On a Saturday lunchtime in Bloomsbury, central London, very few people were eating in Master Wei. This was surprising because Wei Guirong, a Xi’an noodle specialist, recently opened the doors of her first solo venture to much excitement from the type of folk who can tell hand-pulled biang biang noodles from cold skin liangpi, and feasibly do not hold the King Bombay Bad Boy Pot Noodle in terribly high esteem.
“Biang biang” relates to the onomatopoeic sound of the fat, flat dough strands as they’re stretched and shaken into shape. They hail from Shaanxi province. I am not an expert on the geographical nooks of China’s 9.6bn sq km, but I am a consummate professional at consuming large amounts of biang biang, savouring how their flat, sturdy, slippery surface gives great purchase to thrusts of garlic, oil, spring onion, ground chilli and peppercorn. Biang biang, to the unaccustomed eye, might look more like sparsely dressed pappardelle than vegetable-packed, sauce-soaked chow fun Cantonese noodles. They are substance deliciously overriding style, like all the very best foodstuffs.
Wei Guirong’s first restaurant, Xi’an Impression, is tucked around the back of the Arsenal football stadium. Her new venture is down a side street between Holborn and Russell Square, hiding behind an unpromising shop front in a no man’s land of the type of “budget” London hotels where 170 quid buys you one night in a partially vented room the size of a Barbie caravan. It is weird, in a way, that she has set up home showcasing authentic Xi’an food, still a relative rarity on these shores, in this isolated area, but then everything in the restaurant world is weird right now. When I dined there, trade was roaring via Deliveroo: a steady stream of bikers appeared, loitered, loaded up and left. Some people, somewhere – possibly the large surrounding student population – were certainly paying for and demolishing Master Wei’s delicate, hand-shredded vinegary chicken, the dank delights of its spicy wood ear mushrooms with coriander or the cumin beef “burger”, a sort of heavily scented, loose-form patty in a non-delicate, flatbread-style bun.
Whether Deliveroo, Just Eat et al are aiding or assassinating the restaurant industry is debatable, but a restaurant’s ambience does not benefit from metaphorical tumbleweeds. Still, if you do put on pants and leave the house, Master Wei is pretty damned good. And that spicy chicken is remarkable: deftly doused in a piquant, sour-sweet ginger dressing with slivers of sweet pepper. It may, at first glimpse, look like a plate of pale-brown nothingness, but stay tuned. The cumin burger is an acquired taste, let down slightly by a bun that’s like something you might find vacuum-packed at the newsagent. Thinly sliced kelp was magnificent and came with a bowl of pickled veg that was a face-twisting blend of kimchi and punchily on-the-turn carrots. A basket of chicken pot-sticker dumplings certainly looked the part – flat, brown on all the right surfaces, stodgy and a touch oily – but the flavour was less than earth-shattering.
Still, despite these highs and lows, and the fact that service from the cheery waitresses was of that comedic level of neglect that you can’t even be cross at, I’ll return to Master Wei, on my own, whenever the opportunity arises, led by my craving for its biang biang noodles.
I now know why the few other diners were flying solo, wearing headphones or eating with a newspaper for company. Master Wei’s biang biang create a longing for comforting carbohydrate with a kick that creeps up on you. This despite the vegetarian version looking like little more than a bowl of boiled dough and a few choi sum leaves. But that oily, hot, peppery umami undercurrent settles in after a few slurps to something emotionally stirring. Biang biang noodles are an assertive culinary hug. It is a dish that wants what is best for you. The beef option comes with a non-pretty scattering of brown, chewy meat, while the pork features stewed tomato and egg. The xin jiang hand-pulled noodles are less lovable, though, with a weaker, more watery sauce and a reliance on soft chicken skin and par-boiled chunks of potato.
After some begging to pay our bill, we left the empty restaurant with more questions about Master Wei than we started with. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, in a spicy dressing, with a loyal audience that’s too lazy to visit. But I shall continue to biang biang on about it.
• Master Wei 13 Cosmo Place, London WC1, 020-7209 6888. Open all week 11.30am-10pm (10.30pm Fri & Sat, Sun noon-10pm). About £15-20 a head plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 6/10
Service 5/10
