Ambience ✪✪✪✪
Service ✪✪✪
39-41 Low Friar Street
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 5UE
0191 261 5531
www.facebook.com/inoodlenewcastle
Accessibility? No
Gluten free? No
"It must be good. Look: everyone inside is Chinese."
In the great pantheon of Daft Things You Hear People Say, this is one of my favourites.
A number of “reviews” follow this formula on Inoodle’s TripAdvisor page. It’s a peculiar kind of positive racism which assumes, without any foundation, that an ethnic group of nearly 1.5 billion are all gastronomes. Surely a good portion of the Chinese, just like the rest of us, have terrible taste in food?
I always wonder if it works the same the other way round. When a group of Asian people walk past a greasy spoon heaving with Brits, do they sagely nod and say to each other "Look at that, it must be a really great British restaurant"?
Giles Coren reckons that the best way of discerning a quality Chinese gaff is to clock the number of Jewish patrons, citing the similarities between the cuisines (you say dim sum; I say kreplach), and the extreme fussiness of the latter ethnic group. I tend to find that the best Chinese restaurants are the places that all my Jewish friends book on Christmas Day (I have a feeling this criteria may be more reliable when observed in North London than in Newcastle).
All of this ethno-preamble is a longhand way of noting the fact that as my friend and I grabbed an end-of-the-night table in Inoodle, we were indeed the only patrons of non-Asian extraction. However, this isn’t why the meal was such a joy. That comes solely down to the skill of the cook, who prepared us a range of simple but unerringly delicious dishes. And the wondrous treat of proper, hand-pulled noodles.
