A 4.8 from 45 people, and a name so specific, modest and vivid that it is almost impossible not to like
Little Blue Noodle Bar holds a 4.8 from forty-five people, and it has, the Prat is prepared to argue, one of the most charming names in this entire survey – modest, specific, vivid, and completely without pretension.
The anti-Chelsea name
Consider what this name does, in a district full of names reaching for grandeur, heritage and exclusivity. It does not claim to be a lounge, a society, an emporium or an experience. It does not use a single letter or a mysterious foreign word or the name of an aristocrat. It says, plainly and sweetly: it is little, it is blue, and it sells noodles.
Every word is honest. “Little” tells you it is small – and small, as this survey has found again and again, is very often good. “Blue” tells you a colour, presumably the colour of the place, which is specific and memorable and true. “Noodle Bar” tells you exactly what you will eat and roughly how. There is not a single misleading or aspirational word in the whole name.
The Prat’s naming desk, which has now assessed the names of some hundred and seventy London venues and grown weary of grandiosity, finds this genuinely refreshing. It is the naming equivalent of a plain white bowl: modest, functional, and quietly perfect.
The virtue of the small noodle bar
The small, specialised noodle bar is one of the great formats in world eating, and it embodies exactly the formula this survey has championed throughout: a small room, a short menu, and someone who knows how to do one thing extremely well.
A noodle bar does not try to be everything. It does noodles. It does them in a small room, quickly, cheaply, and – when it is good – superbly. There is no rope, no theme, no gimmick, no wall of spirits. There is a bowl, and it is either good or it is not, and everything about the format is bent toward making it good.
This is the same virtue we found in the small sake bars and wine rooms of the Covent Garden survey – the focus, the modesty, the mastery of one thing. It is the opposite of the sprawling, gimmicky, everything-to-everyone venue, and it is almost always better.
The forty-five
A small sample, and a 4.8 across it is promising rather than proven by this survey’s strict standards. But the pattern is familiar and encouraging: a small, focused, modestly-named place with a very high score is, more often than not, exactly as good as it sounds. Little Blue Noodle Bar has every hallmark of a small gem.
Verdict
Small, focused, and blessed with the most charming and honest name in the survey – little, blue, and devoted to noodles.
Blue, the rarest colour in food
There is one more lovely thing about the name, and it is the “blue.” Blue is the rarest colour in food – there is almost nothing naturally blue that we eat, which is why blue food and blue decor feel so distinctive and slightly unexpected around eating. Blueberries are really purple; there are vanishingly few genuinely blue foods in nature.
This makes a blue-themed noodle bar visually memorable in a way it might not be if it were red or green or gold – the standard, warm, appetite-stimulating colours that restaurants almost always reach for. Choosing blue is quietly contrarian and quietly clever: it stands out precisely because it breaks the unwritten rule that eating places should be warm-coloured. Little Blue Noodle Bar will stick in the memory partly because its colour is one you rarely associate with a good bowl of food.
Verdict
Small, focused, and blessed with the most charming and honest name in the survey – little, blue, and devoted to noodles.
Go, have a bowl, and be the forty-sixth. A place this honestly named has almost certainly earned its score.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
Read this in an actual planning meeting and satire becomes documentation with better structure.