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Archive for Chef Tony

DimSumQuest – Chef Tony

Aug31

Restaurant: Chef Tony Dim Sum

Location: 1108 S Baldwin Ave, Arcadia, CA 91007. (626) 623-6668

Date: February 2, 2023

Cuisine: Chinese Dim Sum

Rating: Most dishes quite good

_

Continuing our group survey of LA’s best dim sum is Chef Tony, the original Arcadia location. I once went to the Pasadena branch, now shuttered, but I haven’t been here.

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Frontage is strip mall.
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A much smaller, pleasant, but less upscale dining room than the Pasadena location.
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You can see into the kitchen and the steaming chamber.
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Where the magic happens.
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Epic menu!
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The dim sum menu.
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Cucumber Salad with Garlic and Vinegar. A very solid version of this classic. Cucumbers were nice and crisp and “fresh” tasting. It wasn’t smashed cucumbers, more cut, and there wasn’t much garlic. It did have a decent sauce though and was taken up a notch by the addition of our high end “Jing” chili oil.
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Wood Ear Salad with Mature Vinegar. This might have been the best marinated wood ear I’ve had. Perfect chewy texture and a great sweet/sour sauce.
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They had very solid sauces here at Chef Tony’s including strong mustard, black vinegar with ginger, and a very nice chili paste with a strong vinegar tang.
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Preserved Chicken Feet with Chili. Yuck. And I don’t see any chili.
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Steamed Chicken Feet with Brown Sauce. Not much better. Everyone thought these were bland.
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Spareribs with Black Bean Sauce. Very soft and juicy with lots of meat. This might have been the best pork niblets we’ve had!
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Har Gow. Very good thin skinned with nice whole shrimp inside. Great texture and not over-steamed. I think I liked these better than the “fancy” black version.
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Squid Ink Shrimp Dumpling with Gold Leaf. Basically har gow. The Squid Ink shell didn’t taste like much. Not bad at all since these are great har gow, but nothing too special.
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Shrimp and Pork Dimpling with Black Truffle. Siu Mai. Really nice ones at that with a more al dente wrapper. I’m not sure the truffle adds here, but it wasn’t offensive like it sometimes is.
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XLB. Probably the best dim sum place XLB I’ve had. Nice and juicy and served with good black vinegar and ginger.
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Scallop and Shrimp Dumpling with Fish Roe. Somehow not that exciting and not quite as balanced as the har gow — although certainly tasty.
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Shrimp Wonton with House Spicy Sauce. These were great. Very delicate with lots of great shrimp plus the sauce, which was more sweet than actually spicy, was fantastic.
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Rice Noodle Roll (Chow Fun) with Minced Beef & Chinese Parsley. I haven’t had a beef Chow Fun in a while. This had great texture as it was steamed perfectly. The meat was very soft, pleasant tasting, and extremely mild. Overall nice, but it would be useful to try some of the other flavors. It also wasn’t sauced with the usual seasoned sweet soy, which I do like with Chow Fun.
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Sticky Rice wrapped in Lotus Leaf. This is a classic and we liked how they were actually smaller. It was perfectly stick and steamed and had a realative lot of filling. While it wasn’t quite as awesome as the 1968 version it was a very good example of this dish, possibly the second best I’ve had recently.
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It’s not all rice which is great.
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Whole thing.

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Deep Fried Shrimp Spring Roll. The exterior was solid, but not awesomely flakey. The interior was more real shrimp and was excellent.
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I think these were crispy fried shrimps.
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Deep Fried Pork Dumpling. This was a very solid example of the Glutinous version of the pork dumpling. It had a nice chew and a decent amount of filling. It fell just slightly short of perfection as it wasn’t really crispy on the outside.
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The interior.
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Savory Deep Fried Chinese Donut stuffed with Mixed Shrimp, Squid, and Fish Paste. This was a polarizing dish. Jeffrey didn’t like the mayo (which was probably Kewpie) but I LOVED it. In fact I ate almost all of them even though I shouldn’t have. It had a great exterior crunch, a really nice umami shrimp cake interior, and that nice bit of acidic fatty zing from the “flavored” mayo.
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Eggplant Stuffed with Shrimp Paste. Just okay, although the sauce was great (possibly the same as was on the spicy wontons).
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Steamed BBQ Pork Bun (Char Siu Bao). Certainly a very solid version. Smaller than usual, which wasn’t bad, with a good ratio of sweet juicy BBQ pork filling. The bun was nicely steamed. This isn’t my favorite classic, but this was well executed.
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Interior.
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French Baked BBQ Pork Bun. Same filling as the steamed, and also a bit smaller than some, but with a nice crispy sweet exterior. Not the absolute best but a solid 8/10 version and better than the steamed (not realtively, but just because I like the baked better).
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Interior.
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Ginger, Chicken, Shrimp and Pork Bun. Interesting shape and the inside had a very pronounced shredded ginger chicken thing going on which was quite lovely and unique. Maybe it was the hit of ginger pungency. Very good.
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Interior.
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Pan Fried Shrimp and Pork Pandan Bun. The pandan leaf lends this bao its distinct pretty green color. It was nicely pan fried too and the dough was quite pleasant. The interior was fine too but overall I didn’t love it as much as I remembered from the last time I had it (at the Pasadena location).
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Interior.
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This chicken was displayed this way first.
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Roast Crispy Chicken with Black Truffle. I’m not sure about the black truffle part, but we ordered this because of the irresistable “Vlad the impaler’s chicken” vibe the menu gave at — and the impaled chicken didn’t dissapoint. The dish too was actually great. Really nice juicy chicken with a crispy skin. Just a very nice roast chicken.
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Poached Sliced Beef in Hot Chili Oil. This is a classic Sichuan dish and a fairly solid version at that. Quite a bit of numbing Sichuan peppercorns and tender beef — plus way too many bean sprouts but that’s a thing with this dish. I’ve had versions with more depth to the broth but this was quite solid and had the proper more water/oil texture rather than the goopy corn sauce vibe.
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Sateed String Bean with Minced Pork. Very solid version with crispy beans and lots of umami almost XO-like pork.
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Deep Fried Durian Pastry. After so many great dishes it was surprising to bite into this one — it was awful. The outside was a bit greasy and the durian inside overcooked and heavy with a bannana-like texture. Ick. Nothing like the incredible crispy puff with light durian cream at Monterey Palace.
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Interior.
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Egg Custard Tart w/ Milk. I’m not sure what the “milk” deal is but these pale soft tarts had almost no flavor and certainly not much egg flavor. Barely seemed like a custard at all. Big fail and maybe the worst egg tart I’ve had. Again the divine one at Monterey Park comes to mind.
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Coconut Bunny Pudding. So cute and served very very cold. These had that agar agar jelly texture, much like a chilled hard-boiled egg white. The taste was mildly sweet and mildly coconuty. It was actually pleasant but not much to it.
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Cute!
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Overall, Chef Tony’s was one of the best dim sum place we’ve been to. Hard to remember exactly how it compared to Pasadena (3-4 years ago) but while the menu was almost the same I think this is quite a bit better. Almost all the savory dim sum was great, particualy the steamed dishes. The desserts were weirdly awful. The wood ear, spareribs, har gow, XLB, shrimp wonton, and sticky rice were first or second in class. Given how good the chicken, beef, and stringbeans were I suspect the rest of the menu would be pretty good too.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Too Tony at Chef Tony
  2. DimSumQuest – ixlb Dimsum Eats
  3. DimSumQuest – Blooming VIP
  4. DimSumQuest – Monterey Palace
  5. DimSumQuest – Bistro 1968
By: agavin
Comments (0)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Chef Tony, Chinese cuisine, Dim sum, DimSumQuest, Lunch Quest, SGV

Too Tony at Chef Tony

Apr13

Restaurant: Chef Tony

Location: 2 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91105. (626) 803-0028

Date: February 26, 2020

Cuisine: Cantonese Dim Sum

Rating: Dumplings good, but portions tiny

_

The Lunch Quest gang is always keen to try a new Chinese spot.7U1A8984
So we trekked out to Pasadena once we heard that the original chef from Sea Harbor was opening up a new “fancy” dim sum spot in Pasadena.
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This is in the old 800 degrees space and nicely built out… up stairs at least.
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There is an attractive bar.
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But our six person party was banished to the “dungeon.” The basement was claustrophobic and smelled of “potty.” Ick. It was pretty off-putting.

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The Menu.
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Sauces in the usual microscopic dishes.
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XO sauce.
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Lobster Salad. This is a “whole” order ($28.80). It was tasty, but very small.
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Steamed chicken feet in brown sauce.
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Shrimp dumpling with gold leaf. These are basically har gow (below) but with a black dough and gold leaf. They don’t taste too different. One of the nice things about Chef Tony is that almost all the dumplings can be ordered by the piece as well as by the order. This really helps when you have a person count that isn’t divisible by 3 or 4.
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Har Gow. Very nice classic shrimp dumplings — except they are $2 each and at many places they are $2-3 an order!
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Shrimp and Pork dumpling with Black Truffle. Pretty much your usual shu mai but with truffle. They were good, but I’m not sure the truffle actually improves anything.
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Baked BBQ Pork Bun. Excellent version with the usual sweet interior.
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Shrimp wonton with house spicy sauce. Very nice and delicate with quite a bit of salty flavor.
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Shrimp, crab meat, and matsutake dumplings. Nice delicate dumplings.
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Juicy Pork dumplings (XLB). Very good example of the Cantonese variant of these.
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Pan-fried shrimp & pork pandan bun. Doughy, but with a very nice flavor. Quite tasty.
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Deep fried pork dumpling. Just an ok version of this chewy fried type.
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Deep fried tofu in Thai sauce. Nice tender tofu. Quite good.
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Pan-fried radish cake with XO sauce. I really liked this dish. It had the soft/starchy daikon texture with lots of umami XO flavor.
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Squid ink pasta with crab meat and gold leaf. This was a total disappointment. It was just vaguely fishy with a strong red pepper flavor. Not terribly good at all.
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Stir-fried rice noodle with beef. This was much better. Like Chinese beef Pad Thai.
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Deep fried crispy king prawn. Tasty and super crispy but also super fried.
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BBQ Pork. Delicious and pretty much coated in syrup.
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Braised eggplant with minced pork on rice noodle casserole. Not a ton of eggplant but I enjoyed the chewy “rice noodle” with the sauce.
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Sliced Chinese broccoli with black truffle sauce. Now this was only $6.80, but it was embarrassingly tiny. We are talking 2 inches across!
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Sautéed string beans with minced pork. Decent tasting but also about 1/3 the size of a typical version of this dish. It was hard to split 6 ways.
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Coconut pudding. These were super cute, but very bland. Basically nearly flavorless coconut jelly (vaguely sweet) pressed into bunny moulds.

Overall, Chef Tony is not a phenomenal experience. The dumplings were actually pretty good, being a bit fancier and smaller and more delicate like they are in Hong Kong. But many of the other dishes were a bit limp. It’s still in soft opening and a few things on the menu (like Chow Fun) weren’t available. Service was fine. QPR isn’t great. Some dishes are laughably small. Some are way more expensive than at a larger “Cantonese Palace.” Some are both. I’d certainly rather go to a place like World Seafood, Elite, or Grand Harbor. For me, Pasadena is also further away than the SGV and more difficult to park in.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

Related posts:

  1. Lunasia Dim Sum
  2. Shandong Dumplings
  3. Chef Yu Bo & LQ Foodings
  4. World Seafood is Elite
  5. Westwood Chinese – Northern Cafe
By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Cantonese cuisine, Chef Tony, Chinese cuisine, Dim sum, dumplings, Lunch Quest, noodles, Pasadena, Truffle
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