Authentic Northern Chinese Fare and Hand-Pulled Noodles at Hong Yuan in Plano

At the corner of W. Park Boulevard and Coit Road in Plano, Hong Yuan is tucked away amidst another one of Plano’s seemingly infinite ocean of strip malls. The specialty at Hong Yuan is Northern Chinese fare and hand-pulled noodles, the latter of which are made onsite. You can even watch the process through a window next to the kitchen.
You’ll find a handful of familiar items on the menu, like spring rolls, hot and sour soup and orange and kung pao chicken. However, most of the menu is reserved for dishes you won’t find at typical Americanized Chinese takeout and delivery spots, which seem to be as prevalent as Starbucks in the American landscape. Dishes like cold beef and tripe in chili sauce, barbecue pork hand-pulled noodle soup, chili volcano hand-pulled noodles, egg and tomato noodles and Singapore stir-fried noodles are more the norm than the exception at Hong Yuan, and that’s precisely why we were there.

We dropped in during the dead zone between the lunch and dinner rush windows. Hong Yuan is a no-frills space with plenty of seating, and the service was lightning-fast and friendly.
For a starter, we went with a cucumber salad ($8.74): sliced cucumbers in vinegar and garlic dressing with a hint of chili. This appetizer was light and refreshing, which is perfect if you know you’ll be eating a lot at Hong Yuan (which was the plan).
Next, we grabbed an order of crab meat and pork xiao long bao ($18.75), which come eight to an order. There’s also pork xiao long bao, but adding crab at a mere $3.75 was a proposition we couldn’t pass up. Soup dumplings filled with pork, crab, scallions, ginger and seasoning – these petite treasures likely won’t last long on your table.

The dish we were most eager for was the Lanzhou beef noodle soup ($16.24). There are original and authentic versions, and while we weren’t sure what the distinction between the two is, we knew we wanted the authentic. The recipe is named after China’s Lanzhou City and is a Chinese Muslim noodle soup with sliced halal beef, hearty hand-pulled lamian noodles, Chinese radish, salt, herbs and chili oil. The color of the soup is a deep crimson, and it’s one of the richest soups we’ve had. There’s serious depth to it. We couldn’t help but ponder how this would make an elite-tier hangover dish, but we digress.

The menu here is extensive. There are five different dumpling selections (the chicken and mushroom dumplings sound good, as do the shrimp and pork chive dumplings), an array of noodle soups, sauced noodles, stir-fried hand-pulled noodles, a deep lineup of stir-fried rice options and standout vegetable dishes such as stir-fried spicy cabbage, braised eggplant and Chinese yam with veggies in white sauce.

The term “authentic” is often bandied about in the food world to the point that it borders on cliché, but at Hong Yuan, there’s nothing cliché about it.

Hong Yuan, 3921 W. Park Blvd., No. 100, Plano. Sunday – Monday, 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.; closed Tuesday; Wednesday – Thursday, 11 a.m. – 9 p.m.; Friday – Saturday, 11 a.m. – 9:30 p.m.