79139 Wed Mar 01 17:50:53 -0800 2006 4 2 Los Angeles Area 0 437052 In this week's LA Weekly review of 101 Noodle Express in Alhambra, J. Gold says he learned about this place from reading Jerome's posts on Chowhound. Awesome. By the way, has anyone tried their Shandong chicken? It's advertised on the Chinese language TV stations exhaustively, which may be one reason for the crowds. Link: http://www.laweekly.com/counter-intelligence/12775/lets-roll Wed Mar 01 17:50:53 -0800 2006 0 Hailyn 1 437055 that's awesome! congrats jerome! from what i hear JG is an old-school chowhounder from back in the day. perhaps he gets his ideas from here more often than we think... (quick! i need to find a place no one else has heard of yet...) Wed Mar 01 17:59:19 -0800 2006 437052 0 rickmond 2 437069 Wow. That's an honor. I've been reading Jonathan gold's reviews for years and was a little miffed when he started with (was it) Gourmet magazine(?). Glad he's backed and pleased that he's learned about 101 noodle express from me. I can say that I think I learned about the old 3-6-9 almost across the street from 101 noodle express from him, although he never pushed my fave dish there, the ginkgo nuts with some veg/meat thing (kaofu, or mianjin or such). One little note: for someone who reads Chinese, 101 noodle express is hard to miss - they have a huge Large-character sign, about the size of the old propaganda billboards in Beijing, touting to the character-reading world that they have Dezhou PaJi chicken. That is a specialty about as famous and regional in china as say jambalaya or memphis bbq or carolina pulled pork might be in the US. Second little note on 101 noodle express - they changed the name of the restaurant in chinese recently because, duh, most of the chinese (huaqiao) and descendants of chinese (huayi) in the area aren't that familiar with Shandong. The only difference is the character - they're homophones (same tone even). The old name LuWeiJu meant braised-meat flavor office/establishment - and it's a well-known place in Ji'nan (i think), the capital of Shandong. The new character for Lu is the poetic name for Shandong province, shared with the name of the feudal state in that area in the time of Confucius. So Shandong folks would have been taken with the old name (the same way that some folks here had to try the reportedly awful LouWaiLou in Arcadia because it shared a name with the famous Hangzhou restaurant), but the new name will impress Chinese folks from other regions. Wed Mar 01 18:53:49 -0800 2006 437055 0 Jerome 3 437095 That was quite a compliment, coming from Mr. Gold! Kudos to you Jerome, and keep up the great chowhounding :-) Wed Mar 01 19:49:00 -0800 2006 437069 0 DanaB 1 437059 Well-deserved kudos, indeed! Wed Mar 01 18:26:12 -0800 2006 437052 0 Christine