Restaurant: Happy Valley Village / Shanlitun

Location: 1655 S Azusa Ave E, Hacienda Heights, CA 91745. (626) 669-8406

Date: May 26, 2022

Cuisine: North East Chinese

Rating: One of a kind

This unusual “hot pot” restaurant in Hacienda Heights specializes in lamb spine and goose hot pot from the region just west of Korea.

It’s located in the usual kind of mini-mall and is as far as we can tell one of a kind in California — in that no one else offers this cuisine.

It has a pretty nice build out.


And a colorful decor. Notice the hoods over each table.

And each table has this built in super hot pot.

The menu.



Five Vegetable Noodles. Mustard and tangy sauce with mung bean noodles.

Cold beef with garlic sauce. Sauce was great. Beef is dense and pastrami-like.

Sweet and Sour Crispy Pork. Very breaded. Not actually sweet enough. A bit mild in flavor.

Lamb spine hot pot with mushrooms and eggplant.
Add in pork belly and pork ribs.
Add in crystal noodles (wide).

And corn cakes cooked on the side.


Steaming up.

Spine had a ton of flavor. Very boney, but worth it. Ribs were the best and pork belly also great. Sauce/broth had huge depth of flavor.

Inside of the corn bread.

This is a pretty focused restaurant where the stew is more or less the thing, excepting the fairly simple set of “appetizers.” But the stew is pretty darn tasty. There are the 5 variants: fish, goose, cabbage & pork, chicken, and lamb spine. You can’t really try more than one per visit so we’ll have to come back sometime and try at least the goose.

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For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.