The “Face to Face” Noodle Shop
Now you may be wondering what “face” has to do with “noodle” .
Well, nothing in the English language. But in spoken Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin dialects), the two words sound alike – “mien” . In written Chinese, they look alike, too.
| Face | - | 
|
| Noodle | - |  |
The Chinese character for “face” is what may be called a single character, whereas “noodle” is made up of two Chinese characters – “mak” (Cantonese) on the left, meaning “wheat”, and “mien” (Cantonese and Mandarin) on the right, meaning “face” .
So the owners of this noodle shop in my neighbourhood came up with the novel idea of calling the shop “Face to Face” . And the character used is the one for “face” , not the one for “noodle” .
Why?
I have no answer to that, unless I go by and ask them one of these days. But I would hazard a guess and say it might be because “face” is a simpler character to write than “noodle” . No, seriously, it’s probably because it just makes a good conversation starter. Plus, it probably gets people curious to go in and try the menu.
Which was what I did. I was curious about the shop’s name and went in to see what they had to offer. In fact, I didn’t relate the name to noodles, and thought it was the usual cafe offering a variety of dishes. I was wrong. The shop sells nothing but noodles. After I had a look at the menu, the meaning of the shop’s name became clear to me.
“Face to Face” noodle shop sells a variety of noodles, but its Chef’s Recommendation is Sarawak noodles – a dry noodle topped with soy sauce and minced meat. In addition, there are two variations – black soy sauce and chilli sauce.
I tried the original and it was good. And the serving large. Yummy …
In fact, writing about it now is making me hungry. Maybe I go there for lunch afterwards. And take some pictures, too.
