If you’ve never been presented with a bowl of cha chiang mian, it could easily look to you as if someone had drowned a perfectly good tangle of noodles in crude oil. But to Koreans, the various iterations of these wheat noodles in thick, inky black bean sauce with chopped vegetables and meat represent the very definition of familiarity and comfort. They’re the Asian analog of chicken noodle soup or meat loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy. Koreans use cha chiang mian as a treat and a painkiller: children are rewarded with it for their accomplishments, and every April 14, on Black Day, lonely singles gather in restaurants and pine for love over steaming bowls of the stuff.
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In addition to cha chiang mian, Chinese-Korean food is known for a spicy seafood noodle soup called champong, the sweet-spicy-sauced deep-fried chicken wings called gampongi, and a nonfluorescent and not so cloying version of sweet-and-sour pork called tan su yuk, as well as less common dishes like nanja wanseu, deep-fried meatballs with mushrooms and vegetables in a spicy soy-based sauce, and liang jang pi, a cold composed salad of seafood, vegetables, and pork dressed with a hot mustard sauce.
Evidence of this migration can be found in a half dozen or so Chicago-area restaurants where Shandong ren (and some Koreans) continue to serve Koreanized Chinese food alongside typical Chinese-American dishes. At Albany Park’s beloved Great Sea (3254 W. Lawrence, 773-478-9129), the hard-fried gampongi inspire rapture among the neighborhood’s many ethnicities, but it’s the cha chiang mian that keeps Koreans coming back. Karen Lim, who owns the Pilsen Korean chicken joint Take Me Out, says her parents opened Great Sea in 1988 after operating a place in Seoul. Every morning they make a new batch of dough for the noodles, which is then portioned, rolled, cut, and boiled to order.
I love the atmosphere of all these places—the sort of dim, faded, red-dressed ambience of the prototypical Chinese-American restaurant. Chang’s even serves classic tropical drinks like mai tais and fog cutters in tiki-style glasses. But my favorite version of cha chiang mian comes from the large, modern Great Beijing (6717 N. Lincoln, Lincolnwood, 847-673-5588), which has the most extensive Chinese-Korean menu of the places I surveyed, and where the noodles in the Three Flavor Chachiang Mein are extra chewy.
