Chou Ma Ma’s Kitchen

Looks like Mama needs a break and Papa will take over (Papa Lin). Glad they also have lunch box, lets see how that goes.

ChouMaMa has closed.
Owner was going to move to a larger location nearby, but decided last minute to move to Taiwan. Big loss for fans of authentic Taiwanese cuisine.

Their oyster noodles were the bomb dot com. Get them! Quite similar to the ones you get in Taiwan night markets — 4 stars
Minced pork over rice was pretty good too, but not the best I’ve ever had. — 3 stars
Hsinchu duck noodles were good — you could actually taste the duck flavor in the noodles! — 4 stars
Stinky tofu was not stinky enough :) — 3 stars
Fried fish filet was pretty good — it’s more breaded than fried so it’s not like your typical fried fish but it reminded me of what my babysitter used to cook so I liked it. — 3.5 stars
Wrapped sausage — interesting — it’s basically Taiwanese sausage in between rice wraps, similar to night market ones — 3.5 stars
All of that for $ 32 — such a good deal (note: cash only). Never underestimate Chinese places with 3.5 average stars on Unilocal!Overall I liked this place a lot because their dishes are more unusual and authentic. Be sure to look at the dishes on the wall written in Chinese, since they’re not all on the menu. Get the oyster noodles.

Review for service only.
This place should be renamed from Chou Ma Ma to SLOW Ma Ma.
On a Friday night, this place had only 1 person working the front as a server, and cashier. The server was so busy and doing all kinds of things. I felt like watching Diner Dash (iPhone app) in person.
I can understand they would staff 1 person on a slow night but a Friday? C’mon…
Service was very slow. SLOWW. MA MA. Haha.

Come here with Taiwanese friends to unleash its full deliciousness! I came here with three friends and we ordered the handmade beef noodles (a Taiwanese specialty and probably the most classic thing on the menu), the regular spicy beef noodles, a lightly fried chicken dish, pork baos, pig ear, a rice dish with minced meat, oyster pancake, and a dish of a meatball covered with a glutinous wrapper. Even though the handmade beef noodles didn’t say it was spicy, both noodle dishes turned out to be spicy. The type of spicyness is the numbing spicyness, or in Chinese «ma la,» not your normal spicyness. Taiwanese food seems to be sweeter than normal Chinese food. The pork baos and the meatball dish were both sweeter than I expected. My favorite dishes were the handmade beef noodles, chicken, and the pork ear. The chicken was very tender and also flavored uniquely so that it had a very subtle kick to it, or at least some oomph factor that I can’t name (and I don’t *think* it was MSG). Pork ear is a classic Chinese appetizer of thinly sliced pig ear strips served cold with sesame oil and other savory ingredients. The facility is nothing fancy – a small corner lot in an Asian strip mall with cheap furniture, handwritten posters on the wall expanding on the standard menus given out, and no restroom, but in my experience that’s a good sign when it comes to Chinese fare. It may be difficult to pick this particular restaurant out of the countless options in the neighborhood, but it is definitely worth a try.

We found our joint for Taiwanese eats!
Ordered the oyster noodles, oyster pancake and pork chop bento. All were good. Definitely cannot be compared with food in Taiwan, but these items would satisfy the craving for Taiwanese food.

Came at 11:00, not many people here. Foods are delicious and if you miss Taiwan’s red noodle, you definitely should try this.

Found a hair in bottom of soup. Don’t belong to any of us in the group. We were done with
Food is decent but won’t come back for a while

We were passing by Fremont area from Yosemite and after 3+ hours of driving with three kids under 7, we decided to find a Taiwanese restaurant for dinner. This place came up on Unilocal with decent reviews, and some Unilocalers even mentioned that this place is cheap, so we happily drove here and waited for a table.
The place is very small, it has 5 or 6 tables, but the wait wasn’t long. The waitresses were nice and quickly took our orders, and the food got to us pretty fast. But the food… Hmm, it’s pretty mediocre. It’s good, but it’s nothing special or not something my mom or I can’t make. And it didn’t turn out to be that cheap. We ordered 4 items: crispy chicken over rice, spicy intestine pot, duck noodle soup, and stir fry beancurd with squid. That was $ 38.
Everything is very homemade. If you want something fast for the kids, you can come here. My kids enjoyed the food. If you cant make any Taiwanese stir fry or you’re far from Cupertino or so cal where there are better and cheaper Taiwanese restaurants, you can go here too. Other wise, you can skip it.

My parents really enjoy this place. The food is quite interesting and different from most places and the quality is quite good. We have ordered noodles as well as dishes and rice from this place and all of it has been quite satisfactory.
The food is all fairly good. The beef noodle soup was good. We also had clams which were quite fresh and tasty. The fried chicken bits were a bit too salty but very well fried and addicting to eat. In general, the food has been impressive the two times I have been here and I have no reason to suspect the food is anything less than good.
The prices here are the usual amazing Chinese prices. The food is quite worth it and while the dishes aren’t the biggest, they are large enough to make you feel good about the prices. A rare feat in California, or the U.S. in general.
I have seen some comments about bad service… well you pay for what you get. Cheap, good food and «bad» service. But in general, I thought the service wasn’t horrible. The waitress is overworked but she attempts to get everything right and to the customer as quick as possible. She also wasn’t rude at all (not a guarantee at all Chinese places).
I am definitely a fan of this places prices and quality. However, this is not a place to bring a large party as there are a very limited amount of seats. By limited I mean there are probably only five tables in the place. Come with a smaller group of three-​four people and you’ll be just fine. A lot of people also take out from this place.

To clarify, I wanted to give 3.5 stars but Unilocal doesn’t allow me to do so, so I decided to give the benefit of the doubt and put 4 stars. I had salty fried chicken lunch special. The chicken was seasoned with the right condiments of salt and chilli pepper, though I’d prefer the texture of the chicken from Ocha in mountain view. The veggies were meh, and so were the soy sauce tofu. What surprised me was the soy sauce egg. It’s probably my first time having salty fried chicken special with half the egg. Looks can be deceiving.

We love the food here. Everything we tried here was fantastic. And the unbelievable low price makes it even better.
The prices are low for reasons. They don’t have great service because there is only one person serving all the customers. We understand it is not easy. We always gave tips more than 20%.
We especially like the fried pork steak rice, $ 6.75. It is the must order. It is the best so far I tried in the states.
We really enjoy the food here. We were here last weekend, yesterday, and today. I think we will also be here next weekend.

I come here regularly, but my last experience here was the day before yesterday, this place is really good. It’s located in a plaza near, ranch 99 and a few more oriental stores. We called in and asked for a reservation for 11. If you’ve ever been in here you would know how amazing it is for this small restaurant to accommodate that but they do! The servers pushed a few tables together and we were immediately greeted with hot tea. In total we ordered about 20 dishes and dishes started coming out in less than 5 mins of our order! Some of the dishes that really stood out to me was the pork dipped in a sort of oyster sauce, the notorious stinky tofu (picture attached), oyster pan fried omelet, and their beef stew noodles (omg its spicy but good). I attached a few pictures to supplement this review. Some tips I have is order the chick twists Omahhhgad that stuff is good (served with a tangy dipping sauce).
Tips/​suggestions:
No bathroom available
They only accept CASH ONLY!
This is a smaller restaurant with less than 10 tables.
Have specials on the wall but are written in Chinese so ask the waiter what the stuff on the wall is because they are killer deals.
Must try, especially if you want to try authentic Taiwanese cuisines.

Warning: Bring a Chinese speaking friend, or else it’ll be hard to order! A lot of the menu options on the wall were written in Chinese characters.
Chou Ma Ma’s Kitchen is located in a very busy shopping center near Ranch 99.
I went during lunch on a weekday and there wasn’t anyone there. My friend and I ordered quickly and received our entrees within moments.
I ordered fried noodles and my friend ordered spicy beef. The stir fried spicy beef was 3.5÷5. Unfortunately, the noodles weren’t as good either. I was slightly disappointed, especially since I wanted to support this mom and pop store!
I wouldn’t be opposed to trying this establishment at a future date though. As far as affordability, this place was definitely cheap and gave generous portions.

After reading Ken K’s (
) review, I looked forward to trying some authentic Taiwanese cuisine in the Bay Area. We happened to shop at the Costco Business Center in Hayward and, craving Taiwanese food, I searched on Unilocal which took us here. Housed in a mall anchored by Ranch 99 and the popular first Northern California 85° Bakery, this smallish restaurant is to the left of those two stores. There are about eight tables, definitely exuding a quick bite atmosphere. Most customers popped in to order or pick up takeout food as only three people besides us dined in while we were there. Here’s what we tried:
Appetizers (shared)
1) Stinky tofu — not a bad version, but still doesn’t compare to SoCal spots.
2) Marinated bean threads — nicely done as not overly salted nor too heavy on the sesame oil.
3) Marinated cucumbers — also well done with good strong flavors yet still crunchy.
4) Marinated seaweed — disappointingly over salted; returned to the kitchen.
Main
5) Pork potage noodles (
) — good mixture of tang in soup and noodles were okay; served lukewarm.
Veggies (shared)
6) Garlic stir fried Taiwanese lettuce (A choy) — balanced flavors and not overcooked nor drenched in sauce.
Takeout
7) Szechuan Beef noodle soup (
) — just okay as, though ingredients were good (tendons and meaty pieces with pickles), the broth had a one tone spiciness (Szechuan style).
Coming here with two friends who grew up in Taiwan, I asked what they thought about the food in comparison to 168; they both felt that 168 had better quality and authentic flavors. I asked for a takeout menu but our waitress said they were out, odd considering takeout is their main business. Would stop in again if in the area, but not worth the drive from the City.

Wow that’s too bad. I was going to give it a four star for the minced pork over rice bento 魯肉飯 that’s only $ 7 something with decent amount of minced pork that’s not too fatty. See the photo. I was enjoying my 魯肉飯 and almost finished the rice and pork until I saw a small cockroach hidden underneath a piece of broccoli! Good thing I didn’t finish all the broccoli!
That was a very disappointing first visit after reading all my Unilocal friends positive reviews on this Taiwanese place. I think this will be my last visit too. I think the last time I saw a cockroach in my bowl was maybe more than 20 years ago when I was eating a bowl of noodle soup in Taiwan. Now it’s like déjà vu all over again… I told the server and she took back my box and went to talk to the chef in the kitchen and then she came back and gave me a full refund.
Now I’m just going to go home and rest and hope that I don’t get sick after eating the cockroaches infused lunch…

Small restaurant. Expect long time waiting during lunch hours. And there was only one waitress taking order /​cleaning tables /​taking away dishes (she has a nice service attitude though) The dishes:
— Minced pork with rice: a bit disappointing on this one. The smell and taste of minced pork was very plain, and the rice was over-​sticky (usually rice from minced pork rice should be a bit sticky but it was way too sticky)
— Bitter melon ribs soup: this was above average. I could taste bitter melon just by drinking the soup; and there was a lot of ribs inside too
— Oyster pancake: i have tried better in a lot other places. Problem was that there was very few oysters, so it was just like eating egg cakes
— Beef wrap: it was the best one out of the above dishes. A good amount of beef with meat and tendon, and the wrap was a bit crispy but not too much, i would come back just for this snack
There are many snacks on the menu and probably I will come back some other day and give them a try. Food was kind of expensive based on the food quality and environment though.

Damn good food for really cheap prices. I’m not a huge expert of Taiwanese food, but it definitely tasted authentic to what I’ve had and what little I know about cuisines.
It’s pretty small and a little dirty, but I guess that makes these kind of Asian restaurants legit. I recommend getting the $ 6.50 lunch boxes, excellent deal and you get a lot of food. I guess the only off putting part about this place is that it may not be ideal if you haven’t had Taiwanese food before. Any of the fried stuff is probably safe, but my friend tried the beef shank. It was authentic, but that cold meat he wasn’t really a fan of.
I guess it wouldn’t help to do a little research before eating here, but with a little intuition there’s something everyone can eat!

Serves the freshest, tastiest gua bao in the area!!! Why are they closed on Tuesdays though? Hella random.
The restaurant is pretty dinky and most items are written in Chinese. Thankfully I can read a good portion of the menu and I always recognize my favorites. I really like how they have the small eats menu and everything is pretty cheap but the portions are also not too filling. Their noodle soups are also very good and the «small» portion is more than enough for one person.
Overall, everything I’ve tried tastes as authentic as it gets without flying across the globe. The service can be a little slow and they only take cash.

I thought I already reviewed this place but I guess I didn’t. At first I was going to give it 4 stars. Today, my second time here, changed my mind!
5 stars because my omelette fried rice was so freaking bomb. First, the portion is HUGE. I ate half of it and was the perfect full. Second, the fried rice is the perfect amount of savory and sweet. Third, the hot sauce with it is amazing!!! I was very impressed because it was as tasty as the one I had in Taiwan.
Service is good too! The first time, we went at around 3pm and they are closed then, but they still served us.
I am definitely going back to try other dishes :)