Noble House, Southsea | Takeaway review

One of the common pitfalls of takeaways can be just sticking to the same old dishes every time – especially when ordering a popular cuisine such as Chinese.
Noble House in Osborne Road, Southsea.Noble House in Osborne Road, Southsea.
Noble House in Osborne Road, Southsea.

So with visiting restaurants off the cards for the foreseeable future maybe it is time to be bold with our takeaway choices.

And this is certainly possible when ordering from the Southsea-based Chinese eatery Noble House.

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Located in Osborne Road, which is a hotspot for great restaurants, cafes and takeaways, Noble House offers up an enormous range of Peking, Szechuan and Cantonese foods ensuring there really is something for everyone to try.

A selection of food from Noble House, including mock duck pancakes (left) and the vegetarian starters.A selection of food from Noble House, including mock duck pancakes (left) and the vegetarian starters.
A selection of food from Noble House, including mock duck pancakes (left) and the vegetarian starters.

With this in mind your Dish Detective may have gone a bit overboard when ordering for themselves and a companion one dreary lockdown evening.

We order over the phone rather than using an online service such as Just Eat or Deliveroo to make the most of Noble House's free delivery offer on orders of more than £25 in our postcode.

The food (bags and bags of it) arrives promptly and piping hot. Even through the containers and bags we can still smell the delicious spices and fresh ingredients used in the dishes.

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First to be served is the vegetarian starter selection. For £5.45 you get fried crispy seaweed, deep fried crispy vegetarian wontons, crispy vegetarian spring rolls and mock chicken satay – made of seitan, a meat substitute that comes from gluten.

Each of these is delicious without being too salty or greasy, as can be a problem with some takeaways.

However, the mock chicken satay served on a stick impresses most with its meat-like texture and rich peanut sauce.

Continuing the theme of fake meat we then help ourselves to the vegetarian aromatic mock duck with pancakes and salad. This dish, priced at £8.50, is also made from seitan but this time is a fitting alternative to duck.

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Wrapped up in the pancakes with strips of cucumber and loaded with a sweet plum sauce you would be forgiven in mistaking it for the real thing.

We then move on to what can be argued as the main dish – although by this point we have surely eaten enough for a family of four.

We opt for the vegetarian mock chicken with ginger and spring onion (£5.65), which we serve with vegetable Mandarin style vermicelli noodles (£5.95) that are extremely thin but with a tasty sweet and sour flavour. These easily make two very large meals with oodles of noodles to spare.

And as if we aren't already greedy enough we add a portion of aubergines in Szechuan sauce (£4.95) to this.

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Despite perhaps being an odd mix of dishes, the flavours complement each other really well and the sauces on the mock chicken and aubergines prevent the noodles becoming too dry. Both the sauces are sweet and spicy, with the mock chicken being the stand-out with its tangy ginger sticky sauce making it a must-try.

Although it seems like we have ordered every meal under the sun from Noble House what we have sampled is a mere fraction of what is on its highly extensive menu.

And meat-eaters fear not: the vegetarian options make up just a small portion of what is available, with dishes ranging from steamed scallops to spare ribs to 'real' chicken in ginger and spring onion to be found.

Our gluttonous venture into the menu of Noble House leaves us extremely full but with no regrets.

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I know as soon as Dish Detective is allowed I will be making the pilgrimage to the restaurant itself to see if the venue is just as wonderful as its food.

But in the meantime a takeaway from Noble House is a surefire way to postpone any lockdown blues.