The name affixed to the storefront, one of several international dining options in this otherwise colorless strip center, tells you next to nothing about the occupant, even if the “o” in “Super Bowl” has mutated into a tilted tureen with chopsticks leaning against the rim. The Rockville restaurant could be a sports bar knockoff of Noodles & Company, for all I know.
On closer inspection, you can spot glass shelves in the front window, where one can review plastic replicas of dishes available for order, some looking as if they were created with melted Crayons for sauce and ancient telephone cords for noodles. The dishes cover almost as much geography as the strip center: pad Thai, Beijing-style zha jiang mian noodles, Singapore-style stir-fried rice noodles, South Asia red curry stew and one magical preparation in which the chopsticks, knotted with a thick swirl of noodles, hover above the bowl like a snake charmer’s cobra.
Once inside Super Bowl Noodle House, the dish options expand almost exponentially, numbering more than 125. You'll find appetizers, dim sum and entrees drawn from Korean, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Taiwanese, Chongqing, Shandong and Japanese cuisines. Other cooking traditions, no doubt, lurk inside the 10-plus-page menu, hiding behind awkwardly constructed names that don't tip off their origins. Some menus even have sticky notes tucked inside, each scrawled with Chinese characters, prices and an occasional hand-drawn chili pepper.
Advertisement
Your chances of picking a winner here, at least after initial review of the menu, seem practically Powerball-esque.
Morino Lu and Tao Lan lead the kitchen at Super Bowl; they’re the chefs responsible for the multi-country tour of Asian cooking. When I asked an employee how the pair could recreate the flavors of so many different regions, she said they have traveled widely, studying ingredients and techniques along the way. This may be true, but I still tried to eat closer to the cooks’ Chinese homeland, which itself carried risk. Put it this way: Do you know a single American chef who can execute, with pinpoint precision, dishes native to every corner of our expansive, resource-rich country?
A theme soon emerged at Super Bowl, one of positive-and-negative attraction. Numerous dishes, no matter what region they called home, strayed from classic preparations but still packed enough charm to compensate for their apparent hubris. Sometimes dishes varied from their own advertised preparation. Recipes, in short, seemed as nailed down as clouds.
Advertisement
Which probably says more about the chefs’ skills than it does about the need for regimented recipes in a country where most of us do not have indelible memories of Shaanxi pork burgers, Taiwanese guo bao or Sichuan/Northern Chinese cumin lamb. The kitchen at Super Bowl may defy whatever expectations you carry into a dish, if you carry any at all, but the cooks can still produce a fine plate/bowl/platter of food.
Share this articleShareSuper Bowl’s take on rou jia mo, the Shaanxi street food of pork stuffed into griddled bread, ventures beyond the traditional belly meat to embrace what looks and tastes like offal. A cheap shortcut, perhaps, but a gelatinous, multifaceted one, too. The Sichuan pig-ear salad assumes a meatier personality with its thick, irregular slices, which sacrifice their cartilage crunch for more sweet-and-spicy pleasures. Tender pieces of cumin lamb arrive without their trademark crustiness, no doubt because the cumin seeds are stir-fried whole, not pulverized into a powder that helps create the light coating. I missed the crust mostly in the abstract.
You could continue to throw darts at the three pages listed as “chef special,” not to mention three more dedicated to signature noodle and rice dishes, and hope eventually to discover the stars of the show. Or you could just ask a server, who might direct you to a Beijing interpretation of the Shandong specialty known as zha jiang mian, the noodle dish that inspired a Korean fast-food craze. (Pay attention, there will be a quiz.) A generous portion of wheat noodles comes topped with cucumbers, bean sprouts and other vegetables neatly segregated inside the bowl, a salty black-soybean sauce on the side. When mixed together, the black-stained noodles adopt a sweeter character than you might expect, all without the benefit of a Korean kimchi chaser to provide some needed spark.
The server might also steer you to the Malaysian spicy red curry noodle soup, an entree that quickly messes with your mind. It’s neither red nor spicy. It’s a tangle of rice and wheat noodles ignited more by black pepper than any other heat source. My favorite chef special remains the Chongqing-style dry chili with chicken, which sends Sichuan peppercorns on a stealth mission. The spice’s numbing qualities creep up behind you, hiding among the battered chicken, aromatic scallions and dried chili husks (whose hollow rattle add their own haunting element). Before you fully comprehend it, you’ve been stung by the peppercorns, the surprise as delightful as the sensations.
With its generic Pottery Barn-style art hanging on mango-and-banana-colored walls, Super Bowl Noodle House reserves its originality for the table. Several dishes cry for attention, notably a plate of tightly curled fried shrimp, whose nuttiness is intensified by crumbles of salt-cured egg yolks, which pack a rich, sulfurous punch. The spicy dry pot can be customized with your choice of vegetables or proteins; mine arrived with fried sea bass as silken as tofu and spiked with chilis and Sichuan peppercorns, the whole spicy-numbing cauldron brimming with other textures and flavors: wood ear mushrooms, lotus root slices, cauliflower, intestines, corn and cilantro. The Shaanxi noodle soup looks like a Chinese take on stew but conceals wiggly strands swollen with a sour, five-spice scented broth.
Advertisement
After numerous visits, I still wonder what other surprises remain buried in that menu, behind a drab storefront with fossilized dishes in the window, which only hint at the ambitions inside this strange, idiosyncratic restaurant.
If you go
Super Bowl Noodle House
785-G Rockville Pike, Rockville. 301-738-0086. www.superbowlnoodle house.com.
Hours:11 a.m. to 9:30p.m. daily.
Nearest Metro:Rockville, with a 0.8-mile walk to the restaurant.
Prices:Entrees, $7.25-$32.95.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLmqssSsq7KklWSzsLvDaJhmqp%2BYuLe1y6WcZqafpLGtsYyhpq6rlWLEqbHRnmSyp6VisKK6jJ6YrWWRmL%2Bwv9JmmKyhkWJ6orrDZpuoZZmperixy6Vma2hhanxxg45qbWhtZJeFdYLCaWRrb2NtenJ9xG5kmpmVZ3p3r5OfbHKaYGp9oq2%2BrKuoqqljtbW5yw%3D%3D