Thursday, April 19, 2007

Down Town China Town


After collecting left luggage from the HT party venue from Saturday, I spotted this alley in Chinatown, it was really smelly but I was curious to take a path off the main road so D and I turned in. As I am very curious by nature I saw Chinese ladies and a few Chinese tourists with cameras going into this tiny doorway.

When I went in the crowded doorway it was indeed a little factory - maybe the size of my lounge and in there were three noodle making machines and 3-4 men making the noodles, bagging them, packing them into boxes and also selling to the little crowd of customers in front of me at lightning speed!

No one spoke English so when I pointed at my camera and asked if I could take pics - one of the men immediately waved both arms saying no! Looking at the mini factory and steam and the whole set up am sure they thought I was from the authorities. I tried to explain to one girl that I 'write about food' in half sign language. She then yelled at the men again perhaps to explain what I said, took her bag of noodles and left. Nothing rally happened after that - so I took a few pics anyway as by this point the men were back to noodle making and I felt a bit odd.

I did want to buy some goods but not sure what it was really other than octopus-like white noodles with some green colouring in them and other items that were unrecognizable to me. I then googled the name of the factory and found that another blogger had been there too.

Celine from black.salt said she found some char siew bao - bbq pork buns that she could not find elsewhere in London and that they were selling glassy white rice noodles.
http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
She paid £2 for the 6 pork buns and £1 for the packet of rice noodles, not bad for fresh noodles straight out of down town china town! (what movie is this line from Rexi?)

Next time I will buy some and get Mrs. Lau to help me whip up a meal as I heard she is the best cook to have left Hong Kong.

Check it...
Lo's Noodle Factory
6 Dansey Place
closest tube: Leicester Square

2 comments:

Celine said...

I'm very excited you found this place too! It is quite the little community factory isn't it?

Dolce said...

yes - am going to have to go back and buy some stuff this time!