KERB Loves: Flavours of Youth. Combining cities, regeneration, comfort food (noodles) and storytelling, this new anime film is about three millennials trying to recapture parts of their lives that have faded from view – “memories locked in a bowl of steaming noodles, a fading beauty discovering her way, and a bittersweet first love”.
Food is one of the bridges that helps these lonely souls reconnect with their former selves. We’ve all felt it – the urge to get lost in London’s China Town for a quick recharge of steamed comfort dumplings, intriguing Sichuan hotpot window shopping or a molten custard bun or two… The first of three chapters in Flavours of Youth is ‘The Rice Noodles’, a dish close to our hearts at the moment after inKERBator, Yun, joined us two months ago and we can’t get enough of the ‘Crossing The Bridge Rice Noodles’.
Flavours of Youth – great article from Eater
Or watch it on Netflix
Romance clip of the noods.“What gave me strength was the one with the seasonal ingredients and the San X’ian noodles”
On the topic of anime food, we love this Instagram by @en93kitchen that recreates iconic food scenes from Studio Ghibli Films. (Studio Ghibli is known worldwide for its storylines, its characterisation and beautiful animation), like Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbour Totoro.
A favourite of KERB Team, Ollie Hunter’s:
“I remember in Howl’s Moving Castle being absolutely blown away by the detail of someone pausing and having a conversation whilst putting another slice of bacon in a frying pan, when they cut to it later one slice is less cooked than the other”
MORE love for noodles:
Jay Rayner’s written a great article in the Guardian article on new spot Xi’an Biang Biang Noodles; “I left thinking all was well in the world”, though he brings attention to the bubbling complex times or British Chinese Eateries.
“On the one hand the opening up of China has resulted in a glorious flowering in the variety of Chinese food available in Britain’s cities. We have gone from the days of the orange and the sticky, a disfigured approximation of Cantonese food, to the fiery hit of Sichuan and Hunan, through to the soupy dumplings of Shanghai and the cumin-crusted meat skewers and ribbon noodles of northern China. If you’re a bit handy with a pair of chopsticks these are great times to be alive.
That is the frothy excitement. The bedrock of the sector, those original Cantonese restaurants, are in peril”.
