Review: Wokmix
This is the first in a series of restaurant reviews of cuisines in unexpected places. Think: a Bavarian Beirhaus in western China, an Ethiopian buffet in the jungles of Nicaragua or a Moroccan restaurant in rural Scotland. This time I visited a Chinese takeaway in the Slovenian city of Maribor.
Wokmix sits a few streets away from the heart of Maribor. Situated on a common thoroughfare on the way to the city’s university, the restaurant is often frequented by throngs of university students interested in immersing themselves in the nuances of ethnic cuisine.
As I entered the restaurant on an overcast spring afternoon I was greeted with only the faint smell of soy sauce. Any overwhelming smells that might allude to the restaurant’s foreign nature had been faithfully taken care of. This was a sure sign of things to come. The walls were covered in bright red tiles and advertisements of the lunchtime offers available for students who presented their university ID card. Next to the counter was a small aquarium filled with fish that were weeks too fresh to be on the menu. Anything on this restaurant’s menu had met its maker many months ago and had been in a deeply frozen state since then.
Behind the counter was as a short Slovenian woman probably in her mid-fifties. Her face was wrinkled and small like a shrunken head sitting on an oversized body. In the kitchen behind her was a man in his thirties, assumedly, of Chinese origin. His love of singing in the kitchen contrasted the cash-register lady’s inability to smile. How did these two people know each other? Were they a couple? Had the man come for a trip through Maribor and had fallen for a woman twenty years his senior? Was the woman, assumedly the owner, just a fan of Chinese food and wanted to bring it to the Slovenian masses? These questions flooded my mind, but I needed to focus on ordering.
The menu consisted of three dishes spread over an entire A4 page. Ultimately you could get fried noodles, fried rice or fried rice noodles. All with either beef, chicken, vegetables or shrimp. No flavourings were mentioned in the menu. This was a further indicator of things to come. I opted for fried rice noodles with chicken.
After a short wait a white Chinese takeaway box was slammed down on the glass counter. It sat unassumingly as the Slovenian woman gave me the signal to approach. Under the counter was a container filled with chopsticks and next to it a container filled, albeit less full, with takeaway forks. Clearly the chopsticks were just for show because everyone was given a fork with their meal. Chopstick mastery lessons were less of a focus in eastern Slovenia. That was more of a Ljubljana thing. I took my box and my fork to a table in the window.
Opening the box I found a glut of thin noodles covered in an indiscriminate black sauce. Small portions of cabbage and carrots were scattered throughout the noodles with three slices of onion found at the bottom - an onion surprise for the end of the meal. Dry pieces of chicken breast adorned the pile of noodles like a poultry crown. I attacked the meal with my bamboo fork, scooping up some noodles and not much else. With each bite I enjoyed the subtleties and limited flavours of vaguely Chinese cuisine. With no chillies or superfluous flavours to overwhelm my tastebuds, I was able to appreciate a unique fusion of Chinese and Slovenian cultures.
