Lon Men’s Noodle House has been a pivotal spot in what some like to call Berlin’s China Town for years. Although I think a better name for the stretch of Kantstraße that is home to some of the best Asian food places in the city (check Aroma, Dao, Saigon Green, Go Asia, Do De Li & Papaya for instance) would be something like “Asia Street”. Lon Men’s is definitely a major player and a save bet whenever you’re craving hot and heart warming noodle soups on a cold, dark and rainy November night. Which is why it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that there was a line outside on a random Tuesday evening!
First off, don’t trust your iPhone to just lead you straight to Lon Men, as it has a Googlegänger some 20 minutes further south, a Chinese restaurant that smelled great but definitely was not the place I was supposed to meet the Wednesday Chef for lunch. By the time I’d rushed my way back up to Kantstrasse (and how could I possible have thought this lovely little Taiwanese treasure would be anywhere else but amidst Berlin’s street of Asian delights; see Aroma and Dao), she had already made headway into a disappointing noodle soup and some surprising off-menu dumplings in chili sauce.
Do you remember the summer of 2012? It was the summer of “Call Me Maybe” and McDonalds started to sell bubble tea at their McCafés in Germany and Austria. That summer, bubble tea was everywhere in the city, every skinny storefront, every empty U-Bahn shop, every former sausage stand started to sell sugary muck filled with gooey little balls.
