About Chris 

Born and raised in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, I was always drawn to the cultures of East Asia. However, growing up in the Great American West didn't provide a lot of opportunity to interact with faraway lands. I soaked up all of the exposure I could, taking regular martial arts classes and studying under a Japanese calligrapher who lived in the mountains. College was my first chance to learn an Asian language and truly immerse myself in a foreign culture. After enrolling in a Chinese class, I was quickly hooked. By really learning and reaching fluency in the language, I was able to experience aspects of the culture that would be inaccessible to the regular Western tourist. In 2008 and 2009, eager to put my academic training to work, I spent nearly a year living, studying, and working in Beijing and Hong Kong. While living in China, noodles became my go-to meal. Quick, cheap, and easy to find, noodles checked all the boxes for a poor Chinese language student. In addition to being delicious, watching chefs pull the noodles by hand and serve them end up on my table less than a minute later was mesmerizing. Thus, my obsession with noodles was born.  

Upon returning to the U.S., I assumed I could easily recreate the countless bowls of hand pulled noodles I’d eaten in China. Having worked as a chef during nights and weekends in high school, I felt pretty handy around the kitchen. I was wrong. After many hours spent kneading dough from recipes found online, I was no closer to unlocking the secrets than I had been as a boy in Colorado, dreaming about traveling.

in 2018, consumed by desire to learn how to make hand pulled noodles, I brushed off my Chinese and headed back to China in search of Noodist wisdom. There was only one possible destination for this journey, Lanzhou, the epicenter of noodle culture in China. While in Lanzhou, I spent two weeks in Chinese trade school, learning noodle pulling from dawn to dusk in order to unlock the secrets of the dough. At the end of my time in Lanzhou, I was asked to participate in an official government examination process. Not many foreigners have taken part in this examination system, and even fewer have passed. It was an honor to be selected. With 18 minutes to go from flour to perfectly uniform noodles, my training paid off. I passed the exam and returned home with an official designation from the Chinese Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, one of very few non-native Chinese to attain official certification in hand pulled noodle making. I'm excited to share my passion for noods with you, and to help you find the Noodist within!  欢迎大家来享受拉面!