Nestled between 3rd and 4th Streets along Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn sits Noodle Lane, the small Chinese restaurant where owner and head chef Lane Li merges classic Sichuan and Cantonese dishes with French technique.
But behind the restaurant is the story of one restaurateur’s journey from China to Brooklyn and everything in between.
“I remember we used to walk to the well to get water,” said Li of her memories growing up in Canton, China, known today as Guangzhou. She recalls her family making do with no electricity or running water. “My older sister would carry the barrels — my mom used to cook in a fire, like a brick oven, putting wood in there.” Li’s older sister, Mary, works with her at the restaurant today.
Like generations before her, Li’s family landed in Manhattan’s Chinatown when she was six years old, but they quickly moved to Brooklyn where Li now calls home. Her father worked as a cook in Chinese restaurants and her mother as a seamstress. When Li arrived in NYC, she did not know a word of English and a month after arriving, she was enrolled in school. Acclimating was tough, but not impossible.
Li went to LaGuardia High School for art and eventually earned her degree in business from Stony Brook University, then went on to pursue a career in banking.
“You know, every Asian parent wants their child to do the professional career,” said Li of working in finance for a decade. “But it wasn’t my passion, I was always yearning for something more.”
Li then attended the French Culinary Institute in NYC, which has since undergone several transformations and is today the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). A few years later, she saw her opportunity when she came upon Smorgasburg – an outdoor fair serving prepared foods in Williamsburg, Brooklyn from April to October since 2011.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool — I could do this!” exclaimed Li. And so she did.
Li immediately joined Smorgasburg as Noodle Lane with her specialty of dan dan noodles which were an instant hit among hungry fair-goers. Li appreciated that the time-commitment wasn’t so stringent and that she could do both, her job in finance and part-time chef and vendor.
Finally, after more than 10 years, Li was able to open a place of her own. She kept the name and opened Noodle Lane in Park Slope, but she serves up a lot more than noodles.
Imbued with both, nostalgia and contemporary refinement, the pickled fish is a favorite of Lin’s, inspired by a dish she fell in love with at Guan Fu in Flushing Queens, a restaurant close to her heart which closed in 2022. Guan Fu was one of more than 4,000 eateries in NYC that struggled to survive the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dish reads RIP in the menu description.
The bowl arrives and the visuals are dynamite. Plump pieces of tilapia float in a fragrant broth garnished with red chilis, green onion, Sichuan peppercorns and snow-white mushrooms. It’s what a hot and sour soup would be like if it was on Food Network’s Top Chef. The heat is subtle and the peppercorns give a citrusy bite that punctuate the brininess. Eat with rice to balance the rich burst of flavors.
“You can’t have Chinese food without rice,” said Li.
Adding new things to the menu and taking things off when they get too familiar brings this Chinese restaurant into the modern-day dining environment of a fast-changing NYC. Coming soon are her vegetarian rice noodles with onions, cabbage and bean sprouts cooked in a wok, fast and on high heat — with the fire becoming part of the flavor.
And even though Li owes her trajectory in the food world to her popular noodles, her soup dumplings have made her a neighborhood staple.
“They’re my son’s favorite,” she said.
The traditional pork xiaolongbao, served in a bamboo steamer, are a mouthful of comfort. Give those plump dough balls filled with meaty goodness a poke with your chopsticks and let the liquid pool into the custom wide spoons provided.
“The pork dumplings were so good we ordered another one,” said Brian Sheehan who had came upon the restaurant by happenstance was having an early dinner with his wife on a recent Friday evening.
After years of caring for her parents, her marriage and her child, Li is now free to make herself happy.
“I’m just trying to put out what I feel like I need to please myself first, what I like to eat and then introduce it to the public,” she said.
So far, so good.
