Restaurant: Bistro 1968 [1, 2]
Location: 402 S San Gabriel Blvd Ste A, San Gabriel, CA 91776. (626) 766-1968
Date: January 4, 2024
Cuisine: Chinese Dim Sum
Rating: One of the current best
Bistro 1968 opened with considerable fanfare (for the SGV) at the tail end of 2022. It serves up a large but focused menu of Cantonese dim sum and unusually is not two restaurants in one like most of the Cantonese places. Instead they have the same (dim sum focused) menu for both lunch and dinner.
This visit involves a Foodie Club Sunday Chinese dinner with combined dim sum and other.
The underground parking lot here sucks. Upper level was full and the lower level had this mechanical gated “resident only tow zone” that was poorly labeled and easy to get trapped in.
Escaping the parking lot involved this endless corridor.
Peanuts and Candied Walnuts.
The menu.
They have moderately fancy tea service.
Chili paste and mustard.
Egg Tofu with Abalone Sauce. I love this soft silky tofu. Although we got it more or less twice.
Seafood Dumpling with pumpkin.
Shrimp Har-gow.
Seaweed and Shrimp Paste Cake.
Chili Oil.
XO Sauce.
Pork & Shrimp Siu-Mai.
Selections.
Shrimp Rice Noodle.
Supreme Beef Balls.
Jumbo Sticky Rice Wrap.
Seafood Chow-mein w/ Crispy Noodle. Solid version of the classic with nice noodles and sily seafood.
Pan Fried Seme Cicoria w/ Duck Meat. This “orzo” with bits of duck was awesome. Very much like a fried rice.
Barbecued Iberian Pork w/ Honey. Too lean and too sweet, so while it had good flavor it was a bit chewy.
Egg Tofu with Mushrooms and Vegetables. Delicious dish. This is my kind of “veggie.”
Peking Duck. This was a rather lame Pseudo Peking Duck. Kinda dry and the cleavered style of Cantonese roast duck with the buns.
No cucumbers but there were scallions.
They served both the more “real” hoisin and the standard thin Cantonese type that usually goes with PPD.
Poached Tofu Skin w/ Pork Bone Broth.. Soup was a pork bone broth and pretty delicious. Rest of the dish was meh.
Pan Fried Mix Mushrooms with Egg White. Kinda boring dry version of this dish. It was much better at Colette.
Curry Rice with Baked Eel. The eel was really good. The curry rice was a touch dry and very much that English yellow curry.
Poached Watercress with Fish Ball. Bland this time around.
Strawberry Jam Gelato — an awesome dairy Strawberry base swirled with Strawberry Jam — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato — sugar time! — #SweetMilkGelato #gelato #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #strawberry #jam
To the right was an Almond Zab blend. It was pretty old. Tasted great but had some ice cystal formation. Could easily have been almost 2 years old from the label.
Flavorless sweat bean puffs.
Mango “soup” was actually pretty good.
Overall, Bistro 1968 was interesting at night. It was a Sunday night and deserted. The kitchen didn’t feel particularly on point but the dim sum was still great and most of the dishes very enjoyable. They seem to be floundering, as more recently (early summer 2024) they have switched to $20/pp AYCE dim sum — which will doom them. No way they make money on that.