Daily Noodles, Wapping Wharf: ‘A challenging game of spot the difference’ – restaurant review

Like many people in Bristol, when Woky Ko’s closure was announced before Christmas, I was gutted.

For many years it had been one of my preferred takeaways; a combination of good food and clever packaging meant they could be relied upon as a top-tier delivery option.

So much so that Bristol24/7’s Editor, Martin Booth once identified my house solely from the number of bright pink Woky Ko bags in the recycling bin outside.

Yet when just a couple of weeks after the closure, owner and chef, Larkin Cen announced he was re-opening the Wapping Wharf branch under a different name, I wasn’t the only one who was sceptical.

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This marked the beginning of Daily Noodles, promising a simple menu of noodles and bao, no more than 100 yards from the very same temporarily closed bridge that was partially blamed for the demise of its predecessor.

The menu at Daily Noodles is certainly simple; drinks comprised of Asahi, Tsingtao and a handful of softs.

Food is divided into daily bao, small plates and daily bowls. We ordered pork belly bao (£8.50), chilli fried chicken (£7.50), spring rolls (£5.50), tonkotsu ribs (£8), braised pork hoi sin noodles (£8.95) and buttermilk fried chicken with house katsu rice (£8.95).

At 8pm on a Thursday evening we had the shipping container to ourselves.

From a small speaker on the counter, Taylor Swift charmed us with the lyrics from her latest album.

If someone had erased my memory of the past few months and told me I was eating at Woky Ko, I would have believed them. It was like playing a game of spot the difference and a challenging one at that.

The first dish to make an appearance was the tonkotsu ribs, balancing tentatively on the boundary of being overcooked with a sauce that showed slightly too much enthusiasm for vinegar. Perfectly edible, but not something I’d seek out.

I do wonder if Tonkotsu ribs aren’t a bit like naan bread and chai tea… Tonkotsu literally means pig bone.

Some of the menu items were carbon copies of dishes I’ve had before.

The braised pork noodles for example; a people-pleaser of a dish. Pulled pork doused in hoi sin with generous tangles of sesame-flecked noodles, bean sprouts and red onion.

Though the deep umami of the pork was lost to the sweetness of the hoi sin, it is a good dish, and one perhaps has remained on the menu for a reason.

The portions at Daily Noodles are generous.

The bao buns enveloping the pork belly, spring onions and cucumber were a masterclass in lightness and tenacity; the perfect packaging for their meaty cargo.

That said, I couldn’t help but compare to Woky Ko’s baos, which at one point were so crammed with filling that they could’ve had a face off with a Sandwich Sandwich.

The Daily Noodles’ bao felt more modest in comparison. A sign of the times I guess, but the contents were gratifying.

I wonder whether the infamous hash brown bao will ever make a return to the menu…

The buttermilk katsu left me with a similar sense of déjà vu.

A bounteous portion of crunchy chicken and sticky rice, sat in a turmeric yellow bath.

The previous iterations’ pickled cucumber had been swapped out for a pile of white crunchy nothingness which did little to balance the saccharine nature of the sauce.

From a textural standing point the buttermilk katsu was very good.

I won’t regale you with similes and metaphors to describe the absolute mediocrity of the spring rolls or the chilli fried chicken.

The hardest things to write about are always those that are neither good nor bad, so inoffensive that they leave absolutely no impression on you whatsoever.

The same chicken as the katsu but in this instance drizzled in a sriracha-like sauce.

There’s no denying that Daily Noodles represents good value for money.

The food is satisfying but the over reliance on sweetness feels heavy handed and rushed.

At some point in Woky Ko and Daily Noodles’ tumultuous journey over the last few years, something has been lost.

What used to represent originality, freshness and something unique now feels rather like a tribute to Wagamamas.

The best Asian food invites you into a heady combination of profound umami, invigorating spice and sticky sweetness.

At Daily Noodles the scales of flavour are present, but unbalanced. I hope they last long enough to find equilibrium once more.

Daily Noodles, Unit 7, Gaol Ferry Steps, BS1 6WP

dailynoodles.co.uk

All photos: Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Read next:

• New restaurant Daily Noodles to be opened by Woky Ko founder
• Larkin Cen: ‘I felt empty without cooking’
• Wild Beer at Wapping Wharf repossessed

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