Noya Pawlyn’s Vietnamese cookery heritage runs deep and her back story is fascinating – and please, I urge you, do click on that link; it honestly is the most essential reading you’ll ever find on any restaurant website.
There’s a lot to digest between the lines on that bio. But right here, right now – over 6000 miles away from Vietnam and eight years on from opening her kitchen to the public – Noya’s gorgeous little bistro easily tops the “loveliest, most characterful, vibrant restaurants in Bath” charts while the popularity ratings are through the roof. Spaces for Noya’s legendary Friday evening Supper Clubs (£65pp for a full-on 5-course feast) are booked up literally months in advance, and if you’re thinking of eating here on a whim on any other night of the week you’d better hope that there’s been a table cancellation.
Why? Well, there are multiple reasons. Even before you peruse the menu (which is, by the way, best perused with a quirky cocktail in hand), the environment is captivatingly seductive, elegantly higgledy-piggledy and artfully wonky in a way that only a restaurant based on the first floor/lower ground floor of a Grade ii listed Bath townhouse can be. Floral wallpaper, polished wood and heritage hues dictate the decor; friendly staff and a patchwork of tables snuggled in to all available nooks and crannies complete the genteel neighbourhood diner vibe. It’s skillfully shambolic in the very best possible way: cleverly cosy, efficiently intimate, welcoming in a refreshingly unpremeditated way.
Concise menus waltz along to the pho (rich, satisfying, fully-laden Vietnamese soup)/noodle/curry beat, every dish flying the flag for the fresh herbs, far-flung spices and depth-charge dipping sauces that make Vietnamese food the harmoniously fragrant, deeply satisfying, super-sensual voyage to foodie Funky Town that it is.
As a result, we go to Noya’s Kitchen on a fairly regular basis but our most recent visit was a coupla weeks ago now. I don’t take notes in restaurants, and menus change here faster than a bird’s eye chilli assaults your senses. But I fondly recall that our Prawn Summer Roll starter tasted of a fresh, uplifting summer day, laden with fresh, juicy prawns, and lemongrass, and mango, with mint and coriander vying for maximum attention. We had crispy pork dumplings too, served with one of those impossible-to-recreate-at-home, umami-rich dipping sauces and sticky chilli jam.
We went on to share two curries: a soporific, coconut-rich Vietnamese Chicken (An’s Chicken Curry, to be precise – gosh, I’d love to meet An in person just so I could say thank you) served with pickles, spring onions, yet more coriander and superb rice, and a richer, more complex bowl of fascination involving soft, unctuous pork belly, personality-laden aromats and a generous tangle of slippery noodles just made for slurping.
Sesame seeds here, lemongrass there. Pickles and ferments all over the place, peanuts dotted hither and thither, fresh herbs everywhere. Texture and heat, sour and sweet, citrus and sauce: our feast was as multi-dimensional as a dynamic opera, as beautifully produced as a really good ballet, as melodious and evocative as your favourite love song.
And in many ways, Noya’s Kitchen is a love song: a paean to heritage, and pride, and history, and… well, a love of all of that, and more.
If you want to eat on a whim at Noya’s Kitchen tonight, you’ve probably left it too late to bag a table. But it’s never too late to make a booking…
The Prandial Playground, Bath and Beyond... 