Cardiff . Cheap Eats . Cheap Eats . Restaurants in Wales . Uncategorized

U Mi Chinese Noodle and Rice Restaurant, Churchill Way, Cardiff city centre: review

On November 22, 2025 by The Plate Licked Clean

No, this isn’t a Chinese restaurant-only blog, though it It probably feels like it recently. This one makes it three in a row: a few visits to the ultimately underwhelming Fresh Feast, before BBQ Xiang‘s siu mei roast meats on Caroline Street restored my faith. Now, we head downstairs to a Churchill Way basement for U Mi.

It’s not some grand plan. I just follow my nose/belly/instincts rather than press releases, because I would rather tell you about places which interest me on their own merits, rather than ones with the marketing budget to crowbar themselves into everybody’s inboxes.

The recent proliferation of regional Chinese eating in the city- I’d imagine Cardiff’s international pull as a university has been a significant factor- has been one of the more interesting trends in Cardiff’s development as a place to eat. So Good, Jianghu, Mini Kitchen, Kachun and Roasties are clustered in student-heavy areas, while BBQ Xiang, Fresh Feast and Chinese Fast join U Mi in the city centre, this time bringing the food of Yunnan.

Aa China’s most ethnically diverse province, in the southwest of the country, its cooking has all the variety that implies. Perhaps its most famous dish, ‘Crossing the bridge’ noodle soup, is the headliner here. (The name comes from a wife’s ingenuity: finding the soup cooled too quickly when she made the daily crossing to the island where her hungry husband was studying, she took to keeping the hot liquid separate from the ingredients, only mixing them all together just before he ate, and the layer of fat on the broth kept it hot.)

Head downstairs into this Churchill Way basement. This low room is very much set up for communal eating, with the smallest tables seating four and the majority for six. Bamboo fans will be in hog heaven: there’s a lot of the stuff. A lot. It dresses the walls and forms chairs.

Choose your soup base from a group of five, choose your noodles, add any extras.

Do you like it spicy? asks my server.

Sure.

Quite spicy, or really spicy?

What little I’ve read of Yunnan cooking tells me it can be hot, so I take the hint and pick the medium level. Number 3: golden pickled cabbage soup, thick noodles.

A tray arrives with ten sections: luncheon meat, rolled brisket, edamame beans, sliced wood ear mushrooms, a single plump prawn, more.

‘Meat first, noodles last’ is the rule. It turns out to be the perfect answer for a brisk day, bracingly hot and sour. As the ingredients warm through in the huge bowl of steaming broth it feels like fourteen pounds very well spent, in a postcode where some will charge you a tenner for a sandwich and a terrible pun. Besides, anything which involves slurping is fun, as you know.

Garlic spicy pork ribs. Five, crisp meaty specimens and honestly, when has gnawing at deep fried pork bones ever been a bad idea?

I’ve been thinking of wonton soup all day. There’s a little station where you can help yourselves to more coriander, spring onion or peanut garnish. ‘Try some vinegar in it,’ suggests owner Kelly. ‘That’s the way I like it’. It adds a new savoury dimension to this delicate scallion oil broth bobbing with daintily made wrappers stuffed with minced pork.

It’s a subtle pleasure, warming and comforting, it costs nine pounds, and right now it is everything.

Next time, have the beef brisket rice noodles, Cass tells me (her Instagram account ‘My Food Comas‘ is an education in itself, and you won’t find a better person in the area to follow for Asian restaurant tips and home cooking). I order ‘Dry’ style. It’s nothing of the sort, of course. You know the deal: dig in and get mixing. Disturbing the peanut sauce at the base turns the bowl into a silky slither of noodles which ticks every box I need. That brisket? Every bit as good as I had been promised.

On a cold Cardiff might, when it is dark far too early and Spring seems a daft rumour, when it has been the longest of days, it is hard to suggest a better remedy than this. Come here. Order this. Fall face first into the bowl. Feel restored.

As I pay a second time I see a handwritten list of new dishes. Stir fried chicken gizzards with chilli- ‘very, very spicy’ says my server, mapo tofu.

A hidden gem, then. It is places like U Mi- like BBQ Xiang, like the others I have mentioned and more- which give the immediate area character. Far more than the latest import, far more than the latest big brand openings with the resources to throw complimentary meals at just about anyone with a pulse, places like U Mi give me hope for the city centre. Whether they prosper, of course, is up to you. You know what to do, don’t you?

Mon-Sun 1130 – 9pm

22-24 Churchill Way, Cardiff CF10 2DY