03/07 Miso

The mantra of Ranganathan fans is ‘to each reader his book; and to each book its reader’* an obvious but important maxim which at its most basic means fitting out each person with exactly the right book for them. Similarly, on a cold, wet Saturday afternoon, when I had exhausted my legs with a brisk trot around Hyde Park, followed by a brain-and-purse marathon in John Lewis’ Habadashery department, I found myself joyous at having fitted myself out with exactly the right choice of meal.

Miso is one of those generic restaurant chains serving south-east Asian food – the wannabe little sister of Wagamama, perhaps. It is rather a strange mix of foods, encompassing and mixing up, as it does, Thai, Chinese, Japanese and probably a whole host of things I don’t recognise as well. My noodles in soup promised on the page to be a fairly straight forward Japanese meal; but I was surprised by the very thin, wheat (I think) noodles, when I hoped for udon or soba. The mushrooms were beautifully tasty and exotic to look at; but the bamboo shoot and water chestnut slices a bit of a surprise. It was hot and soupy, the noodles luxuriated in a decent stock, and it was just the right dish at the right time; however it might have been even more delicious if I had no preconceptions about how it should taste, should one be sitting in a shopping mall or on a stool in a back street café, in a northern prefecture of Japan.

On a side note, the Japanese tea was just as I remember it should be, but again, I was just a little disappointed to have it in one of those ubiquitous white mugs that I so love to have coffee in. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have some cheap, small cups without handles? And, and! there’s more to whinge about… the disposable chopsticks. Not the splinter-in-your-mouth sort, thank goodness, but it isn’t hard to wash up or provide a proper chopstick – both for environmental and aesthetic reasons. I suppose I’ll have to go back to my holiday habit of carrying chopsticks in my handbag.

Side notes: 2/5
A filling hot soup when cold and tired: 5/5


*this is a very roughly remembered quotation: sorely lacking in accuracy!