Earlier in the year, Yarom and I hatched and plotted this particular all afternoon mega crawl at the Rowland Heights Mandarin Plaza — partially at least while sucking down some serious hot pot in said plaza. This place is far from LA proper, way out 40+ miles to the east but is in the heart of the “new Chinatown”.
Restaurant: Leung Kee
Location: 18908 E Gale Ave, Rowland Heights, CA 91748
Date: August 3, 2019
Cuisine: Chinese BBQ
Rating: check: roast pig before noon
We start at 11am, “meating” (haha) up at the former Sam Woo BBQ, now Leung Kee Chinese BBQ.
It’s right smack in the middle of this huge mall that contains tons of Asian restaurants, including Chinese, Korean, Thai and more.
They do a lot of takeout biz, pigs and ducks and the like.
The space is typical old school SGV.
Boba must be a new thing.
The menu.
Tea comes in a mug!
And there is free eggdrop soup — which was pretty darn good.
Macau style roast pork. Must have just been reheated as it landed on our table in 2 seconds, but pretty tasty.
Crispy beef. Very fried, but very delicious.
Peking Duck. It wasn’t the best peking duck, maybe a bit soggy, but peking duck is always pretty good.
Buns instead of pancakes.
And sketchy extra duck meat — that was actually pretty good.
Overall, just fair. Pretty much what you’d expect. But I like pretty much all (real) Chinese food at a good bit.
Restaurant: Mandarin Bay Seafood
Location: 1015 S Nogales St, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 839-7738
Date: August 3, 2019
Cuisine: Cantonese Chinese
Rating: check: Just ok
Next up, we leave the actual mall and cross the street on foot to:
Meet up with more people at noon at:
Cantonese Mandarin Bay Seafood Restaurant.
The gang (minus yours truly).
The takeout menu.
It’s noon, by 1 minute or so, so time for wine.
From my cellar, a touch too dry — bone dry rose sparkling from France.
Nice.
Second free soup of the day, hot and sour — this was not good hot and sour. I saved the stomach space.
Marinated Jellyfish. Vinegary and chewy good.
Salt and Pepper Shrimp. Salty, crunchy, very tasty.
Salt and pepper squid — somehow we ended up with the same prep twice. These were good too.
Ginger and Green Onion frog. Kinda fried, but the sauce was great.
Overall, Mandarin was fine too, but nothing super exciting.
Restaurant: Spicy Moment
Location: 1015 S Nogales St, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 581-4966
Date: August 3, 2019
Cuisine: Szechuan Chinese
Rating: check: Surprisingly good, big menu
Next up we walked 2 doors down.
To a new style Szechuan place.
This is what I mean by new style. They still have the ugly drop ceiling, but they have made a tiny effort at decorating.
The menu is gargantuan.
This is a great wine on any day, and particularly great on a hot day with Chinese.
Recycled from the Vietnamese crawl.
Grilled pork jowl with Yunnan sauce. Delicious.
Fish in pickle pepper soup. This wasn’t spicy, but it was amazing. Really, really delicious. Soft tender fish and very distinct and lovely sour flavor.
Dry pot pork rib and shrimp. Also filled with potatoes to sop up the sauce. I generally like dry pot and this was particularly delicious. Lots and lots of flavor.
Black pepper lamb shoulder. Not spicy, but very tasty with a strong onion flavor.
Eggplant with garlic sauce. Fine rendition.
Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by Spicy Moment and would totally go back for a full meal. Plus they let us drink our wine on the down low. Menu is huge and execution was good — and interesting. It should be noted, that as of Feb/March 2020 Spicy Moment “rebooted” into a totally different, more homestyle Szechuan place with the same name. I have, of course, already eaten there.
Restaurant: Hunan Restaurant
Location: 1015 S Nogales St, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 964-8458
Date: August 3, 2019
Cuisine: Hunan Chinese
Rating: check: Solid
Then we popped back to this spot:
Located in between the Mandarin Bay and Spicy Moment.
Hunan is more old school than Spicy Moment, but it also has a vast menu:
Vast menu.
More sweet wine.
And a rhone blend.
Peanuts.
Shredded minced pork with corn and pickled vegetable. Super tasty — pork really helps a veggie. Sure to make things really move along later.
Sautéed lamb. Tasty.
Crispy pork ribs with garlic and chilies. Lots of flavor, not so much meat.
Fish filet with fire cracker salt. Very delicious boiled fish with garlic and chilies.
Spicy pickled cucumbers. Also delicious. Generally a fan fave.
Overall, Hunan was also very good. Sort of a blend of (more old school) Szechuan AND Hunan, but who cares. It was excellent. While the pictures above cover what we ate during the crawl, I’ve also been to this place my specifically, and a more detailed write up can be found here.
Restaurant: Happy Tree House BBQ
Location: 18904 E Gale Ave, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 581-9886
Date: August 3, 2019
Cuisine: Chinese Skewers
Rating: check: hmmm
When I was spotting during the hot pot night, this place seemed intriguing.
Happy Tree BBQ. It’s a new style skewered meats place.
Very snazzy new interior.
Real coals.
And this warmer thing on the table where they put your skewers.
Powders.
Seaweed salad. Tastes like it looks.
Spicy octopus salad. Ok, but the sauce tasted a lot like Sriracha.
Beef skewers. Not bad.
Shrimp skewers. You eat shell and all.
Hot dogs. Well they didn’t call them that, but they basically are.
Chicken skin skewers. Crispy!
Lamb skewers. Pretty good too.
Chicken wing skewers. Just so so.
Overall, we were kinda disappointed in Happy Tree. Chinese skewers aren’t nearly as good as good Yakatori. They’re fine, but not super exciting. This place looks good, and is probably packed with young people on dates in the evening, but it just doesn’t feel as “Chinese” somehow. I’m not really sure where in China this kind of food is actually from.
Restaurant: Silk Road Garden
Location: 18904 E Gale Ave, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 581-9886
Date: August 3, 2019
Cuisine: Uyghur Chinese
Rating: check: great
So our final place is all the way west.
And merely across the parking lot next to the first spot.
It’s Uyghur Chinese like Dolans and has the decor to match. Very cute and intimate.
Being Uyghur doesn’t mean their menu is any smaller! They have skewers here too — I bet they would be better.
Garlic pickles. Nice crunchy garlicky cucumbers.
Yellow noodle with cumin lamb. Delicious tender cumin lamb on top of spaghetti-like noodles.
Meat and Vegetables in Homemade pastry. A giant golden meat pie. Extremely hot on the mouth, but tasty.
Special homemade noodle with minced beef. A western Chinese bolognese — tons of flavor. Nice thick al dente noodles.
Manti, meat and onion filled dumplings. These were superb, with really delicate skins. They could have used a dipping sauce though.
They had a little freezer of ice cream macarons.
Overall, I was also very pleasantly surprised by Silk Road. First rate execution. Small, intimate, and clearly cooked with precision. The dishes are typical of the region — half way between Shaanxi and Afghan — focused on lamb, and delicious.
In Summary, we only hit 6 of the perhaps 20+ restaurants in Mandarin plaza, and we “only” had 8 people, but we dined like Emperors on a cross China trek! Seriously, so much variety of style. The far SGV (aka Rowland and Hacienda Heights, Dimond Bar, etc) is where a lot of exciting culinary growth is.
For more LA dining reviews click here.
Chevy and Mary may have skipped the first place (the BBQ) but they made up for it by getting shave ice and boba tea!
