
The Noodle Bar, Oxford, Gloucester Green
Noodle Bar turned out to be my favorite eating joint in Oxford. One, the place was not too heavy on the pocket and two, if given a choice, I invariably end up eating Chinese. A few of the dinners and lunches were hosted by the university, so it felt quite strange when one day my colleague asked me what should we have for dinner? I have said this before, I am quite indifferent to food. So, I tried hard to make him decide but he would not budge. We were walking around the city and as I am vegetarian my options are just a little bit limited. I think I looked at every restaurant in the two hour walk as a potential eating place. We had ruled out the Indian fare, as we thought we anyway get a lot of it back home. And some places where ruled out because a single dish would cost more than 20 pounds (don't you think it is a neat idea to display the price list outside the restaurants? I wonder why we often don't do it in India).
After walking round and round I remembered the Noodle Bar near the Gloucester Green bus station. So, we decided to head there. I think almost the entire crowd (the waiting staff and the customers) consisted of students, only we and a few others were the odd people out (read older :).

The Dish with Thick Noodles, Noodle Bar, Oxford
I scanned the menu for vegetarian fare and found a dish with mushrooms (my absolute favorites) and decided to order it. But then the young guy who came to take the order had a bouncer. What kind of noodles would we like Ho Fun, Mai Fun, or Udon? Well, the names definitely sounded Chinese to me. Had to ask him to explain what did they mean! He told us one was really thin noodles, the other really thick noodles and the last something in between. But don't ask me which was which. So we decided to try two types. The portions were huge and I really struggled to finish my stuff. My colleague this day also ordered a veg dish.
Then the next day, we had the same question. Where to go for dinner? And you guessed it, we went to the noodle bar again. And this time we realized that out of the three vegetarian dishes we had already ordered two the previous day! Still, it was fun to have dinner at the Noodle Bar in a typical student environment but where none of the students knew me :)
Labels: Food, Oxford, Travel abroad, UK
OK, now that I read it again it makes some sense because Kusum uploaded pictures of poppies and Monet painted poppies ... But then I will not go anywhere near art for quite sometime now. Scares me stiff.