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DimSumQuest – Colette

Oct23

Restaurant: Colette

Location: 975 N Michillinda Ave, Pasadena, CA 91107. (626) 510-6286

Date: March 8, 2023

Cuisine: Contemporary Chinese

Rating: Solid, slightly experimental dim sum

There is a lot of buzz about Colette, which is part of the “next generation” of LA Chinese restaurants. They opened in a cafe-like space and are serving both Cantonese-esqe and dim sum. From their website:

Colette is a Cantonese-based creative Asian restaurant that welcomes people from all walks of life for all occasions. Our goal is to provide you with an inviting experience whether you’re joining us for a fine new Asian cuisine, after hiking, a friend or family gathering, a business meeting, a date, or other special occasions.

Whatever the occasion, our ambiance, and setting at Colette will serve your needs. Whether you are on the go or want to bring your pets to relax and hang out with friends, our indoor seating area and the outdoor patio are designed to offer you a cozy and comfortable space for you to enjoy your meal. In addition, our food is cooked to order and is prepared with quality in mind. Whenever it is possible, our food is prepared using ingredients from local farmers’ markets.

At Colette, we believe dining is an experience involving all senses, not just taste. Therefore, we try to ensure that our guests will enjoy the service provided by our staff and our decor, in addition to the excellent quality and taste of our menu items. We want to offer a memorable experience to each guest so that you will return with your friends and family.

Not your classic decor.

The lunch menu.

We decided not to throw down $79/lb for some geoduck. Did at a dinner a few months later, but more on that later.

Pretty tea service.

Abalone sauce chicken feet. Chicken feet braised in condensed seafood sauce. Those willing to try these nasty things thought they were bland and generally a poor showing.

Shrimp & Pork Siu Mai. Shrimp and pork filled in thin wonton wrap. Not a bad siu mai. One of the better dim sum.

Lotus Leaf Wrapped Sticky Rice. Sticky rice, chicken, salted egg yolk, mushroom, wrapped in lotus leaf. Torched mozzarella cheese. Nice presentation, but we weren’t sure the melted cheese added in any way to the rather bland classic sticky rice. It did have a good amount of filling, however.

Zoom!

Crispy Abalone Taro Tart. Fried taro tart topped with braised abalone. The abalone on top was great and the “body” of the dumpling was a giant ball of taro that was wrapped in a crispy shell and deep friend. While hugely carby, it was kinda delicious.

Sauces. We had to ask for these.

Shrimp Egg Roll. Not a bad spring roll and stuffed with shrimp.

Inside.

XLB. Very mediocre typical dim sum XLB. Not great but not bad.

Zoom.

Jumbo Shrimp Har Gow. Shrimp with rice noodle wrap. The filling was pretty good but the wrapper was sticky and tore easily.

Char Siu Bun. Bun stuffed with minced Char Siu. Pretty sweet but a solid (normal) version of the dish.

Cross section.

Lobster sticky rice. This whole lobster was stir friend and somehow blended with a fried Chinese sausage sticky rice. While an odd frankenstein of two dishes, this was actually pretty tasty.

Zoom!

Crispy stuffed chicken. Deboned air-dried chicken, shrimp paste. This is known as 100 flower chicken. It’s basically a pan fried shrimp paste cake sandwiched in chicken skin. This was a solid version of the dish, and it’s a great dish, so probably one of the best items we had.

More close ups.

Golden Pork Trots. Fried pork trots marinated with red bean sauce and garlic. These were terrible. Overcooked and with a nasty “ripe pig” taste. Yuck.

Overhead on the nasty things.

Black Pepper Diced Beef. Sauteed black angus beef dice. Fairly typical “shaking beef”, pretty sweet, but enjoyable enough.

Overall, this is a weird place. It feels like an American breakfast cafe, but it’s Chinese. The food is mildly fusion. It’s partially dim sum, partially other Chinese. Dishes were hit or miss but nothing really stood out as amazing and it’s not actually “better” in any way than most SGV restaurants. But that’s just the dim sum. A follow-up dinner here turned out an absolutely first class meal. So while I think Colette is nice enough at lunch, it really rocks for less dim sum oriented Cantonese — more on that in another post.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Cantonese cuisine, Chinese cuisine, Dim sum, DimSumQuest, Pasadena

DimSumQuest – Happy Harbor

Sep21

Restaurant: Happy Harbor [1, 2]

Location: 1015 Nogales St, West Covina, CA 91792. 626-965-2020

Date: February 14, 2021

Cuisine: Cantonese Chinese

Rating: Great cantonese

I went here for dinner in 2021 and had a great meal — so I had high hopes for our dim sum visit.

Happy Harbor is a medium sized Cantonese located right next to Mandarin plaza, a “far east” (Hacienda Heights ish) area we have eaten at again and again.

The interior is classic Cantonese.

The infinite corridor.

Grungy tanks.

Le menu.

Decent set of basic sauces.

On request, they brought us peanuts form the dinner menu.

And smashed cucumbers which were very pleasant.

The lot.

Chicken Feet in Abalone Sauce. People said they were okay.

Jumbo Shrimp Har Gow. The insides were generous and pretty good but the shells were thick and sticky and broke apart on trying to pickup the dumplings. So just middling.

Truffle Shrimp har Gow with Squid Ink. These were better as the wrapper retained its integrity. The inside was shrimp with a hint of truffle oil. Not bad.

Fish Roe Siu Mai. The classic Siu Mai were huge and porky with a bit of whole shrimp. They were solid — both literally and figuratively — but not awesome.

Chiu Chow Style Steamed Dumplings. With the peanuts inside. These were pretty tasty but the wrapper was fairly heavy.

Mushroom Shrimp Dumpling. Pretty nice and certainly plump.

XLB. Typical for dim sum XLB — aka not particularly great.

Bean Curd Balls with Vegetables. The wrapper was a bit chewy but these were enjoyable.

Steamed BBQ Pork Bao. The bun was over-steamed and the inside sickly sweet and not very pleasant.

Inside.

Baked Abalone Sauce BBQ Pork Buns. Very sticky and sweet on the outside with a sickly sweet red pork interior. Better than the steamed but not great at all.

Inside.

Deep Fried Spring Rolls. Stuff with shrimp. Very nice flakey/crunchy outside and some solid shrimp. Pretty good.

Fried Chives Shrimp Pork Patty. I always try to order these when I see them. These were good, although not the best. They did have that nice texture and the pleasant greasy quality.

Tofu with Spicy Chicken Sauce. Not sure what’s chicken about this sauce. The Tofu was the classic fried Egg Tofu and was good, even if the overall presentation was sloppy and ugly. The sweet and slightly spicy sauce was probably jarred. But I did enjoy them as I always do.

Spiced Fried Shisamo Fish. Little dark baitfish DEEP fried. They were very strong and the fry was out of control thick. No one went for a second fish.

Stuffed Morel Mushroom. Stuff with shrimp paste and topped wiht a bit of crab. While the mushroom was a bit rubbery this was one of the better dishes and is fairly rare.

Steamed Shrimp Ball with Corn. Fluffy shrimp ball, a touch underseasoned but not bad, laced with corn kernels. The corn leant it an interesting and pleasant texture.

Steamed Rice Noodle with Spare Ribs in Black Bean Sauce. We ordered these ribs on top of the chow fun in order to get a “2 for 1”. The ribs were the usual steamed ribs, a bit porky, but soft and reasonably decent. Not sure having a bunch of rice noodle underneath was much of a plus.

Sticky Rice Wrapper with Lotus Leaf. The rice itself was under-seasoned, almost sticky white rice, although the filling was very pleasant.

Inside.

Live shrimp steamed with garlic. The garlic flavor of the sauce was potent but nice. The shrimp themselves felt a bit overcooked and small and shell dominated by the time we got to eating them. Could have been much better. AND they were like $80/lb!

Crispy Durian Cake. The lard based “buttery” pastry was solid and the durian custard very durian-flavored and reasonably nice.

Overall, Happy Harbor was very “B”. None of the dishes stood out as great. Most of the normal dim sum was okay, but not only below the top A tier, but also below the better (but not top) A-/B+ places in the SGV proper. Still, Happy Harbor was better than the meh places, they have a huge menu with many good options, so it would be enjoyable if the location was convenient.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Tagged as: Dim sum, DimSumQuest, dumplings, Happy Harbor, Lunch Quest, SGV, valentines day

All Day at 888

Sep11

Restaurant: 海珍大酒樓 888 seafood restaurant [1, 2, 3]

Location: 8450 Valley Blvd, Rosemead, CA 91770. (626) 573-1888

Date: February 12, 2023

Cuisine: Cantonese Dimsum & Banquet

Rating: good not great, but awesome room and a lot of fun

As has become a bit of a tradition, Superbowl Sunday hedonist style is an all day affair at 888 Seafood. Not one but two meals!

The frontage.

Nothing like hanging out in the hall with the hanging meat!

Jeffrey’s sauce bar.

We have been in this giant private room both with a single monster table and with the current two large table configurations.

Overall, dim sum here was very “meh.” It was certainly the worst I’ve had recently in the SGV (as I’ve been going to good places), but solid enough to be enjoyable. In general, skins were too thick and things were a bit overcooked. They do have a lot of variety but the “banquet” side of 888 is way better than the dim sum side.

Jellyfish. Pretty meh jellyfish with a decent texture but no flavor. Jellyfish needs an acidic sauce/marinate.

Cold meat plate. The pork was excellent, the duck solid, the chicken fine, and the pink pork “wurst” stuff incredible. Great “cured meat” quality.

Steamed Chicken Feet in Brown Sauce. People said they were gross.

Sparerib in Black Bean Sauce. Very piggy and unpleasant version of this typical dish. Texture was okay but the flavor was terrible.

Premium Har Gow. These weren’t so premium. The skins were a little thick and over-steamed and the interior, while fine and full of solid shrimp, was bland and under seasoned. Still not bad or anything, but bland.

Pork & Shrimp Siu Mai. A touch oversteamed but savory enough, so reasonably tasty.

Chiu Chow Style Pork & Peanut Dumpling. These had a heavy wrapper but the filling was delicious with a mix of peanuts, meats, and various veggies.

Shrimp & Chives Dumpling. Again the wrapper was a little thick and the inside okay but a touch underseasoned.

XLB. Pretty decent actually for dim sum XLB. The pork itself was very tasty but there wasn’t really any juice.

Bean Curd Skin Rolls in Brown Sauce. Actually one of the better dim sum here with a nice texture and decent flavor. Not as nicely white peppered as the best versions, but certainly enjoyable.

Steamed Rice Noodle Roll with Shrimp. Solid Chow Fun with good texture and lots of shrimp. Sauce wasn’t sweet but did work.

Steamed Rice Noodle Roll with BBQ Pork. Again, a pretty good Chow Fun as the BBQ pork here is good.

Pan Fried Shrimp Rice Noodle Roll. I think I actually tried to order the Red Rice Noodle Roll and got this instead. It was pretty good though, being basically a dried shrimp and chive Chow Fun that was pan fried. Tasty in a greasy way.

Steamed BBQ Pork Bun. THe pork inside was very sweet but there was a good amount of it. The dough was over steamed and soggy.

Baked BBQ Pork Bun. Decent but sweet filling, so-so bun.

Contents.

Pan Fried Dace Fishcake. Dense and very fried with an interesting flavor. Not to everyone’s taste but I kind of liked it.

Deep Fried Shrimp Spring Roll. Solid enough version of this with a heavy but crispy shell and lots of shrimp.

Pan Fried Water Chestnut Cake. We didn’t know what to expect from this, and certainly not what we got, but it did turn out delicious. It was gelatinous and vaguely sweet — quite yummy.

Eggplant with Shrimp Paste. The fried fish ball was good, but this kind of straight up baked or steamed eggplant not my favorite texture.

Egg Tofu with Fish Paste in Brown Sauce. I like the soft egg tofu texture and the fish paste (which might have been shrimp paste?) was good, so this was a pleasant dish. Could it have been better with a stronger peppery brown sauce and a more seasoned fish cake? Sure, but it was pretty good anyway.

Steamed Beef Ball. Solid and chewy version of this classic. Very stuck together.

Mushrooms and vegetables.

Sticky Rice Wrapped with Lotus Leaves. I didn’t get a chance to try.

Custard Egg Tart. Very meh version. Eggy, and certainly not offensive, but not great.

Wines.

The coma.

BBQ Suckling Pig. Absolutely awesome and probably one of the best Chinese pig’s I’ve had. It was porky in the best way with a crispy skin and that “sizzling pork fat” thing going on. Really delicious.

100 Flower Chicken. Nice version of this relatively rare dish with the crispy skin and the luscious shrimp paste. Could have been a touch more seasoned but still delicious.

Hot and Sour Soup. Just okay with a decent texture but wasn’t really hot or sour.

Beef Brisket in Chili Oil. Tasty but not amazing.

Crab in Salty Egg Yolk. I don’t love the salty egg yolk prep as it’s kind of heavy and has a grainy quality, but this was one of the best crab’s I’ve had with it. The shell’s were very tender and there was a lot of meat so one could crunch through and really enjoy the sweet meat.

Lamb, onion, cilantro, and mushroom stir fry. I guess this was a variant on cumin lamb (without much cumin). It was soft but quite enjoyable.

Typhoon Style Garlic Lobster. Really nice lobster with lots of meat and crispy garlic.

Eggplant and String Beans. Okay but not my favorite.

Cauliflower with Southern Chinese Sausage. Yum, that sweet porky sausage makes any vegetable good.

Yang Chow Fried Rice.

Kung Pao Fried Rice. Interesting.

Piggy!

New Flavor — Cherry Bakewell Tart Gelato — While watching every episode of the Great British Baking Show I was introduced to the Bakewell Tart, which I liked it enough to make a gelato — Sicilian Noto Romano Almond Custard Base is layered with house-made Honey Almond Graham Crackers and Cherry Preserves. For extra fun I made an Almond Icing and glazed the Grahams with it in the traditional pattern (first time trying it) — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato –#SweetMilkGelato #gelato #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #Sicily #Almond #Cherry #GrahamCracker #BakewellTart #tart #bakewell #jam #icing

One of my earliest Signature Flavors —Tiramisu Gelato — The base is a highly technical Zabaione of Egg Yolk, Fresh Mascarpone Cheese, and Sweet Marsala with Fresh Brewed Espresso. It’s dusted with Valrhona Cocoa powder and layered with house-made Vanilla Rum Espresso syrup-soaked Lady Fingers — the final result is totally Tiramisu — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato –#SweetMilkGelato #gelato #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #Tiramisu #Espresso #coffee #chocolate #Marsala #Zabaione #Eggyolk #Rum #Mascarpone

Wines.

Out in the main hall!

Dimsum at 888 was solid, but not particularly interesting or super fresh. Definitely a notch or two down from the made to order places. Shells were a bit “sticky” which indicates they have been sitting in the steamers for a bit. Also, because we were starting at 2pm the dim sum kitchen was closing and so they brought EVERYTHING out all at once.

The banquet food was better, pretty good actually. It’s not the best Cantonese restaurant in the SGV for dinner, but it’s certainly way way better than anything further west and really quite good. Service is very nice and good for the SGV. And that mega banquet room rocks. They have a couple of them too but ours is the best. Really great private party space even if a little garish.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: 888 Seafood, BYOG, Cantonese Chinese, Chinese Food, Dim sum, Gelato, hedonists, SGV

DimSumQuest – Lunasia

Sep08

Restaurant: Lunasia [1, 2, 3, 4]

Location: 500 West Main Street Suite A, Alhambra, CA 91801. (626) 308-3222

Date: February 23, 2023

Cuisine: Cantonese Dim Sum

Rating: Excellent

The DimSumQuest group continues to scour San Gabriel Valley dim sum restaurants. I’ve actually been to Lunasia many times before, but this is my first trip here for dim sum in a long time, so I figured that instead of updating the old post (it’s almost a decade old) I’d do an entirely new report.

Pretty menu.

House Special Stir Cucumber. The cucumbers themselves were fine, but they dumped packaged sweet and spicy dipping sauce on them. Kind of meh.

Seaweed Salad. This “seaweed” salad seemed like Jellyfish Salad. It was chewy, which was okay, but with a grainy mustardy dressing that lacked acidity — so not very pleasant.

Hangry brought some Beijing Lamb Buns from next door.

Steamed Chicken Feet. Bland.

Spare Ribs w/ Black Bean Sauce. Pretty good actually with lots of meat. Not much “black bean” but one of the better versions of this we have had — not the best but pretty good.

Jumbo Shrimp & Pork Siu-Mai. Huge but delicious with tons of pork meat and whole shrimp suspended inside.

Truffle Siu-Mai. The truffle version was identical but with canned truffle on top. Actually quite good but perhaps not legions better than the basic version.

Jumbo Shrimp Har-Gow. Great version, with fabulous shrimp inside and a good shell. Not the thinest shell ever but with first rate texture. After a few minutes the shell got a little sticky but that always happens.

Scallop Dumpling w/ Squid Ink. Sometimes the scallop dumpling falls a little short but not this one. The squid ink wrapper was nice and there was a lot of scallop inside, almost like a cooked “battleship” scallop sushi.

Spinach Shrimp Dumpling. Unusual, usually this is chive. It had both a green “spinach” wrapper and spinach inside with the shrimp — which surprisingly worked well.

XLB. Solid dim sum version. Not amazing or anything but better than many.

Pork Bean Curd Wrap w/ Broth. Really quite nice. This is the broth version, as opposed to the “flavor corn starch sauce” version, but the broth was pleasant and the rolls excellent.

Steamed BBQ Pork Char Siu Bao. There was plenty of filling but it was overly sweet and the bun itself was soggy and over-steamed. Not terrible but fairly meh.

Contents.

Baked BBQ Pork Char Siu Bao. The baked version had the same overly sweet pork. The bun was oddly small and just okay.

Inside.

Pan-Fried Pork Bun w/ Crab Meat. The buns seemed a bit soggy but the “crab” filling was interesting.

Inside again.

Stick Rice Wrap. This classic was great, probably second only to the 1968 version. Lots of stuff inside the rice and a great rice flavor. Excellent.

The guts.

Supreme Beef Ball. I’m the only one who liked these chewy beef balls.

Shrimp Egg Roll. Nice and crispy with a lot of shrimp inside. Quite good.

Deep Fried Taro Cake? Not sure exactly what this was but the texture was fabulously crispy. Quite lovely.

Mixed Puff with Pork. Just okay version. Not crispy enough and not enough flavor in the filling.

Live Lobster Chow-Fun. I’ve never had lobster chow fun, but now I have and this was awesome. One of the best regular chow fun I’ve had. The sauce cold have been a little strong/sweeter but the texture was very nice and there were lots of nice lobster chunks.

Crispy Seafood Noodle. Just fair version of this generally excellent dish. Seafood itself was pretty good but the MSG factor was very high.

Pan-Fried String-Beans. Woah — MSG string beans. Nicely crispy but they were also stir-fried with the same sweet chili sauce that were used on the cucumbers. Weird.

Assorted BBQ Combination Quartet with Hong Kong Roasted Duck, Lunasia Boiled Chicken, Macao Style Roasted Pork Belly, and BBQ Pork (char siu). Kinda excellent, particularly the char siu. But the duck and Macao pork were also great. Some great sauces for them too.

BBQ meat sauces.

Pineapple Bun and Macao Style Egg Custard. The Pineapple Bun was small but very good with a nice flavored custard and good texture. The egg tart was quite good, although still not in the same league as the Montery Palace one. Macao (caramelized) egg tarts are almost always better than the regular ones.

Pure and Concentrated Evil — Kentucky Mud Pie Gelato — Expresso Knob Creek Bourbon Custard Gelato base with layers of house-made Crushed Oreo Valrhona Fudge Ganache, and house-made Vanilla Coconut Cream Cheese Icing — The Plaid Mode of Gelati and includes a hefty Caffeine kick — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato — #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #coconut #valrhona #chocolate #ganache #expresso #bourbon #custard #oreos #icing

Overall Lunasia was much better than I expected. It’s always been quite good for dim sum, and there is some uneveness to the kitchen, but the steamed items were in general excellent, in the A tier. Fried items were good too. But baked savory items a bit meh, and some duds like the cucumbers and jellyfish. Desserts were excellent. The non dim sum dishes here generally aren’t great, but the BBQ was very solid. So overall maybe A-, slightly under 1968 and Tonys, but very close.

For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Cantonese cuisine, Chinese cuisine, Chinese Food, Dim sum, DimSumQuest, Lunch Quest, SGV

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.

Frontage is strip mall.

A much smaller, pleasant, but less upscale dining room than the Pasadena location.

You can see into the kitchen and the steaming chamber.

Where the magic happens.

Epic menu!

The dim sum menu.

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.

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.

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.

Preserved Chicken Feet with Chili. Yuck. And I don’t see any chili.

Steamed Chicken Feet with Brown Sauce. Not much better. Everyone thought these were bland.

Spareribs with Black Bean Sauce. Very soft and juicy with lots of meat. This might have been the best pork niblets we’ve had!

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.

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.

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.

XLB. Probably the best dim sum place XLB I’ve had. Nice and juicy and served with good black vinegar and ginger.

Scallop and Shrimp Dumpling with Fish Roe. Somehow not that exciting and not quite as balanced as the har gow — although certainly tasty.

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.

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.

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.

It’s not all rice which is great.

Whole thing.

Deep Fried Shrimp Spring Roll. The exterior was solid, but not awesomely flakey. The interior was more real shrimp and was excellent.

I think these were crispy fried shrimps.

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.

The interior.

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.

Eggplant Stuffed with Shrimp Paste. Just okay, although the sauce was great (possibly the same as was on the spicy wontons).

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.

Interior.

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).

Interior.

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.

Interior.

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).

Interior.

This chicken was displayed this way first.

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.

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.

Sateed String Bean with Minced Pork. Very solid version with crispy beans and lots of umami almost XO-like pork.

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.

Interior.

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.

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.

Cute!

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.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Chef Tony, Chinese cuisine, Dim sum, DimSumQuest, Lunch Quest, SGV

DimSumQuest – ixlb Dimsum Eats

Aug29

Restaurant: ixlb Dimsum Eats

Location: 5900 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028. (323) 848-4766

Date: January 30, 2023

Cuisine: Chinese Dim Sum

Rating: Meh. Horrible takeout focused format

ixlb is a mom and pop takeout oriented dim sum spot in Hollywood. The owner is incredibly nice and dedicated to his craft. The kitchen is great and the older dim sum chefs make everything in house right there. You order at the counter and they bring everything in takeout containers. Drinks, plasticware, napkins etc are all of the disposable variety. There are only a couple tables.

The tiny interior is even smaller than this wide angle photo makes it look.

The menu covers most of the dim sum basics but they lean toward the fried and are missing a lot of the dim sum classics like chow fun, lotus sticky rice, etc.

The menu.

We had to keep ordering in batches.

Iced Coconut Tapioca.

Spicy Cucumbers. Okay cucumbers.

Sauces is one of the biggest problems with ixlb. They are in these little containers. Mustard and chili paste are in packets. There doesn’t appear to be vinegar or XO sauce. They are hard to use like this and of vastly inferior quality. The mustard was bitter and awful. To me, along with the crappy plastic wares and takeout containers this lowers the whole “form factor” and “enjoyment factor” of the eating by a fairly massive margin — even though the kitchen is quite good.

Char Siu. Very solid “hefty” version. Nothing amazing, but good.

XLB are good for dim sum XLB but no great shakes by real XLB standards. The lack of vineyard is a big problem too.

Har gow. These had thin wrappers and an excellent shrimp interior. The wrappers did tend to stick and fall apart — perhaps because of the transfer to the tackout containers.

Shrimp and Chive Dumpling. Okay with that “metallic” chive taste.

Shrimp Wonton with Chili Oil. Not really much chili oil but this was a very nice light wrappered shrimp dumpling.

Pan Fried Dumplings. Pretty tasty.

Not sure what these fried shrimp wontons were called but they were very crunchy and delicious. Interior was basically shrimp ball.

Spring Rolls. Crispy with a pretty good interior. Not as good as Rays, but solid.

Scallion Pancake. Just fine.

Fried Crab Sticks. Just about what it says: fried crab sticks. Ok.

Steamed Char Siu Bao. Very nice sweet pork filling and well made bao.

Baked Char Siu Bao. Very nice sweet pork filling and nice fluffy bun.

The interior.

Snowcap Char Siu Bao. Very nice sweet pork filling and well made bao, quite sweet, with really nice crispy top. This was slightly better than the regular baked one mostly because of the awesome texture.

Smiling Bun Fish. Basicaly fried fish, slaw, and sauce. Pretty darn tasty, but a lot like a fried fish sandwhich.

Inside.

Fried Shrimp Balls. Very fried but nice solid shrimp paste.

Sticky Rice Ball with pork. Basically a wrapped ball of sticky rice. Way too carby and bland for my taste.

Inside — all rice.

Seafood Pearl (steamed rice ball). Filled with shrimp paste and a few veggies this was an decent “ricey” version of the normal shrimp ball.

More rice (and shrimp paste).

Tea Eggs. Hard boiled eggs marinated in tea. Not my thing. In China these are usually quail eggs.

Curry chicken puff. This was stuffed with a yellow chicken and pea curry. They were awesome actually, really delicious with a nice crunchy outside and great filling.

The delicious inside.

Baked Sausage Bun. Basically a hot dog in some baked bread. Total meh. The owner said they were “for Americans.”

Ick.

Char Siu. Overcooked, but somewhat tasty. Pretty middling.

Spicy Pork Noodles. Very dry, salty, and lacking in interesting flavors. Not particularly spicy. Not so great.

Mixed up.

Pineapple Bun. This was probably the best pineapple bun I have ever had. Really first rate. The outside had a wonderful crunch and the bun was sweet and pleasant but the custard was awesome, like coconut custard with just a bit of fresh pineapple mixed in.

Awesome.

Sesame Balls.

Macau Egg Tart. Fair version. Pleasant enough but nothing special.

The gang and the owner.

Overall, I didn’t actually enjoy ixlb even though the dim sum itself is homemade and actually quite good. Basically the format utterly ruins it for me. I hate plastic ware. I hate disposable containers. Dumplings stick to them. I hate high top seating. I hate counter ordering. I hate ordering and paying in batches. The sauces totally sucked. So all this conspired to make some quite excellent dim sum actually not taste very good. Dim sum needs the sauce. It needs the steamer with the little sheet of wax paper that prevents sticking. It needs to come out piping hot. It needs to come out in waves (and going up, waiting in line, and paying for each wave isn’t very fun).

Some might say it’s great for take out. Probably is. I don’t do takeout. Don’t like it. Dumplings don’t travel well.

Oh and then add to this that it’s far Hollywood location is actually harder to reach (for me) than the SGV. Well, I’ll probably never be back. Oddly, a couple of the guys really liked it. Not for me. I’ll sit down at a real table.

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Dim sum, DimSumQuest, dumplings, Lunch Quest, take out, takeout

Ray’s Duck House

Aug22

Restaurant: Ray’s Duck House晶瑞轩海鲜酒楼

Location: 4721 Chino Hills Pkwy, Chino Hills, CA 91709. (909) 606-9046

Date: January 26, 2023

Cuisine: Cantonese (and more) Chinese

Rating: Quite excellent, but really really far

So strong is my commitment to Chinese food that I was willing to drive a small group of us ALL the way to Chino Hills (roughly 1.5 hours each way) just for the chance to try this newish recommended Peking Duck and dim sum restaurant.

The aforementioned hills.

It’s unusual for a Cantonese place to have real Peking duck.

Check out the mysteriously featured “plastered over wall”!

Nice new “classic” decor.

Sauce station.

The menu sheet.

Specials. There was also a large glossy dinner menu I forgot to photo.

Jeffrey waiting for Chevy (who was 45 minutes late). Grr.

Chili sauce and very intense Chinese mustard.

Soy Sauce and Red Vinegar.

Smashed Cucumbers made special to order. Not marinated but very fresh and pretty decent.

Spicy Vermicelli. This wasn’t quite what I expected as I was looking for the Sichuan tangy spicy numbing version. This was basically the same but not very tangy or spicy. It was good though and a little vinegar and chili oil half solved the problem.

Spicy Wontons. Sort of drowned in lightly spicy broth. Wontons themselves were fine.

Ray’s Peking duck spread. Style was modern Beijing cut in the back room.
Skin was thick, crunchy, airy, and quite spectacular, both the separate parts and the bits on the meat — it was all crunchy! = 9
Meat was served mostly moon cut with the skin, some dark meat by itself. The wings and legs were missing. And while the meat wasn’t as juicy as MDP it was very very tasty with great duck flavor. Probably the third best meat = 7.
Pancake was thin and translucent and there were plenty of them = 10
Hoisin was great. It wasn’t goopy thick, nor too sweet, and had fabulous on-point flavor = 9
Accoutrements were scallion and cucumbers as usual. This was the weakest element as they had been cut the previous day (most likely) and were dry = 3
Bones were on the menu, but they didn’t think we needed them = N/A
Duck Soup was bland although at least not unpleasant = 4
The burrito/bing together was excellent = 8.5/10.

More details on our giant survey of LA peking duck can be found here in the Ultimate LA Peking Duck Guide.

Skin was thick, crunchy, airy, and quite spectacular, both the separate parts and the bits on the meat — it was all crunchy! = 9
Meat was served mostly moon cut with the skin, some dark meat by itself. The wings and legs were missing. And while the meat wasn’t as juicy as MDP it was very very tasty with great duck flavor. Probably the third best meat = 7.

Hoisin was great. It wasn’t goopy thick, nor too sweet, and had fabulous on-point flavor = 9

Accoutrements were scallion and cucumbers as usual. This was the weakest element as they had been cut the previous day (most likely) and were dry = 3

Pancake was thin and translucent and there were plenty of them = 10

Duck Soup was bland although at least not unpleasant = 4

Spareribs in Blackbean Sauce. These were a bit bony — fine — but not as (realatively) good as most of the rest of the dimsum here.

Steamed Chicken Feet in Brown Sauce.

Shrimp Har Gow. An excellent version of this classic. Pretty nice medium shell with a nice chunky shrimp interior.

Pork and Shrimp Siu Mai. Excellent version. Very chunky with lots of good pork flavor.

Shrimp and Chives Dumpling. Quite solid.

XLB. Not the typical over heavy buns in the tin foil, so a step up. Shells were decent, if still a little thick. The meat was good but there wasn’t that much “soup.”

Rice Noodle Roll with BBQ Pork. The sauce was more savory than usual, but very nice. The texture on the chow fun itself was really stretchy and excellent and the pork was juicy and great.

End on view.

Sticky Rice Wrapped with Lotus Leaves. The rice itself was very good and the filling bits tasty, but minimal. Needed a bunch more and some eggs.

Inside the wrap.

Pan-Fried chives & shrimp cake. I always love this dish and this was no exception. Greasy and delicious with awesome texture.

Bean Curd Skin Rolls in Brown Sauce. This was one of the best versions of this dish I’ve had. Maybe not THE BEST but very good. The quality came down to the extremely “flavored” (MSGed) brown sauce and the nice texture of the wrap and veggies inside.

BBQ Pork Bun. The fluffy bun might have been a hair dry but the pork interior was sweet, classic, and delicious.

Inside view.

Baked BBQ Pork Bun. The sticky sweet bun was spot on and the interior contained the same yummy sweet pork. Excellent.

Inside view again.

Tianjin Pork Bun. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. What we got was a classic bao bun, the kind that’s also common in Japan, with a dumpling like pork ball interior. The meat was good. This felt quite old school.

Beef Ball with Dried Tangerine Peel. These were a bit fluffier than usual, although still stretchy. The flavor was nice so quite excellent, although subtly different.

Fried Shrimp Ball with Egg Yolk. Not sure where the yolk was, as these were served with what seemed like a sweet mayo. They were good though, being classic shrimp balls with a crunchy shell.

Deep Fried Vegetarian Spring Roll. This was like the ideal veggie spring roll, perfect. It was super hot, crispy, and then the cabbage and white pepper interior was absolutely lovely.

Deep Fried Pork Dumplings. The glutinous shell was a bit sweet and quite good and there was a different (if understuffed) pork filling inside. Quite excellent.

Baked Egg Tart. Shell was a touch heavy but the eggy custard filling was excellent. Not as amazing as the Monterey Palace ones, but still good.

Overall, Ray’s was reasonably impressive. The Peking Duck was quite solid, definitely real Peking Duck and right int he middle of the pack. It would have been even better if Chevy wasn’t 45 min late (during which time the duck sat and waited for him, growing soggier). The dim sum was also very good. It’s not the BEST and the dishes were pretty standard, but execution was overall quite good, allowing for a totally solid classic dim sum experience.

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Chinese Food, Chino Hills, Dim sum, DimSumQuest, Lunch Quest, Peking Duck, Ray's Duck House, SGV

DimSumQuest – Monterey Palace

Aug18

Restaurant: Monterey Palace [1, 2]

Location: 1001 E Garvey Ave, Monterey Park, CA 91755. (626) 571-0888

Date: January 24, 2023

Cuisine: Cantonese Dim Sum

Rating: Many good, some great items

The DimSumQuest continues with Monterey Park classic Monterey Palace.

It’s right there on Garvey with that classic 90s look.

And the classic Monterey Park dining room.

Hanging roast meats.

Menu.

You have to pay for the basic sauces at $1 a plate.

We ordered this twice and it cost $1. They were out of XO sauce! huh?

Har Gow. Solid, but a little underseasoned. There was a real shrimp in there and the skins were just a touch thick.

Shu Mai. Also a bit underseasoned. Not my favorite. Not bad or anything, just a bit meh.

XLB. The standard “Elite style” pre-packaged tin foil thick XLB. Filling was underseasoned.

Shrimp with Chives dumpling. Filling was a touch underseasoned and skin just a little thick, but certainly pretty good.

Chao Zhou Dumpling. Peanuts inside this one. Better filling, same skin.

Bean Curd Wrap with Oyster Sauce. A nice version of this dish, piping hot. Solid but not the best ever.

Steamed Pork Spare Ribs with Pumpkin. Really excellent version of this dish. Little bone, very tender, and lots of flavor.

Beef Balls with Orange Peel. The typical “dense” beef ball but quite nice.

Sticky Rice Wrapped in Lotus Leaf. Solid enough, but not so much meat. Rice did taste very nice though. Not as good as the incredible 1968 version.

The contents.

BBQ Pork Chow Fun. Solid with the wrapper being a touch heavy but the pork was good. Sauce could have been a touch sweeter.

Sauced.

Flaky BBQ Pork Buns. Flaky laminated lard pastry was great but the filling was minimal and bland. Very meh.

Baked BBQ Pork Pie (or possibly this is the flaky, hard to know). This pastry was great here and the pork pretty good, although not as red and sweet as some. The pastry was just a touch undercooked in the center but the outside and crackle was delicious.

Pan Fried Spring Roll with Taro. The outside was nice and crispy/flaky but the blah taro interior was heavy and flavorless.

Pork Dumpling. The usual glutinious bomb. These were actually a great example of the type with a nice thick, chewy, and slightly sweet skin. Could have used a bit more filling but what was there was delicious.

The nearly hollow interior.

Cantonese Roast Duck. Cold. Once a person adjusted to the temperature this juice duck — while very salted — was absolutely delicious.

Chinese Broccoli with Salted Fish. Nice very salty green veg with lots of crunchy and umami.

Roasted Squab. Solid, probably 7/10, but I have had better versions of this dish quite frequently.

Live Turbot.

Live Turbot, steamed with Garlic and Ginger. Absolutely first rate fish. This had nice flavor and that melt-in-your-mouth flesh quality that the best versions of this dish have. Almost as good as the Chang’an version — which is to say incredible.

Bovon likes a good Turbot.

Baked Snow Capped Bun. Inside was a coconut cream filling. The pastry was nice, but not that sweet and the filling lacked flavor to my taste.

Yum.

Baked Portuguese Egg Tart. These were probably the best example of this classic I’ve ever had. I think the “pastry” chef here is very good. The tart itself almost fell apart but tasted great and the filling was light, eggy, and very fluffy, not too sweet. Spectacular fresh out of the oven.

Thai Durian Puff. Super crispy sprial pastry with durian cream inside. This was again the best durian puff I’ve ever had. That petrol taste was clean and lovely with a really great “creme pat” texture. Fabulous warm.

Insanely good.

Black and White Sesame Balls. Took 30 min to bake! I didn’t try but apparently they were good too.

Overall, the dimsum was solid but generally just “good-” on the scale of SGV made to order dim sum. A couple dishes stood out. The baked pastries were excellent although the savory fillings hit or miss. The sweet baked goods some of the best Chinese sweet baked goods I’ve had anywhere. There was a general tendency to under-seasoning in the savory items. The non dimsum dishes were better, quite salted.

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Brunch, Cantonese Chinese, Dim sum, DimSumQuest, dumplings, lunch

DimSumQuest – Blooming VIP

May20

Restaurant: Blooming VIP Restaurant

Location: 8118 Garvey Ave A, Rosemead, CA 91770. (626) 280-2288

Date: October 7, 2022

Cuisine: Cantonese Chinese Dim Sum

Rating: Solid

This was sort of the first of a new series we called DimSumQuest, in which a bunch of us actively hit some of Southern California’s vast array of Dim Sum places in short order (1-2 a week over several months) in order to suss out their relative merits. Technically speaking, at the time of this visit we hadn’t yet conceived the nefarious plan, but it was the same crew and in the same timeframe so this was pretty much visit (ground) zero.

Blooming VIP, horrible name aside, is a recent opening of a typical Cantonese palace. It’s even helmed by our friend Ben who used to be at Grand Harbor.

I’m not sure if it’s brand new or took over a previous Cantonese Palace but it has some serious (overwrought) build-out.

Who doesn’t love a dragon medallion.

And the main room has to be seen to be believed.

The highlight are these video screen Chinese columns! Animated seafood scenes roll around them continuously!

The manager, Ben and Yarom.

Le menu.

Honey BBQ Pork.

Five Spices Beef Shank.

Imperial Cold Chicken.

Roasted Duck Hong Kong Style.

Seafood Pan Fried Noodle.

Chicken Feet with XO Sauce.

Short Rib with Black Pepper Sauce.

Bean Curd Skin Wrap.

Steamed Beef Balls.

Shrimp and Mushroom Sui Mai.

Beef Rice Noodle with Green Onion.

XLB.

Shrimp Chives Dumpling.

Har Gow.

Pan Fried Chives Pastry. I love these when I see them.

Tofu with Thai Sauce. I love these too, kind of a guilty pleasure.

Shrimp Egg Roll.

Deep Fried Shrimp Ball.

BBQ Pork Bun.

Salty Meat Sticky Rice Wrap. A bit of an unusual look to it, with lots of filling.

Overall, I remember that this was solid but not amazing Dim Sum. Now don’t get me wrong, if you aren’t jaded like I am with SGV Dim Sum, it might be the best you ever had, but in that rarified world, it’s just “doing a good job.” They have a great classic “Palace” setting, they have a full menu of all the usuals and a few less usuals, they have the BBQ meats, they allow you to order off the bigger “dinner” Cantonese menu if you like (not so recommended during the day), and they have awesome service. So, yeah, it checks all the boxes. Specific Dim Sum execution was just good, not amazing. Unfortunately, not only was this the zero’th DimSumQuest visit but I didn’t take the ultra-detailed notes that I did on later visits, so not much (almost no) commentary on which dishes were specifically great.

When the rest of the DimSumQuest crew returned (without me) in Jan 2023 (due to their incessant zeal) they thought “Blooming VIP in Rosemead was solid. Everything was good… but nothing stood out as excellent EXCEPT… the fresh live steamed Norwegian Langoustine/Scampi….so sweet & delicious! But off course, fresh Norwegian Scampi is not really considered DimSum!” — for me the biggest standout was the giant column TV screens, never seen that before.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Blooming VIP, Cantonese cuisine, Cantonese Palace, Chinese cuisine, Chinese Food, Dim sum, DimSumQuest, Lunch Quest, SGV

Lunch Quest – Lotus

Apr14

Restaurant: Lotus Dim Sum Dumpling House

Location: 326 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90401. (424) 380-5500

Date: September 9, 2022

Cuisine: Bad Dim Sum

Rating: Blech. Sad. Almost a disaster.

I was actually excited to see that the PF Changs in Santa Monica had “rebooted” as a theoretically real Chinese restaurant, a dim sum house even.

And why the hell is there sushi on the menu?

As is typical for independent Chinese operators they didn’t spend much at all on remodeling, it still looks like a PF Changs. The menu is a mix of typical dim sum and random other Chinese dishes.

Oh yes, let’s not forget the SUSHI! Why is there sushi? This is an immediate sign of a terrible restaurant as no self respecting Chinese establishment can make good sushi, they make good Chinese food.

Smashed cucumbers. Decent, but under marinated and under sauced.

Crispy Bun with Minced Pork. Actually not a bad version of this chewy/sweet thing (often called Fried Glutinous Meat Dumplings).

Shrimp Chow Fun. Decent version. The sauce wasn’t quite sweet enough and the shrimp had a slightly “fishy” taste but was still a 7/10.

Har Gow. Wrapper ok and the shrimp a little “fishy.”

Chicken Chow Fun. The soft kind of noodles. They don’t have the crispy ones. But it was pretty tasty in a cheapy Chinese sort of way.

XLB. The filling was ok but there was no juice and the wrapper was pathetic and soggy and solid. Had to eat the meat out of the middle.

Shu Mai. Smelled a bit odd. Pork tasted okay, wrapper a bit soggy. 3/10.

Black Pepper and Black Bean Beef. Basically “French Style” beef. Really tender and smoothered in “flavor” (aka MSG). Pretty tasty actually.

Szechuan Fish Filets boiled in Chili Sauce. It’s not by any means the best version of this generally awesome dish, but it was actually pretty tasty. Probably a 5/10 but with some numbing. Fish was tender. The biggest problem was that they put corn starch in the sauce so it was too thick (for this dish).

Overall, dim sum was TERRIBLE, some of the worst I have ever had. They are sort of trying, but it’s just bad. The non dim sum dishes were tolerable. Not good. Certainly not great. But okay in that way that Panda Express is sort of okay. And this is much better than Panda, if that’s a 1/10 this is like a 3/10. But it’s certainly not going to compete with the best dim sum west of the 405, the Palace, which isn’t itself even that good (maybe 5/10). But as bad as Lotus is, it’s still better than PF Changs (2/10).

It should be noted that Jeffrey actually half likes the non dim sum dishes here. He’s been a number of times. I think it’s just because it was a block or two from his house and work and that the non dim sum dishes aren’t TERRIBLE, only very very meh.

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Chinese cuisine, Dim sum, dumplings, Lunch Quest, Santa Monica

Not all Dim Sum are Created Equal

Feb11

Restaurant: Five Star Seafood Restaurant

Location: 140 W Valley Blvd, San Gabriel, CA 91776. (626) 288-1899

Date: July 9, 2022

Cuisine: Chinese Dim Sum

Rating: Meh

Once or twice a year the hedonists (and Yarom’s family) trek’s out to the SGV for a two part Saturday featuring dim sum and some banquet dinner. Locations vary but several times we’ve been to the awesome Juicy Dumpling.

This is the same maxi-mall with Juicy Dumpling and Spicy City (now sadly closed I think). 5 Star has a comanding position in the corner, high above everything else (you need to take an elevator up above the market).

It’s a giant room with a decent view, classic Cantonese.

And a cart place. I haven’t been to a cart place in a while and 5 Star reminded me why.

Our table.

Pan fried meat and chive patties. Oily and delicious.

Greens. Just were. Not much garlic.

Red bean sesame balls. One of the problems with carts is the totally random order. Actually it’s not random, it’s bad to better.

Fried shrimp paste balls on sugar sticks. Luke warm (or even cool) by the time we got them.

Disgusting pig trotters the way Yarom likes ’em.

Chicken Feet. Same deal as the pig’s feet.

Pork ribblets. Pretty tasty, if boney.

XLB. Doughy version and not very warm at all, but still tasty.

Veggie roll. This is normally a great dish — here a bit meh.

Eggplant stuffed with fried shrimp paste. Not so great. They love the shrimp paste here.

DEEP fried wontons with mayo.

A different deep fried roll, I think with shrimp paste — and more mayo.

Yet another deep fried roll with mayo. Hard to tell the difference, maybe different (fried) wrapper.

Lotus Sticky Rice. They do have all the classics here.

Siu Mai. Took us a long time to get these and even when we did they were luke warm. They were passable.

Scrawny.

Beef ball. Very “processed” and almost sweet like a jewish meatball.

Chive and shrimp dumpling. One of the best dishes. Somehow, despite this being a dim sum place, I basically had to ambush the dumpling carts at the kitchen and rip the steamed dumplings out of their hands — they were very determined to push more over-fried stuff.

Har gow. Very hard to get, surprisingly, and just fine.

Baked pork bun (char siu bao). Ok. You can see from the picture it’s a bit flabby.

Pineapple bun. Excellent actually.

This was some pretty mediocre dim sum for the SGV. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s still tasty. Even bad dim sum is pretty good. And this wasn’t terrible, it’s not like some of the horrible ones in downtown or further west, but there are about 10 much better places within a mile or three! And it’s a cart dim sum which basically sucks. It’s hard to get the dishes you want. They’re cold when you do. You get them in the wrong order. Hungry party members insist on loading up on the bad fry they always drive by first. Much better to order from the sheet in waves.

After this I got two different two hour massages (because I couldn’t convince my normal place to do longer than two hours). THEN we went off to Shanghai #1 Seafood for an awesome dinner (way better than lunch).

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Cantonese Chinese, Chinese cuisine, Dim sum, dimsum, hedonists, parlay, SGV, Wine

Iron Teapot Dome

Feb05

Restaurant: Iron Teapot Dum Sum & Bar

Location: 10306 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034. (310) 736-1803

Date: August 18, 2021

Cuisine: Dim Sum

Rating: Good food, terrible service system

I was surprised to hear that a “real” dim sum restaurant had opened in Culver City. It’s certainly a neighborhood I know well having had an office there for years and owned and operated a restaurant (just blocks from this location). The concept is basically a menu like the “daytime” menu from a regular Cantonese dim sum place, without the evening banquet menu.

The interior space is tiny, right on busy Venice Blvd near the many good Indian and Mexican places.

They have a large outside patio which was great on this warm August night. They also have one of those whacky “staff free” ordering systems where you order on your phone, no physical menus, just a QR code, and the food comes to the table. This turned out to be quite the issue (more on this at the bottom).

Chili oil, ginger, mustard.

They give you containers where you can mix your own blends which is nice.

Fresh chopped persian cucumbers tossed in a sesame oil with sweetened and salted garlic.

涼拌海蜇. Cold jellyfish marinated in a sesame oil, vinegar and Chinese spices.

哈高蝦 – Crystal Shrimp Dumpling.

Crystal steamed dumpling made with shrimp and chives.

大烧卖燒賣 Sui Mai. Plump cylindrical steamed dumplings made of juicy pork and ground shrimp topped with fish roe/Masago.

排骨. Steamed pork spare ribs in a garlic and black bean sauce.

咖哩雞餃. Curry Chicken Crystal dumpling. We’re dim sum on the westside, we have a license to be a bit different. It’s nice to see some variants from the usual dim sum like this.

鮑魚糯米鸡 . Abalone, Chicken, and sticky rice wrapped in a lotus leaf glutinous rice steamed and steamed. Abalone is a sea snail that tastes like heaven.

The interior.

Braised Chicken Feet, in a sweet garlic soy, sesame oil and onion sauce. This version is not as saucy and gloopy, allowing you to enjoy succulent bird feet tendons & skin the right way.

Honeycomb beef/cow stomach braised and steamed with five spices, garlic, and sweet soy so that it tastes like.. um… um.. heavenly goodness.

叉烧BBQ Pork – BBQ tender pork with a sweet Chinese BBQ sauce.

咸水角. Fried Soft sweet Mochi stuffed with ground pork and chicken. Classic favorite that is crunchy on the outside with soft mochi filling.

Classic steamed Turnip Cake with ham prepared with a light fry (different from the traditional pan fry).

Light & crispy fried soft tofu with salt, pepper, and five spice. 椒鹽炸豆腐.

Cuttlefish & Pork Soup Dumpling. Juicy pork dumpling mixed with the unique flavor cuttlefish. Blue Xiao Long Bao.

韩元–辣椒油. Ground shrimp and pork filled wontons in a spicy peppercorn, malat chili oil.

腊肠包. Classic steamed bun wrapped over classic Chinese sausage. Dim sum “snausages”.

Classic Dim Sum dessert made with an egg custard baked in a flaky puff pastry (Not the less tasty pie crust style). This is the better style.

黑流沙包 Premium dessert made with black squid ink and filled with a sweetened salted egg yolk that is specially prepared to ooze out like Lava. Made only by highly skilled Dim Sum chefs. Remember not to pop this in your mouth. Open it over your plate and enjoy the oozing heavenly goodness of the sweet salted egg yolk.

馬拉糕. Ma Lai Go is a dim sum classic steamed sponge cake that’s extremely soft, springy and sweet.

The gang.

The dim sum itself was actually quite good. Maybe not on a piece by piece basis quite as good as a great SGV dim sum place, but quite solid. Almost as good and better by far than someplace like Bao or Dim Sum House. And there was a nice variety of dishes. More even than many regular dim sum places, but missing some of the more homestyle Chinese items like congee or Cheung Fun (which is a total dim sum staple).

The main problem lay with the weird phone based ordering system. Now granted, we were there only a couple weeks (maybe a month or two) after they opened, so hopefully they have fixed some of the bugs — but it was awful. We ordered. Stuff arrived in a completely random order with huge gaps between dishes. At first, they were stuck in some kind of infinite loop where they brought us “3 sets of crystal shrimp” then “3 sets of har gow” then they did waves of those again (even though we had only ordered each once). Then they did a third wave of same. They didn’t charge us for all the repeats, but it took like 90 minutes (and nothing else different came out) so people pigged out again and again on the same dishes and were too full to eat the rest. Instead of the 35 minutes the above would take at a normal Cantonese place (too fast) the above took like 3 hours (too slowly paced). Pacing was WAY off with big gaps and very little control. It was just a bit comical. We also had too many people for this kind of restaurant (8-10). 4-6 would be better.

But the manager was very nice and tried to reign in the chaos a bit (not totally successfully) and they comped a bunch of stuff.

The restaurant has no parking, but (sketchy) street parking is plentiful. I also worry that they won’t survive as the food is very Chinese and Culver City is a TERRIBLE neighborhood for authentic flavors. Sorry, but having owned a restaurant there it was pretty clear that the locals are nice, curious and all that, but very “Mayberry”.

In any case, I have to go again and see how it has progressed.

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For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Tagged as: Chinese cuisine, Culver City, Dim sum, hedonists, Iron Teapot, Wine

J Zhou Prequel

Oct22

Restaurant: J Zhou

Location: 2601 Park Ave, Tustin, CA 92782. (714) 258-8833

Date: June 17, 2021

Cuisine: Cantonese Chinese

Rating: Amazing (if pricey) crab

Today is the third day of our epic Foodie Club June mega week, and tonight is a special La Tâche dinner deep in the OC, so we wanted to “warm up” (sans wine) with a bit of Orange County Chinese food.

J Zhou is the fanciest of the OC’s big Cantonese palaces and I’ve heard good things about it for a long time.

There were 3 of us, but we had our own private room as Fred is friends with the manager.

The daytime dim sum menu.

Seafood dumpling in egg wrapper. These were delicate and delicious!

XLB. A decent, but not amazing version of this classic.

Roast Squabs or Quail. I thought these were some of the crispiest and meatiest little roast birds I’ve had in a long time. Delicious!

We pre-ordered a huge king crab and they prepared it 3 days. This first way was just simply steamed with a bit of vermicelli underneath soaked in crab juices and soy. Incredibly fresh and sweet — hey they did bring in the live crab a few minutes before!

King crab typhoon style. Crispy and amazing.

King Crab Brûlée. Egg custard in the crab shell was also silky smooth.

We didn’t sample that many dishes because we had an epic wine dinner just a few hours later, but what I had was all excellent. The crab in particular was amazing, but it was full premium price per pound — no super steal discount at all. I would like to come back and try a full dim sum spread.

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For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Tagged as: Cantonese cuisine, Chinese cuisine, Dim sum, Foodie Club, J Zhou, King Crab, Orange County, Tustin

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.
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.

This is in the old 800 degrees space and nicely built out… up stairs at least.

There is an attractive bar.

But our six person party was banished to the “dungeon.” The basement was claustrophobic and smelled of “potty.” Ick. It was pretty off-putting.

The Menu.

Sauces in the usual microscopic dishes.

XO sauce.

Lobster Salad. This is a “whole” order ($28.80). It was tasty, but very small.

Steamed chicken feet in brown sauce.

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.

Har Gow. Very nice classic shrimp dumplings — except they are $2 each and at many places they are $2-3 an order!

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.

Baked BBQ Pork Bun. Excellent version with the usual sweet interior.

Shrimp wonton with house spicy sauce. Very nice and delicate with quite a bit of salty flavor.

Shrimp, crab meat, and matsutake dumplings. Nice delicate dumplings.

Juicy Pork dumplings (XLB). Very good example of the Cantonese variant of these.

Pan-fried shrimp & pork pandan bun. Doughy, but with a very nice flavor. Quite tasty.

Deep fried pork dumpling. Just an ok version of this chewy fried type.

Deep fried tofu in Thai sauce. Nice tender tofu. Quite good.

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.

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.

Stir-fried rice noodle with beef. This was much better. Like Chinese beef Pad Thai.

Deep fried crispy king prawn. Tasty and super crispy but also super fried.

BBQ Pork. Delicious and pretty much coated in syrup.

Braised eggplant with minced pork on rice noodle casserole. Not a ton of eggplant but I enjoyed the chewy “rice noodle” with the sauce.

Sliced Chinese broccoli with black truffle sauce. Now this was only $6.80, but it was embarrassingly tiny. We are talking 2 inches across!

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.

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.

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Cantonese cuisine, Chef Tony, Chinese cuisine, Dim sum, dumplings, Lunch Quest, noodles, Pasadena, Truffle

China Red by Day

Mar04

Restaurant: China Red [1, 2]

Location: 855 S Baldwin Ave, Arcadia, CA 91007. (626) 445-3700

Date: January 23, 2020

Cuisine: Chinese

Rating: A- dim sum

Continuing our Lunch Quest series of random lunch visits we decide to check in on the China Red dim sum.

For some reason I’ve been on a run of places on the slightly more “Eastern” half of the main SGV. Slightly more annoying drive too as it’s 10-15 minutes further.

The outside.

The interior is typical midsized Cantonese. There is some DM (deferred maintenance). This is very Chinese, but the place is only a couple years old and is showing some wear and tear.

Zoom.

Sauces.

Har Gow (shrimp dumplings) – large, but hot and good.

Chicken feet in XO sauce.

Pork ribs — ugly but tasty.

Shu Mai (pork and shrimp dumplings) — large but tasty version of the classic.

Shrimp and Leek Dumplings — quite nice. One of the better dumplings.

Sticky rice in lotus leaf — good.

Crunchy baked BBQ pork bun — slightly mushy interior.

Pork Rib Chow Fun — I didn’t realize that this was just the ribs on top of some chow fun. I would have ordered a different one had I known.

Dumplings with an interesting peanut and meat paste inside. I didn’t adore.

XLB (Xao Lao Bao) – juicy pork dumplings. Very nice version.

Shrimp paste with almonds – Basically a shrimp spring roll covered in almonds. Interesting texture.

Another dumpling type with a brown spinach mush inside — not my favorite at all.

Beef balls — ok.

Crispy fried squab — very dense and meaty. Not my favorite squab.

Spicy cabbage — I love this dish as always.

Double Shot Gelato — Hot brewed espresso gelato with house-made dark chocolate hazelnut ganache — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato — this will keep you up! — #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #chocolate #valrhona #espresso #coffee #hazelnut #ganache

Peppered Lemongrass Ginger Creme Brûlée Gelato — A blended milk and Thai coconut cream base steeped with lemongrass and ginger and then juiced up with yuzu and black pepper. For sugar, I used coconut palm sugar and even torched the top! — created by me for @sweetmilkgelato –#SweetMilkGelato #gelato #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #lemongrass #ginger #CremeBrûlée #BlackPepper #coconut #yuzu

China Red is a solid “made to order” dimsum place. It’s better than pretty much all the cart places, but it’s not the best ever, and the menu is pretty small and straightforward. Which place is the best in the SGV is always changing, but generally 2-3 are A+ and a whole bunch are good but not quite as good — that’s where China Red falls.

For my catalog of Chinese restaurant reviews in China, click here.

By: agavin
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Tagged as: BYOG, Cantonese cuisine, Chinese Food, Dim sum, dimsum, Gelato, Har Gow, Lunch Quest, SGV, Yarom

888 Not So Late

Feb14

Restaurant: 海珍大酒樓 888 seafood restaurant [1, 2]

Location: 8450 Valley Blvd, Rosemead, CA 91770. (626) 573-1888

Date: December 19, 2019

Cuisine: Cantonese Dimsum

Rating: good cart dimsum

We had such a good banquet dinner at 888 Seafood a couple of weeks ago that we decided to return and try their dimsum during the day. It should be noted that 888 has been around for a long while — decades — and is still a cart place. I.e. everything rotates around on the steam carts.

Har Gow. Shrimp dumplings. nice.

Shrimp and Scallop Dumplings.

Vegetable Dumplings.

XLB (Xao Lao Bao). Pork soup dumplings. These were tasty, but a bit sticky and pasty.

Shrimp and Vegetable Dumplings.
Shu Mai. Not a bad version of the classic.

Pork ribs. Ugly but delicious.

Beef balls. Also ugly but tasty.

Shrimp Chow Fun. Good for this dish.

Eggplant and Shrimp Paste. Black bean sauce. A little more unusual.

Greens with Sauce. Comes on the dedicated greens cart.

Crunchy top pork buns. A bit sweet and really nice texture.

Baked pork buns.

Shrimp paste with Green Pepper with Black Bean Sauce. Pretty good, actually.

Chewy Pork Dumpling. I always like this texture.
Tofu. Very light and delicate. Nice soft texture.
Bean Curd wrapped veggies.

Cantonese Luke Warm Roast Duck. Pretty juicy, but very luke-warm, almost cool.

Pork Hock with Bok Choy. Delicious! Several people popped their pig’s feet cherry on these.

Fatty Beef Ribs. Rich sauce and thick slabs of beef that didn’t seem so Chinese.

Chicken Feet in XO sauce.

Seafood on crispy Chow Mein. Yum!

Pineapple Buns with custard and real pineapple chunks — great. Had several even though I was very full.

Macao Tart — ok, a bit mild.

Dimsum at 888 was solid, but not particularly interesting or super fresh. Definitely a notch or two down from the made to order places. Shells were a bit “sticky” which indicates they have been sitting in the steamers for a bit while they wheel around. Non dimsum dishes were more interesting. This is more like the way SGV dimsum was 10-15 years ago.

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Brunch, Cantonese Chinese, Dim sum, dimsum, dumplings, hedonists, lunch, Lunch Quest, SGV

Quick Eats – Dim Sum House

Oct02

Restaurant: Dim Sum House

Location: 1822 Westwood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025. (310) 441-9651

Date: August 20, 2019

Cuisine: Chinese Dim Sum

Rating: Mediocre but theoretically fast

Dim Sum House is a newish strip mall take on dim sum.

It’s just in the mini-mall, right south of Santa Monica Blvd, on Westwood — next to the little Pharmacy and dry cleaners. I think it’s owned by the same people as Hop Woo.

The interior is very Chinese — could be in the SGV — but it’s not. Oddly, even though it was about 1pm, there wasn’t a soul in here except for the loan employee (behind the counter).

The daytime dim sum menu.

This is an interesting sort of place. By day, it’s a small (greatest hits) classic Cantonese dim sum menu. I think at night they have skewers.

Har Gow (shrimp dumplings). Probably the best item. Fairly typical, but kinda limp and chewy.

Shu Mai (pork and shrimp dumplings). These looked hideous and tasted better, but not great. A bit mealy.

XLB (soup dumplings). Pasty skins. Filling was okay.

Pan fried bun. Basically the same pork filling, but with a very heavy chewy exterior. Filling was good and I picked that out.

My service experience was very weird here — and not in a good way. I was the only person. Staff person was eating themselves when I came in. Very slow to notice me. Slow to take my order. Then I waited. And waited. After quite a while 2 of the items above came out. Girl just sat behind the counter on her phone. Eventually she brought two more items. I had to get up and ask her for necessities like chopsticks and napkins. Then I waited for some more. The 5th item never came. I went up and asked. She checked in kitchen and told me it was coming. She rang up my bill. I waited. Eventually I asked again and she checked again and then told me “they were out of it.” She had to refund me the money even. Clearly not very concerned about customer service. Staff in back were probably eating and smoking too rather than steaming the dumplings — which clearly were made long in advance, or maybe just frozen.

They didn’t taste great either. Now it’s sort of like bad pizza in that it’s not THAT bad, but for dim sum it was quite lousy. I like the idea of this kind of quick smaller format — which Tim Ho Wan is doing also — but the execution was abysmal.

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Cantonese Chinese, Dim sum, dimsum, Har Gow, Westwood Ca

Ring in Tang Gong

Sep30

Restaurant: Tang Gong

Location: 111 N Atlantic Blvd #350, Monterey Park, CA 91754. (626) 888-5188

Date: August 14, 2019

Cuisine: Cantonese Dimsum

Rating: Great new made to order Dimsum

Our friend Derek has been the manager variously at Elite Seafood, World Seafood, and China Red.

Now he’s helping open up Monterey Park newcomer, Tang Gong.

In an era when the Cantonese Palaces are closing, it’s rare to have a new one opening up — including all the glitzy Hong Kong style trappings. These places cater (haha) to big Chinese weddings.

And a huge private room (where we were located).

Derek posing with Yarom.

The dim sum menu. Like most Cantonese places, there is banquet at night. They had just opened a few days before when we arrived.

Chicken Feet with House Sauce. Sometimes this is called XO sauce. It’s not exactly the same as regular XO sauce.

Beef Tripe with Scallion and Ginger. Sounds gross. Looks gross. Tastes great. Chewy, yes. But delicious.

Steamed Pork Ribs with Garlic. These also aren’t the best looking items in the world, and there are the little knuckle-like bones in there, but the meat taste was fantastic. Very juicy and full of pork flavor.

Har Gow. Shrimp dumpling. Classic, straightforward, and enjoyable as always.

Pork and Shrimp Shui Mai. I always order the classics when checking out a new place. These were solid, much like Elite’s.

Fried Pork Dumpling. These have that chewy fried mochi shell and delicate pork inside. Really delicious.

Sea Cucumber and Dried Scallop Dumpling. I hadn’t realized this was “in a soup” (should have looked at the pictures better). This makes it hard to share but it was scrumptious. Lots of interesting umami flavor.

Pan Fried Leek Cake. There is some shrimp or something in here too. I love these for their greasy shell texture. Pretty much a “Beijing Pie.”

XLB (Juicy Pork Bun). Soup filled lovelies. Solid renditions of these. Not the great kind you get at a specialty house where they make them constantly fresh, but still very enjoyable with the vinegar.

Baked Crispy Pork Bun. 10/10. Light slightly sweet crispy shell, airy interior, and sweet BBQ pork. Awesome.

Shredded Duck and Seat Pea Rice Roll. Interesting. The peas are either an interesting or distracting textural element alongside the chewy soft chow fun.

BBQ Pork and Corn Rice Roll. More straightforward and I think I enjoyed a bit more.

Seafood Salad Roll. Fried with a creamy “seafood salad” inside. Delicious though.

Baked BBQ Pork Pastry. The buttery pastry version with the same BBQ pork.

House special lobster. Good, typical.

Peking Duck. The meat itself was good, although maybe it could have been a touch crispier. I prefer the pancakes to the buns, but the hoisin was good.

Crispy BBQ Pork. Interesting pork pretty. Quite delicious.

BBQ Chicken. Super succulent chicken.

Traditional Beef Chow Fun. Pan fried noodles with beef.

Braised E-Fu Mein. I liked these crispy noodles even better. Tons of flavor and very addictive (viva la grease!)

Canton Style Steamed Greens. Very tasty.

Beet Greens (you can see the purple color) steamed with garlic. These were more bitter and I didn’t like them as much as the straight up greens.

White Chocolate Peanut Gelato — I hadn’t made a White Chocolate base in a while so in light of my rent “experiments” in chocolate took another pass at it — came out awesome, using all Valrhona Ivoire chocolate layered with house-made Peanut Dulcey Ganache — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato — #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #peanut #WhiteChocolate #valrhona #ganache

Hpnotiq Blue Hawaiian Sorbetto — like a frozen cocktail — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato — Thai Coconut Milk, Pineapple, Lime, and Hpnotiq liqueur –#SweetMilkGelato #gelato #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #sorbetto #Hpnotiq #BlueHawaiian #pineapple #coconut #lime

Overall, very solid new place. Service (thanks Derek) was of course perfect. We loved the big private room. Dimsum was “typical good” very much like Elite or Derek’s time at World Seafood. We didn’t have too much that was really novel, but the execution on all the typical dishes was excellent. I want to see how they settle into the rhythm of things in a couple weeks and return.

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For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: BYOG, Dim sum, dimsum, Gelato, hedonists, lunch, Lunch Quest, Monterey Park, SGV, Tang Gong, Tony Lau

Tim Ho Wan – Dim Sum Pedigree

May16

Restaurant: Tim Ho Wan

Location: 2700 Alton Pkwy, Irvine, CA 92606. (262) 888-8828

Date: May 15, 2019

Cuisine: Hong Kong / Taiwanese Dim Sum

Rating: Solid, new format, but not amazing

Tim Ho Wan, the Michelin-starred dim sum restaurant from Hong Kong, opened last week in Irvine at the Diamond Jamboree Shopping Center.

It’s the first Southern California location of Tim Ho Wan, which has 47 outposts in nine countries, with U.S. restaurants in New York City, Las Vegas and Hawaii. The restaurant earned worldwide acclaim when it opened in 2009 as a 20-seat dim sum restaurant in Mong Kok, Hong Kong, earning a Michelin star a year later. The restaurant has continued to earn a star for nine consecutive years.

Tim Ho Wan is best known for its baked BBQ pork buns, made with a sweet, sticky char siu (barbecued pork) encased in a cloudlike fluffy bread with a sweet, crunchy top. In addition to the buns, there are the usual dim sum favorites, including har gow (steamed shrimp dumplings), siu mai (steamed pork dumplings with shrimp), braised chicken feet with abalone sauce, congee with pork and preserved egg, steamed egg cake and fried turnip cake.

And the restaurant is known as much for its long wait times.

Mid week, Yarom and I, dedicated Chinese eaters that we are made the full on 1 hour+ pilgrimage to the OC just to try the new “hot” dim sum place.

It’s one of those newish maxi-malls (10 years or so) — a bit nicer than a traditional strip mall but cheesy construction. There were all the usual suspects like 85 degrees, hai di lao, etc.

11:15am — 3 hour wait! Yep! The buzz is a-buzzing. We were lucky though and were only 2 people (we had a third join us mid meal), so we got seated in about 35 minutes.
Meanwhile we went next door and got some 85 degrees coffee.

Besides the regular tables there is a bar, but it’s not open yet. This will make coming in by oneself easier/faster eventually.

The main dining room is attractive, with some build out, but it’s quite casual. Even more downscale maybe than Din Tai Fung and set up for smaller 2-4 person parties (younger audience) and not the traditional giant round tables of a big Cantonese banquet house. More on this later at the end.

The menu is small, and everything (pretty much) is pictured on the placemats.

The older sheet. Today about 1/4 of the items were not available, as they haven’t come “online” yet. It’s still in soft opening.

Tea.

Steamed Rice Roll with Shrimp and Chives. As I always mention, in my family, when I was a kid, this was called “shrimp slime.” We liked it then, I love it now. This particular one had nice fluffy texture, but the taste was a bit reduced. Maybe less grease? (which is a good thing in dim sum). The sauce was a bit mild too, not as sweet as it usually is.

Braised Chicken Feet with Abalone Sauce and Peanut. Nice abalone sauce and good texture on the little chicken claws.

Foot fetish (not everyone loves a good chicken foot).

Sticky Rice in Lotus Leaf. A dim sum classic.

Inside the meat and sausage bits of the rice were good, but it also tasted a bit under-seasoned. Not salty enough? Texture was pretty good though.

Braised Beef Brisket with Turnip. Just like mom’s Rosh Hashanah brisket with potatoes! Actually pretty close. Beef was excellent. Soft and full of flavor.

Braised Beef Brisket with Thin Rice Noodles in Soup. Soup was delicious. The meat was the same as with the turnips — and just as good. The noodles are a bit thin and soft, which is traditional with this soup, but I like more al dente noodles in general. The bowl size, which is hard to tell here, is single person small. It’s not the bigger bowl that most Chinese places use. More on that later too.

Pan Fried Noodles. Very simple, classic pan fried egg noodles. Nice taste and light texture though. A bit less greasy than the most traditional version. I’m thinking they use a different (or less) oil than traditional Chinese.

Steamed Pork Spare Rib with Black Bean Sauce. Bone in. The usual sketchy looking pork niblets, but great flavor. Also maybe a touch lighter than usual at most dim sum places.

Deep Fried Spring Roll with Egg White and Shrimp.

You can see inside the fluffy egg white. Very nice light roll. Good crispiness, good texture on the filling. Slightly lighter grease though so I think the flavor was a bit muted. The sauce is more a slightly sweetened soy. I kinda like the sweet sauce for this kind of fry. This may be a Taiwanese influence?

Deep Fried Bean Curd with Avocado and Shrimp and Golden Chives. It’s bean curd, but fried up like a spring roll. The inside with the avocado was interesting and flavorful, adding a bit more heft than the fluffy Spring Roll. Again a sweet sauce would have worked.

Steamed Vegetable Dumplings. Nice texture on the skin and chunky vegetables inside. Light skin too which I like. Still a touch under salty/greasy?

Steamed Dumplings with Shrimp and Chives. Great texture again for the skin, but soft on the inside and muted in flavor.

Har Gow. Steamed Shrimp Dumplings. Nice skin, big chunk of meaty shrimp. This was the best dumpling and fairly classic.

Steamed Beef Ball with Bean Curd Skin. Nice soft meat ball with a good beefy flavor.

Siu Mai. Steamed Pork Dumplings with Shrimp. Small like I like them, and very good texture, but again had that slightly muted flavor.

Steamed Rice with Minced Beef and Pan Fried Egg. Rice less sticky than typical Chinese rice (on purpose). Pretty much a flat layer of the same meat as the beef ball on the rice, with a fried egg and the sauce from the Rice Roll. The whole thing was pretty great. The beef on the rice, with the richness of the egg, and the sauce soaking into it all.

House Special Baked BBQ Pork Buns. Soft crunchy outside. A good bit of sugar.

Inside was delectable sweet pork. This was a great pork bun. As good as I’ve had. It’s of the slightly crunchy type. There are several other types like the steamed white ones, or the baked syrup glazed ones. I probably like this and the glazed ones best.

Tim Ho Wan is interesting. They are clearly making a play at becoming (expanding?) a little empire of fine casual focused dim sum eatery. It’s very new generation. Very millennial. The table layout is for 2s and 4s instead of the giant round tables of the big old Cantonese palace. The decor and format are more casual. The menu is smaller, maybe 1/4 the size and focused only on the dim sum greatest hits. Also importantly there is no “second chef” and giant banquet menu. It’s all the same focused small set of dim sum.

Service, particularly for being in soft opening, was excellent. They kept checking on us. They were speedy. Some confusion but they were on it double checking and made sure everything was perfect in the end. They are clearly very dedicated to improving and doing a good job. There were some minor quirks, like they had no chili oil (only chili sauce) — but they promised to get some by next week!

Plate/order size is smaller than a tradition dim sum house. I actually like this as it allows more dishes. They don’t have any large plate items. This is more consistent with the likes of DTF (Din Tai Fung). It works better with parties of 2.

Food wise, the textures were consistently good, which is the standard thing that many dim sum places mess up. Food was pretty fresh and very hot and not soggy. Problem for me was that on many dishes the flavors felt muted or light. I think it’s under seasoning. Maybe there isn’t so much salt (MSG?). Maybe they use a lighter oil. There is this standard dim sum oil taste that I really like and it wasn’t present or at least was very much more reserved. That oil and salt thing is one of the things I love about dim sum. As I mentioned, the menu is fairly small. We ordered every dish available the day we went and all are pictured above. There were about 6 or so on the menu that weren’t online.

So in terms of actual dim sum quality, places like Elite and Grand Harbor are a notch better at current. I can hope that Tim Ho Wan tunes up a bit, but it’s also possible that they are deliberately going for a lighter less coma-inducing style. It has this new faster/more casual format too, but with a long wait, that’s offset. Eventually though, it probably will be easy to get in on a weekday — it’s always going to be a long wait on weekends. Of course, there is always 85 degrees while you wait. And for me the long drive. I hope one opens on the Westside up here!

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Dim sum, dimsum, dumplings, Har Gow, Hong Kong, lunch, Lunch Quest, Orange County, pork buns, sticky rice, Tim Ho Wan, Yarom

Capital Dim Sum

Dec03

Restaurant: Capital Seafood Beverly Hills

Location: 50 N La Cienega Blvd #130, Beverly Hills, CA 90211. (310) 855-1234

Date: October 10, 2018 and August 1, 2019

Cuisine: Chinese Dim Sum

Rating: Good for this far west

Finding great Chinese west of the SGV has long been a problem, but the “great wall” between east and west has been cracking with lots and lots of new openings closer to (my) home.

Capital is the latest SGV place to move west, occupying the Newport Seafood Beverly Hills location that failed to work out. Not that I love even the original Newport, but Capital is fairly straight up banquet / dimsum Cantonese.

The space looks pretty Chinese, even in Beverly Hills.

Coves. Gotta have the coves!

The made to order dimsum Menu.

Sauces were great. The chili sauce and XO both awesome.

Cold Spicy jellyfish (8/1/19). Nice chew and great Szechuan-style spice flavor.

Shrimp and pork shui mai. Classic, but well done versions.

Spinach Mix Veggie Dumplings. We had a vegetarian in the house.

Shrimp Har Gow. Very nice, not too sticky either and kept together.

Tofu Skin Roll with shrimp. I like these bean curd wrapped thingies. The goji berries were a different touch.

Beancurd stuffed with shrimp (8/1/19). Great spongy textural play.

XLB (steamed pork dumpling). Solid versions of this amazing dish. A touch pasty, but oh so good.

Shrimp, scallop, and peanut dumplings. Dumplings always rule.

Baked BBQ Pork Pastry. Super rich lovely pastry and sweet BBQ pork.

Baked Honey BBQ Pork Bun (8/1/19). This is my favorite of the pork bun styles with the sweet bread stuffed with delicious sweet BBQ pork.

Stuffed Shrimp and Scallop Ball (8/1/19). The inside of this fried fellow is a shrimp and scallop cake/paste. Delicious with the provided mayo.

Steamed Cilantro Rice Noodle (Chow fun). I’ve never had it with just cilantro. A little bland but the rice noodle texture was excellent.

Minced Beef Rice Noodle (8/1/19). Tastier than the cilantro version.

Taiwanese Shrimp Egg Roll. I really liked these super hot, ultra fried, mega crispy cigarette-like spring rolls.

Deep fried mushroom egg roll.

Rice Noodle with XO Sauce. I loved these chewy rice cakes smothered in spicy XO sauce. Very soothing texture and a lot of salty umami XO flavor.

Lotus leaf wrapped sticky rice (8/1/19). Classic and filling.

Dried Shrimp and Pork Dumpling. The chewy fried bomb shaped dumplings were excellent.

Shrimp and chives dumpling (pan fried). Also greasy fried flavor.

Steamed Chinese Broccoli (8/1/19). Pretty tasty.

Roasted half duck (on the house). Really succulent and moist. Delicious.

Salt and pepper eggplant. Fried and salty and very hot (temperature) but delicious.

Seafood with Pan Fried Egg noodles (8/1/19). I’ve loved this dish for over 40 years!

On my 8/1/19 visit I brought these home-made (by me) gelati:

Strawberry Margarita Sorbetto! — like a frozen cocktail — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato — Strawberries from Avignon, blended with fresh lime, Reposado Tequila and Cointreau –#SweetMilkGelato #gelato #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #sorbetto #strawberry #Margarita #cocktail #Tequila #Cointreau

Cioccolato Fondente Torrone Gelato — I’ve been working to squeeze the most chocolate humanly possible into a dairy gelato. This is 70% cocoa Valrhona and 100% Callebaut Chocolates — a total of 22.5% cocoa by weight — extremely intense — offset slightly by Italian soft nougat (torrone) — made by me for @sweetmilkgelato — #dessert #icecream #FrozenDessert #nomnom #dessertlovers #dessertporn #icecreamlovers #gelatoitaliano #foodporn #gelatolover #food #foodgasm #foodblogger #dessertgasm #desserttime #foodphotography #gelatoartigianale #gelatomania #dessertlover #icecream #icecreamlovers #peanut #chocolate #valrhona #Callebaut #torrone

Overall, Capital Seafood is middling level dimsum for the SGV but excellent for Beverly Hills. Almost certainly the best west of the SGV. One of the only rivals is The Palace, which is good, but still the cart format. The manager/owner was awesome. Service was very attentive, but a little weird in that a few of the girls hovered uncomfortably close. They were trying though.

On our second visit service was clean and unobtrusive. Food was fresh and tasty. Really quite good. Not the BEST dimsum in the known world but still first rate.

For my catalog of Chinese restaurant reviews in China, click here.