Luosifen noodle soup’s reputation precedes it. Some have described it as “barnyardy” or “pungent” or even, rather archly, “the world’s smelliest noodle.” Some apparently think it should be classified as a bioweapon.
But as I sit in my car, drifting my nose above a bowl of luosifen perched on my steering-wheel tray, I’m struggling to detect anything remotely off-putting about the soup from Yanzi Noodle House in Rockville, Md. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking for trouble. I’m just perplexed. How can luosifen’s reputation be so far removed from the river snail noodle soup right in front of me? Did chef Audrey Keenan go easy on me? Has Western media played up the soup’s funk in yet another sorry attempt to exoticize a foreign dish? Have my olfactory senses finally collapsed, several months after contracting the coronavirus?
