Noodles King

Located in the old Fiji Times building on Gordon Street, Noodles King has dared to try something new: noodles! This latest addition to the asian dining scene (if you could call it that) sits opposite 2 other eateries that have challenged the status quo -- Singh's Curry House & Roma's Hook and Chook -- and so is in good company as it sets about provoking Suva's stagnant notions of what Chinese food should be.



There seems too have been some doubt about the name: the large light-box outside the shop seems, at first glance, to proclaim "Noodle King". Closer inspection reveals the addition of a small 's', reassuring us that this place deals exclusively in the plural (and more generous) style of noodle serve. Noodles King it is!

The menu is simple, the prices are cheap.

$6.80 will buy the house special, King Noodles (from Noodles King: clever, no?) (below) is a large bowl of thick home-made noodles in a bland broth topped with a bed of cabbage, chicken, pork, fish balls, a battered prawn, some raw carrots julienne and garnished with dhania/cilantro/corriander leaves.



The broth seems intended for personal customisation: bowls of chilli oil, soy sauce and salt are provided for this purpose (pictured below). The noodles are accompanied by a small side salad of shredded, vinegared vegetables: various combinations of radish, bean sprouts, carrot and slivers of raw onion have been sighted.



$7.00 gets you to the top of the pyramid: Prawn Noodles. Unless you've got a particular hankering for prawns, drop down to the King Noodles; they're far more interesting.

Noodles with gravy is the cheapest option at $3.80. The curiously named Fry sauce noodles (below) tops $4.20 worth of noodles with fried egg, soy sauce, sesame, and shallots. Other options are Beef, Chicken, Pork, Fish balls, and Egg (sunny-side-up). Takeaway or eat-in.



Suva's sad culinary bottom-feeders are also provided for in the form of chips with the usual chicken or sausage decoration, and a token smattering of the usual pseudo-chinese food-warmer offerings ... why anyone would want to eat this trash when coooked-to-order noodley goodness is available for the same price is beyond me. Coke and Pepsi fridges provide the usual drinks range.

This eatery seems a little haphazard in it's decor: yellow-green walls, blue and pink feature lights on the wall, silver ceiling fans. The eclectic ambience ranged from Eurodance to Chinese folk music to classical symphony: obviously from the well-shuffled MP3 collection of a rapacious download hero. The one redeeming touch was the food pictures on the walls: these were probably not taken in the shop, were not labelled and had "Noodle King" (rather than Noodles King) emblazoned across the bottom ... but to their great credit, all depicted food that could be ordered from the menu.



Kania Tiko held forth at some length on the shortcomings of the orange plastic seats: ill-considered ergonomics, a conspiracy to tip him onto the floor, and the unbucketly alignment of what looked like a bucket seat. Given that this is the worst criticism he could come up with -- and that it was not aimed at the food -- we should probably take this as a wholehearted endorsement of the product.

Places were set with a serviette and a little packet of 'Cool Air' breath mints, a nice touch.

Thumbs-up for trying something different and breaking the usual 'chop suey, chowmein, soup' menu rut that Suva's Chinese restaurants have become stuck in.

In Summary

Noodles King

Old Fiji Times Building, Gordon Street, Suva

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sat: 9:00am - 6:00pm

Spend:

$3.80 - $7 per person

Rating:

Thumbs-up

Le Pain de Mie

The Faith Based Encyclopaedia claims that "pain de mie" is "a type of sliced, packaged bread" similar to "pullman loaf or regular sandwich bread". Given that they don't sell anything like that there it seems like a moronic name, and since most of us don't speak frog we can't pronounce it properly anyway. Therefore most normal humans just call it either 'Samabula Bakery', 'French Bakery', or 'Big Red'.

This establishment sits at the base of Waimanu Road, across the road from the post office. It is a truly hideous building, I can only hope that the cheque from Vodafone was a large one.
Now lets look at their famous pie:

It is an impressive piece of pastry and meat, lets have a look inside.

Picky Eater disses this good shit and talks up the HBK alternative because of some pap about "moistness" vs "dryness" which is too nonsensical to repeat here. My only response is that the above looks and tastes like that it came from an actual chicken, whereas the HBK chicken pie filling is some sort of extruded chicken paste. The HBK might be moist, but is it real?

The pies are $3 each. The pastry is excellent. Get yourself some hot english mustard and work it into the filling and you have a splendid meal.

They also have danishes and quiches for $2 each and croissants for $0.80. I haven't eaten enough of these to have a useful opinion on them, but I'm certain they won't be able to sneak them into your South Beach diet.


The mince loaf is a favourite of the local FIT students, it is a long loaf cut along the spin and filled with curried mince.


They'll pretty much stick this curried mince on just about anything they sell. Order a whole loaf and they'll ask you how many pieces you want it divvied up into before they pack it. Not the healthiest meals you'll ever have, but certainly one of the cheapest at $1.80.

This is a cream loaf. It's a long loaf with cream in in it. Meh.

There are three Coke fridges, that aren't particularly well stocked. If you were looking for a bottle of Frank's or some other fancy drink you are shit out of luck. You usually will find a Coke or a sprite, but that it is not guaranteed.

There are no prices on the board. This is odd.

One other thing you can do here that is not particularly well advertised is that you can bring your own pork or chicken and stick in their ovens. The price varies according to size of the meat you bring, approximately $5 for two chickens or thereabouts.

For providing some of the cheapest lunches in Suva, thus really killing it on the price-performance curve, we give the Big Red Samabula French Bakery a thumbs up.

In Summary

Le Pain de Mie

Waimanu Rd, Samabula

Opening Hours:

Monday - Sunday: 24 hours/day

Spend

$0.60 - $3.00 per person

Verdict

Thumbs up

Hop Hing Cafe

Hop Hing sits opposite the beer factory in Walu bay. It plies a regular trade with the brewery, warehouse, oil, and wharf workers in the area. They serve up your typical pseudo-chinese food, plus the usual morning tea items (cake, buns, tinned meat etc.)

We tried two fairly representative items on the menu, first the combination short soup.
Kania Tiko is somewhat of a connoisseur of the Combination Short Soup. It has diced chicken, roast pork and red pork (but no beef strangely enough). The broth is superior to that of Mrs. Yangs, and doesn't need chillying up (but I chilly it up anyway out of force of habit). My main objection is the paucity of vegetables, all we have a couple of carrots and small handful of cabbage. Its the lack of veges and vege-variety that prevent this from challenging Hot & Spicy's position at the top of the totem pole of Suva's Combination Short Soups. At $9 its only 50 cents cheaper than Hot & Spicy, so it can't really compete on the price-performance curve either.

This is chicken chow-mein. Its stir-fried chicken, cabbage, carrots, and onions with noodles. You've all eaten this before so there is no point in me crapping on about it. It is hot and freshly cooked and costs $6.

This is the menu. If you can read it, then I congratulate you. If you can't go to Walu bay and read the real one.

The following video has absolutely nothing to do this review. I just think it would be cool to have a robot bartender in ones house, and also I want to send a big "Fuck You" to the Associated Press, for this display of stupidity.

In Summary

Hop Hing

Foster Rd, Walu Bay, Suva

Opening Hours:

Monday - Saturday: 7am - 5pm

Spend

$4.00 - $9.00 per person

Kebab King

Suva finally has a kebab shop. How on earth a city with cosmopolitan pretensions could have survived this long without 'Turkish' food defies explanation. All this glorious city lacks now is a Subway franchise and some Mexican food. But back to the kebabs...

Kebab King attempts to be the full-service kebab shop in the style of migrant family-run shops found elsewhere on the Pacific Rim: döner kebabs, iskender kebab plates, kebab sandwiches on pide bread, falafel, tabouli, a variety of stuffed pide, and dolma all make it to the menu along with something passed off as 'Turkish pizza'.

Lamb and chicken are the meat choices on offer.


The cheapest option on the menu, the plain döner kebab, starts at $6.50 and is rather bland (lettuce, tomato, onion, meat, 1 sauce). The best way to enjoy your kebab is to take a $2 hit to the pocket and add hummus and extra tabouli. Top it off with garlic sauce (good with the chicken) or sweet chilli sauce (good with lamb) and the kebab is now a much tastier, albeit more expensive. The chicken tends toward being a little dry, so unless I see the cook slicing the chicken off the stack while I'm at the counter, I order the lamb.

Pizza is best left alone. An unseemly fascination with cheese drowns out the few other toppings.

The kebab on pide is worth a mention: it is a good, solid sandwich, but will need some extras to keep it from being too dry.

Some unevenness in staff training and kebab construction: the hummus should be applied to the flat-bread (yufka) before the salad fillings are added, not drizzled over the lettuce. There also seems to be a large variance in how much time different servers think is necessary to toast the döner kebab.

The layout of the serving area was obviously done with no reference to the sales process. The drinks fridge is located at the opposite end of the counter to the cash register. Having shuffled you along the counter toward the cashier while filling your kebab, your server is then forced to fight their way back down the counter past all the other attendants to fill any drinks orders. This process can slow down service considerably during the lunch rush.


Whilst there's nothing wrong with a kebab shop in a food court, as Suva's only kebab offering they could have done better than than the second floor in MHCC. I humbly offer that the best location for this business would be in the old Air Nauru office opposite Bad Dog's on the corner of Victoria Parade and MacArthur Street. There, nestled in the bosom of Suva's nightlife zone, they would make a royal killing if they stayed open late and competed a little with the BBQ sellers for the attention of tipsy people looking for greasy food.

Despite piling on the good karma for bringing kebabs to the city, the relatively high price point, uneven service, and a boring signature kebab conspire against the awarding of a thumbs-up to Kebab King; but they're certainly no where near thumbs-down territory. So, go forth, mix and match, and tell us what you think is the best way to remix their kebabs.

NB. They're in Nadi too. Port Denarau Marina Complex. Same offerings.

In Summary

Kebab King

MHCC Food Court, Thomson Street, Suva

Port Denarau Marina, Nadi

Phone:

3100 167, 6750 375

Opening Hours:

Mon - Sun: 9:00am - 9:00pm

Spend:

$6.80 - $12 per person

Yang's Restaurant

Yang's Restaurant is on Pratt St., opposite Suva Central and next to the Hare Krishna. Prominent local media harlot Culden Kamea notes "that it's easy to spot because they hang their roast duck, chicken and pork in the front window". He also observes that their Combination Long and Short Soup is "world famous", and that is where this review starts:
The soup is both short (it has won tons) and it is long (it has noodles). The combination bit must come from the roast chicken, beef and roast pork. The lady (we'll call her Mrs. Yang) spoons out the broth, noodles, and won tons from three big pots. The meat and veges are cut with a pair of scissors and placed in the bowl - as far as I know no other short order cook in Suva that cooks with scissors.

We won't comment as to whether the soup is "world famous" but it is certainly Mrs. Yang's most popular order, and at $6.80 its great the value for money. If there is a negative point it is that the broth is rather bland, so chilli it up first.

Other highlights include the Red Pork, which comes with rice, cabbage, some sort of wierd black sauce, and a bowl of that same broth as the soup. With no tasty fillings to break the monotony the full blandness of the broth hits you, but you can probably use it as a dipping sauce. This is also $6.80. A simple dish done well.

If you are short of cash you can get fish/sausage and chips for $3.

There are seven tables, and the establishment can get quite warm, with only a lone oscillating fan struggling bravely against small room full of large sweaty island folk. In the back of the room there is a 'bar' that has long since ceased to serve alcohol and now serves as the washing up station.

In Summary

Yang's Restaurant

Pratt St, Suva
Opposite Suva Central

Opening Hours:

Monday - Saturday: 9am - 8pm

Spend

$3 - $6.80 per person

Verdict:

Thumbs-up