Noodle House has apparently been in Monterey Park for a year, but I’d never heard of it until a Chowhounder who goes by exilekiss posted a review this week. The anonymous poster’s words inspired a mid-week drive to a San Gabriel Valley strip mall, and we weren’t disappointed.

Noodle House holds only eight tables, with fluorescent lighting bright enough to make me see spots. Thankfully, we weren’t here for the décor. Turns out we were here for some of the best dumplings in L.A., all made to order. A waiter informed us that owner Hua Shu Qi hails from Tianjin, near Beijing, and taught everybody else to make fresh dumplings and noodles. She’s clearly an excellent teacher.

“Thin” and “flat” noodles are made in the kitchen. Our bowl of thin noodles came with a bowl of bean sauce loaded with ground pork ($5.25). They were topped with separate piles of raw vegetables: sprouts, mung beans, scallions, julienned carrots and cucumbers. The idea is to dump the sauce in the bowl and stir the hot noodles with the cool vegetables. It was a pretty good bowl of noodles, but we probably would have been better off with a noodle soup, which our waitress raved about.

Noodle House sold out of scallion pancakes and simmered beef pancakes, but we still had plenty of other options. Dumplings come water (boiled), steamed or “pot stick” (pan-fried). Our pork and leek potstickers (10 for $6.99) were crisp and browned on the bottom, with juicy fillings.

Here’s the flip side of the potstickers, to give you a sense of how thin and moist the skins were.

Steamed pumpkin and shrimp dumplings (10 for $6.99) featured market-fresh shrimp, flecks of pumpkin and scallion. Strangely, two of the dumplings contained shrimp, mushrooms and onions instead. The kitchen was a half-hour from closing when we arrived, so they must have been running low on ingredients. The pumpkin and shrimp dumplings were clearly superior.

We closed with pork string bean steamed buns (8 for $5.99). The dough was light and the string beans were finely sliced, which served as a good textural counterpoint to the pork.

Next time, and there will be a next time, I’ll visit Noodle House earlier in the day, when the restaurant is at its full strength.

Hours:
Monday-Thursday: 11 AM – 3 PM, 5 PM – 9:30 PM
Friday-Saturday: 11 AM – 3:30 PM, 5 PM – 9:30 PM

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This entry is filed under California, Chinese, Los Angeles, San Gabriel Valley, Southern California.