Restaurant: Lunasia [1, 2, 3, 4]
Location: 500 West Main Street Suite A, Alhambra, CA 91801. (626) 308-3222
Date: February 25, 2018
Cuisine: Cantonese Chinese
Rating: Fine Cantonese
Every couple months our friend Tony Lau organizes a Cantonese banquet and he always manages to get really interesting stuff out of the restaurant.
Tonight he took us back to Lunasia, where I’ve been several times, mostly for dim sum — but they do Cantonese banquet too.
We had the private room — actually this wasn’t big enough so they opened it up and gave us an even larger space.
Nice tea pot.
Peanuts of course.
And candied walnuts.
They gave us some random dim sum like these chewy rice buns with pork. Very nice texture actually.
Tofu causeway style. I’ve had a lot of seafood causeway style, but never tofu. It was pretty good though, if salty.
Sauces.
A little dim sum plate. Left to right: har gow, spring roll, and truffle shui mai. All good, especially the truffle one, but the problem was that in their effort to individually plate for 12+ people the dim sum grew cold.
Shrimp salad. A whacky combination of shrimp, apple, strawberries, melon, and mayo! Like Ambrosia Salad — whacky!
The individual plating trend continues, by the way, as each person got one of dish pictured!
More sauces.
Stuffed little game bird. Very nice crispy bird with a gamey flavor.
And stuffed with sticky rice. Delicious.
King crab with rice noodles. Pretty dish and delicious in one of those delicate white sauces.
Lamb chop. Very tasty but a touch over-cooked.
Fried sea bass and fried bean curd. Delicious, but a large portion.
I brought some of my artisanal gelato.
Blueberry Cheesecake Gelato – a cheesecake base with French blueberries layered with graham cracker crumble and topped with house-made blueberry coulis. I should have dressed the top with some graham and some fresh blueberries but I went nuts with the coulis and took up all the space!
Turmeric Latte Gelato – milk base steeped in turmeric with a touch of cinnamon, cardamon, and ginger! And yep, that yellow is all natural.
Pretty colors!
A chewy crispy rice ball filled with egg yolk custard — surprisingly delicious for a Chinese dessert.
Weird almond soup pastry — not very good at all, but it is a Chinese dessert.
Food was quite good but the individual plating was not nearly as good as family style. It looks nice, but the dishes are a little cold and the portions way too large per dish so that even with the relatively small number of dishes above (for me) I was incredibly stuffed.
But still, a super fun evening!
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List of wines below:
