Chilli Family Noodles, Bath: 'Are Marco Pierre White's gems still worth heeding?'
A recommendation from one of the world's best chefs
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Marco Pierre White is perhaps the greatest chef this country has ever produced. Chef-patron of legendary Harvey’s with its renowned tagliatelle of oysters. First British chef to earn three Michelin stars and, at the time, the youngest worldwide to do so. Mentor to one Gordon Ramsay, who he famously made cry, albeit without admitting to. “I didn’t make Gordon cry, he made himself cry”, the Yorkshireman once claimed. Which is like mowing down an old lady at a zebra crossing and saying “I didn’t break her leg, she broke her own leg.”
In these post-Hell’s Kitchen days Pierre-White has a string of terrible steakhouses, an ambassadorial role for Knorr stock cubes — probably not featured in his oyster tagliatelle — and some restaurant opinions that are, at best, questionable. “McDonald’s offers better food than most restaurants” is one. “Trust me, there’s no better place in Bristol and which represents better value”, is another, and I don’t think any reader of The Bristol Sauce would have guessed Finzel’s Reach Lamaya for that one.
Most recently he has made murmurs by announcing the long-awaited Ridley Scott film based on his life will not go ahead, and caused genuine uproar in his hometown of Bath by snapping a photo of some, admittedly carbonised, pizza at Landrace and plastering it all over social media, like a grandad who has just graduated from TripAdvisor to Instagram. The result was a pile-on from locals, stock cube stans and, most tellingly, some of the pioneers of the New Haven style pies that Landrace were trying to ape. I feel bad for Landrace — their upstairs restaurant and bakery have never been anything less than excellent in my experience — but that pizza was, to coin a technical term, fucked.
But one restaurant that has received love from Marco, however, is Chilli Family Noodles, which he claims is his favourite restaurant in Bath.
Chilli Family Noodles is, as the name suggests, a family-run restaurant, with lots of noodles and a penchant for Sichuanese cuisine, with the odd unagi don or chow mein thrown in for good measure. Slap bang next to Bath Spa bus station, it is ideal for visiting Bristolians trying to spend as little time as possible amongst the meandering hordes of lost tourists flitting somewhere between the spa and the Jane Austen museum.
I say next to the bus station, but it is actually inside the same building. A little corner section of what could once have been the waiting room or ticket office has been repurposed into a no-frills canteen-like space. A turnstile leading to the toilets is situated somewhat jarringly at one end of the room, while the decor, if you can call it that, consists of a small screen attempting to segregate the bathrooms from the dining room and another cutting off the kitchen. So far, so promising.
Chongqing xiaomian, that irresistible spiced noodle soup from Chongqing, a municipality that was, until the late 20th Century, part of Sichuan, is a sterling litmus test of any Sichuanese restaurant.
But first, mouth watering beef, which sounds much more appetising than the other translation ‘saliva beef’. And it was an excellent thing. Slices of fatty meat, the once impenetrable connective tissue broken down to a mere jiggle, made piquant with vinegar and the lightest nudge of spice with a few peanuts in their reddish skins and some fresh coriander strewn over the top.
A bean sprout and seaweed salad followed within seconds, both elements similarly crunchy and juicy, such that when you got both in one mouthful they melded into an inseparable whole, like Ant and Dec. The same sparse trickle of peanuts and coriander anointed the slightly salty, vegetal hillock.
If you have a matinée to catch of Urinetown: The Musical at Theatre Royal, you could even consider a pre-show meal research given the toilet situation. Similarly for a Stewart Lee gig at Komedia, Chilli Family Noodles would be an excellent option to ensure you didn’t miss the beginning of “Keir Starmer’s let himself go”, as only four minutes later, the xiaomian materialised as a large, round matt black bowl full nearly to the rim with the characteristically thin noodles. A generous chunk of boned out duck leg, a little trickle of chilli oil and — you guessed it — a couple of peanuts and a leaf of coriander completed the bowl. The broth was pleasantly sapid with soy and sesame, but curiously gentile. We had been asked beforehand whether we wanted it spicy or not spicy, and affirmed the former, so we were expecting the white heat barrage of red chilli and Sichuan peppercorns.
I once ordered a dish of live shrimp on a wooden platform jutting out into the crystal clear lake of a Chiang Mai mountain range. What were brought over were not just dead, but fully cooked. “This idiot doesn’t know what he’s ordering”; the server’s clear train of thought. This was that, but in Bath, so even more embarrassing for me. Scoville would have been sent scrabbling around for a smaller unit of measurement.
Apart from that, the dish was pretty damn good. But apart from Reform, Labour were victorious in the local elections. Okay, so the crispy duck wasn’t exactly crisp. I have had crispy duck in a noodle soup, in dry noodles, and as a standalone dish so many times. To receive properly lacquered, crisp skin is as vanishingly rare as a chef handing back their Michelin stars. It’s one of those things you have to catch at exactly the right time, the skin starting to sag as soon as it is out the oven, as was the case here. The meat underneath, however, was undeniably delicious; cooked through but with no hint of dryness, and more tender than Keir Starmer’s ego on Friday 8th.
“Meat dumplings” came as a group of 10 or 15. 10 proved more than enough. Pop one in your mouth, pop the skin, and, if you’re not careful, a gush of scalding, fragrant juice spurts out. The pork meat below, the greyish pink of a bashful elephant, has been formed into small balls with the addition of a few herbs and possibly a suggestion of ginger. A soy dipping sauce was simple but effective.
So, are Marco’s gems still worth heeding? Or is he becoming increasingly obsolete? I don’t think he’s quite there yet — after all, he’s still a semi-frequent judge on MasterChef Australia. And on Chilli Family Noodles he’s more right than wrong. To quote the man himself once more, “perseverance is the key to success in the kitchen and in life.” I’ll probably find myself back in that bare dining room again. And hopefully I’ll get my spicy xiaomian, and Marco will get his biopic.
All words by PXandTarts, all photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour
Chilli Family Noodles, 1 Dorchester Street, Bath, BA1 1SS
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I think it WAS once the ticket office, before that was closed (I seem to remember from my time in Bath as an undergrad over a decade ago… cripes)
Next to the bus station, not the train station.