We Tried The Viral California Noodles People Wait Years To Get Their Hands On

If you've ever been to San Francisco, you might have noticed that it's a city where people line up for food. Two-hour waits for pastries, snaking lines for burritos, 30-minute backlogs on matcha — when word spreads about a new spot, the people flock, and they tend to video every second of it. But there's one waitlist that shocks even the most patient of San Francisco's hungry: the years-long backlog for Laowai noodles.

The hand-pulled noodle pop-up was the brainchild of William Lim Do, a local chef who's worked in some of the city's most prestigious Michelin-starred restaurants, like Mister Jiu's and State Bird Provisions. Do extensively studied noodle-making in Lanzhou, China, and while stuck at home during the pandemic, he started experimenting with different flavors and grains. He eventually came up with his own version of tian shui mian, or sweet water noodles, a popular Sichuan street food. He posted the result online, and was soon selling noodle kits to the masses — at one point the waitlist was 4,000 people long.

The Laowai kits each come with two bundles of fresh hand-pulled noodles and a variety of toppings, including roasted sesame seeds, garlic confit, perilla seed paste, and Do's homemade chili crisp. Customers boil the noodles at home and mix them with the toppings to form the sauce. Yup, people are waiting years for something they heat up themselves at home — and pretty much everyone agrees that it's worth it.

Laowai noodles are painstakingly crafted with five different types of grains, and Do makes every topping in the box, including the aromatic soy sauce. Each is an upgraded version of the usual tian shui mian accompaniments, but Do puts his own spin on things by embracing different elements from his Chinese-Cambodian-Vietnamese background. For example, the usual sesame paste is replaced with a creamy East Asian perilla paste and crushed peanuts are swapped for puffed Japanese grains. The result is a completely unique dish that's unlike any other noodle in the city.

A little assembly is required, but it takes just a few minutes, and there isn't any measuring or major cleanup involved. Do includes a sheet containing very detailed instructions with each order, but all you really need to do is boil the noodles and rinse them under a cold tap. Each element of the sauce needs to be placed in the bowl in a particular order, but the instructions guide you through it, and it's really just a matter of mixing everything together with chopsticks.

As it comes together, the emulsion becomes a rich, velvety sauce that perfectly coats each noodle. It's aromatic but not overbearing, with a balanced spice level that has just enough of a kick. The perilla paste brings a welcome nuttiness, while the garlic confit provides a pungent but gentle tang. Then there's the crunch from the puffed grains and a scattering of bright scallions, which rounds everything off.

Some people enjoy chopped cucumber salad with the dish, though Do recommends eating the noodles as they are. Having gotten ahold of one of the sought-after packets, I have to say I agree that they really don't need any other add-ons. The noodles can stand up entirely on their own — they're tender and silky, but at the same time springy with just enough bite. Do's hard work definitely pays off, and to call these noodles a labor of love would be an understatement. 

They take hours to create, and the demand the young chef faced when they took off was hard to keep up with. He even had to take a temporary step back from the pop-up a few years ago, and he's spoken about how much it's pained him to have to raise prices as he battles with the rising costs of ingredients (two noodle sets, designed to feed four people, cost $48 at the time of writing). But these kits are more than worth it. If you manage to nab one, Do's creation will be unlike anything you've ever tried before — you just need to get off the waitlist first.