If you’ve been flirting with the variety of Asian restaurants that have surfaced in town of late, you’ll have already experienced that they range from great (Izakaya) and average (East) to disappointingly par-average (Sushi On Bloor). The influx of new entries show that Asian flavours still lure in the masses in a big way, but it’s the Asian fast-food, tapas variety that is the current darling off the culinary world.

Clutching onto that very concept and adapting it into a cute-as-a-button eatery on West Queen West (near Trinity-Bellwoods), SweetLuLu provides some of the simplest but still-solid fare to hit the ‘hood since Chippy’s, and even that’s gotten tired. The hip and shiny eatery is a jet-fueled dynamo of bubblegum design and cheap eats; owners must have looked at that lonely Queen West block and said, "Bro, you’re lifeless, boring, and you need some fresh, irresistible SweetLuLu to pump some life into you."

And to some extent, that’s what SweetLuLu has done, by offering delightful simplicity in Asian noodle dishes that runs parallel, in fact, to what Banzai Sushi did to contemporize sushi in ‘04. It’s not as big, nor clubbish, but it churns out fun Asian fare; expect quick starts like plates of shrimp satay tiger shrimp pooled in a sweet chili sauce, and plates of marinated Chicken Satays served with satay sauce. Both go down very nicely with a Tsing Tao. But SweetLuLu is building street cred for its confident spin on custom-made signature noodle dishes cooked to order.

Noodle dishes are probably the common denominator of Asian fast food, and Sweet Lulu capitalizes nicely by providing a crisply edited menu that sprints us through a design-your-own series of options in order to a create noodle dish tuned to your otherwise fussy desire. Though it hits some confusing potholes along the way, the menu takes us exactly where SweetLuLu wants us to go. It’s clever enough not to patronize diners with an instruction manual, but just a little hand-holding through the many different options to be had, and want you to exploit that for a little extra fun.

First, the menu instructs us to pick our desired rice or noodles; wheat noodles, hokkien noodles (thick shanghai egg noodles), rice stick (pad Thai noodles), stir fried rice or steamed Jasmine rice. Once that’s done, we choose our flavour; Thai, Malay, Chinese, or blackbean.