Dinner!  Yunnan rice noodles are done a little differently than most dishes.  First, they bring you the dish of raw, uncooked ingredients.  I stared at it, thinking it was edible because it was presented so nicely, but I was smartly informed that we had to wait until the steaming bowl of soup came first.  Steaming hot it did arrive.  The server dunked all of the raw ingredients into the hot soup, and then plopped the bowl of rice noodles on top of it.  Then, it was ready to be eaten!  Really neat.  At first glance, it looked like just regular rice noodles; I’ve had them before, but they were always ready to eat in the bowl already; no show involved. This place had really soft and chewy noodles!  Very yummy. =)

These rice noodles originated in the province of Yunnan in China, and they’re also known as “cross bridge” noodles.  There’s a story of how the noodles came to be.  According to Wikipedia, there’s several different versions of the story.  You can read about this dish and its origin here.