The Noodle Soup Series: Mami Soup at Asian Noodles

Below, the infamous Filipino dish Mami Soup. If you have a cold, head to Asian Noodles in Downtown and you will be assured a cure. Mami is an amalgam of Tagalog words for chicken ("manok") and egg noodles ("miki").

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I'm one of those people who dislikes Filipino food but every time that I eat it, I'm always moaning about how good it is; what is the cause of this dichotomy?

My Doppelganger had a "Soup's On!" event here a while back, and I was a little hesitant to attend considering that I don't like Filipino food. But I do love noodle soup and I figured, "how bad can it be?" It wasn't bad at all, and as a matter of fact is why quite great and I could eat at Asian Noodles daily especially now that the weather is getting cold again. (Ok, apparently it's not cold, it's like 80 degrees and above during the day but I'm in my office where I think someone might be aging beef it's so damn cold)

Below, a slight variation on the classic Mami Soup: this soup had wontons and a different type of noodle. I preferred the thicker, flatter noodle served in the classic version.

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Below, some fried wontons. These looked really good but they were so-so and the dipping sauce was really boring.

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But luckily, someone ordered Lumpia! These were excellent and came with a great sweet and spicy dipping sauce.

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Below, my Bola Bola Siopao. A Siopao is similar to a Chinese Bao but three times bigger. There were many types of Siopao on the menu but I went all out and ordered the Bola Bola which was supposed to have chicken, pork, sausage, and a salted egg but mine was sans salted egg(though, I still enjoyed it.) I used three different sauces for dipping: the sweet spicy sauce from the Lumpia; some Sriracha sauce; and the all-purpose dipping sauce that they served which is made from soy sauce, sugar, water, and cornstarch.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/la_addict

Despite how good our food was, we were dying to take photos of the garlic fried rice and deep fried pork shank that the table of 20 somethings next to us ordered. However, when we saw their food and started oohing and aahing, they did what any 20 something worth his or her salt would do: they rolled their eyes and then glared at us with that perfect balance of disgust and contempt. Oh, how I weep for that generation! But I delight in shadenfreude thinking about how when they are "slightly" older they too will experience this.

Asian Noodles

643 North Spring Street

Los Angeles, CA 90012