Viral Eatery Serving Spicy, Slurp-Worthy Hand-Pulled Noodles Brings Chinatown Vibes To Mumbai

Chef Rahul Punjabi’s BANG BANG! Noodle in Goregaon is named after Biang Biang, a type of thick, hand-pulled noodle from China’s Shaanxi cuisine. Known for their belt-like width, the noodles inspire the restaurant’s identity, with ‘Bang Bang’ being the English translation of ‘Biang Biang’, adding a cultural twist to its viral appeal.

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The noodles you get here are handmade, uneven and very messy, but that's probably what's so good about them as well. Chef Rahul discovered these noodles in Chinatown in Sydney, the city where he started off his career as a chef. During the day, he attended culinary school full-time — he studied at Le Cordon Bleu — and at evenings, he'd be a dishwasher at a kebab restaurant just to make money. That role eventually gave him a lot of skills and speed.

(Clockwise) Chef Rahul in the kitchen, Ma La Chilli Oil Wontons, and Spring Rolls

Popularising Sichuan Flavours In India

"At the end of the shift, when you're done at around 1:30 AM, the only two options are Chinatown or McDonald's." So, he used to visit Chinatown and eat the kind of food he cooks at his restaurant now.

"Coming back to Mumbai, I figured there were no Mala restaurants here," he says. "It's just a piece of home that my wife Shreya and I missed. So, we decided to bring that part back with us.

According to him, the entire understanding of Chinese food in India is Cantonese because that's what is close to Kolkata, like Hong Kong. However, Chef Rahul hopes to introduce Mumbaikars to food mostly from the Sichuan Province of China. Chillies predominantly feature in this cuisine, especially the numbing Sichuan peppercorn, and that's why if you love spice, you're going to love BANG BANG! Noodle.

Shaxian Peanut Noodles and Teddy Bear Iced Milo

What To Eat When At BANG BANG! Noodle

Their bestsellers are the Classic Ma La Chilli Oil Noodles, Bang Bang! Spring Rolls, Bang Bang! Honey Chilli Prawns and Ma La Chilli Oil Wontons. The Ma La Chilli Oil Soft Serve hits all the spicy notes, and it's a lovely combination of vanilla ice cream with pungent chilli oil.

In the starters, if you're a non-vegetarian eater, try the Honey Chilli Prawns. For vegetarians, the savoury-spicy X.O. Mushrooms with stir-fried button mushrooms is highly recommended by the chef.

For people who don't eat too much spice, the place has options like the Hakka Butter Garlic Wontons and Shaxian Peanut Noodles, which use roasted peanuts, peanut oil and seasoned soy sauce. To add a little bit more flavor, scallion oil is added to it as well.

Chinatown's popular Iced Milo also features in the menu. The Iced Milo here ups the Instagram-worthy quotient with a really cute ice cube in the shape of a teddy bear.

The chillies also go into their drinks as the Smoked Chilli Lemonade. That smoky spice with a little bit of cumin, along with the sugar syrup, makes it really moreish.

Chef Rahul may look like this big blokey kind of guy, but he loves matcha, and that's probably how the Vanilla Iced Matcha and Iced Strawberry Matcha Latte took shape.

Classic Ma La Chilli Oil Noodles

Burning Through 40 To 50 Kilos Of Dough To Get The Noodles Right

Chef Rahul reveals that one dedicated member of his team just makes chilli oil all day. "That chilli oil is the mother sauce in 80 per cent of our menu," he reveals. "We source our chillies from Sriradakom in Manipur, where garlands of chillies are hung above the angithi in homes. The smoke naturally dries out the chilli, and it smokes it from the inside as well. "

At this eatery, the noodles are made from scratch and feature three ingredients, including salt, flour and water. "That's it. The flour that we use is an organic double zero one from Italy, and the water is RO filtered water," shares the chef.

Right from the start, Chef Rahul knew he had to get the noodles right, and that process took a really long time. They ended up burning through around 40 to 50 kilos of dough. But stay focused on getting the texture right. "The amount we've spent in the kitchen versus the dining room, it's the opposite of what most people spend in their restaurants," he jokes, adding that the restaurant was started by him and his wife, who is also a chef. "When we were in Australia, we knew that this was the kind of restaurant we were going to start. This is the food we miss eating, from our time in Australia."

Smoked Chilli Lemonade and Ma La Chilli Oil Soft Serve

Selling His Gold and Shares To Build This Viral Mumbai Noodle Spot

Right from the start, Chef Rahul chose to be self-funded. "You can see there's no ring on my hand," he says with a touch of sincerity, "I've sold every bit of jewellery, every bit of gold and all the shares that I had to open this restaurant so that I wouldn't be answerable to someone. We took a lot of risks when we opened over here. Of course, opening in Goregaon was one risk, but the second risk was that have kept a full non-veg menu and all our noodles are chewy, thick and handmade."

The first two months post the opening, Chef Rahul was at the restaurant till 2 am, scrubbing the floors, washing dishes, cooking the food, and that took him back to his time in Australia.

Mastering the Biang Biang noodles took him about two months, and that is the easiest kind of hand-pulled noodles. But he doesn't want to settle for simple things. He is soon headed to Chengdu and Chongqing in China to learn how to make Lamian noodles and Dao Xiao Mian, which is a different type of blade-cut noodles. "I want to bring those techniques to India and really perfect them. I also want to do the cat's ear noodles, and other weird and wonderful kinds of noodles with a hot oil splash," he adds.

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