The BBQ pork laksa homes in on a hero ingredient, and could there be a bigger hero than pork? Photo: Tenele Conway.
In 1997, the ANU student newspaper Woroni called Dickson Asian Noodle House an institution.
Having only been open for three and a half years, it might have been a little premature, but you can’t argue with a uni student, and given 30-odd years of hindsight, they were right on the money.
Those early stories speak of cheap and cheerful dining, where a generous bowl of green curry beef would set you back $8.90, and flavour was never sacrificed for price. Some of those reviews are still proudly pinned to the front window of the now-legendary restaurant like a badge of honour. It’s a very Canberra habit, giving your mid-’90s food press pride of place, and I find it charming.
As you’d expect, inflation has pushed the prices of the meals up over the years, but it still fits into the cheap and cheerful category, and I’ve rarely walked away in the last 12 months having paid much over $50 for a meal for two.
I’ve happily queued for a table at Dickson Asian Noodle House more times than I can count, and having eaten my way through most of the menu, I’ve never found a clanger among the many southeast Asian dishes. They are the definition of consistency and reliability, and, truth be told, consistency is the foundation of all restaurants that become institutions.
Can you call yourself a Canberran if you haven’t stepped inside the Dickson Asian Noodle House? Photo: Tenele Conway
Despite the varied menu packed full of classics, if you ask many of the regulars why they keep coming back week after week, year after year, they’ll tell you it’s the laksa. It’s a dish they built their name on early, and their reputation in that space has only grown with time.
In 1995, cook Alyssa Devanny was reported as saying that she had set herself a life quest to figure out the recipe for the curry laksa served at Dickson Asian Noodle House. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t figure out the right combination of lemon, coconut and chilli.
While that’s an admirable life quest, I’d say, why bother? You can run down to Dickson and grab a bowl from the experts for around $20, so cut yourself a break and do that instead.
I did just that on a recent Saturday, and as I peered into my heaving bowl of lurid orange soup and fished out its many wonders, I pondered, ” What makes this laksa so good?
There are 10 varieties of laksa on the current menu. They were once available in both half-sized and regular bowls, but now come in just one size. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the current bowl is quite as large as the old regular. I guess that when they standardised the serving size, they split the difference between the two, landing somewhere in the middle.
When ordering, first find your hero, be it chicken, beef, seafood, duck, fish, prawns, or go meat-free with the vegetable version. On my recent visit, I went for BBQ pork, and my dining companion went for the big daddy, the jumbo laksa, which combines all of the proteins, including the seafood, and if you ask them, there is no other laksa to get.
The jumbo laksa combines all the laksa ingredients into one lucky-dip bowl. Photo: Martin Conway
If we’re going to dissect it, and I can’t think of a better thing to dissect, a lot is going on here, and there’s definitely not just one secret to this laksa.
It’s in the balance of the broth, which has body without being claggy. It’s rich and sweet without being cloying. It has a little spice, but it doesn’t detract from the aromatics like the lemongrass, garlic and galangal. The fried shallots add depth and aren’t as bitter as they can be when overcooked, and they go the extra mile by including two types of noodles – a yellow wheat noodle and a thin vermicelli noodle. Many laksa joints have dropped the second noodle, and that’s a travesty.
Dunking your chopsticks into the jumbo laksa is like a wonderful lucky dip where every retrieval comes with a payoff. Puffed tofu, duck, chicken, BBQ pork, squid, prawns, crab stick, some token greenery, maybe choi sum.
There was a brief and devastating period of time when the puffed tofu changed, but thankfully, they reverted to the OG variety, the type that, when you hold it under the surface, air bubbles rise as it becomes bloated with broth.
The whole thing is a sensory experience and one that you shouldn’t wear white for, a rookie mistake that I made this day.
The BBQ pork version is just as good, less of a lucky dip and more like coming back time and again to visit a reliable friend, and a friend bearing pork is a friend indeed.
It’s safe to say the laksa here lives up to its legendary status. At this point, the bigger question is whether you can really call yourself a Canberran if you haven’t tried it.
Dickson Asian Noodle House is located at 29 Woolley Street, Dickson. They’re open 6 days a week, Tuesday to Sunday, from 11 am to 8:30 pm.
Original Article published by Tenele Conway on Region Canberra.
