NOYA’S KITCHEN, BATH

After moving from Vietnam to England at a young age with her family, Noya Pawlyn has become one of the most loved foodies in Bath and has recently transformed her popular Vietnamese supper club into a restaurant. The Georgian building dates back to 1770, and Noya has added personal touches such as sepia family photographs in pretty frames, pots of homegrown purple hebe flowers, and coconut milk cans filled with chopsticks.

As well as serving informal but hearty sharing dinners in the evening, Noya’s Kitchen also opens for lunch, Tuesday to Saturday, offering a thali-style menu. We were presented with a tray of small dishes and advised to work clockwise, and started with a summer roll filled with prawns, mango, cucumber, pickled carrots shaped into flowers, and Vietnamese herbs, with a punchy chilli dipping sauce on the side. Next was a bowl of chicken in a pungent ginger sauce with a chilli kick, and another of jasmine rice; followed by fragrant pho, or, as on our visit, a bun bo beef noodle soup topped with Thai basil and spicy Vietnamese mint. We mixed through the fiery lemongrass sambal and squeezed over lime juice before fishing out strips of beef brisket and slurping up silky, fat rice noodles.

Finish with Vietnamese coffee, served the traditional way in a drip cafetière with condensed milk to sweeten, or enjoy a pot of Vietnamese jasmine tea.

noyaskitchen.co.uk (Words by Alex Crossley)