The hand-pulled noodle craze is on full display at new Denver restaurant

You don’t need to be well-versed in the history of hand-pulled noodles to be impressed by the gravity-defying act of stretching dough, which can be seen up close at a new Chinese restaurant in Denver.

Magic Noodle House, 1400 E. 17th Ave., opened late last year, intent on bringing the technique to central Denver, said Nina Zhang, the shop’s 30-year-old owner. Hand-pulled noodles originated in Lanzhou, the capital city of a province in northwest China, according to a well-documented history dating back more than 100 years. In the last decade, noodle shops dedicated to the craft have cropped up across the U.S.

Visible from behind a large window display, the cooks at Magic Noodle House take turns mixing dry flour with water in a machine, then pounding the resulting balls of dough and stretching them into oblivion. They flip, twirl and slap the dough until it begins to resemble a long rope, subdividing it into the strands that will become the base for the restaurant’s sign...