Asian delights
Street food is great when you just want to eat and go. And Huddersfield’s
Pan Asian Street Food restaurant is just the place for a quick bite to eat – with the chance to try something you’ve never eaten before.
We only stumbled across this place while we were looking for somewhere else.
The darkened glass in the windows doesn’t make it look particularly enticing from outside. But inside it’s got that ‘street food vibe’ going on, an industrial no-frills style which has been carefully created.
The interior reminded me of the Trinity Kitchen, the street food place above the Trinity shopping centre in Leeds.
Pan Asia is at the start of Queen Street, just a stone’s throw from the main entrance to the Kingsgate centre. But who knew?
It serves Korean and Japanesestyle dishes and appears to be a place popular with students from that part of the world.
It has to be a good sign for its authenticity that Asian students form a big proportion of its clientele, around half while we were there.
We were given chopsticks with the food and a fork only came as an after thought. I usually fumble about with chopsticks but I impressed myself and only switched to the fork when it came to clearing up the remaining salad and strips of lettuce.
The prices seem pretty good too, although this is meant to be a street food dining experience so you wouldn’t expect full-on restaurant prices.
It was barbecue weather outside and the menu offered a chance to barbecue meat and seafood at your table.
I was tempted to go for that but chickened out. It’s probably just as well because the tables are a little close together so I might have caused the temperature to rise on the next table.
For starters we shared Chicken Gyoza (£4.60) and Vegetable Spring Rolls (£3).
The gyoza is a chicken dumpling very lightly fried and served with a dipping sauce. It was sweet and subtle and I wanted more than the four pieces. You need to try this.
There were two pieces of spring roll, which were light and crispy with a sweet chilli sauce for dipping.
I’d never eaten eel before – not even the London jellied variety – but found myself drawn to the grilled eel on the menu.
I’m always willing to try new food and it certainly sounded more appetising than Pork Offal Soup, described on the menu as “slow boiled pork head meat with offal”.
I’m sure it will taste better than it sounds but I’ll pass on that, thank you very much.
I went for the Grilled Eel Bento Box (£12.50). A bento box is a traditional Japanese way of eating street food – literally a box with small compartments of food.
The eel was served on a bed of rice and came with more gyoza (yes!), edamame (salted boiled soya beans in the pod), salad and pickles.
I was pretty sure eel was a fish and I’m delighted to say it tasted like a fish. I half-expected it to be a bit more, erm, slippery.
It had a lovely rich sauce on top. It’s a shame there were only the four mouthfuls but less is certainly more here.
My partner Sian had the Beef Yaki-Udon (£8.90), a stir-fry with thin noodles. It came with a mix of vegetables and was garnished with spring onion and sesame.
The beef was tender and the noodles proved a challenge for Sian’s chopstick skills. She managed to clear her plate, however.
Staying in the theme of trying something new I washed the meal down with a glass of Sunshine in the Morning.
I had no idea what that was. I asked the waitress and she said it was “like milk. It’s really nice.”
She was right. It’s a rice drink – a bit like watery milk – but nicer! A good palate cleanser and a cool drink for a hot day.
This is a place where you can pop in for a quick bite on the go.
It’s an authentic taste of Asia in Huddersfield – and who knew it was there?