The best noodle soups in Sydney

The chicken and prawn laksa at Malay Chinese will arrive in a black bowl and piping hot. The coconut-milk based broth is rich, creamy and layered with tiny pools of chilli oil on top, and it’s sweetened with palm sugar. The soup surrounds a mountain of vermicelli noodles dotted with silky chicken, plump prawns, and tofu puffs that look like honeycomb. A dollop of crimson-red sambol brings funk and umami. All up it’s a fiery bowl of goodness. Don’t wear white.

If you’ve been searching for an excuse to take the train to Cabramatta, this is it. Sydney’s little Vietnam has no shortage of pho options, but Pho Tau Bay is a bona fide institution that’s been doling out bowls of soup for more than 35 years. The steamy pho bo is textbook, the clear broth packed with a depth of flavour that knocks your average pho out of the park. Stacked with rare strips of beef, brisket and tendon, the bo option has plenty of bovine protein, but offal lovers can upgrade to the pho dac biet for ribbons of chewy bible tripe.

Growing up, sisters Rowena and Kate Chansiri used to eat a beef noodle soup made by their mum using their grandmother’s recipe. It’s a traditional street-food dish that’s slurped in Chinatowns all over Thailand, and now, they are serving it at their new unassuming Surry Hills eatery, Ama (pronounced ah–maa), which means grandmother in Thai. It arrives in a pretty blue-and-white floral bowl with three types of beef. There are three thick slices of 16-hour braised salt-aged silverside, fall-off-the-bone-soft beef short rib, and round, light-coloured beef balls, as well as verdant Chinese broccoli, spring onions, crisp fried garlic and chewy noodles. The broth is fragrant with Chinese five spice with a great depth of flavour thanks to stock made from the beef bones and caramelised palm sugar. It tastes like a bowl of comfort and love. And it costs 20 bucks.

Chaco Ramen's menu offers six choices, plus one for kids. The Chilli Coriander chicken ramen is often namechecked by chefs about town (Neil Perry is a big fan), but for pork lovers, the Fat Soy is impossible to resist. The style sits close to tonkotsu, but the base is actually chicken stock, made in-house to utilise offcuts. To serve, it’s laced with soy sauce and a choose-your-own-level of pork back fat. (Tip: ‘normal’ level turns the soup completely opaque and leaves your lips slicker than Osher Günsberg’s hair.) Charcoal-kissed chashu pork, crunchy black fungus and shallots are the finishing touches, and a bed of springy noodles awaits underneath. This is a dish every self-respecting Sydneysider should try once.

What is it? A casual BYO eatery in Darlinghurst that delivers big on flavour.

Why we love it: Bowls of khao soi are eaten at tiny roadside stalls throughout northern Thailand, especially in Chiang Mai — and the one they serve at Eat Thai Darlinghurst is especially good. It features a coconut milk-based curry broth that’s sweet, savoury and spicy, with chewy egg noodles, pickled mustard greens for tang, braised chicken and a handful of crisp fried egg noodles on top for crunch. Finished with fresh coriander, a squeeze of lime, slivers of purple onion and smoked chilli oil, it’s incredible — and even better when it’s raining outside.

Time Out tip: There’s also an Eat Thai in Paddington — but the one in Darlinghurst is our pick every time, both price- and flavour-wise. Feel like rice? The kra pao also slaps.

Address: 358 Victoria St, Darlinghurst NSW 2010

Expect to pay: $20–$30

Ryo’s fans swear this is some of the best ramen you’ll find in all of Sydney. Duck your way past the traditional Japanese noren curtains hanging out the front and you’ll feel like you’ve been transported to a Tokyo noodle house. Everywhere you look it’s heads down, as diners hoe into steaming bowls of soup filled with crinkly ramen noodles. There are ten types of ramen to choose from – half with chicken soup, the other half with a rich pork tonkotsu broth, brimming with collagen. Ramen #2 is popular: a tonkotsu soy sauce soup with slices of fatty roast pork, squidgy boiled egg, a nori seaweed sheet and wilted vegetables. You can load up your noodles with extra toppings like butter, sweet corn, garlic and pickles.

What is it? A family-run diner known for its incredible soups and home-style Korean eats. It has a popular sibling restaurant in Strathfield.

Why we love it: People flock to both venues for the signature oxtail soup. The pièce de résistance is the deeply flavoured, cream-coloured broth, simmered for hours in bubbling, witch-like cauldrons at the front of the venue. People say it’s one of the best soups in Sydney – so if it’s your first time, go for that. But for a noodle soup, our pick is the spicy beef. It arrives with enough steam to give you a free facial, the broth flecked with lava-red oil droplets. Gochujang adds a delicious earthy and savoury taste, and there’s a subtle, lingering heat. Slippery noodles, thin slices of beef and spring onion round out a cracking bowl.

Time Out tip: There’s plenty of soju and cold beer in the fridge, but you can also BYO wine for $5 per person. We're also fans of the massive, crisp seafood pancake, dotted with octopus and prawns and brightened by a delicious dipping sauce made from sweet vinegar, mirin and soy.

Address: 39–41 Goulburn St, Haymarket NSW 2000

Expect to pay: $20–$40 for a main

If you’re craving something warm and delicious on a shoestring, head to Harmerket’s Spicy Joint, China’s popular Sichuan chain that is anything but tacky. The Dan Dan noodles come with slippery, bouncy, spaghetti-like noodles, caramelised ground pork with pickled mustard greens, and verdant bok choy. Plus a vibrant and savoury broth spiked with five-spice powder, Sichuan pepper and chilli. And the best part? It costs just $5.90. Yeah, we can’t believe it either. Don’t stop there. The spicy beef hot pot is a flavour-bomb in a bowl, and the garlicy, crunchy, cool cucumber salad is a must-order.

Just like any good aunt, the team at this Marrickville favourite is determined to send you home with a full stomach. Case in point: their Pho Dac Biet. It’s a deeply satisfying bowl of soup, served with all of the requisite trimmings and a side of the restaurant’s signature chilli and lemongrass oil. The broth is rich and umami. The fresh rice noodles come with thin slices of rare Angus beef, chunky meatballs, braised brisket and a hunk of bone-in just-blackened beef rib, to seal the deal. If your mum isn’t available for a hug, we reckon this soup might just be the next best thing.

Ho Jiak’s laksa is considered Nyonya-style, the coconut-and-curry-heavy variation popular in Malay-Chinese cuisine. The soup is equal parts creamy and spicy, tinged red with a hefty layer of chilli oil that plays off against the richness of the coconut, and a served with a side of dried shrimp-laced chilli oil for extra funk. Opt for the Hainan chicken option, and you’ll score a calorific boon big enough for two. Yellow mee and vermicelli noodles are loaded up with slow-poached chicken.

The building blocks of many noodle soups are bone-based stocks, or fermented fish sauces and pastes, meaning the great options are rarely vegan friendly. You might find a light and brothy number, but rarely anything with the heft of a meaty tonkotsu. This may be one of the many reasons why RaRa Ramen is often a full house with a queue that stretches out the door ten minutes into lunch service. Grab a stool by the open kitchen and watch the deft chefs draw ladlefuls of stock to start each bowl. The Vegan Shio Soy ramen uses soy milk for creaminess and amps it up with house-made tare, soy sauce and salt. Hakata-style noodles are made on-site with plenty of bite, and round out the bowl, along with grilled tomato, bamboo shoots and an optional soft egg. The resulting ramen has a creaminess offset by the sweetness of the tomato and soy, with a whack of black pepper thrown in for good measure. It’s completely unlike any other ramen in Sydney.

Legendary ramen restaurant Gumshara may have new digs in Chinatown, but thankfully the ramen has stayed the same. Gumshara has been serving its legendary tonkotsu ramen for more than 14 years, and you need to try it. It takes a whopping seven days to make the pork stock for the tonkotsu ramen and just three ingredients: water, miso and 120kg of pork bones. The result is a rich, soul-warming bowl of noodle soup with an incredible porky flavour and enough guts for two.

Bianca’s Deli caters to homesick South Africans and the local Jewish community. It also caters to those who simply love the fare, letting you replenish your stocks of biltong and matzo ball soup at the same time. Who knew you could do such a thing? Chicken broth (aka Jewish penicillin) has proven healing properties for when you're feeling under the weather, and it's one of those hug-in-a-bowl dishes that you can stash in the freezer for when you need a little pick me up.

Throughout northern Thailand, especially in Chiang Mai, tiny roadside stalls dishing out bowls of khao soi are a common sight. Laksa might seem like the most immediate point of reference for this coconut curry-based soup, but the flavour profile sits somewhere between that and massaman curry. House-made smoked chilli oil delivers Chat Thai's spicy component of that crucial spicy-salty-sweet-and-sour complexity, backed up by pickled Chinese mustard greens and a wedge of lime. Sturdy, fat egg noodles provide a more elastic bite than laksa’s yellow mee, and the crowning glory is a hearty garnish of crisp fried noodles to finish. Just note it's only on their lunch menu.

Cold noodles might seem unusual, but in Korea, it’s standard practice. Traditional icy-cold noodle dishes, locals believe, are filled with ingredients that are quite warming to the body. At the Mandoo, that means your Naengmyeon arrives chilled to the point where you can almost make out ice crystals when the bowl jiggles. A tight twist of slippery thin noodles stands tall in the clear broth, finished with a careful arrangement of spicy gochujang, kimchi, cucumber and boiled egg. Take to the noodles with a pair of scissors, and mix well to get that fermented gochujang funk through every bite. In the unlikely event that the cold noodles don’t warm you up, a few extra spoonfuls of chilli should do the trick.