The contents of this blog are matters of opinion formed over one more visits. There has been some artistry applied and metaphors and similes should not necessarily be taken literally.
One of the best meals that we had as we were scurrying across the Inner West and Inner East trying to commit the next 30 years of our lifes’ savings on a piece of residential property was at Yan’s Kitchen in Waterloo. Cheap and delicious, I can highly recommend paying this Northern Chinese restaurant a visit.
Yan’s Slow Cooked Beef Noodles 闫记大块牛肉面 ($15.80) were excellent. They had a lovely soup flavour, with lots of umami, a slight bit of spice (don’t be scared by its red colour) and a rich beefiness. The beef chunks were tender, tasty, and plentiful, and the noodles, slightly alkaline, were perfectly tender and handmade in house.
Yan’s Signature Fried Dumplings 金牌虾肉三鲜锅贴 ($15.80) with pork and prawn and chive and egg were also quite good. The wrappers were very thin, allowing them to get super crispy on frying, with a bit of lace on one side to stick them together. The filling, four classical ingredients in Northern Chinese dumpling cuisine was tasty though ultimately still a few milimetres away from extra-ordinary.
The Pork Wonton Soup in chicken broth 鸡汤小馄饨($5.80) was the weakest of what we ordered. They were the kind that were predominately wrapper with only a small smattering of filling. We were asked if we wanted coriander, which of course we did, but I found the soup a bit soapy. I don’t know if these two things can be clinically correlated as I’m normally someone who loves coriander. Maybe it was the influence of the seaweed rather than the coriander? Either way, it was only about a third of the price of the other dishes, I guess not meant to be eaten on its own as a meal, and definitely not intended to be the star of the restaurant’s menu.
THOUGHTS It’s been a while since I have written that I could recommend a restaurant to a friend or colleague, but this place fits the bill.
One of my favourite things about Xi’an restaurants is that they are almost invariably named “Xi’an Restaurant”. We ate here in the first week of having moved house, in a flurry of cheap and cheerful dines out whilst we were still unpacking our kitchen.
The food was generally good. This Chinese pork burger Roujiamo 肉夹馍 ($8) was moist and meaty, flavourful though lacking any visible vegetables or herbs.
The Pan Fried Chives Pancake韭菜盒子 ($7) is a relative favourite of mine. This example had a good crispiness to the skin, which was kept thin so as to maximise the filling to pastry ratio. A good example in a sea of good examples.
The Rice with Yuxiang Eggplant鱼香茄子 ($16) was a vegetarian version of the dish, well priced, tasty, and very filling. Something my partner enjoys and I am yet to make an edible version of.
Comments Though readers will note that only the roujiamou was particularly Xi’an in origin, this restaurant executed good versions of Northern as well as Sichuan cuisine at good prices. I’m sure we will be back for more.
UPDATE 13/03/2026
I went back by myself last night, about half an hour before close, for a bowl of noodles. I kind of rationalised going back without my wife by it being just a quick meal, that was ultimately going to be cheaper than buying groceries and cooking for one. The Biang Biang Noodles 𰻞𰻞面 were $17. The service was fast, and the bowl was gigantic. The sauce or gravy of the noodles was extremely delicious, with lots of umami flavour contributed to by the variety of ingredients including egg, pork (with cubes of both lean and fatty meat), as well as tomato, a natural source of glutamate.
The cubes of potato added a richness and thickness to the soup that would have been difficult to achieve with tomato alone, ensuring that flavours clung to each road strand of noodle. The noodles themselves were a bit more soft and well cooked than I would have expected, however thicker parts of the noodle did retain a signature kind of bounce to them, which was I liked.
It was overall a good bowl of noodles at a reasonable price, that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.
When we first ate at Swanky Noodle back in 2019, we were very impressed by the dingy decor, the no fuss service, and the excellent Northern Chinese cuisine. Flash forward to 2023, and we found ourselves back at Swanky Noodle for dinner in between acute stroke calls, a particularly interesting part of the public health service where a non-radiologist is tasked with reading a CT Angiogram, CT Perfusion, and non-contrast CT Brain and making a decision as to whether or not someone should get thrombolytic therapy within the course of minutes.
Good as ever was this Hot Stewed Beef with Noodle Soup ($13.80). It was a large and well priced bowl, with chewy, twangy housemade hand-pulled noodles in a richly umami soup. There was plenty of very tender beef, and it’s easy to see why this is one of their most popular dishes.
Less good were these pan-fried dumplings ($13.80), which most importantly were pan-fried, rather than boiled, like we asked for. The boiled dumplings were great back in 2019, but pan-fried dumplings are just lower effort in general. They were very meaty.
The spring pancake ($13.80) I also didn’t love, mainly because they were dryer than expected and filled with vermicelli, complicated by the fact that of the two separate guys in the kitchen one guy had cooked the filling but the other guy had forgotten the wrapper until a bit later. The equivalent of this dish that we had back in the day was full of chives (I have photo evidence from the 8th of September 2019) and much better.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
The beef soup noodles were as good as ever, but the other things we had were complicated by mishaps and also just not being what we wanted. It is true that we visited half an hour before closing, but we weren’t the last table to enter and be served, and would’ve rathered a maximum of one accident per meal. I’m upset because I had really quite fond memories of this place. If only we had stopped at the noodle, the fondness would’ve remained
Unfortunately my dinner at A Bowl of Noodles did not live up to the expectations set by following their social media over the past year or so.
The Yellow Croaker Noodles ($23.80), one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, did not amaze me. It had unfortunately and probably unavoidably quite a fishy smell to it, though to its credit it did not actually taste fishy. The flavour of the soup was quite light, umami, and pleasant, though pleasant not to the degree that we wanted to finish it.
The Pan Fried Pork Buns (sheng jian bao 生煎包 – $11.80) were fine on the outside with good dough and crispiness, but oddly gooey on the inside. I won’t go so far as to say uncooked, because I don’t know for a fact and I didn’t get sick after my meal, but these buns were generally unpleasant for me.
The chive and pork dumplings (10 for $13.90) were actually very good. They stood alone as a dish that met expectations and were the highlight of the meal.
I kind of felt that the xiao long bao ($9.80) would be a dish that I could trust that a Shanghainese specialty restaurant would do well, but I was of course mistaken. These XLBs were quite dry and devoid of soup, without even any holes in the skin that could explain it. I’ve had much better steamed from a box from the frozen section of my local Asian supermarket.
COMMENTS. I didn’t find what I was looking for.
A Bowl Of Noodles 一碗面 735 George St, Haymarket NSW 2000 0415 483 140
I almost didn’t go to Hong Kong Street Food after watching a negative review video from some online influencer. The Tiktok/Instagram people are notorious for singing the praises of literally any place in the hopes of getting a free meal, so I had erroneously assumed that any kind negative review would mean that the place would be truly very bad. Of course I didn’t take into account what kind of a review a place would garner if they refused to pay up.
I am indebted to my partner’s mother for making us give this Rhodes Central (to contrast to the similarly named restaurant around the corner) cha chaan teng a shot.
This is a milk tea ($4.50), strained probably over multiple runs through a silk stocking and mixed with evaporated milk from the Dutch. Ah, colonisation. Had by my partner’s mum and hence not me. Part of a set with food, so a bit cheaper than the listed price, but about $2-3 more than just the food dish by itself. Poured out onto the saucer, quickly replaced with an apology. Apparently it was not bad, but not memorable.
This ice bear lemon tea commands a $2 premium on top of the set meal, or $6.50 if purchased separately. It was fine. It was more than I would want to pay for it individually, but was more palatable as part of the meal deal. The novelty of a melting bear didn’t do anything in particular for me.
Alright here we go. The meat of the review. The stewed beef brisket with radish ($9.80) is a side dish that comes as a topping on some of the cart noodles, but not the right ones. They were pretty good, with a mixture of fatty and tendinous pieces as well as lean pieces. A good variety that allowed each diner to have what we wanted. I’m a lean beef brisket fan.
The four treasures Hong Kong cart noodles ($21.90 in a set with a drink and not available separately) was pretty good. It was a choice between this, with its chicken wings, salt and pepper pork chops (the best part), curry fish balls, and beef stomach, or the alternative Supreme Hong Kong cart noodles, with radish, beef brisket, red sausages and luncheon meat. I chose the four treasures, mainly because I was keen on some of that beef stomach, and because we could get the radish and brisket as a side. I’m also not such a fan of luncheon meat. Despite enjoying this dish, it did pale in comparison to the cart noodles at Hong Kong Bing Sutt in Burwood, which were seriously special.
The baked rice with black pepper chicken steak and cod fillets in creamy corn sauce ($21.90 in a set but also not available individually, even though a bunch of other baked rices are) was really good. I think anything with this amount of cream and cheese and meat and sodium and carb is going to taste good, but damn, delicious. Both the chicken and cod were good, and the fact that it was like a half half pizza was great for the decision-impaired. So creamy. So good.
RE-VISIT, JUNE 2025.
On a revisit I had the chicken and cod baked rice again, for the second time. It is not my usual practice to visit the same restaurant twice, let alone have the same dish at the same restaurant twice, but there were forces at play (PMR) outside of my control. This baked rice (now $23.90), this time without any capsicum, remained delicious – in particular the cod component with the crispy fish covered in sauce.
The French toast ($8.80) did nothing for me, but my white friend PMR whose claim to HK culture is having a HK based girlfriend tells me that it was close to the platonic ideal of a French toast, served with a squeezy bottle honey rather than condensed milk, and with a large layer of peanut butter in between.
The photo certainly looks good, but I found the peanut butter so thick that it actually detracted from the dish overall due to its dry pastiness.
The Tornado Omurice with Beef in TomatoSauce ($23.90 with a milk tea) was like some bizarro version of the classic tomato and egg with rice dish that Chinese children grow up eating. The swirl of egg was, unlike a classical omurice, merely a thin single layered swirl without a wet inside, covering a relatively large mound of rice. The tomato was peeled and stir fried in the way that you would expect of the Cantonese tradition of tomato-egg, with the sauce well portioned to the rice but of a sweeter flavour than I would make myself. The beef seemed only present to aid the presentation and distract us from the fact that you can get a serving of tomato-egg and rice for like $7 at an economy rice restaurant. The taste was not bad overall, but it didn’t feel special for $23.90, whereas the baked rice definitely did.
Curry Fish Balls ($10.80) seem pricey for what they are, and it is difficult to eat with a colleague to obtain the appropriate curry to fish ball ratio without double dipping.
We asked for two cold mild teas and were given one hot and one cold. It was not a battle either of us felt was important to fight.
OTHER THOUGHTS The decor, with neon lights and sections representing hawker carts and the HK MTR was a nice touch. I thought it was a bit weird that there were ads posted up for real estate in Hong Kong, but guess it makes sense that if Australian real estate is being advertised in China, that Chinese real estate is being advertised in Australia too. Don’t @ me.
