Restaurant: Shanghai #1 Seafood Village [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Location: 250 W Valley Blvd. San Gabriel, CA 91776. (626) 282-1777
Date: April 17 & July 9, 2022
Cuisine: Chinese
Rating: Very authentic Shanghai style
The San Gabriel Valley is a veritable treasure trove of Asian dining, particularly regional Chinese. Shanghai #1 Seafood Village is the LA branch of a high end Shanghai chain specializing in banquet dining. Here in 2022 we returned for a pair of dinners to see how it was doing post pandemic.
The decor is Stark meets Chinatown. Interestingly, as cheesy as it is, it’s fairly authentic. It is however, some 7 years after I first went here, looking a bit “shabby.” This is typical of Chinese establishments as they don’t seem to do a lot of maintenance. We had the private dining room tonight. Mysteriously, even though it was a Sunday night and the place was EMPTY, at first they gave us a table in the main area. We had to ask for the private room. It’s much better though.
The menu is like a giant full color fashion catalog for food, but I thought I’d show a couple pages by way of example.
Smashed Cucumbers with Garlic. Good with some of the other sauces.
Jellyfish Heads. In a nice sweet and tangy sauce.
Pickled Turnips. Sweet and a tiny bit spicy. I like them a lot but some people don’t.
Black Fungus (cloud ear mushroom). I always like this.
Pork Jelly. Very clean version of this dish.
Cold Chicken. Fine, but a bit boring as always. Simple “hainan-like” chicken. Pretty good except for he bones. The sauce was good.
Oil Poached Crab. Very lovely with clean crab flavor. Not so large though (we ordered 2).
Tofu with shrimp and salty egg yolk. Very strong salty egg flavor, but quite nice.
Two Flavor Shrimp. The one with the shell is sweet.
Yellow Croaker with Green Onion. Brown savory sauce and a very nice oniony flavor.
Fried yellow croaker with tea leaves. Very fried but delicious with the sweet vinegar.
Yellow Croaker with Green Onion. Brown savory sauce and a very nice oniony flavor.
Jiggly Pork Hock. Delicious.
Tea Smoked Duck. Crispy and delicious.
Beef with Scallions. Okay but a bit bland and the beef was chewy.
Cumin lamb. They pretty much forgot the cumin and the peppers.
Peppers with pork. Good, although not that much pork.
XLB. Very good.
Vinegar for the dumplings.
Tofu with pork. Great flavor.
Shanghai Style Pan-Fried Pork Dumplings. Heavy, but yummy.
Shrimp fried rice.
Shanghai Noodles with pork and cabbage. Fabulous noodles actually.
Crispy noodles with seafood. Delicious. Great texture and nice flavor.
Caramel Double Chip Gelato — Base is Salted Caramel made by replacing the sugar with house-made Water Caramel. Laced with Valrhona Chocolate Chunks and Toffee Chunks — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato — #SweetMilkGelato #gelato #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #caramel #SaltedCaramel #valrhona #toffee
Overall, these were both really great meals, but the April one was spectacular and the July one just great. Shanghai #1 severs (on a good night) first rate Chinese and quite authentic and typical of high end banquet meals in China. I’ve been here many times and finally enjoyed getting some “tricked out” dishes like sea cucumber. They were great. Service was good. The place is QUIET these days. Maybe they subsist on daytime dimsum, but it’s a shame as this Shanghai banquet food is delicious.
For more LA Chinese reviews click here.
They have a Karaoke setup in the private room!