SoJo - Mongolian Wok

SoJo
8-9 Hythe Bridge St
Oxford, OX1 2EW

Sojo is one of those places I love to hate. Every time I visit, I am served lackluster food by uninterested and sometimes outright rude staff. Yet every time I visit, some table of Chinese people chattering away about their new iPhone or new Bently is served totally authentic food by an overly attentive propriotor. Maybe I just don't give the rich vibe that gets me premium service?



The menu is mostly standard fare.



With a dim sum menu as well (from previous experience, this ranges from good to awful).



A lunch menu of 'specials'.



And some explanation of where they come from as a cuisine. If you ever see 'specialises, Shanghainese, Szechuanese and Dim Sum' all in the same sentence: run a mile. This is like a restaurant claiming speciality in Danish, Spanish and Indian cuisines.



But we came because we were bored, and felt like returning to that old Mongolian Wok thing. When I was a starving student, my friends and I had to construct cunning feats of engineering to fill a bowl as high as possible, to ensure a full stomach for the rest of the week. £5.90 for all the food you could fit into a bowl is a serious challenge for us. Alas, we may have been over enthusiastic and spoilt it for everybody, as they now have this sign denoting a maximum of a half bowl of meat.



Not to say the meat is of very high quality - it isn't. But wait, I hear you complain, why did you go if you are so down on this dump? Well, I guess it adds a little bit of interest to what might otherwise be a mundane lunch chomping on bread with [insert filling here].



A choice of chicken, pork, lamb and beef.



The fun part: the condiments. There are over a dozen spices, mixes and sauces to choose from to top your gargantuan creation.



Selections of veges, if you're feeling healthy. To be honest, if you eat this stuff to be healthy, you're going to be in for a big surprise.



Satay powder - a mix of curry powders I believe.









You can top your creation off with noodles, but it's also served with plain rice.



You hand your bowl to this tiny little wizened man who looks like he should be at home on the plateaus leading a yak.



Some suggestions on flavour combinations on the blackboard.



A healthy dollop of vegetable oil to get it all frying.



Left to heat through.



Et voila, instant cuisine.



All shoved artlessly on to a plate:



*sigh* Once upon a time, they'd take the care to form the rice into a ball, via a round bowl turned upside down. These days, it's barely warm, let alone nicely formed.



We also ordered a bowl of dan dan mian - spicy noodles. We were told that this is a very very small serving, but turned out to be ok as a large snack, or small lunch.



The broth was surprisingly good, very flavoursome and tasty - most likely chicken stock - with a spicy finish. Topped with spring onions, cashew nuts (tradition dictates peanuts on a sesame sauce), and served with shredded cucumber. Not terribly authentic, but a decent bowl of noodles.



The house chili sauce was one of the best I'd tasted, with chewy detritus of dried shrimp, chili seeds, and black beans, the oil was fragrant and spicy, as well as wonderfully savoury.

The damage: around £10 for a sizeable lunch. Not great food, but definitely value for money.

Chop Chop - London

Chop Chop
1 Euston Rd
London, NW1



This isn't the view from Chop Chop. Rather, we were wandering around Leicester Square, and it had been invaded by Santas. Rather shabbily dressed Santas who looked like they had been dressed by Primark in their papier-chic range. Cans of lager and cider were being consumed in copious quantities. The Santa on the left rushed over to give a very surprised A a hug.



Around the corner now, just outside the greengrocers on Newport Court in Chinatown (directly opposite the Baozi Inn), is this little stand that has for the past couple of years been purveyors of northern style baozi (steamed meat buns), soy milk, and more recently zhongzi: a rice ball wrapped in bamboo leaves.



At the princely sum of £1, you are provided a genuine street-food item the size of a very large first, filled with either chicken, pork, or vegetables. The bread if fluffy and faintly sweet, with a (usually, although on one occasion cold) filling. Definitely to be recommended. [Since the time of writing the price has increased to £1.20: it may not seem much of an increase, but does represent a 20% rise.]



And on to the main feature: Chop Chop noodle bar. Placed conveniently opposite King's Cross tube and train stations, Chop Chop is a sizable locally run noodle house that serves very cheap and very good one-bowl meals.



Fans of the quick and dirty (in this case fairly clean) hot meals on the run will recognise the style: laminated menus divided up into the usual options of starters, noodle soup, rice with saucy stir fry, fried noodles. Wagamama and their ilk managed to turn this into a trendy upmarket pan-asian (read mishmash) experience.



Starters such as satay skewers, etc, are priced around £2, while mains hover between £3 and £4 at a stretch. Incredibly reasonable, but is the food passable?



Ordering via the tick boxes, a la yum cha, there is no question of mishearing your order in this bustling and busy restaurant. As we were ushered in, the waitress had addressed me directly in Mandarin, and so we cannot evaluate whether there may be deficiencies in their use of English. Perhaps the ordering system is to overcome any potential confusion.



Having ravenously consumed our utterly delicious beef satay starter without giving pause to document the event, we moved on to A's seafood ho-fun noodle soup.



The food is unpretentious, and true to its roots: quick, tasty, cheap, and nourishing. Brimming with fish cake, squid, fish balls, mussels, prawns and fish sticks, they certainly weren't skimping on the quantity or ingredients. The soup was a clear but rich broth with strong lemongrass flavours.



My laksa was rich with coconut cream, and the requisite layer of chili oil floating above the noodles, soaking every bite with delicious pain. Too mild for me, but I'm sure that the average punter would have enjoyed its bite. The flavours were authentic, and even had the authentic grittiness of unstrained coconut, which I personally do not like. The portion was again ample, with scatterings of fish cake, fried doufu, prawns, etc.

The damage: After consuming a couple of beers, a starter and two mains, the bill came to just a tad below £15. For those on a tighter budget, or a regular lunch that is quick, hot and delicious, the bill could be as low as £3. Highly recommended!

Golden Chopsticks - Amsterdam

Golden Chopsticks
Oude Doelenstraat 1
Amsterdam



Our first morning in Amsterdam saw us feeling rather rough, following a hectic, late, difficult and lost night in which whisky was involved somewhere. And three nipples, for some reason. Probably a witch.



Continuing the "it's my birthday" riff, we went for nourishing noodle soup to chase the cobwebs away, and found what we thought was a casual diner, but turned out to be more restraunty than originally hoped (we were in no condition to act like adults by this stage).



A opted for the roast pork noodle soup. We were trying to interpret from the Dutch menu what the item might be, as it said 'spek', which was probably pork cracklings/fat. Deciding that it might be crackling soup, A bravely went for it. The waitress asked if we really did want to order it, reiterating with a dubious look that "it's very very fatty".

The pork turned out to be very nice, with a decent crackle, but not holding a candle to the Gold Mine version.



I went for the cantonese roast duck soup.



The duck was plentiful, and flavourful, but rather drowned in the noodles. Along with ramen served with tempura, I never really understood roast meat noodle soups: surely everything just gets soggy? The noodles were a little disappointing, being a sort of curly deepfriend then boiled variety reminiscent of instant noodles with more body. The stock was nice, but nothing exceptional.



A pot of excellent chilli oil sat on the table, and was nearly demolished by the two of us.



The damage: €16 for two bowls of noodles. Similar in price to the UK, and quite decent after a night out. Not my top 10, however.



The kitchen is remarkably clean, but this vat of broth was also simmering away happily; it's always a good sign when the soups are made from chickens, rather than a plastic tub.

Baozi Inn - Chinatown

Baozi Inn

25 Newport Court

London, England

44-20-7287-6877

Baozi is the Chinese word(s) for any steamed filled-bread, that's round in shape. Generally the size of a potato, they can be sweet or savoury, filled with any combination of meat of vegetarian fillings, and vary from a small new-potato in size (xiao long bao, for instance), to mammoth baseballs, filled with meat and vegetables.



Communist placards on the doorway sets the tone for little themed shack.



Propoganda poster reproductions from the 60s.



A sample of the menu.


(New) old copies of the People's Daily, from the 60s. These are actually reproductions printed on newsprint to look authentic. And indeed, they looked just like a back issue would.



Photo of Zhou En Lai, first premier of the new China (in the loo!).



Look at the size of my corn!



A young hero of the People's Liberation Army.



Propoganda posters of a young Mao, sitting with the people. Farmers, workers, all the right sort are represented.



The menu. In Chinese, it actually heralds the place as a commune, rather than the slightly blank name of 'Baozi Inn'.



The menu is actually incredibly varied, and lists only three types of baozi - pork, chicken, or vegetable.



Most of the menu consists of noodles, wonton dishes, and small 'snacks' that are found all the way from Beijing to Shanghai, where ever a street vendor can set down a bucket and a few stools. All utterly delicious, and all impossible to find elsewhere in the tourist-heavy streets of Chinatown.



The place is licensed and serves a very small range of beers by the bottle, for a fairly reasonable £2.50.



Hurray for the Chairman!



I think this was a mungbean-starch noodle dish served cold with a firey broth, with bits of peanut, coriander, spring onion to add flavour and texture.



Mmm, bowel-stoppingly firey.



Dan dan mian: the dish actually comes in (at least) two completely different variations. We had the spicy version with fried minced pork. It can also mean a cold noodle dish served with a peanut sauce, go figure. Dan dan is usually taken to mean the bamboo pole that streent vendors use to carry two big buckets, in moving their wares around.



A traditional breakfast item, this is a savoury serving of unpressed doufu smothered in a savoury sauce that traditionally would be pork, lilly buds, wood ear mushrooms, and herbs. The unpressed bean-curd has a silky and light texture, similar to very very soft egg-white, but with a faint taste of calcium from the coagulant. Most of the flavour comes from the rich, thickened stock/sauce, while the lilly buds and mushrooms add a toothsome crunch.



The waiting staff are efficient and friendly, the prices are good, and the food is glorious. Almost nowhere else in London can you get such authentic Chinese food, especially dishes from the firey regions, such as Sichuan and Beijing. The noodles are filling and delicious, and tingle the tastebuds so much more than the bland offerings normally found in 'Chinese' restaurants.

The damage: two main dishes and a main-ish dish to share for £18.50. A steal!