Ken and Wendy Chen went on their first date in the very restaurant that they’ve just opened on Chinatown’s famous Falkner Street back in 2001. It was China City then (in fact, it was still China City when they took over the lease a few months back), and Wendy did not like the food. At all. But she didn’t say anything.
Wendy is from the Szechuan region, which means she’s used to the bolder, heavily spiced flavours of Szechuan cuisine over the lighter Cantonese style seen almost everywhere else in Chinatown. So China City didn’t do much for her demanding palate.
“I ordered the two Szechuan dishes from this Cantonese menu, and they tasted awful! It just wasn’t right, but I couldn’t say anything!” she laughs.
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“We always have this debate whether Szechaun food or Cantonese food is better. But if you go to China now, Szechuan food is the number one choice, particularly noodles. There’s so many varieties, we’ve not even done 10 percent of it here.”
So that’s why, when they opened the doors of Noodle Alley a few weeks back, they were inundated with Chinese students from Szechuan, some of whom had barely been home in recent years because of the pandemic. It’s given them an authentic taste of home.
“Noodles in Szechuan, that’s kind of all people eat in that region,” says Ken, who has the slight lilt of the scouser from growing up in North Wales and Liverpool. “Not so much rice. And no one else is doing this in Chinatown. In London, yes, but in Chinatown, we’re the only ones doing it.”
He’s an IT infrastructure engineer for Bet365, and has taken leave time to help set things up, working the tills and waiting while Wendy manages her three new chefs, also from Szechuan, who are adapting her recipes from home cooking to the professional kitchen.
The Szechuan pepper, key to many of the dishes at Noodle Alley, is famous in Wendy’s small hometown of Hanyuan, near the region's capital of Chengdu, and you can smell its fragrance everywhere on the trees. The effect it has when eaten raw is intense, numbing your mouth and sending off bursts of citrus. I wouldn’t recommend trying to be clever and eating one whole.
“Do you need some water,” Wendy asks, seeing my eyes starting to water. “My husband is always trying to make people eat the pepper raw.”
It was family and friends who insisted that Wendy, previously working for Marriott hotels, transfer her home cooking skills to a restaurant. “Oh, I can cook for friends, but not in a restaurant,” she replied, but a friend, who has two restaurants herself, helped with getting things set up. “I know how to cook, but that’s all I know!”
She modelled the place on the alleyway noodle bars that she remembers growing up, where her favourite dish was the noodles with steamed beef in bamboo. Even the grey tiles on the walls, imported from China, are a nod to the roofs of the traditional noodle houses.
So they saved and saved and saved. For 21 years, in fact, and now they’re finally open, and the dishes are superb. Chopped up chunks of ‘sweet and sour’ ribs are not the kind you might be used to, crisp morsels of deliciousness. A plate of braised then torn up chicken with chilli oil and pepper, with ribbons of courgette, served cold, was a hit too.
The house speciality ‘burning noodles’, served with spicy minced pork, were everything Wendy promised, hot and fragrant (you can ask them to calm down on the chilli too, Wendy says, there’s no judgement). A bowl of soothing pork wantons in chicken broth helped calm the fires.
But as basic as it sounds, it was the ‘wavy potatoes’ - crinkle cut chips - which proved to be some of the most compulsive eating. They’re unlike anything else, showered as they are in the signature mouth-numbing Szechuan peppercorns.
“In Szechuan, the potatoes would be less cooked, still with a crunch to them, but not here. So they’re made with Szechaun peppercorns, salt, chilli powder, cumin, soy sauce, a little sugar, and Chinese dark vinegar,” Wendy reveals. Just when you think you’ve had chips of every kind possible, these come along and completely blow you away.
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“I’ve been in Manchester 23 years now, and I just want to share the food that I grew up with. I’ve also had a debate with other friends who say I need to put some of the traditional British Chinese dishes on the menu, but no, I want to keep it authentic,” she says.
“For many, many years, Chinatown has been dominated by Cantonese style food, but over the last 10 years more Szechuan food has been coming.” Bring it on.
