Dad and I went for dinner at 101 Noodle in Rowland Heights last Friday. We were thinking to drive out to Alhambra for more options, but aiya, the traffic was so terrible!

We settled for a rather light meal, our stomachs still stuffed from an afternoon of food foraging in Hollywood. 101�s menu lists over twenty varieties of dumplings and we thought it be proper to sample the basic pork and leek dumplings. Priced at $5.99 for an order of 10, they were pricey, but also this is no Taiwan! The dumpling skins were thick and somewhat floury. Not disagreeable in flavor, but for place that touts such a wide variety you would think more effort be invested in the skin. The blend of pork and leeks were generous and very juicy, if not too tightly packed.

In hopes of soothing my sore throat (which has now turned into strep throat!) we also had medium order of the hot and sour soup. It seems that in our family, only dad and I are fans of hot and sour soup, so we try to get it every chance we can. A huge bowl came out steaming hot, and just looking at it, you could already tell how good it would taste. So delicious it was, flavorful, thick and rich with an abundance of silky slivers of tofu, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and a flowering of egg whites everywhere. If it were an endless bowl, I might very well never stop drinking.

Our order of ja jiang mien was standard at best. A very big bowl though! There was nothing bad, nor particularly wrong, but it was very boring, and almost lifeless after the many bowls of invigorating soup. Or perhaps it was because I craved something spicy, maybe if they had thrown in a generous round of chili peppers so that they would be brilliantly embedded and twirled in with the nidbits of tofu, sweet pork and julienned cucumbers, even better if it the peppers came tossed in the noodles themselves!

101 Noodle Express
1388 Fullerton Road., #122
Rowland Heights, CA 91748
(626) 964-9218