We take the table at the back, close to the bus station proper, next to sticker-clad glass at an undecorated wooden table among scattered chairs. Wafts of perfumed broth and roasting duck fill the room.
There’s a couple by the entrance sharing a great tapestry of noodles, chilli oil and scallions falling over the edge of the bowl, and groups of university students replenishing themselves after whatever frivolities occurred the night before. Some feast excitedly on dumplings, these dipped in soy sauce and vinegar; others look a little mournful, though thankful, I’m sure, for the cheap sustenance.
This is Chilli Family Noodle, a noodle bar in the corner of Bath bus station with an entrance from the concourse or from a grey intersection by the river. “Just park over there, it’s fine,” my friend Luci tells me. “You won’t get a ticket at this time.” And I don’t.
When I get in, having dropped my passenger off moments before, he has already ordered half the menu. That is often Marco Pierre White’s way – generous to the point of intrigue, embracing an eccentric sort of relaxed chaos.
Marco, the youngest chef ever to win three stars in Britain, is more interested in food as value these days and Chinese restaurants are a favourite of his. The other one – a five-minute drive away and which I thought was perfectly good – has been done away with. Chilli Family Noodle is his choice now, a full-throttle, fast-paced diner with a corridor of tables next to the bus station toilets – “Closed! Not for public use!”
To enter is to be greeted by a smiling chef in Xiaoyi Wu. His place exists without a website or much by way of an official footprint apart from the occasional video on social media.
This is a family-run venture, with a kitchen in the corner behind a perspex screen. There are two menus, disordered and slightly contrasting – one has food photos and the other does not. Scribbled blackboard specials include an ox tripe salad and chicken satay chow mein.
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Chefs busy themselves over steaming pans, drop noodles into boiling water and douse medleys of herbs with secret red sauces. Haphazard, but ordered too, the food here is utterly mesmeric, each dish more freeing and satisfying than the last.
There are a number of noodle variations, from wheat to udon to rice vermicelli, and they’re available with soup or without. Some dishes are hot and sour, others fried; all are intense and aromatic, many spicy – the Chongqing Xiaoman is particularly intense and savoury – and come with stewed beef or crispy duck, stewed spare ribs or chicken. Vegetarian options exist but have no place here.
We have an assortment of noodle dishes, the foremost being one topped with what is probably the finest roast duck I’ve ever eaten. The meat is beyond tender, tender to the point of delirium, and the skin is crisp despite its brothy bedding. And it’s enormous, a seascape painting of green and red, where coriander leaves dance with peanuts and noodles lurk beneath a sesame-seeded surface. It’s enough for three to have an ample fill, and costs £12.
We have a dry noodle dish (£10) with bean sprouts and egg. It’s rich and deep, the noodles curling and folding and tumbling about the place as we dip and scrape through lashings of spice. And then come £10 prawns, in the shell, to be plucked, and an oblong of roast eel (£15) in a sweet glaze. It’s dark and brooding, a cauldron of umami as white meat is carpeted by heat.
“This is masterful food, you see,” Marco says. “And it’s such great value – most dishes are a tenner, full of flavour, generously portioned, and sophisticated without any fuss.” To measure food in Marco terms is impossible. But here the table is surrounded by those for whom food is everything.
We don’t finish our feast but are full within half an hour, and so return to the countryside, discussing the meal on the drive back. “I just love it there,” Marco says, “a Chinese restaurant in a bus station. It’s funny. And I think it might be the best restaurant in Bath.”
Never mind Bath – I can’t think of a better meal I’ve had anywhere so far this year.
Josh Barrie is a food and drink writer in London
