jonattonyeah I had to look this up based on the characters, because there are so many homonyms in the Chinese language (many ’huang’s and many ’cheng’s).
Huangcheng 皇城 is a village in Shanxi Province. The name actually means ‘Imperial City’ so it will have been an important capital of some fiefdom or warlord’s mini empire centuries ago probably. I expect it’s just where the owners are from.
The noodles look legit, if excessively spiced. Either you dumped a shit-ton of chilli oil in there yourself, or they serve them like that for SF hipster tastes. No-one from anywhere in Northern China is eating that amount of spice in their daily staples, although someone from Sichuan might.
If they are genuine Shanxi people (as opposed to third generation ABCs bastardising their grandparents’ recipes), G9 and B6 on their menu will be superb.
