The actual stall itself offers chicken, pork and duck either in soup or with rice as well as dim sum that maybe I'll try next time. The soups vary from spicier offerings to more savoury broth-based ones for nonces like me.
I had the char siu soup and the noodle man quickly got to work, cutting off a section of quite wet dough, lobbing some flour around and rolling it into a tube and proceeded to work his magic. I nearly wrote "wok his magic" there but it would have been particularly twattish.
These noodles were dumped into hot water along with some pak choi, some char siu rapidly cut up and a darkish stock thrown over the top. £4.50 please. I have great pleasure in saying, in my limited noodle opinion, that the whole thing was wonderful. I am still amazed that you can get noodles from a blob of dough in about 3 minutes. They were very good - firm but definitely not mushy. The char siu portion was overly-generous, the pak choi retained a crunch and this all sat in a really intensely savoury - maybe even too savoury! - broth.
I am really struggling to think of anything better in London in terms of value of money and a satisfyingly full belly. It's just a shame they don't operate at weekends. I ate at 12.30 and by the time I'd got to the bottom of the bowl the queue was about 10 deep. Deservedly so. I'm sure if I do a saddo Nick Hornby-style "Top 5" at the end of the year that this will be in it. 9.
As an addendum, I also had some very nice chicken karaage from a nearby stall. Re-fried seemingly to order, it was crisp, hot and still really tender and moist in the middle. Two triumphs in one day.
I am getting hungry!
ReplyDeleteThe noodles look quite thick though!?
Glad to learn there is la mian in London.