Watching wizards make your food is part of the fun at San Antonio’s Noodles & Dumplings

With its emphasis on foods that suggest longevity and prosperity, Chinese New Year makes a good excuse to revisit a cuisine that often gets shunted aside in favor of the latest culinary trend. Of course, not everyone buys into the notion that noodles lead to a long life, but the arrival of the lunar new year, the celebration of which ran from Jan. 29 through Feb. 12, made for a great excuse to visit Noodles & Dumplings, an El Paso-based chain that made its San Antonio debut last spring.