One Noodle Friendship

Its puzzling name is not easy to forget, One Noodle Friendship, and over the past year quiet recommendations for the restaurant have mounted: "Hand-made noodles and dumplings", "Cheap", "Speciality Lanzhou beef soup", "Friendly character". One Noodle Friendship became my restaurant equivalent of Berlin – where, it seemed, a lot was "happening" and everyone was going.

Then, I found it: a little place in a fading '70s arcade, ingloriously crammed with boxes, sacks of flour, pallets of canned drinks, a front desk under piles of papers and tables so close you could be pressing backs with the person seated behind. One Noodle Friendship isn't winning friends on its presentation.

So, this slightly shambolic Chinese diner won't appeal to everyone (really, the door to the bathrooms opens only halfway, halted by a tower of boxes behind), and not everyone is eating here: mostly students and locals, some of them coming through from Preston Market on the other side of the arcade.

In One Noodle's defence, making noodles and dumplings requires space. There are the sacks of flour, but also the workbenches: for kneading and stretching noodles, rolling and cutting dumpling skins, and for parcelling up dumplings and dim sims every morning.

Vegetarian dumplings (12 a serve) are stained green, the dough infused with spinach juice and roughly pinched shut around vermicelli, silken tofu and spring onion. Steamed or fried, and dunked in vinegar, they're a fresh, nicely textured two bites. Pork, and pork-and-prawn versions are on offer, too.

The specialty Lanzhou-style soup ("stewed beef noodle soup" popular throughout China) is a big bowl of white lamian: hand-stretched and folded noodles. They're beneath a brown-tinged aromatic broth (of aniseed, ginger and bay leaves), pieces of brisket – stewed tender for two hours – broccoli florets and fresh stems of coriander.

It's for these noodles that the restaurant is named. Buried in the name One Noodle Friendship is the idea that we're all human, that behind each face is another complex being. The name starts to make sense when you know that the Chinese word for "face" and "noodle" is the same, "mian". It's a way of saying that noodles can bring people together. Very close together at this tiny diner.

The food comes out fast, and goes down fast. Nobody is here for long (no deeper meaning intended), not even when ordering a couple of courses. Explore starters like an irresistible umami-savoury tea-soaked egg or the small section of Japanese dishes like a slippery sesame-seaweed salad.

Service is quick but also graciously patient should you want advice on ordering. The average price for a dish is $10; for that, you get hand-made, flavoursome food, and, maybe some challenges with space: a small price to pay.

THE LOW-DOWN
Do ... carry cash; no cards accepted here
Don't ... bring a neat freak
Dish ... stewed beef soup
Vibe ... Chinese diner meets workshop meets storehouse

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