garlic noodle pizza recipe
adapting the famous sf garlic noodle dish to pizza -- special shoutout to chef kenji
If you’ve never had garlic noodles, you’re missing out on an SF staple.
If you didn’t know by now, I live in San Francisco — a city that’s an amalgam of cultures, people, and food. SF is known for a few food items, among them being: dutch crunch bread, clam chowder bread bowls, and garlic noodles. If you want to hear the story of how SF Vietnamese-style garlic noodles were created, head to this video of Chef J. Kenji Lopez-Alt explaining the legend and walking through the recipe. Shoutout to Chef Kenji, his NYT recipe was the foundation of what became the garlic noodle pizza!
It looks simple, but it’s packed with flavor.
Most Vietnamese places in San Francisco offer garlic noodles as a menu item and the above image is a common way that garlic noodles are served — in fact, I’ve had this exact plate of food at a restaurant called Chic n’ Time in SF. They’re sometimes a partner to a meat item like five spice chicken or lemongrass chicken and there’s a simple vegetable on the side like broccoli or carrot slices. The noodles themselves may look simple, but it’s absolutely packed with flavor. If you’ve never had them, I’d highly encourage you to try them out.
Now why does this make sense to put on pizza?
SF Vietnamese-style garlic noodles have a couple key ingredients that make complete sense when translated on pizza.
Butter
Parmesan cheese
In my mind, the fat element that both of these ingredients provide already translate directly to pizza. It’s then about composing the rest of the ingredients in a way that brings nostalgia to the garlic noodle dish while creating a new pizza that’s still unique and stands alone, separate from the original inspiration.
What did I end up doing? (two adaptations)
The first thing I ended up adapting was translating the original butter sauce in the garlic noodle dish into a take on a mornay sauce. A mornay sauce is a milk and butter sauce that’s usually enriched with gruyere and parmesan cheese. In this case, I made a base milk, butter, garlic, oyster sauce, soy sauce, and fish sauce and enriched that with some parmesan cheese and then thickened it with flour. This gave it the appropriate feel I wanted with a thicker, almost alfredo sauce-like texture.
The second thing I adapted from the original recipe were the NOODLES themselves. Obviously, pizza is already a bread-y, starch-y item to eat on its own. But I wanted the essence of garlic noodles still represented on the pizza. So I did a common Chinese technique of pan frying noodles to give it an extremely crunchy texture which I then used as post-bake garnish on top of the pizza afterwards. A nice bite and an homage to the original dish all in one.
I really like this pizza — please do try this recipe at home.
Now for the recipe. Save this one for when you really want to impress the guests.
garlic noodle pizza
ingredients (makes four 11” pizzas):
4 tbsp unsalted butter
20 medium garlic cloves, minced or smashed in a mortar and pestle
4 tsp oyster sauce
2 tsp light soy sauce or shoyu
3 tsp fish sauce
1 oz grated Parmesan or Pecorino Romano (heaping 1/6 cup)
1 package of dried chow mein (pan fried noodles)
1 cup milk
1/6 cup AP flour
A small handful of thinly sliced scallions (optional)
instructions (base pizza sauce):
Melt the butter in a wok or saucepan over medium heat.
Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant but not browned, about 2 minutes.
Add the oyster sauce, soy sauce and fish sauce, and stir to combine. Remove from the heat.
Then add the following ingredients into the saucepan to make a mornay:
1/6 cup flour
1 cup milk
then 1 oz grated pecorino
Set aside and let cool.
instructions (fried noodles):
Heat 1 tbsp oil in skillet over medium high heat. Place 1 noodle cake (1/2 inch thick) into pan then drizzle over 2 tbsp water. If packaged noodles not in round shape, then shape into a round shape so as to cover the whole cooking surface.
Wait until the water evaporates (steam cooks the noodles), then pat down lightly and let the noodles cook for a further 1 to 2 minute until the bottom of the noodles are golden brown (lift up with a spatula to check).
Slide noodles onto a plate, then flip upside down back into the pan. Cook for a further 1 1/2 - 2 minutes until golden brown, then transfer to tray to drain oil.
Repeat with any remaining noodle cakes.
instructions (pizza):
stretch dough to roughly 11” and top with base pizza sauce
cook off pizza in home oven or pizza oven until desired doneness
then top with fried noodles, parm, and then finally thinly sliced green onions (scallions)
If you enjoyed this recipe, please give this post a save and try it for yourself! Don’t forget to give my dough recipe a try as well.
You can also subscribe to my Substack to get notified on my next pizza drop so you can come try my creations in person, can’t wait to see you soon :)
Much love <3
Harry (Tableside Pizza)