My Last Meal - Lucky Noodle King

If I'm going to have to curtail my diet for the next couple of months, I'd like to go out with a memory of my Last Delicious Meal.

The weekend before I got sick, we went to Lucky Noodle King in the town of San Gabriel, California, which is east of Los Angeles and the heart of the Chinese immigrant community of today.

We went following the advice of Jonathan Gold, Pulizter prize winning food critic at the L.A. Weekly, and as a followup to our earlier trip to Chuan Yu Noodle Shop, which has since closed.

Lucky Noodle King located in a strip mall on E. Valley Boulevard. Stand on any corner in this unassuming neighborhood, throw a rock and you'll hit one of the best Chinese regional cuisine restaurants in the United States. Lucky Noodle King specializes in the food of Sichuan province in southwestern China.

Sichuan cuisine features strong flavors, the use of garlic, ginger and chiles. The Sichuan peppercorn, Zanthoxylum piperitum, is a widely used seasoning. The outer pod of the fruit is dried and ground, and has a unique quality - not exactly hot, not exactly pungent, it actually produces a numbing or buzzing sensation on the tongue. It has been described as similar to the effect of carbonation in the mouth - or touching your tongue to an electrical current.

An acquired taste, to be sure!

Sichuan food also uses techniques like pickling, salting, and drying.



At Lucky Noodle King, we ordered Chongqing Chicken, which was diced cubes of chicken meat fried in oil with garlic, scallions, and an amazing amount of dried red chiles.


Despite the chiles, the chicken was tasty and crisp, and not too spicy hot - if you chose heat, you could easily pop a chile in, but you could also avoid it if you wished. I detected a flowery buzz in whatever dusted the chicken - perhaps Sichuan peppercorn.


Then we ordered Dan Dan Mien, which had been such a revelation at Chuan Yu Noodle Shop. It's simple street food. Noodles in broth with a spicy sauce made of sesame or peanut paste, spiced with chile oil and Sichuan peppercorns, and garnished with chopped roasted peanuts and scallions.



We also ordered House-smoked bacon with green garlic. I wasn't sure what to expect with this, but here it was, shards of cured pork, smothered in the green tops and white shaved bulbs of fresh garlic. It was salty, complex tasting - and delicious. Think of a side of this bacon with your morning scrambled!
As a refeshment and palate cleanser, a plate of pickled cucumbers. Chunks of small persian-style cucumbers, steeped in salt and rinsed, they were crunchy and refreshing and delicious.


So - for a few weeks or months, I say farewell to this kind of fare. If I'm good and if all goes well, my doctor says I may be able to eat this kind of food again someday.

I don't know what motivates you. I tend to be somewhat lazy, myself. But all I can tell you is - if it's going to take hard work and dedication to be able to eat at Lucky Noodle King again as my reward - it's the right way to motivate me. I am ruled by my stomach, for both good and ill!

If you had to give up certain foods for your health, what would you miss the most?