In far-off Northwest China lies the city of Dunhuang, an ancient stop along the Silk Road from a couple of millennia ago. Dunhuang is the main city of the Gansu province, and its geographic location along this trade route brought different cultures together, mingling culinary influences from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Perhaps the most famous and essential dish from Gansu was Lanzhou beef noodle soup, created a thousand years ago along the twisting and turning Yellow River by the Muslim Hui people. Lanzhou soup includes hand-pulled wheat noodles in a broth made from stewed halal beef with no soy sauce.
DH Noodle was started in 2015 in Flushing, New York, and the initials of Dun Huang formed the name. Since then, it has opened a dozen or so locations in New York, Los Angeles, the Silicon Valley and now, finally, a Plano location, the first in Texas.
You can watch the noodle puller ply his trade while you look through the menu of goodies. There’s even a handy chart on each table that describes the various types of noodles prepared in multiple thicknesses: thin, regular, thick, triangle, leek leaf and wide, along with stylized pictorial representations of each noodle width.
The menu offers several types of noodles, from soup to fried to sauced, along with chef specials, cold dishes and desserts. There is a lot of lamb on the menu, which we always appreciate. There’s also a section labeled “Lamb Spine” that was intriguing if not a bit intimidating with such options as “mutton with skin soup noodles” and “spicy stewed lamb spine hot pot.” Not in an adventurous mood, we settled on a chef special, a starter and some noodle soup.
The scallion pancake may be a cliché at this point, but we still enjoy them and always try to order some in a constant effort to find a suitable substitution for our father’s homemade “papa’s pizza” of our childhood, and they vary widely both in cost and quality. Here, the price is right at $4 and not the ridiculous $12 or $14 we’ve seen recently elsewhere. They were fine and just the right amount.
Next, we got the spicy crispy lamb rib from the chef special section of the menu. These were wonderful and plentiful, a full dish of about eight or nine lamb ribs that seemed to have been par-boiled or stewed first and then quickly fried in a flavorful yet subtly seasoned crispy coating before being covered with a medley of stir-fried onions and mild peppers. It was messy in a good way, the tender lamb full of just the right amount of good fat that pulled away from the bone and provided a great combo of crisp and juicy protein.
Our third selection had to be Lanzhou beef noodle soup. Signage at the table described the perfect Lanzhou as being "1 clear, 2 white, 3 red, 4 green, 5 yellow" to signify clear aromatic soup, white radish, red chili oil, green cilantro and yellowish hand-pulled noodles, and this was spot-on. It arrived in a large bowl full of broth flavored by a slow-cooked braised beef, colorful in presentation with the chili oil, radish, cilantro, thinly sliced beef and noodle hitting all the colors promised. The flavor was rich and complex.
This place lives in that shopping strip that is anchored by zTao Marketplace at Coit and Park, home of so many good Asian spots, so of course we’ll be back. There are other chef specials to try such as “monstrous plate of chicken” as well as “mutton on the bone” or “crispy lamb leg,” along with several other varieties of noodle dishes. The Chinese burger with lamb also is something we must try.
The lamb spine, however, might have to wait awhile.
Perhaps the most famous and essential dish from Gansu was Lanzhou beef noodle soup, created a thousand years ago along the twisting and turning Yellow River by the Muslim Hui people. Lanzhou soup includes hand-pulled wheat noodles in a broth made from stewed halal beef with no soy sauce.
DH Noodle was started in 2015 in Flushing, New York, and the initials of Dun Huang formed the name. Since then, it has opened a dozen or so locations in New York, Los Angeles, the Silicon Valley and now, finally, a Plano location, the first in Texas.
You can watch the noodle puller ply his trade while you look through the menu of goodies. There’s even a handy chart on each table that describes the various types of noodles prepared in multiple thicknesses: thin, regular, thick, triangle, leek leaf and wide, along with stylized pictorial representations of each noodle width.
The menu offers several types of noodles, from soup to fried to sauced, along with chef specials, cold dishes and desserts. There is a lot of lamb on the menu, which we always appreciate. There’s also a section labeled “Lamb Spine” that was intriguing if not a bit intimidating with such options as “mutton with skin soup noodles” and “spicy stewed lamb spine hot pot.” Not in an adventurous mood, we settled on a chef special, a starter and some noodle soup.
The scallion pancake may be a cliché at this point, but we still enjoy them and always try to order some in a constant effort to find a suitable substitution for our father’s homemade “papa’s pizza” of our childhood, and they vary widely both in cost and quality. Here, the price is right at $4 and not the ridiculous $12 or $14 we’ve seen recently elsewhere. They were fine and just the right amount.
Next, we got the spicy crispy lamb rib from the chef special section of the menu. These were wonderful and plentiful, a full dish of about eight or nine lamb ribs that seemed to have been par-boiled or stewed first and then quickly fried in a flavorful yet subtly seasoned crispy coating before being covered with a medley of stir-fried onions and mild peppers. It was messy in a good way, the tender lamb full of just the right amount of good fat that pulled away from the bone and provided a great combo of crisp and juicy protein.

Wide Lanzhou noodles hand-made and hand-pulled in house at DH Noodle & Grill. The broth is pretty good, too.
Hank Vaughn
This place lives in that shopping strip that is anchored by zTao Marketplace at Coit and Park, home of so many good Asian spots, so of course we’ll be back. There are other chef specials to try such as “monstrous plate of chicken” as well as “mutton on the bone” or “crispy lamb leg,” along with several other varieties of noodle dishes. The Chinese burger with lamb also is something we must try.
The lamb spine, however, might have to wait awhile.
2001 Coit Road, No. 165 (Plano); Sunday - Thursday, 11 a.m. - 8 p.m.; Friday & Saturday, 11 a.m. - 9 p.m.