A Bite, Dickson

When I made the booking for the photo shoot for this restaurant review, I wrote on the photographer's slip "you can't miss it - there's an enormous teddy bear sitting by the door". And that's still probably the easiest description for this Chinese eatery on Woolley Street in Dickson. Maybe the giant, genial teddy bear is necessary because the name on the door is a little generic - it's called A Bite (and not to be confused with A Bite to Eat, the cafe in Chifley).

So that's one way of standing out on a street full of Asian restaurants. Another way is to have a culinary point of difference - in this case, the signature dish "crossing the bridge noodle soup".

The first part of the menu is devoted to the folk tale behind this dish, which was cooked up by a diligent woman who wanted to keep her husband's noodle lunch warm because it was quite a trek (across a bridge) to deliver it to him.

Every table in this little eatery has an instructive sign telling you how to eat the crossing bridge noodles, which is brought to the table in various components - noodles, broth, meat, vegetables and a raw quail egg. You then assemble it yourself, slipping each ingredient into the hot broth to cook it. It's a Yunnanese classic and owner Sunny Liu says she wanted to bring the dishes from her home province to Canberra.

The restaurant itself is cute - a big communal table up the front, banquettes down one side of the room, and plenty of student-friendly touches such as free Wi-Fi and a collection of board games to play while you wait for your food. There's a dedicated sauce station filled with jars of different chilli oils, herbs, soy sauces, garlic, and other condiments. There's even MSG powder if you want to get all technical with your umami.

We start with a couple of youtiao, or savoury fried dough sticks. These are for dipping in sauce or broth but when I was a child I was partial to just eating them on their own and these are good enough to do just that - they're crisp and golden on the outside and puffy and light inside.

The main attraction, the "crossing the bridge" noodle soup, is fun - all the dishes filled with ingredients are brought out and spread before us. There's a tiny sense of ritual in tipping them into the hot broth in the proper order: the soft quail egg to poach first, then sliced mushrooms, the coriander and herbs, and finally white rice noodles. The slippery noodles and the clean, simple broth make for a happy marriage of texture and flavour.

My partner has a dish of garlic pork trotters ($13.80) which are substantial and super tender with plenty of melting fat, dusted with spice. It's excellent with rice. There's no shying away from the nose to tail bits of the animal on this menu and it's a welcome change from generic pan-Asian blandness.

The rice noodle soup with jellied pork blood and chitterlings (intestines) is both reasonably priced ($12.80) and deliciously meaty. Look away now if you're squeamish. A knot of white noodles in a spicy broth, with generous cubes of dense blood jelly that are rich and earthy, like someone has cut up pate in solid blocks. The chitterlings add a salty touch but are a little too chewy in texture.

A casserole rice dish is served in a tiny clay pot, stuffed with plain rice, sliced lap cheong, broad beans and preserved duck egg. It's a homey sort of dish, the kind your mum might throw together to feed the family on a weeknight. Simple ingredients all mixed together with the beans for a touch of green, the lap cheong for sweetness and a hit of salt from the duck egg.

A Bite is cheap and cheerful, caters directly to the large international student population at the ANU, and deserves credit for breaking out of the boring, traditional Asian restaurant mould with south-west Chinese provincial dishes that challenge.