With L.A. Weekly apparently having cleared out their online archives, here's a repost from an article I wrote for them in 2017.
The Most Unlikely Restaurant in Chinatown — but for How Long?
Depending
on whether you’re looking at the menu, the signage over the door or the
sandwich board in front of the building, a restaurant called Noodle
Time, Noodles Time or Noodle Times opened in Alpine Plaza about a year
ago. The complex is a compact shopping center (sometimes described as an
indoor bazaar) located on Alpine Street between Broadway and Spring.
For more than 30 years, Alpine Plaza was home to the venerable Chiu Heng
Restaurant, until its closing last year, and it's still home to
Salathai Restaurant. Over the years there has been a parade of Chinese,
Vietnamese and Thai restaurants occupying the plaza’s three restaurant
spaces.
Clearly, Alpine Plaza is in a part of Chinatown
that has not yet benefited from the restaurant boom triggered further
south in Chinatown by eateries such as Howlin Ray’s, Chego, Baohaus,
Little Jewel of New Orleans, LASA and all the other new restaurants
opening up in Far East Plaza and the Jia Apartments. With the completion
of Blossom Plaza around the corner from Alpine Plaza on Broadway, there
have been proposals for a number of new developments at this end of
Chinatown, but nothing has been finalized, and this stretch still looks
as it did 40 years ago. At the moment, Alpine Plaza is really suffering.
Bustling for 40 years, the grocery store space is vacant and subdivided
but unrented, and only two operating business, Salathai and
Noodle(s) Time(s), are apparently open.
But the mere presence of Noodle(s) Time(s)
and the fact that it has already lasted a year may be an indication that
things are changing on Alpine Street, because it doesn't resemble
anything seen before, either in this shopping center nor anywhere else
in Los Angeles Chinatown. First of all, the menu. At first glance,
Noodle(s) Time(s) would seem to be best described as a Thai-Chinese
noodle restaurant, with a menu of standard favorites such as Thai boat
noodle soup, beef stew with tendon noodle soup, pad Thai and chicken
chow mein. But the menu also goes off on a Japanese tangent, with
varieties of sushi, pork chop ramen soup, bento boxes and teriyaki
bowls. And for Malaysian influence there are satay skewers, pork jerky
and roti. Nothing unusual so far, as pan-Asian restaurants are
gaining a respectability they never had before, but certainly something
new for Chinatown — though Chinatown is clearly ready for something like
this, given its recent culinary evolution.
But
then there's the "Vegetarian (or Vegan)" section of the menu. It
includes Thai and Chinese dishes such as Chinese broccoli with oyster
sauce, green beans with garlic, and pumpkin with yellow curry. At the
bottom of the section there are truly odd dishes that are neither Thai,
Chinese, or of any Asian ilk, such as the lentil burger (quite tasty)
with French fries, the vegan fried soy chicken burger, or the "cowboy"
burger wrap. With these items on top of its Asian offerings, Noodle(s)
Town(s) clearly has the most eclectic menu ever seen in Chinatown, which
by itself distinguishes it from the competition.
It's
also decorated differently from other restaurants on this end of the
neighborhood: American pop culture icons smile from the walls; the
seating is wood benches. Of course, given the recent changes that have
come to Chinatown dining, Noodle(s) Town's menu and decor wouldn't
appear terribly out of place if it were located in the booming southern
part of Chinatown, and if it were operated by a millennial chef or
hipster owner. But Noodle(s) Town(s) is run by an older immigrant couple
on a block in Chinatown that has escaped recent gentrification, which
makes the entire operation totally unexpected and noteworthy.
So
far, based on Yelp reviews, Noodle(s) Town(s) seems to be best known
for the fact that it delivers almost anywhere. But those who get their
food delivered are missing out on something unique that can only be
appreciated in person. You might want go on down there sooner
rather than later, because Alpine Plaza is the proposed site of a
massive, seven-story mixed-use residential and retail real estate
complex. Of course, not every proposed real estate project makes it to
fruition — downtown Las Vegas would have a hundred condominium towers if
all the projects planned a decade ago were built. But still, as Howlin’
Ray’s, Little Jewel, Chego and all the others have proven in just a few
years, anything is possible in Chinatown.