Excellent Chongqing Chicken, Noodles and Dumplings Arrive at Best Noodle House! [Review]

Yum. Can I get a supplemental of levofloxacin 500mg with that?

You’re the physician in the house.

I’m just a lowly dishwasher here.

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I actually used google translate to look up the difference. It’s nice to know that a loogie is worthy of distinction around the world.

Seriously? People can’t handle the f-word, but this is okay? I’m so disgusted right now. Thanks for ruining my dinner. Fuckers.

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Thanks for sharing your feast with us, @Chowseeker1999! So many enticing dishes! I really need to get back to the SGV and have the cucumber salad, water boiled fish, stir-fried vegetables, seaweed salad, and the youpo noodles ASAP. Despite having just finished a large meal from Gjusta, I’m jealous of your food at Best Noodle House!

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“The Chinese man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his phlegm.”

  • Confucius.
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i’m pretty sure that literally means saliva, while “水口” means ‘faucet’; i had a friend go to china to teach ESL and he tried to complain about a leaky faucet and couldn’t understand why they kept laughing at him.

Yeah, so I came across this thread right before I came with a friend for dinner. He’s originally from the Chongqing area, so he was really excited. We followed some of your recommendations, and overall really enjoyed the meal. Of course, his father/auntie/himself can cook __ better, but that’s to be expected. At the very least, I now know that this is his homestyle food, and since I enjoy it, my mind will be blown if/when I ever make it to Chongqing itself because he will tell me all the best places to go.

We had the Cold Steamed Chicken with Hot Sauce, Pig Ear with Chili Oil, the Spicy and Numb Cold Jelly, the Youpo Noodle, and the Chongqing Dan Dan Noodle.

My friend did not like the pig ear at all, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I thought there needed to be more chili oil than was drizzled on top of the pig ear. We both enjoyed the cold jelly and the chicken, though his father apparently makes the cold chicken dish better. The sauce with the chicken was quite tasty, but since I try to be lower-carb, I couldn’t take @Chowseeker1999 's recommendation of eating the sauce with rice as bowls of steamed rice don’t exist on my tabletops. We both loved the youpo noodle–I really loved the vinegar in the sauce. The dan dan noodle is even better fresh, and this was deemed “really good” by my friend.

Next time, I’d like to try the Gele Mountain Style Fried Chicken Cubes and some other things on the menu. I’ll also probably re-order the youpo noodle; I cannot emphasize enough just how toothsome those noodles are!

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Hi @strongoxman,

Nice! Good to hear. Strange on the Pig Ears, when we ordered it (twice) it was very well coated / marinated in their Chili Oil. I hope it was just an off / rushed plate on your visit.

Yah those Youpo Noodles are awesome aren’t they? :slight_smile: Fantastic flavors, great texture and chew.

The key to making the chili sauce for the saliva chicken is the right amount of sugar. It’s always tricky finding the right ratio.

uhh… water faucet is actually 水龍頭 …

Maybe Barry’s faucet spits out … saliva?

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in cantonese/toisan sui hou is faucet, hou sui is saliva.

Well aware, but I’m just saying that your buddy teaching ESL in China (where faucet is 龙头 “dragon’s head”, and not “water mouth”) was likely misunderstood if he was translating faucet by character from the Cantonese root phrase.

Personally, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it, and neither did my friend. I think it’s just like with me and meatloaf–my mother’s (and now my) recipe is the best in the world, and while I’ll be polite if someone serves theirs to me, I already know that mine is better.

My friend is literally from Chongqing; this food is his jam, and there’s just no way some mom and pop place in Rosemead, California, is going to be “the best” when he has had a whole lifetime of food to which he cannot be helped but to compare. I knew this going into it, bringing him there. If anything, I figured maybe he could enjoy it as a place to go to scratch the itch when he’s a bit homesick.

I think this is the opposite of the phrase “damning with faint praise”–for my friend to say the dishes are good (in the case of the chicken, I believe he actually said “really good”), but that his auntie/father/neighbor/local hawker does it better, is actually really “praising highly with faint criticism.”

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Real fun place to eat. Took my brothers who are significantly less adventurous eaters than I am and they still mostly enjoyed it, except for the pig ears.

The Saliva Chicken really was incredible. One large piece had a significant amount of red blood being seemingly really undercooked. We avoided that piece. Not sure if part of this is supposed to be raw? Have always assumed red blood in chicken was a no go? But he rest of it is intimately succulent, and the hot sauce is one of the best sauces anywhere. It reminds me a lot of the sauce on the clams at Ruen Pair because it has a heat to it but at the same time is mild (the sauce on Ruen Pair’s clams being described as a spicy mild sauce). It’s alightly saccharine as well, but mostly just very unique in the way it blends heat and sweetness. An difficult to describe dish that has to be tried.

Cucumber Salad was a wonderful dish for $2. Tangy and cool with a nice crunch. It really anchors the meal by co feasting the numbing heat in most of the other dishes, I would say it’s an essential order here as much as the saliva chicken.

Pig Ears in Chili Oil are really good for pig ears and a bargain at $3. More than enough numbing chili oil on them. My brothers didn’t really eat them though. I would say that an essential order because it has so much of the same numbing heat as other dishes and the potion is almost too generous. However, if you love numbing heat and pig ear this is a veritable goldmine of porcine delight.

Chongqing Dan Dan Noodles were excellent. Other than perhaps Lukshons version of this dish, easily the best version I’ve tried. The noodles had a pretty nice heft and chew to them for not being made in house (this is the main thing Lukshon beats them in by making their own noodles). It was more savory than other versions, really nice. Of course quite numbing.

Youpo Noodles might’ve been the best dish after the saliva chicken. The noodles are like super toothsome pappardelle. Just remarkable chew. I am somewhat lot on how you are actually supposed to eat them with chopsticks but regardless the elegant simplicity of astringent greens and soy garlic sauce with these immense noodles was super addictive. It was nice to have a dish that didn’t have numbing heat in it as well in some ways.

Gele Mountain Style Fried Chicken Cubes were very “Americans Chinese” to my brothers haha they were remarkably succulent cubes with a salty punch that went well with the crunchy fried chiles all over the plate. However it was somewhat singular in taste without a ton of dimension I pared to the other dishes. Dipping the chicken into the Saliva Saice helped make it more exciting though.

Their house plum juice is super tasty and pairs extremely well with all of the food in lieu of alcohol btw. Forgot to photograph it though.

Overall including plum juice and tip it was $55 for theee people for some rather unique and incredible cooking. This is the kind of place that I heartily thank these forums for discovering!

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Hi @Aesthete,

Nice report back! Glad you liked it. And good to hear that the dishes seem pretty consistent.

Yah that Cold Steamed Chicken with Hot Sauce (Mouth Water Chicken :slight_smile: ) has a unique sauce. I’ve never had anything quite like it and it’s definitely a standout here.

As is that Youpo Noodles dish. Nice description that it’s like a great toothsome Pappardelle in a way.

Has the chicken ever been bloody on some pieces? Overall your photo of it makes it look more cooked than the one we got. I should’ve shot a detailed shot.

Also, I like that the unique sauce was not necessarily numbing.

I enjoyed eating here way more than Chengdu Taste haha

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Hi @Aesthete,

No, never been bloody. Probably a mistake. We’ve ordered it twice and both times were cooked all the way through.

Bloody chicken is safe to eat. The blood is not from the flesh (or the result of undercooking), but rather from bringing young chickens to market. Their bone mass has not fully developed, or calcified, and as result, the bone mass is very porous. Deeply colored pigment from the bone marrow migrates to the surface and often is visible along the bone and the meat that is immediately attached to the bone.

You’re fine. Of course, if you’re not, nice knowing you. See you on the other side.

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