After losing count of people telling me that a Chinese restaurant in the Southside was "Glasgow's best," I had to check it out.
Nestled just a few minutes' walk from Mount Florida train station on Clincart Road is The Real Wan.
The unassuming exterior and no-frills setup of the restaurant wouldn't usually suggest booked-out tables and a slew of reviews describing the food as "mindblowing."
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Before going any further, it must be said that this is a Southwest Chinese restaurant, so there's no chow mein on the menu - instead, there's an array of dishes I'll admit I'd never heard of.
It's also worth noting that I'd argue you need to enjoy a bit of spice to get a full run at the menu, but it's a balanced spice that deserves its place in the dish, not over-the-top heat in place of flavour.
Cracking open a few brought-from-home cans (The Real Wan is BYOB with a corkage charge of £5 per head), my friend and I peruse the menu and order two snacks: the 'life-changing' peanuts with chilli shells and roasted broad beans.
Straight out of the gate, I'd suggest a slight change to the menu; the broad beans are in fact the "life-changing" option of the two, an absolute treat and a reasonable £4.
The menu itself deserves the time it'll take you to chew through the snacks, as the dishes, a taste of the chef's home city of Guiyang, all jump off the small menu with promises of flavours and noodle types I'd never seen.
Split into 'Wee Wans', tapas-sized dishes, and 'Big Wans' for mains. I opted for a portion of the beef Geda noodles as my 'Big Wan', large, almost ravioli-sized and shaped, thick noodles seeped in a tomatoey garlic chilli sauce for £12.50.
The unique noodles soak up all of the flavour, and the salty beef is perfectly balanced with a kick of spice.
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Sharing other 'Wee Wans', we ordered fried pork dumplings, £7.50, which come coated in a crispy tempura 'skirt', stir-fried squid, £14, and the dish which topped the lot for us, the chewy rice cakes.
Combining the rice cakes, small penne pasta shaped tubes with a surprising texture, with Chinese cured sausage, £9, was the perfect choice.
The dry chilli, pickles and garlic combined in the homemade sauce made for a flavour which had both of us at the table picking at the leftover garnish in the bowl for morsels.
After sitting back to enjoy the rest of our carry-out while the food settled, we agreed that it's no wonder that The Real Wan recently moved to a larger location.
The restaurant, which used to be a more hole-in-the-wall spot in Cathcart, is inundated with walk-ins, but none can get a seat.
That popularity, which is only growing, is well deserved.
After dining there for the first time, I'll be singing its praises and joining with the growing chorus that it is the best Chinese restaurant in Glasgow.
