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Fabulous Noodles Report

Started with Vegetarian Chicken, a marinated tofu and dried mushroom concoction that I normally love, but it was half-frozen (!) this time, and so only offered up its best flavor as time passed, and we had moved on to other things.

Crispy Chicken was more juicy and tender than usual with the normal lemon and salt mix. Quite tasty.

Soup Noodles with BBQ Pork. A high point for me. Excellent, rich broth (which they continued to replenish), nice thin noodles, and pork "like candy" to quote TonyG. Very satisfying - I could have made a meal on it.

Salty, spicy soft shell crab. Tasty and tangy, though I wonder if we are approaching the end of the season. It got a little lost in the rush of dishes, though, and I think I prefer the big, crunchy heads on shrimp in a feast such as this.

Yu Noodles with pork and shrimp. Another stellar dish, big thick noodles bathed is a light brown sauce with baby shrimp and strips of pork. Livened up perfectly with chili oil.

Ginger Beef, recommended by our hosts. Slyly sweet and tangy, crisp fried bits of beef candy. Very good.

Tofu and fish maw casserole. A symphony of textures - chewy strips of maw, chunks of tofu with their own medley of crispy, and exploding soft interior, and big black mushrooms. The mushrooms dominated the flavor, with the other components adding just those textures.

Sauteed water spinach with garlic. Particularly stemmy this evening, we all needed a little roughage. By the time it came, I think we were also pretty full.

Vegetable fried rice and white rice accompanied everything.

And all for the un-chowish price of $17 per. A fine meal. Thanks to all who came. More details on Joliet to come shortly, though I think that may be a new topic for clarity.

Please chime in if I forgot anything.

Fabulous Noodles
4663 Old Tavern Rd
Lisle, IL 60532
630-305-8868

_________________
d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

I think you got it. I would add only the customary praise for the great company. What's best about these events, for a relatively inexperienced eater like me, is that chance to try stuff I never would have ordered on my own. There always ends up being something I'm delighted with. Here that prize goes to the vegetarian chicken, which I hadn't had in any other form, so the temperature was fine by me. On the other hand, I do not expect to try tofu and fish maw again--but at least I now have a basis for passing it by.

I agree that the soup noodles and BBQ pork were the high point of the meal. I think separately they're the two things FN does best, and combined they're sublime.

You guys are lucky to have FN out there. I'm in the minority, I know, but I still prefer the soup noodles at nearby Katy's Dumpling House, however. A much less inviting spot, I know, but the spicy stew beef noodles are supurb. Not nearly as deep a menu compared to FN, either. But, apples to apples, I like Katy's soup noodles.

Hi.

It's a great irony when the fake tofu chicken tastes more chickeny, than the roasted chicken. It was fun to try them side by side.

I have long gone to Seven Treasures for soup noodles. The soup noodles at Fabulous were much better because the broth was substantially better. I'd go back just for a large bowl of soup noodles. Excellent.

Soft shell crab in a salt and pepper preparation were absolutely succulent. I pulled off the legs, then consumed the body slowly bite and bite. It wasn't lost on me. This entree alone was $17.99, so our combined meal costing $17 each included this delicacy was something special.

The ginger beef had a candied texture, which combined with chili shot, was a contrast of sweet and capsaicin-hot. Another dish worth a revisit.

Thanks for a lovely dinner. The bonus was identifying a locus for my friends who live far west to meet up for dinner with all of us equally inconvenienced!

_________________
Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
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On my one visit to Katy's I was unimpressed. The noodles and dumplings were good enough, but the broth was sad compared to FN. It was one of those things where I took three bites and said, "Why am I here when I could be at Fabulous Noodles?"

So, yes, I disagree on this, just this one thing, Jeff. But I have not tried the spicy beef stew noodles at either place. For that I usually go to Old Peking, in Naperville. I do not like much else at that place as it is pretty Americanized (though they can and do present some good stuff if you order off the menu), but they make some very nice spicy beef and seafood noodle soups, as well as a pleasantly vinegary pork noodle soup.

Fabulous Noodles rich broth is a different style entirely, almost Japanese in style.

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d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

thanks discksond for introducing me to fabulous noodles! sundays at fn are the best day to eat there because they offer a "dim sum" selection that isn't offer any other day of the week. we've tried almost everything on that menu and everything's really worth trying. fn's congee's the best i've had (tons of preserved egg and smoked pork) and they have the best shrimp stuffed eggplant. i have to agree with jeffb that the noodles at katy's dumpling house are far better. at katy's, they specialize in handmade noodles and this is a rare find within most chinese restaurants. fn's noodles are great but they lack the chewiness you'll find at katy's. their soup noodles are excellent but i would stay away from the stir-fried noodles because they can be really greasy. as for decor and service, i would definitely recommend fn over katy's. there's a woman at fn that is really helpful in recommending orders for anyone who's eating there for the first time. at katy's most of the workers don't speak a word of english and you may have to deal with the head cook who will stare at you until you finish every little drop of your stew beef noodle soup! :)

My family and I tried Fabulous Noodles this weekend....mixed reviews.

On a positive note...the BBQ pork fried rice and ginger beef (once you get past how the beef looks- little fried worms come to mind) were outstanding and the hunan chicken was ok.

On the downside...the egg rolls were soggy and tasted like they had been out for quite some time (also only luke warm).

Neutral note...my father-in-law had the Shredded Pork Peking Style which he liked ( I myself am not a fan so I cannot comment).

Overall, I was disappointed in my experience. I guess I had it pumped up to be more in my head. I will definitly give it another try sometime...but I am not in a huge hurry.

I agree with you about the Ginger beef it does look menacing, but tastes great. OTOH you skipped over many of the finer offerings. As the name suggests noodles are the specialty. Soup noodles w/ bbq pork and the Yu noodles indonesian style come to mind. I've typically steered away from the rest of the menu, relying mostly on the noodles.

Flip

_________________
"Beer is proof God loves us, and wants us to be Happy"
-Ben Franklin-

As the cold weather moved in this morning my mind turned to PORK CANDY

FN's Soup Noodles w/BBQ Pork


Fab Noodles was spot on today, and it definitely hit the spot.

Flip

_________________
"Beer is proof God loves us, and wants us to be Happy"
-Ben Franklin-

brief update.

First, since confession is good for the soul, I admit (sheepishly and guiltily) that Fabulous Noodles is no longer my favorite Chinese spot in the area. Not because Fab Noodles has declined, but because of the competition. LSC and Katy's have stolen my heart, for now at least.

Call me fickle.

But Fabulous Noodles chugs on, turning out excellent Cantonese, or more properly Hong Kong and Taiwan, dishes.

Helen has been experimenting with noodles, and seems to have settled on a Taiwanese style that is thicker and chewier than the old options. They are very good so you now have three options for noodles in your soup. At the last visit, the broth was also particularly rich and satisfying, which has always been one of their strengths - the richer, meatier broth than in other Chinese places. Anyway, I am sold on the Taiwanese noodles.

Otherwise nothing significant to report, and the kitchen continues to do excellent work. And it is definitely soup noodle season.

_________________
d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

The Westmont location of LSC never impressed me, often disappointed me. Never once did I find the salt and pepper shrimp to be competent. Is the DG location better? Katy's is on my to do list.

I remain a Fabulous Noodles stalwart, which I think is as good as any Chinese in Chicagoland.

More for western exurbians, a new strip mall place China Hut #2 (no idea where #1 is) opened up on Orchard Road in Oswego between Rts 30 & 43. Food is not FN quality but it's pretty good for that type place, almost all takeout, but I absolutely love their Singapore style noodles even better than FN. Odd strategy though-they have hired only anglo front end help-stoners or burnouts with not a clue about the food or customer service. But the cooks all seem more than competent.

Sorry, dyslexic typer. Between Rt 30 and Rt 34!

China Hut #2
1045 Station Drive
Oswego IL 60543

630-554-5757

Never made it to the Westmont LSC, nor have I had salt and pepper shrimp at LSC, so I cannot comment. But isn't salt and pepper shrimp a cantonese dish, which would be more the specialty of FN, or LTH, than a Szechuan place like LSC? I recently had Dan Dan noodles at both LSC and Katy's, for example. Katy's were great; LSC's were simple, just heat, little more. In retrospect, it was a little stupid to order noodles at LSC (in my mind anyway, even if Dan Dan is a Szechaun dish), when there are no less than two great noodle places less than 15 minutes away, and noodles are clearly not a focus at LSC.

Anyway, I find LSC DG, great for what they do best, which is Szechuan dishes, Katy's wonderful for pan-Chinese noodle dishes and dumplings, and FN great for Taiwanese/Hong Kong/Cantonese noodles and general Cantonese cusine (though there is an increasing selection of indonesian noodle dishes on the menu, some of which I very much like).

Question for someone more knowledgeable:

Does the presence of these Indonesian dishes represent something normal in Cantonese cuisine more generally (like the overlap that occurs between Malay and Thai cuisine), or does it represent some sort of cross-pollination that is more unique to the US, and maybe even a cook now or at some point in FN?

Call me curious.

_________________
d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

Cross another of the the GNR's off my list of places to try, and add my vote to another very worthy memeber of this list.

We went to Fabulous Noodles today for lunch, and came away agreeing it is the best Chinese food in the area bar none. In my humble opinion, better than Katy's, and Lao Szechuwan.

We dined on egg rolls, bbq fried rice, Yu noodles indonesian style, and crispy skin chicken. Each dish was well prepared, and excellent. The service was attnetive, and helpfull, our server even recommended some Filipino items they had on the menu to my Filipina wife.

The egg rolls were crisp, perfectlydeep fried with a sweet skin. The bbq pork fried rice was some of the best fried rice I have ever eaten. The crispy skin chicken was excellent as well. The star of the meal was the Yu noodles indonesian style. Great flavor, great noodles.

Lunch for 3 adults, and our 1 year old(who sampled everything) came to $45 with tax & tip. A little steep for lunch, but a mountain of leftovers accompanied us home, in addition the food was great so well worth it to us.

We now live over an hour away from Fabulous Noodles, and my wife and I are kicking ourselves, we used to live in Lisle and Naperville(I grew up in Naperville, and lived there for 30+ years) for years, and had just driven by this place oblivious to the great food that was beeing turned out. Doh...

Thanks LTH for another great food find. Now whats next on the list? Burt's, Sun Wah BBQ, Sol De Mexico..? We shall see.

I'm planning to stop by FN tonight. I eat everything and my wife is a vegetarian. So far I am planning on getting the following:

Yu noodles indonesian style (for me)
Vegetarian Chicken (for the wife)

Does anyone else recommend any other vegetarian options? Sometimes it's hard to tell if they use fish sauce/oyster sauce/beef or chicken broth in the dishes...

I was thinking of also getting the eight treasure tofu and maybe a vegetable fried rice?

I'm not sure if it is mentioned up thread, but just so you know the vegetarian chicken is a cold appetizer.

_________________
"Beer is proof God loves us, and wants us to be Happy"
-Ben Franklin-

HI,

The funny thing about the vegetarian chicken, it tasted more like chicken than the roasted chicken that was also circulating when I was there last.

Regards,

_________________
Cathy2

"You'll be remembered long after you're dead if you make good gravy, mashed potatoes and biscuits." -- Nathalie Dupree
Facebook, Twitter, Greater Midwest Foodways, Road Food 2012: Podcast

Thanks for the info about the chicken - I definitely want to give it a try now after hearing about it.

C2,

If it was the same meal I was at, I found that quite amusing myself. The 'Real' chicken that night was blah, but the veg was yum.

Flip

_________________
"Beer is proof God loves us, and wants us to be Happy"
-Ben Franklin-

I had a terrific meal at FN tonight thanks to LTH.
We started with the BBQ Pork Noodle Soup which had a nice rich broth, candylike BBQ Pork and aldente noodles.
With the soup we had the potstickers which were very tasty.
Then a special, Mandarin Shrimp, big firm shrimp coated in a ketchupy hot sauce and fried with onions. Maybe the best shelled shrimp I have eaten at a Chinese place.
Then some roughage, Chinese Broccoli with Shitaki mushrooms in an oyster flavored sauce. Very earthy and good.
Had to have the Indonesian E noodles which were as good as advertised.
I never would have found FN and Katy's without you guys.
Thanks again!

Kicking off soup season is always soup week for me - so far this week I have had soup with or for one or two meals every day, and today it was time for soup noodles at FN. Reliably excellent BBQ Pork and broth, I am happy to say. Dan Dan Noodles at Katy's was Tuesday. It is a good week.

Then something embarrassing happened - Helen brought out some shrimp-stuffed vegies, one pepper and one eggplant, for me to try. Wonderfully full of shrimp and flavor, no cheap filler there, so I asked her if they were offering Dim Sum these days. The answer was, yes, Saturday and Sunday from 1130-230.

I thought it was something new and was going to share it here, but I see they have been doing it for years based on the posts I apparently did not read very well. A couple of weeks ago my son had a taste for Dim Sum and I did not feel like driving into the city. We ended up at Triple Crown in Westmont (next to the DiHo Market) for some workmanlike Dim Sum. They use the cart method, rather than preparing by order, so things are not quite so fresh always, and the dumpling dough seemed a lot heavier and gummier for most things than at Shui Wah. Anyway, turns out we could, and should, have been at FN.

Glad Helen helped me work that out.

_________________
d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

Dickson,

FYI - There is a new soup on the specials menu at LSC that I tried on Monday, Noodle soup with Pork Ribs. You can order it either home-style (spicy) or with a brown sauce. I assume the brown sauce style would be very similar to their beef noodle soup, but I opted for home-style. Generous serving of spicy broth with a good amount of rib pieces. The noodles, as with all of LSC noodle soups, are pedestrian at best, but the broth more than made up for it.

Also, I quite enjoy the beef-noodle soup at Mapo on Naperville Rd. Very rich broth, and it is my goto for when I don't have the time to get to Katy's

Flip

_________________
"Beer is proof God loves us, and wants us to be Happy"
-Ben Franklin-

On a couple of visits I have not been that fond of Mapo. Decent soups of various sorts, but nowhere near as good as Katy's or FN. And, to be honest, having tried soups a couple of times at LSC, I tend to have other things there - the soups are not bad, but there are other, great, things to eat.

Tomorrow's soup will probably be tofu and mushrooms at Cho Dang Tofu Village, so I will stay on the Asian kick. Or maybe some Udon? Yesterday was Brisket Chili day at Schmaltz. Ahh, happiness.

_________________
d
Retired, gone fishing, and exploring my curmudgeon within

Another great meal @ Fabulous Noodles yesterday for lunch. We arrived @ 1 p.m., and almost every table was filled, many families with young children, and 90% of the crowd was Chinese.

We started with the egg rolls again, I am a sucker for a good egg roll, and Fabulous Noodles has some of the best. We also ordered the Yu Noodles Indonesian Style, General Tsaos Chicken, and I also had a bowl of the shrimp dumpling and noodles soup. All were excellent as usual, the Noodle dish is one of our favorites with plenty of shrimp, and pork. The soup was also excellent, the shrimp dumplings were tasty, the broth perfect, and the thin noodles a must.

Total tab $33, not bad for 3 adults, our infant daughter, & plenty of leftovers. Next time we are going to try the Mandarin ribs.

I took a virgin trip to Fabulous Noodles for lunch yesterday around noon. It was fairly empty when I got there, and (quite amusing to me), I was the only non-Asian in the restaurant when I arrived. This is usually a good sign...

Flip was kind enough to meet me for lunch here, and to my pleasant surprise, he brought two friends, which meant more food to try! (The company was pleasant as well. )

We started out with an order of the BBQ pork in soup noodles, which was more than enough to share between four people. This was excellent; as previously stated, the BBQ pork almost does have a "candy"-like flavor to it. We also got the Vegetarian chicken which came with a seaweed salad. Flip said the salad it came with was new. I've never seen this at a Chinese restaurant before. The vegetarian "chicken" was surprisingly good. I didn't expect that a cold dish pretending to be chicken would actually be any good, but it is. I wonder if they soak it in a chicken stock to give it that chicken flavor. The skin on that really amazed me, too. Really weird, but good dish. The seaweed salad with it complimented it really well and had a nice vinegar-y dressing on it.

For our main courses, we ordered Yu Noodles, Ginger Beef and Crispy Skin Chicken. All of these were also extremely good -- by and far the standout for me was the Ginger Beef, which was extremely flavorful and somewhat crunchy with a rich, sweet ginger sauce on it. I would go back just to get this. Eating that was like candy to me. Everything was great, though. The chicken was very crispy; I love the nice skin on it, and it was chopped roughly into big pieces that made you think, "Well, this is a chicken," and the Yu noodles had really nice flavor. They obviously do what they do well.

I'm really glad I had the opportunity to try this place. It's not exactly close to me, but it's a good place to stop at if I'm in the western burbs. Thanks again to Flip for coming and bringing friends! (Let me know if you're still planning that Amanacer trip.)

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-- Nora --
"Great food is like great sex. The more you have the more you want." ~Gael Greene

The BBQ pork in soup noodles has been a lunch favorite of mine for the last couple of years ever since I learned about it here on LTH.

The last time I had it before the Holidays the pork wasn't the same. It was just thinly sliced, gray roast pork without much flavor. Not the dense, thick-sliced "pork candy" like before. When the lady who seems to be in charge (Helen?) came by to check on my meal I mentioned it to her. She indicated they had just pulled a new batch of pork from the oven, which I took to mean they had to pull it early to fill my order.

I went for lunch today for the first time since then and got the same disappointing gray pork. This time I asked her if they had changed the receipe. She said the chef had changed it because they were getting complaints the pork was overcooked. I told her it just wasn't very good anymore and she said she would mention it to chef.

Anyway I'm curious to see if other people think the change is as drastic as I do. If enough people do, and mention it to her, perhaps they will move back closer to the old way.

When we visited on Saturday the pork seemed to be the same as always. about 1/2" thick, and bright red around the edges. The pleasant sweetness complimented the rich broth very well.

Flip

_________________
"Beer is proof God loves us, and wants us to be Happy"
-Ben Franklin-

we typically go to Fabulous Noodles on Saturday's, and the last time I went I forgot to look at their weekday hours. It is still to early to call, and I am trying to schedule my lunch today, and I am ideally looking forward to some noodles, mandarin ribs, and eggrolls from Fabulous Noodles for lunch.

Is Fabulous Noodles open on Monday's?

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I got a real good mind.

Before Cotton was King: http://www.grubseeker.blogspot.com

Clever of you to check ahead of time - I just drove over, to my considerable disappointment. Massachusetts restaurants didn't have this Monday closing thing, and I'm still getting used to it.
[url]
http://fabulousnoodles.com/directions.htm[/url]

Corn&Tomatoes

checked Fabulous Noodles website(which I probably should have done in the first place..).. closed on Monday... now on to plan B.... Lao Szechuan

_________________
I got a real good mind.

Before Cotton was King: http://www.grubseeker.blogspot.com