Cheap and cheerful restaurant delivers a Northwest Chinese experience

THIS remarkably cheap, cheerful and truly good-food diner sits in a nondescript shop that looks like it might once have been a chicken shop.

Housemade noodles at Tasty Xi'an, Parkside.

THIS remarkably cheap, cheerful and truly good-food diner sits in a nondescript shop that looks like it might once have been a chicken shop.

It has handy parks out front so you can duck out of the whizzing Glen Osmond Rd traffic. First no-bells, nor whistles impressions are deceiving. While the space is brightly lit, and the kitchen works behind a typical stainless steel counter, with illuminated menu ideas overhead, the chairs are comfy and the service is good.

Chef/owner Susan Guo is part of the team delivering Northwest Chinese dishes, explaining how a few less-common things are done, down to scissors for chopping the excellent noodles she makes fresh every day.

The chef’s own noodles, made daily at Tasty Xi'an, Parkside

Expectations of disposable crockery are soon dashed, starting with charming cups and matching Chinese pots of green tea, $2 per person, with complimentary spicy crackers, that cleverly get us salivating as we browse the menus.

A surprising start is tea in sweet little pots.

Within minutes we’re grazing, the parade of food served with no fuss, letting the fresh, clean flavours shine.

This is not the place to find Aussified sweet’n sours or lemon chicken.

Even the handmade spring rolls, are northwest style, a little square and chubby, packed with chicken, if a tad oily.

Housemade spring rolls, packed with chicken.

We pass around bowls, including a lamb paomo soup, a dish quite unique to China’s Xi’an area. Lamb and fungi is floating in broth with chopped flatbread, soon soft and soaking up the flavours.

Traditional Xi’an paomo soup.

Dumpling soup, deliciously spicy and sour.

It’s delicious, but quickly bettered by a spicy and sour dumpling soup, the plump perfectly al dente pork morsels, 10 for $10 or 15 for $12.99, bobbing in a dark soup also loaded with garlic chives, coriander, nori and sesame seeds. This is the dish that will draw us back, as will the chef’s noodles that we scissor into easy bites, even though the partnering brisket could be better.

Condiments on the side such as whole preserved garlic cloves and fermented chilli add even more oomph.

Rougamo pork burger, better for lunch or a snack.

The rougamo pork burger also is beyond the norm, the pulled meat in a flat bun for $6, perhaps better for an on-the-run substantial snack.

We have feasted for a mere $15 each.

Tasty Xi’an

1/84 Glen Osmond Rd, Parkside. 8373 5196

tastyxian.com.au

SCORE 7.5/10