An East Bay Newcomer Slings Hand-Pulled Noodles and XLB Until Midnight

The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.

Tucked away in an unassuming suburban neighborhood in San Leandro, the 88 Manor Market shopping plaza had all but shut down for the night by the time we pulled up at 10:30 p.m. on a recent Friday. The Asian grocery, the chicken phở spot next door, the boba shop, the beauty parlor — all already closed for hours. Just a single storefront was still brightly lit up, bustling with a packed dining room full of hungry customers bent over steamers full of juicy soup dumplings and piping-hot bowls of noodles — an enticing offer as our fall evening grew chillier.

The restaurant is called Dao Artisan Noodle, and while it’s only been open for a couple of months, it seems to have already established itself as the place to grab a late-night bite in San Leandro, especially if you’re a noodle-loving Asian American (or other Asian food enthusiast).

We have the good fortune to be experiencing something of a noodle renaissance here in the Bay Area, where until recently Chinese restaurants specializing in handmade noodles were a relative rarity. Now, it feels like every few weeks there’s another new restaurant rolling out fresh Shanxi knife-cut noodles, spicy Chongqing noodles or the kind of stretchy Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles that you’ll find at Dao Artisan Noodle. And Dao is the only East Bay spot we’re aware of that’s selling hand-pulled noodles and handmade xiao long bao (XLB) until midnight every night.

Lanzhou noodles might be the flashiest of the Chinese regional styles — maybe you’ve seen videos of veteran noodle masters acrobatically twisting and stretching the dough, then dividing it between their fingertips over and over, like Cat’s Cradle virtuosos, until they’ve formed a pile of bouncy, impossibly thin noodles.

During the day, the whole song and dance of the noodle-making is one of Dao’s selling points, as diners can watch the chefs make the dumplings and noodles by hand inside the restaurant’s glass-encased show kitchen. By the time we sat down to eat, those uncles and aunties had long gone home, which also meant that the menu options were a little bit more limited. Instead of being able to choose between five different noodle shapes and thicknesses (ranging from “thin” to “knife cut”), only the “regular” round noodles, roughly the shape and thickness of bucatini, were available.

But what excellent noodles they were, with a Goldilocks-like level of chewiness, neither too soggy nor distractingly al dente — just right for slurping and soaking up the savoriness of the braised beef noodle soup that I ordered. The chunks of meat were tender; the beefy, clean-tasting broth had a pleasant undercurrent heat. It was an ideal bowl of comfort food.

We also liked the soupless, oil-slicked beef short rib noodles, which had a tongue-tingling mala flavor profile and came with a big, showy hunk of meat on the bone.

Dao has a broader, more varied menu than your standard noodle shop, though its specialties are its dough-based items. Apart from the noodles, Dao’s biggest selling point is its xiao long bao (aka soup dumplings), which come six to an order and are clearly handmade — thin-skinned and intricately pleated if a little rustic in appearance, and about 30 percent larger and plumper than I expected. None of that weak-hearted XLB-in-a-little-cupcake-sleeve here: These are soup dumplings you can pick up with your chopsticks and jiggle and bounce on your plate without a drop of the broth inside — the hot, savory, perfectly seasoned broth — leaking out.

Another surprise favorite: Dao’s beef wrap rolls, which look like the same meat-stuffed pancakes you can get at any number of Chinese restaurants in the Bay — except that the hoisin-soaked beef inside is much tenderer and more luxuriously fatty.