Traffic in Dublin was appalling today. Please don’t tell me this is the start of the annual Christmas snarl-up. Not sure that I could take another month of this.

Anyway, I had an urge to go back to Moore Street. When we were there for the first outing (Delhi O’Deli) I remember spotting a Chinese buffet a few doors up, with €4.99 signs stuck on the window.

So I battled my way down Henry Street, cut through the ILAC centre and emerged exactly opposite the place I was looking for. On the way, on Capel Street, just near the bridge I passed Soup Dragon, which does a Friday Fiver lunch and then I found Bonza Pies in the ILAC centre which sells various pies for under a fiver, both noted for future outings.

So …

Chinese Fast Food Buffet, Moore Street, Dublin

… in I went, alone this time.

It doesn’t seem like a place that would be noted for its atmosphere, or maybe I just caught it on the wrong day. It was 1.45pm and maybe it was a hive of babbling activity a little earlier, but now, it felt a bit like a library. There were about 8 patrons there, most dining alone and just finishing up their meals, and by the time I sat down with mine, only one was left, and he went shortly afterwards. Pretty quiet for a place that provides huge amounts of food for a fiver. Why?

Chinese Fast Food is a buffet, so I took my plate and checked out what was on offer. There were three big buffet catering units, each with eight trays of food.

The one on the right has two types of fried rice, noodles, chips, cocktail sausages and a few other bits and pieces. The other ones contained a reasonably broad range of standard Chinese restaurant/ take-away food: pork, chicken, tofu and vegetables, cooked in a variety of ways some in standard looking/smelling sauces and others deep fried in batter.

I wasn’t massively hungry but I wanted to try a few dishes, so I spooned out some rice and tried some cauliflower, some broccoli and a few different pork dishes (one rib and two other fried pork portions, one in sweet and sour sauce).

My lunch

It wasn’t hot. That’s the first thing that crossed my mind. Not helped by being spooned on to a cold plate. The rice was nicely cooked, with egg, and it wasn’t greasy. The vegetables were quite crisp, especially the broccoli and served in generic, hard to define but tasty sauces. I could taste salt or MSG but it wasn’t the dominant flavour.

The rib was gorgeous, with a strong five spice flavour. Very tender and not fatty. The two other pork dishes were fine. The sweet and sour sauce was as I expected and the pork was a bit chewy, but not tough.

To be honest, I enjoyed this meal and it was only €4.99. The only other Chinese buffet I had experienced was the rather more famous one on the quays, where every dish seemed very oily and overcooked and from which one emerged smelling like a chipper. In contrast, there was no residue of grease on my plate after this meal. I had plenty of food and there was no limit on the amount of food one could pile on the reasonable sized plates.

The place itself is plain and pretty devoid of atmosphere…

… which is a pity and I still find it odd that it was so empty. On my way back to the quays after lunch, near enough to 2.30pm I passed several other restaurants, none of them as empty as the one I had just left.

I’m not going to not recommend this place, if you know what I mean, but I’d suggest that if you are going to give it a try, go with a few other people and liven the place up.

(PS. I confess to being a bit nervous of buffet food in general. It’s quite exposed to the atmosphere and, of course, to people, with our various unpleasantnesses. You’re never quite sure how long the food been there and at what temperature. These are general concerns, you understand, not particular concerns about this buffet.)

I knew I’d be able to eatforafiver somewhere on Parnell Street among the various Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese restaurants that have opened there in the last few years. I wasn’t wrong.

The boys and I headed there this lunchtime. We parked on Hill Street just off the Gardiner Street end of Parnell Street and wandered around for a bit. We were tempted by a (misleading, as it happens) sign outside a buffet place offering ‘3 Chinese dishes and rice’ for €5. In actual fact, that was for a take-away option which wasn’t mentioned on the sign. That being said, the place was offering a substantial tasty looking lunch buffet for €7.

Elsewhere we found a tiny place with two tables with interesting sounding dishes for €5 but rice would have cost an additional €1.50.

We had a look at ‘Wok in a Box’ and we’ll visit there sometime in the future. But for today, we settled for Charming Noodles, or Lee’s Charming Noodles.

The guys outside Lee's Charming Noodles

Charming Noodles, as you might expect, specialises in noodle dishes. It has several different menus on display. There’s a general lunch menu, offering two courses for either €7.99 or €9.99. There’s a standard Chinese-restaurant-fare menu, offering the sort of dishes that you’d see in any other Chinese place. There’s a very interesting looking Noodle menu, comprising soup noodle dishes, pan fried noodle dishes, chow mein dishes and noodle mixes. And there’s the Recession Specials, for a €4.99 each.

The restaurant was a little over half full when we went in, but filled up to almost capacity while we were there. About half the customers appeared to be of far eastern origin, and most were tucking in to big bowls of noodles with gusto.

It was the Recession Specials that clinched the deal for us obviously although on my next visit (and there will be one) I’ll be going for one of those delicious looking noodle bowls. The recession specials are available from 12 – 3, Monday to Friday. On offer are sweet and chilli squid, creamy chicken, salt and chilli chicken wings, beef with black pepper sauce, and sweet and sour vegetables (all with rice or chips). And also seaweed tofu soup with chow mein. For your fiver you also get a glass of either orange, pineapple or apple juice.

The young lad opted for the chicken wings with chips,  the big lad for sweet and chilli squid with rice, and I went for the seaweed tofu soup with chow mein.

We ordered and waited. And waited …

Eventually our food arrived. Mine first.

My seaweed tofu soup with chow mein

The soup was lovely. Nicely seasoned, with light melt-in-the-mouth tofu and feather-delicate leaves of dark green seaweed. The chow mein was a little too oily for my taste but flavoursome and filling nevertheless. The quantity was generous.

The big lad’s squid arrived next.

Sweet and chilli squid with rice

The squid was tender and the sauce subtly spicy and quite tomatoe-y. The big lad was pleased with the quantity and polished it off with evident satisfaction.

After a long wait, the young lad got his wings.

Salt and chilli wings with chips

He was a bit disappointed to be honest. The long wait, he felt, wasn’t really worth it, and he eyed the big lad’s squid jealously. The wings were more batter than meat, with not a lot of chilli in evidence. The chips were fine, he said, but without much enthusiasm. Chinese restaurant chips always look and taste distinctively different from chipper chips, and these were definitely Chinese restaurant chips.

In any case, we were all well fed and watered for €14.97 which was the point of the exercise:

The bill

I have to say, I’d go back, especially to try some of their speciality noodle dishes, which seemed to be remarkably good value and looked scrumptious as they emerged from the kitchen. Most noodle dishes seemed to be priced at somewhere between €8.20 and €9.50, with a few above that. I think that’s pretty good.

Parnell Street has been dubbed Dublin’s Chinatown. I suspect by people who have never been there, but like to think there might be somewhere vaguely exotic on the north side. Sure, there are a quite a few Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese restaurants and some oriental food shops there but none of the hustle, bustle, colour and atmosphere of the more established Chinatowns you’d find in different parts of the world.

That being said, Parnell Street, Moore Street, Mary Street and Capel Street seem to be very much worth exploring for cheap eats generally.

To change the subject entirely, I’ve been growing chillies. I bought a pot of seeds a few months ago in Homebase for €2.99 or so. They came with their own compost, so all you had to do was to sow them, water them, keep them warm and covered and, hey-presto, they germinated. I thinned them out, repotted the stronger ones and now have about 10 chilli plants on my window cill.

One of my chilli plants

And a young chilli ...

About a month later, I got a chilli from the fridge, cut it open, took the seeds out and germinated them in a similar way. I now have four more plants from that process. They are so easy to grow. Can’t wait to pick them and cook with them.