Shan Shan Noodles, a small Xinjiang restaurant at 333 US-46 in Parsippany, pulls its noodles by hand to order. Try the cumin lamb, spicy ground pork noodles, beef pancake, dumplings, and celery salad.
Tucked away in a Route 46 strip mall in Parsippany is one of New Jersey’s greatest dining experiences. That’s not hyperbole—this is easily one of the best meals I’ve had all year. The unassuming restaurant is easy to miss, but what’s coming out of the kitchen is food that’s hypnotically good.
Shan Shan Noodles has been serving hand-pulled noodles and other dishes from Northwest China since 2014. Walk in any time between open and close, and you’ll find hungry diners filling the tiny dining room—each table scattered with bowls of aromatic noodles, hand-formed dumplings, spicy tripe, and more.
The food is enough of a reason to make the trip, but regulars know the family that operates it is the real draw. Shan Lu runs the shop, along with her husband John, who pulls the noodles, and her mother Li Li, who you’ll often find going table to table in the tiny dining room.
Li Li bursts with excitement when she catches wind that it’s my first time. She enthusiastically talks me through the entire menu—pointing out items to order and explaining the differences between noodle shapes. She’s not shy about the pride she possesses for the food, either. “Beef pancake,” she points to on the menu. “This is very good. I want you to get this.”
The menu mixes traditional Xinjiang cooking with some other regional Chinese dishes. Noodles are the obvious choice here—specifically the hand-pulled noodles with cumin lamb, a specialty from their hometown. Li Li brings the bowl to the table, holding a pair of chopsticks in one hand and purple scissors in the other. She begins explaining what makes the dish special, while mixing and snipping the noodles into smaller, more manageable pieces.
All of the noodles at Shan Shan are hand-made, and guests can pick between thin or wide shapes, depending on their preference. For the thin option, a mass of wheat dough is pinched and repeatedly stretched into strands, eventually multiplying into dozens of five-foot-long noodles, which are promptly cut and cooked in boiling water. It’s done to order, and you can watch the process through a tiny window in the dining room that looks directly into the kitchen.
For the signature cumin lamb, the chewy noodles—I chose flat for this dish—are topped with tender slices of lamb, crunchy onions, peppers, and a ton of cumin-scented oil. Li Li jokes “this is not stinky lamb,” as she carefully tosses the noodles in the bowl so each strand is perfectly coated. That’s good news for me, as I famously hate lamb. But this is different. Cumin is the primary flavor, and there’s not even a trace of that usual gamey lamb taste that I tend to dislike. It is the first lamb dish I’ve had in quite some time that I actually enjoyed, instead of merely tolerated.
In Northwest China, where wheat is a staple crop, noodles and other flour-based dishes are more common than rice. You see this again with the spicy ground pork noodles. This time, dough is stretched into thinner strands, almost resembling linguine. Where the flatter, ribbon-shaped noodles feature a rustic, imperfect shape that you’d expect from hand-formed noodles, the thinner, wire-like noodles are surprisingly uniform, and almost impossible to comprehend coming from hands instead of a machine. It’s a skill that I don’t think I’d be able to master even with years of practice. To John—who pulls hundreds of orders each day—it’s second nature.
They’re served with crumbly minced pork, bathing in fragrant chili oil. Once again, Li Li rushes over to the table to ensure our bowl is properly mixed. She lifts the noodles with chopsticks in one hand, turning them over and snipping with the other. She does this until the lengthy noodles are reduced by more than half, each one glistening in chili oil and dotted with pieces of ground pork.
It’s an indulgent experience. I wipe sweat off my brow in between bites, but I can’t stop going back for more. The noodles themselves are bouncy and the spicy sauce clings to them.
For a more approachable option, try one of the sautéed noodle options. The same hand-pulled noodles, but wok’d with meat, stir-fry sauce, and veggies. I sprang for the beef option, which boasted tender meat, an intensely savory sauce, and a healthy amount of wok hei flavor—the smoky quality that wok-cooked food picks up through high-heat cooking, which fittingly translates to “breath of the wok.”
There are plenty of options beyond noodles worth ordering. The beef pancake, at Li Li’s suggestion, is a must: tender sliced beef wrapped in a flaky scallion pancake. The dumplings (I tried both the steamed and fried) have a doughier wrapper than the usual variety and a flavorful pork filling. For a cold dish, crunchy celery salad includes slices of firm, brown-skinned tofu and is dressed in flavorful oil. And because I’m me, I had to get a plate of something more familiar, too. Kung Pao Chicken does the trick: tender bites of fried chicken, stir-fried in a sweet-and-spicy sauce with dried peanuts and aromatics.
I didn’t have a bad bite at Shan Shan Noodles. But, as the name suggests, it’s the noodles I’ll be going back for—specifically the flagship cumin lamb option.
If there’s a better noodle dish in North Jersey, I’m not sure I’ve found it.
Shan Shan Noodles is located at 333 US-46, Parsippany, NJ. They are open Tuesday to Sunday for lunch and dinner. Be sure to check out their bakery next door, Sweet Shansations, for bubble tea, flaky egg tarts, cakes, and more.
Peter Candia is the Food + Drink Editor at New Jersey Digest. A graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, Peter found a passion for writing midway through school and never looked back. He is a former line cook, server and bartender at top-rated restaurants in the tri-state area. In addition to food, Peter enjoys politics, music, sports and anything New Jersey.
