What: A sleek Sichuanese noodle restaurant on the Chinatown end of Wardour Street. Looking out onto The Chinatown Gate, Noodle & Beer Chinatown follows the success of the inaugural Noodle & Beer, which launched just to the south of Spitalfields Market in 2019. The West End iteration of the concept has a similar menu of authentically-spicy dishes but has a much more upmarket feel to the canteen-like East London original and a glam cocktail bar downstairs.
Who: Noodle & Beer is the creation of Sichuan-born restaurateur Xiaoxiao Wang. He says he is on the look out for other high-traffic locations for the concept.
The food: Though the restaurant does of course major on noodles the menu is a bit more wide-ranging than the name suggests. Things to kick off with include crispy beef jerky; aubergine in a garlicky-sweet-and-sour sauce; and Sichuan’s iconic mouth watering chicken (cold poached chicken in a fiery and numbing red sauce). Noodle & Beer’s flagship dish is Xian jiao niu-rou - a tangle of pleasantly-chewy wheat noodles topped with tender fragments of beef, peanuts, spring onions, pickled mustard greens and lots and lots of pickled chillies (it’s billed by the restaurant as the ‘boldest beef noodles in London’). Other dry noodle dishes include wa-wa mian (blanket noodles with fried frog legs, bell pepper and mustard tuber chilli sauce); and zi-jiang mian (wheat noodles with minced chicken, cabbage, spring onion, pickled mustard greens, peanuts and chilli sauce). There are also a few soup noodles dishes including Xia mian (soup noodles with king prawns, fish balls, tofu, bok choy and coriander) and some over-rice dishes including mapo tofu, another famously spicy dish from the southwestern Chinese province. Noodle dishes can be upgraded with a fried egg, pickles, or extra noodles.
To drink: Noodle & Beer offers a wider beer selection than most Chinese restaurants with two draught options (Kirin Ichiban and a Spanish-made N&B House Lager) and seven choices by the bottle including Leffe, Sapporo and - inevitably - Tsingtao. The cocktail list offers a range of classic options alongside a collection of signature dishes that includes the Forbidden Pear Martini (vodka, pear vodka, pear eau de vie, sandalwood liqueur, pear juice and dry vermouth).
The vibe: Formerly Hung’s, the site has undergone a complete makeover and has a far more premium look than its name might suggest with an expensive looking mosaic floor, top-quality beechwood furniture and chilli-red accents. Downstairs dials things up considerably. Nearly everything - walls, chairs, banquettes, drapes lighting - is bright red.
And another thing: Noodle & Beer perfectly encapsulates how Chinatown is changing. Hung’s - a basic and cheap Cantonese restaurant with a big menu - has been replaced by a restaurant that targets a youthful Chinese crowd and adventurous Western diners. The tight menu - there are fewer than 30 items in total - is extremely authentic but well-explained by clued-up staff. More helpful still is a ‘chilli-ometer’ that ranges from one to five chillies per dish.
27 Wardour Street, London W1D 6PR
