[Alhambra] [Chinese] 川渝麵莊 Chuan Yu Noodles Town (CLOSED)

Chuan Yu Noodles Town
川渝麵莊
525 W Valley Blvd #B
Alhambra, CA 91803
(626) 289-8966
(CLOSED)

My dad heard about Chuan Yu Noodles Town on a Chinese radio show.  This show airs weekly.  The DJs from the radio station visit a restaurant, try their dishes, and rave about everything.  I don't trust anything they say on the show because it's basically glorified advertisement.  Any restaurant can pay the radio station to be on the show.  So when dad suggested to try this restaurant, I wasn't expecting much.



This place used to be Dai Ho Kitchen (大合滷味).  It's a tiny place with only 5 tables.  They serve Sichuan style dishes.



四川泡菜 Sichuan Vegetables Pickles ($1.95)

Sichuan Vegetable Pickles is listed on the menu for $1.95.  But the lady owner brought a complimentary plate to our table as we browsed through the menu.  The crisp pickled cabbage was slightly sour and slightly spicy.  It was a very simple dish, but done very well.  I was really looking forward to try their food after tasting this small dish.


川北涼粉 Chongqing Spicy and Sour Stick (Mesona) ($3.50)


The lady was really pushing us to order Chongqing Spicy and Sour Stick.  She kept on telling us how good it is, but we weren't really interested.  Then she just took out a bowl of the spicy and sour stick from the kitchen, and told us that she wanted to give it to us for free because she really wanted us to see how good the dish is.  I have to say, she was right.  The dish was absolutely delicious.  The "stick" was made with green beans.  It had the texture of jello, and very similar to the Korean green bean jello.  The sauce was truly amazing.  I could tasted all the spices in it.  It was very addicting.  This cold dish was perfect for the hot weather, too.  I would definitely order this dish next time.


涼拌海帶絲 Seaweed Salad ($1.95)


I like the Seaweed salad.  It was good, but nothing too special about it though.


粉蒸肉 Steamed Pork Belly with Ground Sticky Rice ($6.95)

The lady recommended Steamed Pork Belly with Ground Sticky Rice as one of the specialty dish.  It sounded good so we ordered it.  I thought steamed dishes usually take longer to cook, but this dish came out really fast.  I think they already made it, and probably just heat it up when customers order.  She asked us if we prefer leaner or fattier meat.  We picked lean.  She said the lean pork would be a little drier than the fatty one.  I didn't think it was dry at all.  It was actually quite good with the right proportion of fat and lean meat.  The dish was meant to be eaten with rice.  But we ordered noodles that night, so the meat was a bit too salty to be eaten by itself.  I had the leftover with rice the next day.  It was very good.


紅油過橋炒手 (12個配味碟) Hot Sauce Cross Bridge Wanton (Ground Pork) ($5.95)

Spicy wontons at Szechuan restaurants usually come in a spicy sauce.  But their version had wontons in soup with separate sauces.  This was perfect for us because my mom doesn't eat spicy food.  The two sauces were sesame sauce and spicy sauce.  I like to dip my wontons in both, and both sauces were great.  The wontons were medium size.  Mom likes it a lot.  The soup was somehow tasteless though.  I think maybe we were supposed to add some sauces to the soup as well?


巴渝擔擔麵 Chongqing Dandan Dry Noodles (Ground Pork) ($4.95)

Mom ordered the non-spicy Chongqing Dandan Dry Noodle.  We all like the rich sesame sauce a lot.  Mom even said this dandan noodle was one of the best she's ever had.  This noodle dish also came with a bowl of soup, the same tasteless soup as the wontons.  We didn't even touch it.


四川紅燒牛肉麵 Sichuan Goulash Soup Noodles ($5.95)

Dad wanted to try their Sichuan Goulash Soup Noodles.  I thought it was funny they use the word "goulash".  So gourmet, haha.  It's basically a spicy beef noodle soup.  One word, DELICIOUS!  This was one exceptional bowl of beef noodle soup.  The beef and tendon were flavorful and very tender.  The soup was full of flavor with all the spices.  Noodle was cooked just right.  And I love the addition of bamboo shoot in the soup.  Plus half way through eating, the lady offered to add more soup to the noodle.  Knowing how much Dr. P likes beef noodle soup, I kept on thinking I gotta bring him back here to try it.  After dad had the noodle soup, he even said that we should take Dr. P back here to try this.



What a pleasant surprise!  This little restaurant was super good.  The owner lady was also the waitress and the cook.  Truly a one-person small restaurant.  We like everything about the restaurant, the only problem was there was no air conditioner that night.  The weather was already hot enough, plus the spicy food, all of us were sweating like crazy.  When the lady asked us how was everything as we were paying the bill, we told her it was really hot because there was no AC.  She said she forgot to turn it on.  So they do have AC.  How can they forget to turn on the AC when it is 100 degrees outside?  So that was the only thing we didn't like.  But definitely, definitely we will be back very very soon.

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