Xi’an Biang Biang Noodles, London: ‘I left thinking all was well in the world’ – restaurant review | Jay Rayner

Slurp joyously at this brilliant noodle joint – and drown your fears over Britain’s Chinese eateries

Xi’an Biang Biang Noodles, 62 Wentworth Street, London E1 7AL (020 8617 1470). Small plates £4.80-£7.50, big plates £7.90-£11.20, wine from £16.50 a bottle

These are complex times for Britain’s Chinese restaurants. I know this because recently I sat on a panel about their future at Asia House in London. For the most part I was listening to my fellow panellists, Andy Kwok of the Good Earth group, and the uber-restaurateur Alan Yau, who set up Hakkasan, Yauatcha and Park Chinois among others. I contributed memories of the Chinese restaurants along Queensway in the early 1970s, where chefs stood in the windows pulling noodles as a kind of come-hither culinary theatre; they talked brutal economic and business realities.

We get a chicken broth with pork and vegetable wonton. When your next cold hits have this. It’s your mum’s hug in a bowl