Opened first week of May, first date of visit, May 19.

Holy flying goat Batman! Lovers of pho and birria, you will get schooled here. This is where you will encounter a bowl of ethereal pho de chivo (©Sinosoul, hehe). I hate being so flippant but this bowl of lamb noodle soup is so much better than just “lamb”, “soup”, and “noodles”.

JTYH touts Shanxi style noodles, mainly dao xiao mian, (刀削面), knife shaved noodles . This is a serious business at JTYH. The knife-shaved noodles just plain kicks Kam Hong’s arse; they come in longer strands and has an odd semblance of uniformity, despite the total squiggly squiggles. This iteration of shaven dough is also never over cooked ala Kam Hong’s products. They have 3 types of noodles, the dao xiao mian, hand kned noodles and some generic “thin noodle”. No idea what the latter are as the dao xiao mian is all that matters.

During one of the latest visits, powered by the appetite of Citynitz, Kung Food Panda, as well as JC and various SO’s, JTYH’s hot wok and simple flavors shown brightly. Fried chitlin’ flavored to a Szechuan profile (Braised Pork Intestine) was much lauded by all. Pan fried Jin Du flat cake is chewy, crunchy while offering the physique of a double stacked quesadilla. Michelle’s pancakes’s might appeal to LA Times, I will guarantee JTYH’s Jin Du stuffed flat cake is the coolest in all of W. SGV.

The following are 2 of the deepest find at JTYH (strike the mou er dou, it’s been long covered by Jerome on Chowhound): June of ‘08, A bowl of Chinese naeng myun came to me serendipitously on Garvey Blvd at what is now Hengyang Chili King. At $5, it was cold and grand. Flavored with predominantly apple juice, “Chao style iced noodle” was lost in the SGV after Northern Dumpling House was closed in November of ‘08. No worries, tho. Exactly one year later, a similar bowl of “Chao style iced noodles”, aka naeng myun to the Korean readership, is back. This bowl of “Chao style iced noodle” uses the same noodles as naeng myun, but includes kimchi and abundant applique of tender beef brisket, something always missing from actual Koreans bowls of naeng myun.

Beyond Chao style iced noodles awaits more excitement. Flip the menu to its back and you will see a small printed box covering “Snack/Desserts”. Herein lies the deepest Chinese find in SGV for all of 2009: “mian guh dah”. A google search on this subject yields over 2two million hits in Chinese, yet I’ve never seen this darn this in a Chinese restaurant in America, in the last 5 years of dining out. 麵疙瘩, item number 6 and 7, roughly translates noodle pimples. Goose bumps, in Mandarin, roughly translates to chicken “guh duh”, ie, chicken pimples. Snack/Dessert item number 6, tomato scrambled egg “noodle pimples”, was my parents’ ultimate weapon of choice in insipid gastro punishment when I was young and we were poor. Nothing evoked my gag reflex quicker than watching them squeezing dollops of wet slurpy dough into the boiling water in preparation of this dish. Fearing item number 6 would make me puke up my hard earned dinner, I went with the safer item number 7, “noodle pimples” in dried shrimp and napa cabbage soup. The whole concoction wasn’t as bad as I remembered, but it really was nothing more than a mental exercise to trigger childhood memory flavors.

The various items from the deli case are available as combos for $5 (approximately) but of the tripe/cucumber/seaweed/tofu/brisket/tendon/etc. I sampled, all were either too bland, too salty, or just completely WTF.

Finally, a history lession. Mr Gold first wrote of “Dow Xiao” back in 1991 which makes “Heavy Noodling” one of the oldest existing Chinese carb house in all of SGV. He publishes the similar article in Counter Intelligence in 2000, with first mentions on Chowhound’s LA board in 2000 by chadavkl. Due to the LA Times Editor’s choice article title in ‘91, “Dao Xiao” took up the name “Heavy Noodling”. During this period, yours truly was kickin’ it in Ann Arbor, NYC, Chicago, etc., denied of this LA treasure, while Daily Gluttony was satiating her fat fetish with these bowls of wheaty gems. But they suddenly closed the week before “going back to Cali” materialized in my life. Bastards. Since then, every shaved noodle argument ended with: “O, so you never had Heavy Noodling, it was the best, too bad”, ie: “STFU, you never had the end-all, be-all benchmark of knife shaved noodles in LA”. FML.

Now I have. And I took these lousy pix before you did. Neeners.

vs.

Shout out to Wandering Chopsticks for the tip; thanks to Jenny for confirming the status via telephone and the “secret” behind the new, even more wretched name.

JTYH’s Take Out Menu

JTYH
9425 Valley Blvd
Rosemead, CA 91770
T: 626-442-8999
11:00am – 9:30pm
closed Tuesdays

Originally published August 18th.

Browse Timeline

• « technorati
• » SinoHow: The Best Rosemary (e.v.) Olive Oil Ice Cream You’ve Already Had

Comments ( 33 )

Add a Comment