, Mr. Ding grew up mostly in Sydney, Australia. Both parts of the world share a love of lamb, and that meat is what gives contour and depth to the finest dishes here.

It's packed inside dumpling skins time-consumingly made by hand. It's wedged in a pale English-muffin-like bun (also house-made), a version of roujia mo, the Chinese burger. It's steeped overnight with little more than onions, then seared with cumin (added at the end, so as to barely take the edge off its sun-and-earth scent) and muddled with a Chinese "pesto" of scallions, garlic and Shaoxing rice wine. And it's set afloat in a soup labeled "tingly" - an advisory against the (very faint) presence of numbing Sichuan peppercorn - whose dimension comes from a stock of lamb bones slow-cooked for half a day.

One of two composed dishes, listed under the heading "Native Picks," isa fine rendition of dapanji, which translates as "big plate chicken." Mr. Ding calls it "trucker food." The chicken arrives still on the bone, in a sloppy stew with twisting ribbon noodles and an aggressive nimbus of fragrance from cardamom (both black and white), star anise and five- spice. After this, tiger salad, a wild fistful of cilantro, scallions, celery and pickled onions, makes for a nice recalibration of the palate.

Mr. Ding, who apprenticed for 3 months at a Chinese restaurant in Sydney run by a family friend, taught the staff to cook his family's recipes.

The space, squeezed between a tattoo parlor and a unisex hair salon, hasan unpretentious downtown air, with a raw-concrete floor, vintage chicken feeders turned lampshades and the legend "We Pull Your Noodles" graffitied over exposed brick. Chubby babies frolic in Chinese New Year's posters beside a wall covered in pages from The People's Daily, circa the Cultural Revolution.

A note at the bottom of the menu admonishes: "Noodles are best eaten immediately!" This is serious. With each passing minute, hand-pulled noodles start to die. I tried takeout: the ribbons went limp; the lagman stiffened. Only the ding ding noodles, little kinks and tatters like a heap of errata, stayed true.

This information was last updated on Oct. 12, 2022