The best noodles in London
31 places
Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall
£London's largest Asian food hall - more than twenty-five kiosks across Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese, built as the successor to the much-missed Oriental City that stood on this site.
Zone 4 on the Northern line, so it is a trip rather than a stop-off, and worth going hungry for. Cash-light but busy at weekends; the kiosks turn over quickly.
Bánh Bánh
££A family recipe book turned into a Peckham restaurant, run by the grandchildren of the cook it came from.
BaoziInn
££Northern Chinese street food tidied up for London, in a room done out in Communist-era poster kitsch.
Bone Daddies
££Ramen with a deliberate Western slant and a soundtrack to match - the bowl that made ramen a night out in London rather than a quick lunch.
Cây Tre
££Hiếu Bùi is treated as the godfather of Vietnamese food in London, and the bone marrow phở is the bowl that argument rests on.
Cocoro
££Open since 2006 and the sort of place Japanese office groups and families actually eat - sushi, sukiyaki and a tonkotsu ramen that punches above the room.
Eat Tokyo
££Enormous portions, Japanese chefs and prices that have barely moved - the volume option that Japanese Londoners actually use.
Hakata Ramen + Bar
££Named for the Fukuoka district the style comes from, doing Kyushu tonkotsu on Bermondsey Street with enough room to actually sit down.
Kanada-Ya
££The broth recipe was worked out in Fukuoka before the first London site opened, and the queue outside the St Giles branch has become part of the experience.
No bookings. The queue is shortest before noon and after 2pm.
Khao So-i
£££Named for the northern Thai coconut curry noodle it is built around - the newest room on these lists and already on all of them.
Koya
££Udon made by hand at their own noodle workshop, served from breakfast onwards - the Frith Street counter has been doing it since 2010.
Opens for a Japanese breakfast service that almost nothing else in Soho offers.
Koya Ko
££The Broadway Market outpost, opened in 2021 - the same handmade udon without the Soho queue.
Mandarin Kitchen
£££The lobster noodles are the reason - a whole lobster over ginger and spring onion noodles, and the dish most London Chinese restaurants are measured against.
Big round tables and lazy susans; built for groups rather than couples. Long-running and deliberately unmodernised.
Mao Master Hotpot Noodle
£Maocai rather than malatang: the same one-bowl idea, and the broths run classic spicy, chicken and fresh tomato. Lotus root, Chinese yam, enoki, tofu puffs and bean curd rolls hold up best.
Master Wei
££Hand-pulled biang biang noodles and Xi'an street food near Russell Square, from the team behind Xi'an Impression.
Med Salleh Viet
££Grilled Vietnamese street food and phở, run halal by the couple behind Med Salleh Kopitiam - a combination almost nothing else in London offers.
Monohon Ramen
££A single-site ramen bar on Old Street that takes no reservations and has outlasted most of the chains that opened around it.
No reservations - walk in and wait.
Murger Han
£London's first dedicated Xi'an specialist, built around the murger and biang biang noodles wide enough to need folding.
Murger Han
££Named after the murger - slow-cooked meat packed into a flatbread bun - and one of the cheapest serious lunches in the City if you know to order it.
Normah's
££A Malaysian kitchen tucked inside a Queensway market building, cooking nasi lemak and rendang for people who grew up on them.
Ramo Ramen
££Ramen run through Filipino cooking rather than beside it - the oxtail kare kare bowl is the dish the whole place is built around.
Rasa Sayang
££Hainanese chicken rice and char kway teow in Chinatown, at the volume and price of a hawker centre.
Shoryu Ramen
££Hakata-style tonkotsu across a spread of central sites, which makes it the ramen you can actually get into when the single-site places have queues out the door.
Silk Road
£Xinjiang cooking where only three items on the whole menu cost more than £8 - cumin, chilli and hand-cut noodles rather than anything Cantonese.
Sông Quê Café
£The Kingsland Road institution that made the street synonymous with phở - strip lighting, fast turnover, enormous menu.
Speedboat Bar
£££Built to feel like a late-night Bangkok Chinatown canteen, with pool tables, and curries good enough that it was ranked the fourth best restaurant in London.
Viet Grill
££The smarter end of Kingsland Road, from the Cây Tre group, with a wine list someone has actually thought about.
Xi'an Impression
££A small room opposite the Emirates doing the chewy, chilli-oil-heavy cooking of Shaanxi - the liangpi cold noodles are the reason people cross London for it.
No bookings, and the room is tiny - go off-peak or expect to wait.
If everything else is full
Reliable rather than remarkable. These are chains — worth knowing about when you need somewhere open, not worth a journey.
Din Tai Fung
£££Xiao long bao folded to eighteen pleats behind glass - the Taiwanese chain Ken Hom put in the New York Times' world top ten, and its first London site.
Marugame Udon
£A canteen where you walk the line past the open kitchen watching the noodles rolled, cut and boiled - the cheapest proper udon in London and the most fun to queue for.
Tonkotsu
££Launched in Soho in 2012 by Ken Yamada and Emma Reynolds, making its own noodles - and now the ramen you are never more than a short walk from.