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Blessed are the noodle whisperers and the joy that they bring to our lives.

In January, I had the fortune of meeting two emerging flour power Samaritans. Their names were Leila Norris and Alice Norris, co-creators of “ramen soyannaise”: a delicious, resourceful dish starring instant noodles slicked with Kewpie mayo and soya sauce that the teenage duo whipped up on a camp stove using shelf-stable ingredients.

While I’m sure the Norris sisters would gladly share their recipe with me, I’m okay with soyannaise remaining a secret. After all, what’s the fun in knowing how a magician performs their magic?

Erich Wong is another Perth noodle whisperer and is (sorry Leila, sorry Alice) a little better known in dining circles. You might remember Wong from Noodle Forum, a squeezy CBD noodle bar that the (now) 66-year-old chef opened in 2014.

Noodle Forum was a smash, thanks largely to a strategically placed kitchen window that let those in the queue – there was always a queue – watch as Wong seesawed on a bamboo pole to make the toothsome, increasingly rare southern Chinese noodle, zu sheng mian. (According to Wong there are very few shops on the planet making noodles this way: a claim that Google searches in both English and Chinese seem to verify.)

After quietly slipping off the handmade noodle radar, he resurfaced in October when Wong, wife Chee Ling Low and son Everson rebooted a former lending agent’s office in East Vic Park into Yip: a fresh-faced 60-seat restaurant named for Wong’s father and bamboo noodle-making teacher, Yip Kee.

It’s easy to miss Yip’s understated shopfront among the grey and mushroom jumble of Albany Highway. Thankfully the throng of eaters queuing on weekends is an excellent beacon for first timers to look for. While regulars will arrive 15 minutes before opening to maximise their chances of sitting down right away, it’s worth preparing yourself for some sort of wait. It might be short. It might be long. But it will be worth it.

Wong absolutely sends it when it comes to his noods.

The stars of the Yip menu are the house-made “thin” noodles (maybe you know it as the spaghettini-esque wonton mee?) and their fat and crinkly “thick” counterpart, mee pok. Both are southern Chinese in origin and made with nowt but flour, eggs, salt and the proverbial elbow grease of a skilled artisan bounding up and down on a bamboo pole to work the flour’s gluten and gradually develop the spring and tensile strength in the dough.

Gosh these are a great time. If you’re looking for an example of what commitment to craft and half-a-century of muscle memory tastes like, go directly to Yip. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. You won’t need it.

A base serve of noodles gets you change out a tenner, plus a choice of enjoying your noods “dry” or in a “soup”.

For those going dry, I dig the way the springy mee pok takes to the caramelly, Hong Kong-style “dark” sauce. Just as people reach for spaghetti when making aglio eolio, marinara and other oil-based pastas, those spindly “thin” noodles work best with the Kuala Lumpur-influenced “light” option: a lush one-two of rendered pork fat and light soya sauce. White pepper shakers on the table let you tune spice levels.

I can’t remember the last time I had my mind blown by a dish with a per-unit cost of less than $1.50 (you get six dumplings for $7.80) in Perth.

Maybe it’s not a 41-degree day like today and you’re in the mood for soup? The
house broth is all slow-simmered pork and chicken comfort and zero dry-mouth that comes from an overreliance on MSG. An earthy, prawny baseline underpins the spicy, coconutty laksa: if you can, spring the extra dollars for the main-sized
“Malaysian curry laksa” bowl which features jangly house-made Hokkien egg
noodles, thin bee hoon rice noodles (not house-made), chicken, prawn and fish
cake. A new challenger has entered the great-laksas-of-Perth arena.

Impressively, benchmark noods aren’t the only dish that Wong can stake a bona fide best-in-breed claim on. The buttery char siu – one of 13 meats you can beef up your noodles with – made with pork belly and lacquered with a heroic amount of Shaoxing wine, for one, is a compelling reason to visit. Ditto the compact, ultra-juicy roast pork belly and its alternating layers of blistered skin, fat and meat that underscore why the cut’s poetic Southern Chinese street name is “five-flower meat”.

Finally, there are the dumplings. In yet another example of Yip’s love of binary
choices, the menu features both comet-like wontons and torpedo-shaped shui jiao “dumplings”.

They’re available either lolling in soup which emphasises their suppleness or deep-fried, so the dumplings’ delicate skin metamorphises, its golden, barely-there skin disintegrating in the mouth like a communion wafer. I can’t remember the last time I had my mind blown by a dish with a per-unit cost of less than $1.50 (you get six dumplings for $7.80) in Perth: you?

At this price point, there are, understandably, some concessions with the dining
experience. Yip is a restaurant built for efficiency and guests help themselves to
chopsticks, cups of water, napkins and side bowls from a communal bench. There
are also QR ordering codes on tables, although you’re also free to buy your food
from a real-life human at the counter. (Other real-life humans are also stationed
throughout the space, running dishes, checking in on guests and generally practising the very human art of hospitality).

It must be said that there’s a ubiquitous, mall-like quality to the room, but personal flourishes such as murals and framed letters from guests ensure Yip doesn’t feel like some ChatGPT restaurant design experiment gone awry.

The biggest of these flourishes is unquestionably Wong himself. A natural showman, he times his bamboo-bouncing routine in Yip’s air-conditioned custom-built noodle room for midday and at the start of dinner: peak times for the dining room.

When he’s not pressing sheets of dough, he’s pressing the flesh in the restaurant, sweet-talking tables, greeting guests and sharing cooking tips with those that ask. He doesn’t reveal everything, of course, but just enough to let guests – even if just for a moment – behind the curtain. (His roast meats, for instance, aren’t cooked in a space-age duck oven, but in a domestic turbo broiler, a cooking appliance commonplace in Asian households.) After all, what’s the fun in knowing how a magician performs their magic?