Thanks to Frontier Airlines for the last minute canceling of regular Deep Dish writer Caitlin Rockett’s flight home, readers of this ordinarily informative column are stuck with me this week. But don’t worry. I went some place so good and simple to write about that even an untrained troglodyte like myself — a man who can reach nirvana by putting darn near anything between two slices of bread — can’t mess it up.
It was just before 1 p.m. on a Monday, and I was parked by eTown’s 16th and Spruce Street location. It was cold and snowy so, of course, I decided to walk to lunch at the far west end of Pearl Street. The wind was flying in from the west with a bone-chilling quality that made my teeth hurt. But it was all about to be worth it as I finally turned the corner to arrive at Zoe Ma Ma.
This place has been a Boulder staple for Chinese street fare since 2010. That’s the year Edwin Zoe got the idea to open his small restaurant serving up authentic dim sum, noodle dishes and rice bowls based on his mother’s recipes. It doesn’t hurt that his mom Anna Zoe also does a fair amount of the cooking.
Zoe Ma Ma is also a perennial lock for BW’s Best of Boulder award in the Chinese food category. What all this means is that from the point of view of a food writer, this place is low hanging fruit. But I’m not a food writer. I’m a food eater, so it was my stomach that chose the destination.
One step through the door and it was clear that I was in the right place for a hot meal on a cold day. One step in because that was as far as I could go because apparently everyone was thinking the same thing: freezing weather… big, piping-hot bowl of Ma Ma’s chicken soup noodle. Yep, you read that right “soup noodle.”
Zoe Ma Ma has seven tables crammed about 6 feet in front of the counter where you order at one end and pick up at the other. There’s a small bench that can hold three people to the left of the door as you enter and another of similar size in front of the counter. Fill the tables and benches and then add another eight or nine people standing in the small gaps in between these eating and waiting stations and it can create a pretty claustrophobic dining environment.
But who cares. You’ve come to eat the best Chinese street food this side of Beijing, so scarfing down a noodle bowl in a crowd just adds to the authenticity.
My Ma Ma’s chicken soup noodle sure hit the spot that day. At first, every spoonful required a long blow to cool it down. There was tons of shredded chicken and the white meat was cooked to perfection. The pickled greens added color in the red bowl (think holiday presentation) and flavored the broth as did the ample amount of ginger. Sprouts added earthiness to the taste and along with the rice noodles, volume to the overall dish. It may be soup, but it is one great big filling meal to be sure. Just for fun — and in order to maintain my troglodyte status — I added a couple of pork pot stickers to my order.
Good Lord they’re good. Cooked brown and firm on the bottom with a soft noodley top and filled with juicy pork screaming out for red chili sauce, I could have eaten 10 of them. No really, I could eat 10 no problem.
Just as my taste buds were transporting me across the Pacific, I heard the guy at the pickup window call out an order for “Lynn.”
The sight of Boulder resident and legendary climber Lynn Hill headed for her own rendezvous with one of Ma Ma’s tasty dishes, snapped me back to reality. It was time to give up my seat to the next lucky member of the horde and head for the car.
Why did I park so stinking far away on such a cold day?
Who cares. It was so worth it.
Zoe Ma Ma 2010 10th St., Boulder,
303-545-6262.
