Restaurant: World Seafood Restaurant [1, 2]
Location: 1412 S Garfield Ave. Alhambra, CA 91801. (626) 282-3888
Date: November 26, 2016
Cuisine: Cantonese Dimsum
Rating: Fun dishes, good, but not the absolute best
My quest to try all the great dimsum houses in the LA area (mostly the San Gabriel Valley) continues. Last year’s newcommer Shi Hai has rebooted into World Seafood Restaurant.
It looks pretty much the same on the outside — and clearly isn’t a place all geared up to serve the English-speaking population!
Inside it got a touch of new color but remains a giant Chinese-style banquet hall.
The lengthy menu — all in Chinese with just a touch of English.
Pan-fried chives pancake. Not very pancake like, but extremely tasty. Some kind of mystery meat in here too — probably pork.
Shrimp and pork Shiu Mai. Good version of the classic.
Har Gow shrimp dumpling. Solid also.
Scallop and shrimp dumpling. The scallops were a touch fishy, so this wasn’t my favorite.
Chu Zhou Fun Gou. Peanuts, pork, and who knows what make a lovely dumpling. Fun guo, or Chaozhou fun guo sometimes spelled fun quor, fun gor, fen guo, Chiu Chow dumpling, Teochew dumpling, or fun kor is a variety of steamed dumpling from the Chaoshan area of coastal eastern Guangdong, a province in Southern China. They are typically filled with chopped peanuts, ground pork, garlic chives, dried shrimp, dried radish and shiitake mushrooms. Other filling ingredients may include coriander, cilantro, jicama, or dried daikon.
Seafood salad roll. I ordered because I had no idea what it was. This light and crispy but very deep friend fellow contained some kind of seafood/cream cheese mix with a slight sweetness. There was a mayo-like dipping sauce. Despite the oddness of all this, it was delicious.
BBQ pork rice noodle. Solid.
XLB steamed pork dumplings. The shell was a touch thick, and while I’ve had better, these were still delicious.
Pork bean curd roll. Delicious. Stuffed with pork? and vegetables.
House special roast duck. Delicious, meaty, and only $5.99!!!!
Plain soy sauce noodles for my son. Pretty yummy actually.
Pan fried noodle with seafood. This was the thick rice noodle and I would have prefered it over the thin egg noodles.
Steamed honey brown sugar cake. World Seafood has a lot of “dessert” dim sum and this one was new to me so I tried it. Look at the cool coral-like texture. It tasted like mildly sweet honey cake but did have a very nice fluffly organic quality.
Pumpkin pastry with salted egg yolk. Delcious. Mochi-like texture, pumpkin taste, and a gooey hot salty egg-yolk filling. Awesome. We ordered an extra order.
Steamed sweet bun. Who can resist desserts that look like pigs? This vegetarian light fluffy buns contained a paste of purple taro.
Steamed walnut bun. How cute, shapped like walnuts! Inside was a nut paste we actually thought was chesnut. It was good though.
Overall, World Seafood was quite good. I’d put it in the second tier of SGV dimsum underneath Elite, King Hua, and Sea Harbor, but in line with Lunasia and Shanghai #1 Seafood. It absolutely blows away what Downtown and Westside places I’ve tried, and is certainly a worthy destination. World Seafood also has an interesting menu, with lots of weird dessert pastries, and I’d like to go back and try another round or two of dishes.
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