Tucked away in the middle of the arcade that connects the Preston Markets carpark with High Street, One Noodle Friendship looks like a very modest eatery.  Upon entering, we were greeted by a very smiley noodle maker that looked like he could have been an extra on Monkey Magic!  He motioned for us to sit down, so we did.  We waited a bit for some menus and tea cups but nothing came.  I had to go back up to the counter and the noodle maker apologised for forgetting us.

The menu had the typical dumpling and noodle dishes, but there were also some Japanese options as well.  We went with the pork and prawn fried dumplings, fried noodles with beef, and the five spice beef.

The five spice beef came out first in a little boat!  It was cooked slices of beef in a thin sauce with spring onion over the top.  The cold beef was delicious and tender.  Most of the flavour came from the sauce, which may have been a mixture of Chinese 5 Spice (probably cinnamon, coriander, star anise, cloves and peppercorn), with some soy sauce, possibly peanut or sesame oil and ginger.  Really yum and refreshing.

Next up was the fried noodle with beef… but where’s the beef?!  There were tiny morsels of slow-cooked tender beef, but the majority of the dish was tender house-made noodles, bean shoots and cabbage pieces.  The flavour was a little bland so we poured the leftover 5 Spice sauce over the noodles to give it a bit more bang.  It wasn’t a terrible dish, but it was lacking.

By the time the dumplings came out, our appetites were proper whet.  The pieces of happiness came out on an unnecessarily large plate, making the serving look unnecessarily small, but we still had 5 pieces each.