The name isn’t great is it? It doesn’t really inspire you to go inside and test out their offerings. Take any other cuisine and it gets all the more ridiculous – a restaurant called ‘rice, rice’, ‘spaghetti, spaghetti’ or ‘pie, pie’ doesn’t work either but maybe I’m being unimaginative.
Name aside this oriental canteen just north of Victoria station is quite an exciting find. It’s the sort of place you walk past a hundred times without even thinking of going inside. Away from the lunch time chaos, it turns out it’s worth spending a pound or two more than you would in Eat or Pret for an excuse to sit down and chatter over bowls of spicy pad thai, chicken-katsu curry or ramen soup.
Big beakers of juice arrive at the table in record speed and after our order is taken generous portions of fragrant fodder follow close behind. My Tom-Yum soup (£5.95) comes in a cavernous china bowl. Fine rice noodles swim in flavourful spiced stock along with tender poached chicken, spring onions, bean sprouts and a chunk of lemon which leaves a tangy punch. On a cold day like today this is comforting, with a hangover it would be cleansing and really, there are few days that this classic concoction wouldn’t be well received.
Jess, who introduced me to this little place, has spicy fried chicken (£7.95)which arrives with sticky rice and a thick, weirdly bright, sauce. The crunchy crumbed fillet is well received though and judging by the empty plates flying back to the kitchen from all corners the chefs have got the lunch time formula pretty much spot on. Mountainous piles of wok fried noodles, plates of steaming dim sum and all sorts of soups magically disappeared all around us.
Noodle Noodle isn’t gourmet, the ingredients aren’t sourced from suppliers in rolling English valleys and there’s no way the waiters know the provenance of the chicken on your plate but it’s fresh, healthy, quick and satisfying. In comparison to the array of high street vendors offering their latest attention grabbing sandwich it beats them hands down.
Noodle Noodle
16-18 Buckingham Palace Road
London SW1W 0QP
020 7931 9911
http://www.noodle-noodle.co.uk/
