Banging flavours, super noodles and late in the night it’s a tasty refuge for revellers in need of refuelling
I should at this point say ‘Noodle and beer, it does what it says on the tin’, but unfortunately it doesn’t as the draught beer is ‘off’. Some kind of technical problem, apparently.
This is a slight disappointment, as it’s about 30C in Chinatown this lunchtime and I am gagging for a cold drink. Fortunately there’s a range of bottled beers too and these are deliciously frosty.
Noodle and Beer has two personalities, upstairs it’s airy, bright and modern, and a bit cramped as the open kitchen occupies much of the space. Downstairs, for the evening crowd (until 4am Thursday, Friday and Saturdays) it’s deep red, dark and louche, just the sort of spot you long for when hungry, less drunk than you were at 11pm, and as ravenous as you can only be after a big night out.
This is lunchtime though, we’re very sober but hungry all the same.
The menu, rather battered through a lot of handling, doesn’t make your head swim with excessive choice, but as usual you’re umming and erring a lot. The waiters, as is Chinatown tradition, are not particularly helpful but adopt a look of stoic patience as the amateur eaters dither.
I do know I want ‘Mouthwatering Chicken’ as I know from experience this really does what it says on the tin. This dish of cold chicken salad swimming in chili oil along with soy sauce, black vinegar, sesame oil, sugar, Sichuan pepper oil, is always a winner. Squeamish Westerners like me also like it because it always uses chicken breast, and not the unidentifiable, but undeniably tasty, chicken components usually found in Chinatown dishes.
This version also has strips of pepper and peanuts, which I like, even if they do make my dodgy back tooth cringe on impact. It’s lucky we didn’t have any spoons on the table or I’d have cleared the bowl of the sauce/broth. It’s highly addictive.
Having shared this we dive on Sichuan dumplings, large and heartily packed out with meat and swimming in their own Sichuan sauce. These are also brilliant, the combo of fierce heat, spice and the addictively numbing Sichuan pepper ( ‘ma la’) is again irresistible and cold beer is the perfect partner.
So noodles. Obviously we have to have some, but which? Noodles in soup, ‘dry’noodles or some other variety? Well the Super King Braised Beef Ribs With Blanket Noodles and slow-cooked braised beef ribs, spring onions, pak choi has been much praised online, so that’s our pick.
We share this again, which is our only mistake. The noodles are thick, bouncy, wide and slippery. Delicious, but also long making it very hard to get them out of the bowl. One person could easily throw decorum to the wind and slobber the bowl at zero inches from the mouth, but we try to separate them to our plates and swiftly redecorate the table and our shirts. Totally worth it, no question, but some scissors would have been great, if a little untraditional.
The beef, slipped off the bone by the waiter, is superb. I don’t get the rationale behind the edible gold spray business but hey, I am sure it makes for great ‘Gram.
A fantastic dish, if you only have time/money/inclination for one dish this is it. And it will feed two people, if messily. Braver souls might want to try Blanket noodles with stir fried frog legs, bell pepper,mustard tuber chilli sauce, or Wheat noodles with chicken gizzard.
We don’t try the desserts, there two and they sound interesting, but we’re done – happily full and, after two bottled beers each, a little gassy.
Noodle and Beer is the kind of place that should be all over the UK, instead of the ever growing number of chicken wing shops poisoning teenagers (not literally).
As it is, there’s one in Spitalfields and now there’s this one in Soho and if you like noodles and beer, who doesn’t, then you know where to go.
www.noodleandbeer.com
Chinatown
27 Wardour St,
W1D 6PR
Spitalfields
31 Bell Lane,
London E1 7LA