It is beyond difficult to get recognition in a professional restaurant review.

Witness this exclamation in reference to Pal Cabron’s review. Witness this old Chowhound post in relation to this South El Monte Pho round up.

The Western San Gabriel Valley is our stomping ground. Kung Hua, the closest “written-about” Chinese restaurant, is only 1425 feet away. While Asian food (sans Japanese) isn’t the only thing that goes into this stomach, geographically, it is the most accessible. Though sometimes, restaurants still escape by; think Lung Lung (to be featured shortly), Pearl’s Kitchen and A&J Bakery. Without serendipitous good fortune, a tumultuous relationship requiring a good shrink, an obsessive desire to be the glorious first, and a deep hunger for new gastro-ventures, JTYH wouldn’t have made it onto the radar .

Mr. Gold on JTYH, Rosemead, CA

To be honest, the tablemate for life discovered this place. She likes memes and she likes odd signage. “JTYH Market”, with a row of extremely complex looking Chinese characters underneath, is right up her alley. Personally, restaurants sporting “Blue Hills” has greater appeal but… what the hey, the vinyl signage said Shanxi shaved noodles and who’s not a sucker for house-made “pasta”? The rest is history. Or is it?

Despite going live with the first version of a 4000 word Q2, 2009 SGV rundown containing the JTYH blurb on August 18th, the poorly edited, non-pictorialized, 3 months late post was removed from the public eye a few days later. It didn’t garner much traffic. Not J. Gold worthy traffic.

During August, Kung Food Panda took a group of fine folks, including The Gastronomy Blog, with at least 10x the traffic of this site, to Rosemead. On the 28th, The Gastronomy Blog featured JTYH, sporting a super sexy mnemonic featuring “Justin Timberlake”. September 3, the original JTYH piece was extracted from the monstrous Q2, 2009 run down and cross posted onto Chowhound, as well as this site, after new info on the restaurant was received and verified. On Sept 9, Squid Ink’s Noah Galuten provided the first linkback. Sept 22, Runaway Squirrels (who has lunched with Mr. Gold) published her post of JTYH.

Then on Sept 27, Mr. Gold (who teases with extracts from his review on Twitter) issued this tweet, and I began to wonder:

Mere days before the weekly LAW Thursday review published, both Eating LA and Food GPS published reviews, both with credits. Wednesday night, Bsideblog did a quick round up (and honestly B, I don’t always read the round ups…) and that’s when it finally dawned.

Last summer, Yelp Los Angeles interviewed Mr. Gold for its blog. The decision to start this blog was heavily motivated by one sentence from Mr. Gold:

And I think Tony C hates me, but I like the vengeance with which he attacks the restaurant search.

On this blog’s First Blogiversary, October 10, (Taiwanese National Day, ie, 雙十節), Eating Valley Blvd will go live at http://www.eatingvalleyblvd.com. It will solely feature Asian eateries from Valley Blvd, between the 710 and the 605 freeway, covering approximately 8 miles. With the advent of Eating Valley Blvd, more space will be dedicated here to thuggy Carson eats, (really) lousy Long Beach eats, random LA street eats, and perhaps even some Indonesian experiences, replete with brain curries, from West Covina.

In the end, this post is really a thank you, to all the neighbors (hi DG, hi WC!), the readers (hi tricerpops!), the commenters (hi WeezerMonkey! Food She Thought! MyLastBite! Gourmet Pig! et al.), the email pals (hi Diana!), the writing inspiration (that’s Infinite Fress), et al.

And yes, I still have that post-coital glow. If I smoked, I would be on my third pack of the week.

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