Yo Yo Noodle is a small franchise that has a branch in Nottingham City Centre. Basically as the name suggests they specialise in selling noodles, but not on the end of a string like a yo yo (no that would be silly), having said that for those unpracticed with the chops sticks it can look like that as you try to grasp your noodle strands and suck them up at the same time (love people watching).

Inside you are presented with a selection of different noodle types to choose from; ‘egg noodles, vermicelli, udon, ho fun, or a non noodle option of rice’. To that you can add one of their meat options; ‘chicken, beef, pork, duck’ or the mock meat options of quorn fu, or just veg or king prawns. Then you choose any veg that you want (a bit like the tray at subways) and a sauce to add to it all from ‘sweet and sour, sichuan, teriyaki, singapore curry, thai, sweet chilli, black bean, satay, and last but not least shao shao’.

They said that it was a simple A, B, C selection method, but I was blinded with choice so I took the easy option of the “Box of the Day“. They take all your basic selection of noodle and protein, in this case chicken, add some veg, (I just had some spring onion and garlic) and then hand it all to the wok man. He then softens the noodles in hot water, before stir frying them quickly in his steaming wok adding the chosen sauce, all done in front of you quickly with no fuss but plenty of clattering of pans and deft flicks of the wrist.

It was all passed over too quickly, one minute I was watching wok man cooking the next I was handed a box of steaming hot noodles. They were so hot that I had to take my glasses off as the steam from the box was fogging them up. Although they might not look too much they were a nice filling noodle snack. Perfectly cooked I was soon sucking them up greedily using a shovelling pincerlike motion with my chop sticks. My hand and sticks worked together like Edward Scissorhands with chopsticks and I was making short work of emptying my box.

I did pause for breath on occasion and I was happy to see a steady stream of people coming in and waiting patiently for their noodles to be fast woked. It was an eclectic crowd too, not your usual common takeaway crowd. I am certainly not going to claim that these are the worlds greatest noodles, but as I said in the tagline they were fast, fresh, decent and reasonably cheap. I would use this joint as a go too quick noodle take out place in the future (if I was passing).

Nottingham’s branch of Yo Yo Noodle is at 62 Long Row just up from the Old Market Square which is probably the closest tram stop as well.