Dan dan mian
Dan dan mian, of course, is on the menu of any restaurant with even vague pretensions toward Sichuan cuisine — a simple, intensely flavored dish of noodles with dried chile, pickled mustard, fried peanuts and a bit of vinegar. There is almost always a handful of crumbled pork in the bowl, but if you happen to be vegan, most places, even the hard-core ones, will leave it out if you ask them to. Sesame paste? Optional. Dan dan mian is at its best dialed up to 11, reddened with tons of oily chile sludge and zapped with enough fresh Sichuan peppercorns to leave your gums numb for a week. Until it closed abruptly, the best in the San Gabriel Valley was at the Alhambra noodle shop Chuan Yu. And when Chuan Yu was reincarnated a few miles east as Lucky Noodle King, the dan dan mian was even better, because it was made with what seemed to be fresh noodles instead of dried, a bowl whose slippery, living texture was as intriguing as its 220-volt taste. 534 E. Valley Blvd., San Gabriel. (626) 573-5668.
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
Red Medicine's chef Jordan Kahn
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