We're on King Street heading towards
Kekaulike Street where we are going to the
Ying Leong Look Funn Factory. It is in
Honolulu's Chinatown which is one of the
oldest Chinatowns in the United States.
It is a business that has been around
maybe 70 years to my understanding, under
its current ownership about 40 years.
The "look funn" in this case is the dish:
it is a take on the traditional dim sum
dish the cheung fun which literally means
"intestine noodle" because it looks like
an intestine. It is usually a noodle
that is wrapped around some sort of
filling, in this case at Ying Leong, the
bits of morsels are mixed in with the
noodle mixture. So the rice is put into
the funnel — pulverize, liquefied — into what
is going to become the noodle before it
spread on the pan. That is when the
toppings go in. Then it's sort of maneuvered
around the pan and set to steam. They
solidify into the noodles and then
they're wrapped up. I'm super excited to
be here and I can't wait to eat it.
"My name's Alice." Aloha, it's so nice to meet you.
"My husband
started the business, he's from China, too."
"He came here in 1963, before me."
"He was coming into work, to survive."
"He was single, not married, so after we
met about 10 years later, we met so we
got married." You met and you fell in
love? "Yeah, he's a hard worker."
Can you tell me about the look funn? "Ok we
have the plain noodles like all the other
restaurants.
This is like extra, for customers coming.
There is chau siu, shrimp, and mushroom.
The favorite is char siu."
Is that your favorite? "My favorite is mushroom."
Oh, mushroom's your favorite.
"I want to stay healthy!" But this is different
then cheung fun, that's a plain noodle
wrapped with the stuff inside. "The way
they make is Hong Kong style. They use flour, we
use rice, so it's a little bit thicker. So local
style is like this." And you mix the
green onion and the pork, you mix it in
the noodle? "The green onion is
stuffed inside. It
mixed the favor." And you eat it with soy
sauce?
"Soy sauce, you can use oil sauce or
hot chili sauce."
Well it looks amazing, I will try a
little bit of each. I want to try one of
the chau siu, one of the shrimp, one of the
mushroom, thank you.
What did you order today? "I ordered the
plain look funn and I also ordered that
looks fun with chau siu." And have you been
coming here for a while?
"Yeah, over 70 years." Wow. "Yeah they do
the old-style. The new style, when I
went to China, is very thin and they do
machine. I tried this and I tried the one
that was machine — it's flat, didn't have the
taste.
You know you get used to a
certain type. My grandniece always loved look
funn so I would bring it to her in Japan
from here, and I also take it to the mainland."
Here we are look funn. So let's try this
one, this is the classic, the original.
This is the chau siu. So it's cool, so
you got that really satisfying, chewy,
cold, glutinous texture of that
rice noodle, which I love. I love chow
fung noodles, those thick broad rice
noodles. And this is a similar kind of thing.
It's got those nice little red bits,
slightly sweet barbecue pork, the chau siu,
within the noodle, along with some of the
green onion. There's something very
satisfying about it and it's nice just
like aesthetically, it's very pleasing.
lt looks like candy or something
like that, just with the little
colorful orange and red bits dotted
throughout the white sort of glossy
rice.
Let's just try another flavor, so this
guy is shrimpl
Great, too. Similar to the pork except it
has shrimp so instead of having that
sweet meat flavor you get a little bit
more of that salty brine sea flavor
within the rice noodle. And then lastly
we have a mushroom one which Alice said
was her favorite.
I like that one too, you have to like
mushrooms. You have to like that
earthiness, that sort of wet dankness of
a mushroom, which I love. The pork is
great, the shrimp is great,
all-in-all you absolutely can taste the
difference when you have a noodle made
from rice as opposed to a noodle made from
flour. The composition of the rice is
going to give it a chewy elasticity
which you want to have, they are not
dropping these noodles into vats of
boiling water,
they're just putting them in a steamer
for a few minutes. I don't think you
could prepare wheat noodles in the same
way.
Texture-wise it certainly is different
than a wheat noodle.
Taste-wise it's different as well. Rice is
maybe a little bit more of a blank
canvas that also happens to taste sort
of vaguely of something delicious like
meat or onions. I really hope you enjoyed
this episode of Dining on a Dime, we are
in Chinatown in Honolulu at the Ying Leong
Look Funn Factory. If you'd like to watch
more, please click here.