Noodle Inn, Sheffield (revisited)

I've eaten at two of the restaurants in Sheffield's Noodle Inn mini-empire before (see here and here), enjoying the meal on both occasions but finding it tricky to work out what they're actually best at, the almost novel sized menus proving a challenge.

A repeat visit to the original Noodle Inn on London Road enlightened me further in one regard: their roast meats are very good indeed, especially the belly pork.

Three roast meats and noodles in soup brought a competent broth, bouncy noodles, plenty of greens and a ridiculous quantity of meat for the £7.50 price tag. The belly pork was a dream, the thin layer of crackling fracturing on the bite to give way to melting fat and tender flesh. Spot on, and it didn't even lose the crunch after sitting in the soup for ages. Many a gastropub charging twice the price for the stuff could learn a thing or two from these lot.

The duck and char sui pork were also good, but it's the belly pork that's sticking in the memory, and that I'll definitely be back for.

Service was brisk and to the point, but that's fine by me. You come here to get fed not for someone to be all nice to you. £7.50 for a huge bowl of noodles, or £11 with a beer and service.

8/10

156 London Road
Sheffield
S2 4LT

http://www.noodleinn.co.uk/

Edit: The website has disappeared. Surely they haven't closed down in the last fortnight or so since I was there? http://www.noodleinncentro.co.uk and http://noodleinnhotpot.co.uk/ are still online...

Two easy Asian ways with pork

As is often the case the best things I've cooked recently have been a happy accident; one a meal involving creative use of leftovers and another a last minute change of heart.

What was left of a slow roasted leg of pork was going to be sliced thinly and flash fried with garlic and ginger, but the joint wasn't as fatty as I'd anticipated and so the remaining meat was overdone. Moisture was needed. 

The cooked pork was suffused with a fairly strong whack of fennel, so I thought the anise notes would work well with a sticky soy marinade. Something sort of Thai in style, which of course led me to thoughts of Thai Aroy Dee and the little chewy nuggets of caramel pork that make up one of the accompaniments on their shrimp paste fried rice.

Turns it out it couldn't be simpler to make your own caramel pork. This has that addictive blend of sugar, salt and meat that's impossible not to enjoy. Mixed up with a big pile of vegetable fried rice and a generous squirt of Sriracha it was about ten times better than the original roast pork dinner. 

Here's what I used and how to do it:

Caramel pork

Enough for 2 or 3 people, served with veggie fried rice and hot sauce

300g cooked pork, cut into small chunks (mine were a bit big, no more than 1cm cubed is the way to go)

1 fat clove garlic

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce

1 dessertspoon palm sugar

2 dessertspoons white sugar

2-3 spring onions

Crush the garlic then put it in a bowl with the pork pieces and the soy sauce, then mix everything up well. Finely chop the green ends of the spring onions and set aside.

Heat some neutral oil in a wok until it's hot then throw in the pork, soy and garlic mix. Stir-fry for a minute or so then turn the heat down to medium and add the sugar. 

Keep stir-frying until the sugar dissolves to form a syrup (if it's too dry add a splash of water), then keep frying and stirring until your syrup starts to reduce and coats the pork. It's done when the sauce clings to the pork, almost like a sticky glaze. 

Turn out into a serving bowl and garnish with the spring onion tops. Serve immediately.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The last minute change of heart was meatball-related. The plan was Italian style, like this, but I just wasn't feeling it. I wanted something soupy and spicy, a lighter feeling way of using more or less the same ingredients.

The result: fragrant pork balls with noodles in broth. At least eighty percent the same meal (especially since I didn't have any actual noodles in the house so had to use linguine, but the Italians just copied off the Chinese so it's all the same really right?) but somehow completely different.

The meatball pan stickings lent a lovely deep brown colour to the stock, which in turn kept the noodles (linguine) all lovely and slippery and full of bite. The balls themselves were gently spiced and didn't dry out as they'd finished cooking in the broth. 

Fragrant pork balls with noodles in broth

Serves two

200-250g pork mince

small thumb of ginger

1 large clove garlic

1 heaped teaspoon sugar 

zest of half a lime (or a lemon if that's all you've got)

a good splash of fish sauce

a good squeeze of Sriracha (or other chilli sauce)

a tablespoon of finely chopped herbs (I used mint and basil, but coriander and Thai basil would probably have been better in place of regular basil)

Two blocks/strips of noodles (your choice, or use pasta if you're really desperate) 

400ml light chicken stock

more herbs and/or spring onions to garnish

Mix all of the meatball ingredients together in a bowl (that's everything except for the noodles, stock and extra herbs in case you were wondering), then put the mix in the fridge for at least half an hour to firm up.

Remove the mix from the fridge and form into little meatballs, aim to make around twelve in total. Heat a little oil in a deep pan (deep enough to hold the stock) over a moderate heat, then add the meatballs. Leave them to colour a bit before turning. While the meatballs are cooking prepare your noodles (or pasta) as per the packet instructions.

Cook the balls for a few minutes on each side then pour in the stock, it should immediately turn a darker colour from the gooeyness at the bottom of the pot. Cook for a few minutes more to finish cooking the balls and heat the stock to a simmer then throw in the noodles. 

Stir to heat through the noodles then serve immediately with extra herbs as a garnish and any other condiments you fancy. Note: it's much easier to eat this with chopsticks and a spoon rather than a fork and a spoon!

Noodle Inn Centro, Sheffield

After a few false starts I've finally eaten a really good Chinese meal in Sheffield. The Noodle Inn restaurants come highly recommended from those in the know, and after a solo visit to the original branch on London Road a while back I was almost convinced, but the gargantuan menu made it tricky to pinpoint the good stuff.

The new branch in town has a slightly more focused approach, there's still a lengthy Cantonese and Sichuan menu but no dim sum list to complicate things further. All of the main dishes are available as one plate meals with rice, a great option if there aren't enough you for a full on sharing feast (and if your dining companion isn't a spice fiend).

Gong bao chicken (it might have been kung pao on the menu here) was a cracking rendition. Laced with sichuan pepper and chilli and coated in an addictive sticky salty-sweet sauce, there are few things more pleasurable than scooping this stuff up with chopsticks. It's not just the flavour that satisfies, but the mouth feel; soft chicken, the crack and yield of nuts (cashews rather than peanuts strangely), tongue tingling pepper, fluffy rice.

A plate of salt and chilli chicken wings were also damn fine and utterly more-ish, as you'd expect meaty wings fried to a good crisp and smothered in fried onions, garlic and chilli to be. 

Sweet and sour chicken's not really my cup of tea, but A was happy with hers and it looked like a decent version. Only veggie spring rolls were a pointless, but then they always are.

The one plate meals are all under a tenner, remarkable value given their enormity. We took home enough leftovers for another full meal. In total we paid around £28 including a drink each and service. Free ice cream for afters too!

I'll definitely be returning to Noodle Inn. The keen pricing and name suggests a pile-it-high noodle bar, big on quantity but lacking in quality, but don't let that put you off as the food is far better than that provided you order carefully. A Red Chilli style Sichuan knees-up is definitely on the cards.

8/10

15 Westfield Terrace
Sheffield
S1 4GH

http://www.noodleinncentro.co.uk/

Host, Liverpool

Pan-Asian, a restaurant genre to strike fear into the heart of the purist. I'm not really one of those, but I understand their criticisms. Asia is a big place. The two most populous nations on earth have cuisines more varied than some continents, and that's just within their own respective borders. And it's not as if the vast span of Asia outside China and India eats food that's lacking in distinction either.

So can a Pan-Asian restaurant like Host really do justice to such myriad variety, or is it destined to disappoint? The classic jack of all trades but master of none.

A duck and watermelon salad with cashew nuts and thai basil was pleasing to eat on account of its textural contrasts. Fibrous meat, yielding, juice heavy melon and the snap and crunch of nuts and beansprouts. Taste wise it wasn't so much fun. Sweet fruit, sweet-ish meat and a sweet dressing left it one dimensional, needing something acidic for balance, or at least for the advertised basil to be detectable.

I couldn't resist ordering the seared beef pho to follow, partly because I fancied something soupy, and partly because at twelve quid it was by some margin the most expensive pho I've ever seen.

What does the mark up on your average Vietnamese restaurant prices get you? A very fine looking dish with a well stocked platter of garnishes, which although plentiful sadly didn't include any of the more unusual herbs, just regular coriander, mint and basil. The meat was the high point of the dish, a good slab of well seared, blush pink sirloin that wouldn't have been out of place with a bowl of frites. Springy noodles were also a hit.

So far so good, just the broth to taste, and oh... it just tastes of salt. Not offensively so, there's just not much else to it. None of the meaty depths of a good stock, no aromatic star anise back note. Ultimately what you're paying for is the European-isation of the dish, everything else acting as the supporting cast to the big slab of protein in the centre of the plate. Not unpleasant, just not really the point of pho as far as I'm concerned. It should be all about the broth.

Sadly it didn't really add up for me at Host. I hoped that the food would defy expectations, but it just served to confirm my suspicions that pan-Asian restaurants are never the place to go for genuinely good Asian food.  At £24 for two courses, one beer and service it's also not cheap.

Service, I should point out, was excellent. Everyone I spoke to was attentive, polite, and keen to check that everything was ok. Fine, I said, of course. Which it was. You can't really take up your issues with the entire concept with the waiting staff.


5/10

31 Hope Street
Liverpool
L1 9HX

http://www.ho-st.co.uk/

Northern Food on tour: New Year in London part 1

Mega-post alert. We spent three nights in London over the new year festivities, you might not be surprised to discover that eating was a very important part of the trip. By very important I mean that's mostly what we did, alongside the drinking of course.

I'll never get round to writing up each meal individually, so here's a warts and all round-up, good and bad, in mostly chronological order, of the whole lot.

To make things a little more manageable I've split the post into two, this first one covers the casual and the unplanned, the second post will be of the two slightly more upmarket places we ate at.

Ikea, Milton Keynes

You'll probably be aware that Scandinavian food is the hot ticket right now. The Nordic dining revolution has made the short voyage across the sea to our shores, and is making waves in London and the South-east. It's an intriguing mix, connecting food to culture with an almost palpable sense of place, ground-breaking in its sourcing and preparation of foraged ingredients, terroir on the plate in the most literal way.

What better way, we thought, than to introduce ourselves to this cuisine with a trip to a restaurant run by an organisation that's done more than any other to bring Scandinavian food to the people of Britain. So we went to Ikea in Milton Keynes for lunch. As you do.

I'm not quite sure how it came about, but it was something like this: no breakfast + bored on the M1 + traffic jam + discussion about meatballs + pouring rain making original outdoor plans unlikely = sod it let's go to Ikea for lunch.

The meatballs are an experience. Nice in a rubbery, filthy sort of way, but I'm not convinced by the weird milky gravy. And the lingonberry stuff is just crap jam. Crap jam with weird milky gravy isn't a great combination I don't think. Next time I might have my meatballs unadorned.

We had apple cake with vanilla sauce for pudding. I really enjoyed the cake, it was moist with good fat chunks of tart apple in. Scan-delicious! The sauce was rubbish again though. It had the taste and texture of Bird's custard after you've mixed the powder into the milk but before you've cooked it. Weird.

Would I go again? Yes, it's inevitable. Avoid the weird sauces. Cheap.

5/10

Bletcham Way
Milton Keynes
MK1 1QB

http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/store/milton_keynes


Baozi Inn Takeaway, Chinatown

Baozi Inn is a little Sichuan cafe in Chinatown, I've eaten there a couple of times but not for a few years. The good news is they've opened a little takeaway next door that sells nothing but skewers and buns.

The skewers (£1.00-£1.20 each) are boiled to order in a dirty great vat of spicy broth laced with salt, chilli and Sichuan pepper. The result is stonkingly good: tender morsels of meat or veg intensely flavoured from the broth. There are loads of varieties, I only got as far as lamb and enoki mushroom, both of which were great.

The buns (bao) are big fat steamed dough monsters stuffed with pork and onion, sturdy and filling for the harsh winters in Northern China (or to fill a 15 Ikea meatball sized space before a trip to theatre). Two quid each.

8/10

27 Newport Court
Chinatown
London
WC2H 7JS


Princi, Soho

Princi is the sort of place I wish existed elsewhere in the UK, but just doesn't. This sort of thing only seems to work with the critical mass of London.

It's a big bustling Italian bakery-cafeteria-bar-takeaway. You shove your way to a space at the counter, shout out your order from an impressive display of baked goods, pizza, filled focaccia, salads, pasta, meat dishes and god knows what else, collect your drinks from the bar then elbow your way to any vacant space on the communal tables. Not the place for peace and quiet, but for a lively drink or two accompanied by some quality snacks (or a three course dinner if you feel like it) it's an excellent choice.

Pasta pesto and mozzarella and tomato salad were both very good. Beautiful milky cheese, tomatoes with some semblance of taste (which will do for me at the end of December) and grassy, herbal pesto. The pizza was just ok though, I'm never a fan of the thick rectangles of pizza a taglio stuff, not even in Italy.

Given the central location prices are reasonable. We paid just over a tenner for the food and a bottle of water.

7/10

135 Wardour Street
Soho
London
W1F 0UT

http://www.princi.com/




Full Stop Cafe, Brick Lane

A pleasant coffee shop with a few comfy sofas. The coffee, when it eventually arrived after nigh on twenty minutes, was satisfyingly robust. Yes I know that quality coffee isn't made in an instant, but twenty minutes is still too long in a not very busy place.

Still, at least we got to amuse ourselves eavesdropping on the conversation at the neighbouring table during the wait. This being East London hipster central it was mostly about their unbridled talent going unrecognised, this being the fault of others, his issues with anger and hers with Tatiana, ya? The joy.

£2.70 for a flat white. A bit much but probably par for the course in these parts. And still cheaper than Costa so on second thoughts that's good value.

7/10

202 Brick Lane
London
E1 6SA


The Breakfast Club, Spitalfields

We only ended up at the Breakfast Club as our original brunch choice was closed over Christmas and New Year. It was good enough to entice us back on New Year's Day for a hangover cure before the journey home.

It was an infuriating place though, with the makings of excellence being let down by shoddy execution in parts. The coffee was just ok, too milky and not very well made.

The bacon sandwich was also a misfire, but I shan't bang on about it having already done so here.

But the cinnamon French toast with roasted apples and syrup was bloody lovely, so much so that I voted it my breakfast of the year (and shared a plateful the day after, making it a contender for the 2013 award too!).

The half monty breakfast continued the trend. Beautifully poached eggs of unusually high quality (dark yellow yolks that actually tasted of something) balanced out by everything else on the plate being mediocre.

Breakfast plates are priced from around six quid up to a tenner, fair enough, but drinks are a little pricey. Service is brisk and the atmosphere verging on raucous, busy with loud music. Depending on your level of delicacy this could be a good or bad thing.

7/10

12-16 Artillery Lane
Spitalfields
London
E1 7LS

http://www.thebreakfastclubcafes.com/

May's Recipes, Leeds Kirkgate Market

I'd love to bring you a festive post about all the wonderful things I'll be preparing to feast on this Christmas, but unlike last year I won't be preparing a thing. Not even another pork pie.

Instead, I'm going to write about a Thai and Chinese food stall that's recently opened on Leeds market. Not exactly Christmassy, but it's good and they deserve a mention before time flies by and I forget.

You'll find May's Recipes right at the bottom corner of the (almost certainly) doomed part of the market, just inside the door opposite the multi-storey car park entrance.

I ordered a pad ka-prao; chicken stir-fried with holy basil and chillies. What arrived was a far better rendition than many restaurants serve, firstly as it actually contained plenty of basil for that all important hit of warm aniseed flavour, and secondly as it was absolutely enormous.

I'm not sure including about fifteen different vegetables in the mix is traditional, but it made for a very nutritious lunch, my 5-a-day must have been sorted in one hit. And finally what of the jar in the background of the photo? Prik nam pla, the classic Thai condiment of chillies in fish sauce, there is no better seasoning for rice, so mine received a liberal dose.

£5 for the stir-fry with rice. Another market opening serving good food at a great price, run by friendly people. Give it a try.

Merry Christmas everyone.

7/10

1976 Hall
Leeds Kirkgate Market
Leeds
LS2 7HY

Noodle Inn, Sheffield

I'm on the hunt for really good Chinese food in Sheffield, I'm sure it's out there somewhere as there are plenty of options and what looks to be a sizeable Chinese community in the city.

So far what I've eaten has been uninspired, so given a good few recommendations I'd received for the place I had higher hopes for Noodle Inn. It's hard to tell after just one meal, especially when dining alone with little opportunity to give the menu a good going over, but I'd say it just about delivered.

The Sichuan section of the menu warrants the most attention, as apparently they have a chef who hails from there, but there's also a great long list of Cantonese stuff and even a separate dim sum menu.

Beef flank with noodles in Sichuan hot and sour soup was a monumental bowlful, so much so that I barely got through more than half of it. The meat was the star here, whacking great hunks of gelatinous long braised stuff, intensely beefy and worth the effort taken in prising every morsel from it's protective layer of wobbly fat.

The broth, in comparison, was disappointing. It was a bit one dimensional, sour with plenty of chilli heat but not much else to offer, and only the merest hint of Sichuan pepper numbness (though perhaps that's all this dish is supposed to have?) The noodles, which I think were a potato starch variety, were good and sturdy, but not really my favourite type being overly glutinous.

A side order of steamed prawn dumplings from the dim sum menu were slightly overcooked, the skins just starting to stick a little, but the sweet, bouncy prawn filling was spot on.

The bill was just £11.90 including a soft drink, and there's free ice cream for afters if you want it (I didn't, it was pissing icy rain outside and I was in a hurry). Service wasn't exactly enthusiastic but everything arrived promptly enough. On the whole this was good, and the menu definitely deserves further investigation. I'll be back.

7/10


156 London Road
Sheffield
S2 4LT

http://www.noodleinn.co.uk/

Asia Style, Glasgow

Another day another dark, rainy mid-week journey to Scotland. I love Glasgow but it can be a bit dismal in November. For some reason I was craving noodles, only they would brighten my day.

Search for 'noodles Glasgow M8' and chances are you'll end up at Asia Style (actually that's lies, you'll probably end up at somewhere called Ichiban, but Asia Style must have entered my conciousness somehow 'cos it only took me two minutes to recall its existence and locate it), a casual Chinese Malaysian place close to Charing Cross station just off the motorway.

I was hoping they might serve me a decent laksa, my last such experience being a bit underwhelming. At least they had roti canai, sneakily hidden on the menu under the description 'Malaysian pancake'. Roti canai, done well, are marvellous. Crisp, flakey layered eggy breads of utter deliciousness; like the buttery bastard child of the finest paratha and a wayward croissant, dipped in curry sauce. Oh yes.

Sadly this one was a bit rubbish, cooked too quickly too hot, rendering the edges charred but the interior lumpen and unflaked, grease permeating the whole. I still loved it in a sordid, sweaty fried bread kind of way though, that is if you ate curry with your fried bread. Which you probably should.

Curry laksa this time, I would have had assam but they didn't do one. I'm no expert on Malaysian food, but I think curry laksa should include seafood and tofu, but I'm not really sure in what sort of ratio. This one was ten parts tofu to one part seafood. One big prawn, three fish balls and several kilos of spongey tofu and the weird vegetarian tripe that is beancurd skin.

I'm yet to learn to love tofu. I'm really trying, but it's just not working. The texture is always wrong, be it spongey or squishy or slippery or chewy. Consequently eating this was a bit of a chore. The curry broth was ok, nothing special though, as were the noodles (which were the thick yellow mee variety).

I can't quite decide whether this was rubbish, or just not to my tastes. I'd just driven for four hours in a torrential downpour so my brain was frazzled when I ate it so it's hard to say for sure. On the plus side it's cheap and cheerful, and copious quantities of Chinese tea are proffered free of charge. It's open late so maybe go when you're pissed.

6/10

185-189 St George's Road
Glasgow
G3 6JD

Hong Kong Wok, Sheffield

Hong Kong Wok is a cheap and cheerful Chinese restaurant, one of several on the London Road strip. I doubt it serves the best food in the vicinity, but the staff are friendly, prices low and portions enormous. Just the thing for a casual, low key Friday night.

There's a full menu of individual dishes, covering all the usual Cantonese stuff and a few Sichuan dishes, and a great big long list of one plate meals, appropriately named 'Wok Woppas'. Appropriately named as they are indeed whoppers.

We started, customarily but completely unnecessarily with some crispy duck and pancakes, and a bowl of chicken and sweetcorn soup just to make sure. Then onwards to our woppas.

I can't recall ever having been served a single plate of food so unfeasibly large, certainly not for £6.50 anyway. I had the ma po tofu (on rice), a classic Sichuan dish that's supposed to be tofu, some sort of mince (beef or pork) and some vegetables in an oily broth laced with chillies and Sichuan pepper. Depending on how you wish to translate it you might like to call the dish 'pockmarked old woman's tofu' or perhaps 'leprous old crone's tofu'. Yum.

Slightly disturbing names aside, done right this is a really satisfying dish that warms the cockles with layers of chilli heat and numbing spice (ma la) from the Sichuan pepper. This version was tasty enough, hot and savoury, but completely lacking in the ma la element leaving it a bit one dimensional. The sauce was a bit too cornflour-gloopy as well.

AS had a serviceable and also humongous plate of special fried rice, most of which we took home for Saturday lunch.

With a couple of booze drinks the bill was still less than thirty quid, but you could be in and out for well under a tenner a head if you stick to the one plate meals. The food wasn't brilliant but I'm still rather enamoured with the place; everything was just so generous. Plenty of food, friendly service, free ice cream for afters and fortune cookies!

6/10

200-204 London Road
Sheffield
S2 4LW

http://www.hkwok.co.uk/

Good things to eat [Volume 11]

A few more things I've been enjoying recently but haven't written about elsewhere.

Plum puddings

Not plum puddings in the Christmassy sense, plum puddings meaning any dessert made from plums. After last years magnificent damsons I'm on the look out for anything vaguely plummy. Damsons themselves are yet to appear but I've made a couple of lovely puddings with some Victoria plums and some cheap and cheerful purple supermarket plums of unknown variety.

The secret is in the cooking. Neither variety of plum was that exciting to eat alone, not juicy or sweet enough to give much pleasure. But slowly baked under a thin, crisp topping the juices ran and the flavours came alive.

It's far too early for a full-on crumble and custard is out of the question, so I just make enough topping to barely cover the fruit. A large knob of butter rubbed into a tablespoon each of oats and flour and a dessertspoon of sugar.

Think of it as a late summer plum crisp, and serve it warm rather than hot with a dollop of thick, cold cream or vanilla ice cream (or even better, both). Heaven.

Lamb from Rivelin Valley farm shop

As with the plum puddings a slow roast shoulder of lamb smacks of autumn, conjuring up images of pillowy piles of mash and jugs of gravy. It doesn't have to be that way, have it with roast new potatoes and minty summer veg and you've got a splendid Sunday dinner for August.

The lamb on this occasion was from the farm shop in the Rivelin Valley, and I'd thoroughly recommend it. There was real depth of flavour to the meat, quite strong and very slightly gamey. The farm shop is one of the more basic survivors, there's no plush barn conversion tea room or any other frippery, just fine produce.

Proper jerk

Jerk how I love thee. Proper jerk is one of the finest foods known to man. It really is. Sadly there's a lot of crap out there sold in the name of jerk, so you might have been given the false impression that it's just another chilli sauce and grilled meat combo, caribbean Nando's if you like.

Jerk chicken, or whatever other meat you choose to jerk, is so much more than this, it has real complexity of flavour from the marinade, allspice and scotch bonnet chillies being the dominant forces. It's a hot, smokey, fruity, spicy, lip-tingling thing of wonder.

The jerk in the photo was just such a thing, marvellous it was. I bought it at the Bristol balloon fiesta, a huge event with dozens of food stalls, of which this jerk stall was the least professional looking by a country mile. Mis-spelled menu scrawled by hand in felt tip, a makeshift counter made from an assortment of camping furniture and a great big fuck-off kettle drum barbecue.

These are always the best places for jerk, it's usually better to shun anywhere that looks vaguely professional (especially any upmarket caribbean restaurants, which are all expensive and boring) and make a beeline for the most ramshackle stall or a takeaway carved out of the front room of a terraced house.

Custard tarts from Ho's bakery, Leeds

I'm not always sure what to make of Chinese baked goods. If I'm in the mood I quite enjoy the sweet, doughy buns stuffed with all manner of bits and bobs, roast pork being a particular favourite. I do have to be in the mood though, sometimes they just seem a bit weird to my British palate. I always bite into them half expecting jam or that fake cream stuff they love at Gregg's or anything other than pork.

I do love the custard tarts though, especially when they're done as well as those at Ho's bakery in Leeds. They're really delicate with a wobbly, barely sweet filling and light, flakey pastry. I could eat half a dozen.

Hui Wei, Sheffield

Tired and not really paying attention, we must have ordered one of the most disjointed, incoherent meals ever at Hui Wei the other Monday night. The excitement of the Olympic torch relay must have gone to our heads. As soon as we were seated in a comfy dark booth I was ready for bed.

We accidentally ordered nothing but meat and carbs, where a dish of greens would really have gone down a treat. As such I didn't really enjoy the whole meal as much as I should have done, but looking at each dish objectively there was some good stuff here.

I was after the Sichuan dishes, AS was after anything as long as it involved roast duck with pancakes. The duck was fine, but I didn't eat a great deal of it saving myself for spicier, garlicky treats to follow.

Ants climbing up a tree was a new Sichuan dish to me. I'd heard of it but never eaten it, probably because it's not on the menu at Red Chilli. A colossal bowl of crispy thread noodles is brought to the table alongside a gravy boat filled with errr gravy I suppose. Gravy made primarily from ground pork, garlic, chillies and oil that is. That's my sort of gravy. The noodles are doused in the gravy which makes them crackle and pop rice krispies style, reducing down to a spicy, noodly slop. Good fun and good to eat as well. One to share in a group though as it got a bit boring after a while.

Pan-fried beef with chillies and Sichuan peppercorns hit the mark spice-wise, with a three pronged assault. Vibrant, fresh sliced chillies, deep smoky dried chillies and numbing, tingly Sichuan pepper. Lovely flavour but let down by being swamped in too much gloopy, cornflour based sauce. It would have been better dry or oily rather than saucy.

Duck, pork and beef clearly not being enough meat, we had some Northern style pork dumplings as well, just to make sure. The filling was beautiful, tender, savoury and fragrant with chives. The wrappers less so, being a bit too thick and doughy in parts.

Including rice, tea and one glass of wine the bill came to around forty quid. Reasonably good value. I can't quite work out whether they specialise in Cantonese or Sichuan food here, or maybe something else (Beijing?), but either way the food was good although I've had better versions of most of it elsewhere. Service was friendly and efficient.

6/10

Hui Wei
221 Glossop Road
Sheffield
S10 2GW


www.huiwei.co.uk

East One, Sheffield

East One is a noodle bar, very much in the Wagamama style. One bowl dishes, seating at long wooden benches and so on. The menu leans more towards Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai rather than Japanese, but the styling is similar. I like these places, and am always hopeful that independent ones will come up trumps with better food than the chains.

Sadly East One wasn't that great. Vegetarian spring rolls were crisp and greaseless, but otherwise boring. Probably straight from the freezer catering pack, but certainly no better than that if they were made in house.

My Thai fried rice (chicken, onion, tomato, stir-fried with chilli paste, basil and fish sauce) was underseasoned in every way. Not enough chilli, basil or fish sauce. I asked for fish sauce and chillies so I could pep it up a bit, only for the waiter to explain that fish sauce wasn't used as a condiment as it was too salty. News to me. He brought me a tiny dish of chillies in vinegar instead.

AS had roast pork and duck on rice with greens. I tried the duck;- good flavour but a bit chewy. The sauce was too gloopy.

The chap, who to be fair was friendly, came back for another chat when we'd finished, and decided to explain the situation vis a vis appropriate use of fish sauce in more detail. I wouldn't have minded had I not known he was talking bollocks. Thais eat fish sauce laced with sliced chillies all the time. It's a condiment called nam pla prik (annoyingly I couldn't remember the name at the time).

Anyhow the food was ok, and was served quickly. Service was friendly but irritating. We paid around £23 in total, reasonable but not particularly cheap for this sort of thing.

5/10


13 The Plaza
West One
8 Fitzwilliam Street
Sheffield
S1 4JB

www.east1noodlebar.co.uk

Pho 68, Sheffield

Mission 'find pho in Yorkshire' arrived in Sheffield last Friday. Surely Pho 68 would come up trumps. The clue is in the name.

Pho 68 is a Vietnamese Cafe serving 'Traditional Vietnamese and select Pacific rim cuisine'. Their words not mine. I'm not really sure what they're on about with the Pacific rim bit, in practice the lengthy menu comprises a fairly short list of Vietnamese classics (noodle soups, summer rolls, clay pot dishes, grilled meat and rice/noodle plates) and a far longer one of Anglo-Chinese dishes.

We mixed and matched, left to my own devices I'd have stuck to the Vietnamese stuff but AS had a craving for crispy duck. A quarter duck and a Vietnamese pancake was clearly far too much food for a starter as both were enormous, a theme that would continue with the mains. Be warned.

The pancake was stuffed to bursting with beansprouts, other veggies and chicken, and wasn't overly greasy like some of these I've eaten in the past. I was rather pleased we'd chosen the duck once it had arrived, as it was fragrant with lovely crisp skin and still moist flesh. The hoi sin sauce doesn't really do it for me though, it's far too sweet. Give me some chilli bean sauce and I'm happy.

Here it is. The real purpose of the visit to Pho 68. Pho with rare beef and braised beef. It looked the part, and tasted it too. They've got the makings of a really good pho here. The stock was excellent. Deep, aromatic and intensely savoury. Wafer thin slices of beef were rare on arrival but cooked through as time progressed, the gentle poaching keeping them tender. The braised beef (brisket I think) was also sliced thin, but had a stronger, minerally flavour. The tendon running through it was soft and gelatinous speaking of long, slow cooking. The noodles, save for a little gluey clump at the top, were cooked just right.

So all was well with everything that arrived in the bowl, it was the plate of accompaniments that rather let the side down. For me, the thing that can really lift a bowl of pho from the good to the sublime is the plate of things to add. The contrast between the earthy depths of the nourishing broth and the freshness and zip of herbs and citrus can be just the best thing ever (especially when hungover).

You'd expect to get beansprouts, a wedge of lime, some chopped chilli, and as a minimum, a good handful of coriander and mint. There are several other herby possibilities (sawtooth herb is my favourite), but I've never seen anything other than mint and coriander offered outside London. Pho 68 offered up one measly sprig of coriander. To be fair, I didn't ask for extra, maybe the good folk of Sheffield don't want their tea tainting with unnecessary greenery so they don't bother. Next time I'll ask, but more herbs really should be the norm.

Our other main was a Vietnamese chicken stir-fry which was pleasant enough, if a little boring. A more generous hand with the lemongrass and chilli would have perked things up a bit.

It's a casual sort of place but they are licensed so we had a couple of beers each. Including those the bill came to around £34 before tip. Service was efficient but also very friendly. It's a bit of a tricky one to rate this, as some things were excellent (the pho broth, the duck) but others disappointing (the stir-fry, the lack of herbs).

I'll definitely return though, sort the herb issue out and this is best pho I've eaten in the North by a clear distance (ahead of Vnam in Manchester and Viet-Thai in Leeds).

7/10

175 London Road
Sheffield
S2 4LH

www.pho68.co.uk

Ho's Restaurant, Leeds

I had a monumental craving for noodles on Friday. I'm heading off on an exploratory pho mission this Friday, but just couldn't wait a whole extra week. Only a massive steaming bowl of noodles, meat and broth was going to satisfy. Ideally noodles of a substantial, carbolicious, chewy nature.

I'd noticed before that Ho's has an extensive menu in Chinese and wondered what delights it might be hiding beyond the standard stuff on the English menu, so thought I'd give it a try.

Things didn't get off to a very promising start, the conversation with the waiter going something like this:

Me: Is the Chinese menu different to the English one?
Him: Yes
Me: Has it got any noodle soup dishes on it?
Him: No
Me: Do you do any noodle soup dishes?
Him: Yes
Me: What?
Him: Duck or char siu or beef, thick or vermicelli egg noodle.
Me: (wishful thinking) Any hand pulled noodles or other noodles at all? What sort of broth? Any spicy versions?
Him: No. I can bring chilli oil.
Me: err ok, char sui and vermicelli then please.

When I say unpromising I don't mean to sound ungrateful, his English wasn't great and I think he was trying to help. Unpromising as I didn't think Ho's was shaping up to be the place of my noodle dreams.

So here's what arrived, and it certainly satisfied my craving. The noodles weren't brilliant, but were at least properly cooked so they retained bite throughout. The broth was a little one dimensional but still tasty in a generic umami sort of way. The char siu pork was the highlight, a generous serving, very tender and sweet, the marinade having permeated right through the flesh. A couple of stalks of pak choi rounded things off, providing a bit of colour and health.

Not bad, and reasonably priced at £7.50 for the noodle soup and £1 for a large pot of Chinese tea. There's a lot that warrants further investigation at Ho's though. They obviously don't specialise in soup noodles, but I'd like to know what's on the extensive Chinese menu, and I've a feeling all of the roast meats will be good. There's also a fairly extensive dim sum menu available at lunch and a bakery downstairs.

I grabbed a custard tart from the bakery on the way out, which turned out to be lovely. A light, eggy filling and exceedingly light, almost ethereal pastry. Really good. I'll definitely be back to sample the pork buns and the intriguing sounding sausage bread (as recommended by Jools, cheers for that).

6/10 for the noodles, but 8/10 for that custard tart


115 Vicar Lane
Leeds
LS1 6PJ