101 Noodle Express

The stretch of Valley Boulevard in Alhambra between Atlantic and New Avenue boasts such an impressive array of Asian restaurants that it is unofficially dubbed “The Golden Mile.” Heading this all-star list are “The Kitchen,” “The Boiling Crab,” “The Jazz Cat,” and “The Boat House,” and these are just the ones that sound like New Orleans jazz clubs. If you like Vietnamese, there’s “Noodle City” and even better, “Che Cali.” It may be my favorite in the area because you can watch the female chefs make your banh mi sandwiches. If you’re enterprising enough (and I am not), you may even get some digits. In the arena of Thai, you have “Noodle World,” “Thai World,” and my favorite, “Siam Express.” For about $5.50, you can eat like Thai royalty at this strip-mall dive just a block west of New Avenue. The chicken curry is a fluorescent orange wonder, where the marriage of heat and sweet reminded of you why you like Thai in the first place. Right next door is their understated neighbor “101 Noodle Express.” It’s hard to make your name in this town but if you had to, you could do worse than their Shandong beef roll. On this point, I’ll defer to a more enlightened writer who described this beast as a cousin to the Tepeyac burrito of East LA. This is a whopping, cosmic “egg roll,” with a peppered, sweet beef packed with something green. Cilantro? Lettuce? Not sure. Who can remember? Most of this thing, mercifully cut in parts, ended up as a midnight snack. Also on my table was a “fried pancake” which was like a chicken chow mein but instead of noodles, they cut up something that was like strips of fried pita bread. Did I like it? I’m not quite sure. What I most certainly did not like is the “small fish with peanuts.” Silly me, I thought I was going to get a catfish with a peanut-type batter. What I got was dried guppies staring at me with a “how could you?” look, swimming around a bowl of whole, salted peanuts. Not my cup of tea. Stick to the Chinese burrito and you’ll be alright.