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ABSENT-MINDEDNESS shouldn't come to someone still in their 20s, but I suppose it's got to hit you at some time. While I've been forgetting birthdays and introducing people by the wrong name for years, the affliction has worsened in recent years.

So bad has it become that I answered the phone giving someone else's name a few weeks ago.

And were it not for the fact a careless walker bumped into me on the pavement of Bangor High Street, my doziness means I would never have noticed Noodle One.

I must have walked past its front door dozens of times since it opened this summer, and not spotted it once.

That is nothing against the restaurant itself - because once seen, I couldn't believe I had missed it.

So thankfully, Noodle One was noticed, lunch at one of the more traditional spots in Bangor was cancelled, and the appointment at this new venue was hastily rearranged.

So good was that lunch, I was back within a week for this Taste Test, with another friend in tow.

Noodle One champions the minimalistic - going for very plain, clean walls and wooden desks arranged in rows, meaning you may be sitting next to a complete stranger.

Intimate it ain't, and it's quite difficult to have a quiet conversation without it echoing across the whole room, but this is the only real niggle.

On one screen in the corner of the room, there are Japanese animated films on loop, and as a fan of the Studio Ghibli films that always seem to be shown here, I was almost as transfixed by the big screen as I was by my meal.

The food itself is all of Eastern origin, with Japanese, Chinese and Thai thrown in for good measure.

My friend Craig and I decided not to go for the starters, which is lucky, as there aren't any on the menu.

Instead, we ordered (vainly, it turned out - our eyes were bigger than our stomachs) three different side dishes.

Prawn toasts were impressively hefty affairs, which actually felt as though they had plenty of prawn on them, compared to their deep-fried namesakes you'll find elsewhere.

The vegetable won-tons were light, crispy and surprisingly sweet, and went down a treat. The chicken satay skewers were a bit of a let-down - while still irresistible, they were just too big and a little on the dry side.

To be honest, having already seen the size of the main courses, I needn't have ordered any sides, but I felt obliged since readers have a right to know.

So it's all your fault.

My chicken noodle soup was huge. It came served in an enormous dish, chock-full with chicken broth, vegetables, fresh noodles and what felt like several chickens.

Just the right side of spicy, it is a meal in itself, and for £5.95, it is the best value meal I've had this century. Probably.

It comes with a wooden ladle and chopsticks - not the most elegant way of eating soup, possibly, but authentic, so commendable.

Luckily, the helpful waitress offered us any cutlery we wanted beforehand, although this did not stop pools of soup forming on my shirt.

Again, the only downside is there was just too much, leaving me feeling guilty at seeing so much chicken left over.

Craig's Thai red curry with king prawns was a more modest affair, but no worse value, coming, unusually, with chunks of aubergine. You'd think it wouldn't work, but it did, I'm told.

Purely in the name of research of course, I had to see which desserts were on offer too.

A cup of green tea cut through the weight of my main meal, and prepared me well for afters.

And while the last course can often be a let-down in oriental eateries, they were among the strongest points here.

I plumped for a jasmine and green tea panacotta, an unusual version of its western equivalent, and coming with a wild blackberry sauce and almond biscuits. I'm still not quite sure where those two ingredients went in the panacotta though.

Craig, by his own admission not a dessert man, went for the ginger ice-cream, which turned out to be the perfect light come-down to what preceded it.

In an hour and a half, we had ordered, eaten, paid and left - staff clearly follow the model of Japanese efficiency while never being anything less than polite and friendly.

I'll be back here again, especially if you can eat as well and we did for such good value - just over £35 for what we ate and drank is remarkable.

Bangor, contrary to claims in this column earlier this year, is now becoming quite an exciting place to eat.

So thanks to Noodle One, I'll be making sure I keep my eyes open next time I'm on Bangor High Street.

166, High St, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 1NU
Tel: 01248 354418