There are few independent restaurants in Western Kentucky and Southern Indiana. I have a couple of “go-to” favoriites, but mostly, the restaurants in this region are fast-casual and family-style dining. But sometimes little gems are right under our noses. Only if we take the time to look.

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I walked through the narrow aisle and scanned the aisles as if I was watching a tennis match. Countless varieties of rice vinegar and soy sauces were stacked like soldiers on the shelves to my left, fresh raw coconuts, papaya’s and three-pound bags of shallots and garlic to my right. I carried  a packet of nori sheets, my lone buy, to the register. A small Asian man fingered boxed candies a few feet from the register where his basket sat filled to the brim. The same man I considered asking if he spoke English a few minutes ago to translate a packet of what looked like thinly sliced dried salmon, marked with Asian script I didn’t understand and a red starburst sticker labeled“new.” But the shopper wouldn’t make eye contact. The moment vanished and he walked away.

I stepped around the same shopper to get to the register to pay. Upon seeing me, he lost complete, utter interest in the candies and scurried to the counter. I glanced at the contents on the shelves of the refrigerated glass container next to the register while I waited. Wakame salad, packaged Gnocchi with purple yams and cheese, fresh rolled glistening, brilliant white rolled noodles wrapped in plastic. A tall man maybe Indian, maybe Pakistani, watched me from an aisle and I wondered what he saw. A middle-aged white woman, alone, buying one item in a sea of goodies in the middle of this bustling International market in Southern Indiana.

I remembered I needed a packet of rice seasoning and gave up my spot in line while the shopper counted out his $5 dollar bills aloud in Chinese, or Mandarin (in retrospect, he could have spoken Korean, or Vietnamese for all I know, my ignorance of the Asian language is ridiculously embarrassing), as if the woman at the register, also an Asian, didn’t understand him. You know how you speak louder when you’re trying to talk to someone and they don’t understand? Except this woman did understand. She repeated his every word referring to the bills, her face soft, her head nodded while she spoke. She looked like the definition of “patience” in the Oxford-Webster dictionary. Their voices faded as I walked to the back of the store down a different aisle. The air smelled musky. I passed two buckets of head-on, shell-on shrimp that sat dangerously near a vat of chicken feet. No commingling of poultry and seafood, I wanted to shout to somebody.

I went back to the aisle where the ten varieties of nori sheets sat figuring I would find the packet for the rice. I’d bought the same packet from the Vietnamese Market in Orlando years ago. It was yellow and red, and about the size of a packet of dry hot cocoa mix. No English on the packet. What amazed me about that packet more than anything, I could see it in my mind’s eye, my memory of it as strong as a cup of Café con Leche, but I couldn’t remember what I watched on television the previous night.

By the time I got back to the register, the line snaked past the glass display case and into the Latin food-inspired aisle.

It was then I noticed the restaurant. A one-person cooking station with a four-burner gas stove top. Beyond that a smattering of tables and chairs behind a plate-glass wall. The room was empty.

How is it I never saw that room? I’d been to this market a dozen times in the past several months.

By the time I got to the register, I watched a woman and a man walk back and forth through the room.

“Is that a restaurant?” I asked the clerk with the patient face.

“Yes. Fresh noodles. She makes them herself. People say they can’t finish them.” She rung my two items, barely making eye contact, instead smiled a Mona Lisa smile.

That was all the bait I needed. I’ll bet I can eat an entire bowl of noodles. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate noodles, but my memory is selective about certain things. Suddenly I craved a bowl of hot noodles from this tiny, empty restaurant attached to this market.

Abandoning all thoughts and preconceived notions about empty restaurants not being good, a vat of chicken feet exposed to fresh air in the back of the store, and the late afternoon hour, I realized the last time I ate was at 9:00 a.m. A bowl of Special K with a handful of blueberries and half banana I looked at my wristwatch. 4:30 p.m. There goes dinner.

“Five dollars, thirty-five cents,” she said.

I handed her a ten and felt a little flutter in my belly. Am I nervous?

I’d spent the afternoon trying on dresses, fingering cheap jewelry, trying on shoes and looking for sparkling sake (to no avail.) This was my second to last stop before I bought the fresh fish for the sushi. I’d had a relaxing afternoon away from my laptop and the incessant pounding from the roofers who’d been hammering shingles onto the roof for over a week.

When I walked into the shop, I knew the noodles would be good, the experience worth mentioning and returning for. I had one of those gut-reactions. The bright white walls, clean turquoise colored tables, and black pleather chairs gave me a comfortable feeling despite its austere look. A flat screen television took up part of one of the walls, the other walls were bare as if there was no need for an aesthetic experience.

“You want noodles?” The woman asked.

“Of course. What’s good?” I asked. The menu selection, a small dry erase board at the entrance offered beef, chicken, pork or vegetable noodles. No drinks, sides, or salads.

“You like beef?”

“Yes,” I said. Then added as an afterthought, “but spicy, please.”

“You like spicy beef?” She smiled a warm smile and her eyebrows arched up creating a wave of wrinkles on her otherwise smooth forehead.

She is amused by me, the middle-aged white woman in the sun hat and Turkish rose-pink lipstick.

“Sit,” she said. “I make.”

I loved her at that moment. I sat at a table near the window for the natural light so I could capture a few photos of the food. Then realized the room was so bright, I’d rather see her cook, so I moved to the next table. As soon as sat, I realized the table was dirty and thought of all the times my customers at The Spoon would choose to sit at the only unclean table in the restaurant. It was one of those weird and unexplained things that happen in the restaurant business.

I moved to the next table.

She handed me a cup of tea from behind the counter.

“You are so beautiful,” she said as I reached for the tea.

“You’re so generous. Thank you.” My hand went to my heart and I sucked in a deep breath. Boy did she know how to milk a customer.

“It’s barley tea,” she said.

“Perfect.” As if barley tea was something I drank all the time, when in fact I never had it in my life.

I decided right then I’d call her Mama, and I also knew I’d come back once a month. All this before I even ate her noodles.

Next she handed me a plate of green papaya salad. I ate as if I hadn’t eaten in weeks. Fresh, pickled, light and sweet, I felt transported back to VI-MI, the Vietnamese community in Orlando.

I watched Mama and her husband do a little tango behind the four-burner. He fluffed the noodles in a hot water bath. She poured oil into a wok and added black beans, beef and a special spicy red sauce. He added sliced tomatoes into the bowl, then added the drained noodles. She poured the beef concoction over the top, then added some greens and shredded carrots. Then she placed the bowl on the counter and I leapt from my seat to retrieve it.

Marrow scented, beefy, warm noodles slide into my mouth. I tasted cinnamon, or anise. I couldn’t tell. The perfect amount of heat. I slurped the noodles, not considering my thought to dare myself just minutes ago to eat the entire bowl, just content to eat the warm, soft, chewy beef and noodles.

Of course I couldn’t finish the bowl.

“Okay Mama,” I said into the back room behind the four-burner stove.

“You want this to go?”

“No, thanks. It’s too much.”

“You’ll tell all your friends?” she asked, again those eyebrows pushed up.

“Of course.”

The Mona Lisa smiling clerk was right. But it wasn’t because the portion was big (although it was), it was because the food was so damn good. You’ll eat until you can’t, too.

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Aihua Sun and her husband (pictured) own Aihua International Market and Noodle Shop. Appetite required.

Aihua International Market; 1624 North Green River Rd.; Evansville, Indiana; 47715; 812-479-7168; Sit-down or take out; Wheelchair access; Ample parking; $-$$.