Charley Noodle & Grill

Hidden gem. The owner is very friendly and the food is great... as well as budget friendly. I see some low ratings from several years back but IMHO, they are outdated reviews. I like their dan dan noodle whereas my boy likes the chowmein

actually an amazing place. HOW IS IT NOT MORE POPULAR. the food is BOMB. the lady there is so sweet and helped me on a mandarin project freshman year of hs. love her so much. she is bilingual speaking both english and chinese 服务员可以说英文和中文。 the atmosphere is really chill but is still restaurant vibes it’s great for when i want to go with my friends also SO AFFORDABLE (especially in comparison to the rest of downtown los altos) WOULD RECOMMEND 1000%

Really wanted to like this place because it came highly recommended. Could be the dishes we ordered so might go back and try again. Had the chicken don, katsu don, curry chicken, seaweed salad and another noodle dish. Should have gotten the ramen because when it came by our table on the way to another table, it looked good. The don bowls were a little flavorless while the other dishes' flavors were too strong. The place was packed on a Friday night. Lots of upper grade school aged students there. Service was slow but understandable that it's hard for 2 people to wait on a fully packed house.

The food was good, and the service was nice. Tasty Japanese food options available, I had the katsu don bowl and my dining mate had a ramen with boiled egg. The fried squid appetizer was also tasty, though my pic only represents one of 3 sticks, and it's partially eaten. They also served us a complimentary fried cheesy dish appetizer which was quite good.

I really wanted to like this place because the owner seems very nice and the service was friendly. But the food was mediocre. I love dan dan noodles, so I tried their Dan Dan Yimein -- hardly any sesame or peanut flavor (that's the whole point of dan dan), and the noodles were somewhat soft and overdone. My wife got a Dragon Roll, which tasted fine, but she noted that everything seemed quite cold, suggesting that it had been refrigerated for a while. There are definitely better places to go in downtown Los Altos.