Chinese Fast Street Food, Charles St, Cardiff: review

I’ll always have a soft spot for Charles St. I had one of the most romantic meals of my life there, one of those unplanned post-gig late-night styrofoam boxes of noodles under a starry sky, where she nestles her head into your chest and softly sighs and you’re both stupidly, uncomplicatedly happy as possibilities bloom.

That’s either background colour or superfluous wibble depending on your mood. Many places have come and gone on this bit of the street, all of which escape me now: the latest is Chinese Fast Street Food. With a tiny kitchen separated from your table by a trellis effect, and just twenty seats inside and a few outdoors, it’s functional rather than opulent. If you know Malai Thai on Caroline St– and you really should by now- it’ll be a familiarly setup with you almost sat in the kitchen.

There’s a specials chalkboard in Mandarin and a regular bilingual menu which tops out at £15. The lunch deals set a whole tray in front of you. £12 buys you nicely tender duck, braised in a soy sauce-rich liquor; tofu, all silken wobble, in a sauce of mushroomy depth (hi Suella, love to the family); rice, and a steamed egg (at a guess, microwaved) white, lightly set, and seasoned with soy sauce.

I get both spoon and fork, presumably due to that ‘klutz with chopsticks’ aura women find so powerfully alluring.

From the ‘Vagen’ (sic) section, and alongside the more obvious spicy tofu and stir-fried pak choi, French beans with…minced pork? Freckled with garlic, bolstered with dried red chillies and with little cracked peppercorns bringing little bursts of citrus, it’s a big serving. It’s also completely free of any pork. Answers on a postcard to that one…

Here comes cumin beef, smoking and bubbling on its cast iron skillet, pluming great wafts from its payload of garlic, whole dried red chillies. The menu doesn’t confine itself to one region, and this is more Hunan than Sichuan perhaps, a substantial portion and all very straight to the point and well done.

The customers are mostly Chinese students, one of whom recommends the noodle soup. There’s a long tradition of such dishes in Sichuan, I ask for it ‘spicy’, hoping for a bowl to remind me of similar dishes at So Good in Cathays, or even Great Chongqing: something to make you fear your face is about to slump clean off and splash into viciously hot broth. Something you feel all day coiling from your pores. Something to have your brow steaming as you reach for the tissues on your table and mop your lily-livered brow. Something to thrill.

This version doesn’t reach those ferocious heights, stopping at sinus-clearing levels. But let’s not downplay it too much, because this is one of those hearty noodle soups straight from the Sichuanese tradition. ‘Red-braised’ brisket- meaning meat is stewed typically in soy sauce, wine, sugar, along with cinnamon, cloves, and star anise as spices- is plentiful, fat and all, in an aromatic broth. Simultaneously nourishing, comforting and energising, slurping up noodles through that lip-slicking layer of chilli oil might just be the ideal pick-me-up, and to have it just off busy shopping streets is nothing short of a Very Good Thing. Next time you’re being hauled round town and you can feel your soul wither and die deep inside, come here and get stuck in. It might just save your day.

Chinese Fast Street Food is something of an oddity in the city centre. Places like this can thrive in the shadow of bland ubiquities- look at the example of Malai Thai, up against Busaba with its deep pockets and all its ‘#invited’ OMG fire emoji turbopiffle- yet still open even as its glossy neighbour gathers dust. Regional Chinese cooking in the heart of a shopping district? I’ll take that, because if you can’t find it in your heart to support and champion places like this, then the chains really will have the city to themselves.

11 Charles St, St Davids Centre, Cardiff CF10 2GA

11.30am-930pm, every day