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Far East – Beijing Tasty House

Mar10

Restaurant: Beijing Tasty House [Crawl: MK BBQ, Peking, Bafang, Spicy Home, Beijing Tasty ]

Location: 1380 Fullerton Rd Ste 105 Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 573-8518

Date: July 31, 2022

Cuisine: Beijing Chinese

Rating: Okay, but not as good as Alhambra branch

Crawls generally need a good “closer” meal at the end where the group can mop up to a satisfying level. In this case, we chose the newish Hacienda Heights location of Beijing Tasty House.

I’ve eaten at the Alhambra branch at least half a dozen times and always enjoyed it, even if their service is a bit “unrefined” and their execution at times uneven. This one is way out east in a typical strip mall.

The interior is nice enough but much smaller and more cramped than the Alhambra branch.

The menu. Very small writing.

Hot and Sour Soup with Rice Noodles. Name was weird but this is exactly the dish I hoped it was. The “soup” is very tangy with a bit of spice and numbing. It’s warm and the noodles provide interesting texture.

Smashed Cucumbers with Garlic. Properly done.

Fire Exploded Kidneys. For the water sports enthusiast.

A-Choy with sesame sauce. A bit weird, bits of lettuce with a sesame sugar paste.

Peking Duck. Very solid spring pancakes and hoisin. Skin was good and crispy but the meat was very dry and low fat. Not bad, but probably a B+ Peking Duck, even by LA standards. I really should put this place in my Ultimate Peking Duck guide as they do serve proper Beijing Peking Duck, it’s just not the best in town by any means.

The meat with skin on top.

The usual condiments.

Real spring pancakes (certainly NOT tortillas).

The contents of the “bing” or “burrito.”

Duck Bones with Cumin. Not a bad version of this dish, quite spicy too.

Beef (and pork belly) Dry Pot. Quite tasty with very tender beef. Extremely spicy.

Lamb Ribs and cumin. Also similar, but the ribs were awesome and tender.

Strawberry Cheesecake Gelato — strawberry cream-cheese base with strawberry ripple and house-made graham cracker crumble — made 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 #cheesecake #strawberry #GrahamCracker #ripple #creamcheese

Overall, food is very similar to the Alhambra outlet, but it’s further, smaller, and has no liquor license (although they let us use tea cups with the bottles hidden). So no reason to go this far, just visit the closer one for a better experience.

For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Beijing Tasty House, BYOG, crawl, Gelato, hedonists, Peking Duck, Rowland Heights

Quick Eats – Peking Restaurant

Mar04

Restaurant: Peking Restaurant [ CLOSED? ] [Crawl: MK BBQ, Peking, Bafang, Spicy Home, Beijing Tasty ]

Location: 19240 Colima Rd Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 363-4961

Date: July 31, 2022

Cuisine: Chinese

Rating: Sloppy and not worth recommending in any way

This particular crawl was not well researched. In fact, it was slapped together mostly from yelp or driving around to include places in the “far SGV” (Rowland and Hacienda Heights). This is our second stop after one tucked in a Supermarket!

I love the look of these dives where they took some old 1950s-70s place and converted it into a Chinese restaurant.

The menu is big — just not good.

At least they let us open wines.

Cucumbers were just plain chopped cucumbers. Not marinated. Not smashed. No garlic. Nothing.

Jellyfish. Very mild flavor like they just dumped some distilled vinegar on them.

Cold appetizer plate with MORE jellyfish, ok cold beef, and shrimp with ketchup and Chinese mustard. The shrimp tasted just like shrimp cocktail Chinese style. Lol.

“Peking” duck. Wasn’t very crispy and the meat was quite dry. Total hack job.

Messy pile of scallions.

Gunky shredded cucumber.

Hoisin was not so great.

Tortillas! Yep, not spring pancakes. Packaged flour tortillas. Way too heavy and ruined the whole vibe.

Fried sweet buns. Fried Chinese dough with a bit of sweetened condensed milk. This was probably the best dish. lol. It was best dipped in a 50/50 soy sauce and vinegar mix.

Oranges.

This place appears to have closed (gone out of business). Not exactly surprised, it was one of the worst SGV Chinese restaurants I’ve ever eaten at. Kinda grungy inside too.

For more LA Chinese dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
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Posted in: Food

Tagged as: Chinese cuisine, crawl, hedonists, Peking Duck, Peking Restaurant, Rowland Heights, SGV

Spicy Moment V2.0

Apr17

Restaurant: Spicy Moment V2.0

Location: 1015 S Nogales St, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 581-4966

Date: March 1, 2020

Cuisine: Szechuan Chinese

Rating: check: Terrible menu, surprisingly good home-style food

Back in August we did a 6 restaurant crawl in and around the Mandarin Plaza. One of the places we visited was Spicy Moment and we agreed to come back for a full dinner, or maybe a 2-fer combined with Hunan next door.

In the meantime Spicy Moment “rebooted” with a new owner, new menu, new concept — but they kept the name, build out and sign. However, despite what the sign says, it’s no longer “modern Chinese cuisine” and is a much much smaller menu Chongqing place.

The decor is pretty much unchanged. They still have the ugly drop ceiling, but they have made a tiny effort at decorating.

My wine.

This menu set me up with low expectations. It’s basically cold apps and noodle soups. Noodle soups don’t share well and I’m not that into them anyway. There is nothing here. But Yarom never likes to give up on a plan so we went anyway — and were in for a super pleasant surprise.

They have Chongqing crispy duck — we’ll come back to that later.

And an array of “attractive” cold apps. But we love cold apps. Serious, they maybe a touch scary but we love them.

Smashed garlic cucumbers. Nice and crunchy, but could have used a stronger garlic flavor.

Cold marinated pig ear and sliced pork or beef parts.

Savory sweet peanuts with little fish (delicious), pulled spicy pork, and crunchy celery with tofu.

Chongqing special tofu pudding. Soft homestyle tofu.

Spicy sauce for the tofu.

You take a scoop of tofu and add sauce — we also added peanuts. The tofu had a fascinating smokey wood-fire flavor. The chili sauce was salty and had a ton of flavor. Really interesting and great combination.

Chongqing crispy smoked duck. Very crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Tons of flavor.

I have a feeling this duck is made more or less in this manner. Check out this video — and the cook’s adorable dog!

Noodles with beans and pork and egg and veggies.

You mix it all up with the sauce and it was quite delicious.

Chicken cold dry noodles.

These had a thinner noodle. You mix it all up and it had a great texture and a wonderful slightly tangy texture.

Overall, we were blown away considering the expectations from the limited menu. Just a terrible menu that looks like all of one thing. But this was some delicious stuff and really different. Hadn’t had this exact sort of duck before and everything we tried was pretty delicious. Plus that tofu pudding was totally unique and I could just imagine eating it in some dirt floor ancient Chinese farm hut! That dish has to be like 1,000 years old!

This place was like teleporting to China. Super interesting and a whole lot of fun. Very nice people too with great hospitality.

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: Chongqing, duck, Mandarin Plaza, Rowland Heights, SGV, Sichuan, spicy, Spicy Moment, Szechuan cuisine, Tofu, Wine

Malubianbian Spicy Stick Pot

Apr08

Restaurant: MaLu Bian Bian Hot Pot

Location: 18194 Colima Rd Ste A, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 820-9206

Date: February 23, 2020

Cuisine: Chengdu Szechuan Chinese Hot Pot

Rating: 12/10 for experience

I’ve been on a bit of a Szechuan style hot pot kick for the last year. For those of you know don’t know, “hot pot” is the classic Chinese homestyle food which is super popular as a restaurant type in recent years. The most “classic” form is “Mongolian” like Hot Pot Hot Pot or Little Sheep. Then there are hybrid more modern joints like Hai Di Lao. And even the cheap student pre-prepped version like Boiling Point or Flaming Pot. But my favorite is the ultra spicy Chengdu or Chongqing style. I’ve had this in Chengdu and last year several opened in the SGV including Chun La Hao and Shancheng Lameizi.

So bringing us to tonight, Malubianbian represents a new style of skewer oriented Chengdu street hot pot. This is one crazy experience so I’ll detail it.

This is in the “Yes Plaza” in Rowland Heights. It’s like teleporting to China because everyone here is Chinese and at the restaurant everyone is about 23.

If you can see, there are about 20-30 people waiting outside.

Inside it’s sort of industrial new Chinese style. Small tables. Uncomfortable chairs. Ineffective hoods. As part of the “experience” a few minutes after we entered I started to cough uncontrollably. Something was just making my throat and eyes itch. I thought something was wrong with me until I noticed everyone else doing it. The server came by to apologize as the chef had just fried up a new batch of chili oil. Lol. I should have known. The place already smelled like chilis, so you couldn’t really smell it, but when you make Szechuan style chili oil (which I do myself) you have to dump 350deg oil over chilies and it releases a ton of pepper compounds into the air which are very “irritating.”

In any case, we didn’t have to wait too long (only 20 minutes) as we had a “reservation” for the “private room” which was this super cute painted closet with a two burner little table. Supposedly it sat up to 12 — but really 8 max. I mean max.

Very cute though.

Wine was a whole saga too. Only Jefferey brought some, but no one, including the restaurant had a corkscrew. He wandered the mall but no restaurant was willing to help him open his bottle (and walk out with it). Eventually we managed.

Like many new hot pot places Malu has a “sauce bar.” This isn’t as extensive as at Chun La Hao or Shancheng Lameizi but was sufficient. It was, however, pretty messy.

This was one of the main sauces I made. They didn’t have the sesame paste or all the fermented stuff I really love at Shancheng Lameizi.

They do have these traditional dry “powdered” sauces. You grab one and then add some broth from your pot to make up a sauce. It congealed very easily and didn’t really work for me, but the sauce bar version was decent.

We got all the broths. On top here is the lame tomato broth and below is the series traditional super-spicy ox fat (those big rectangles that haven’t melted yet) and blend of peppers and 18 spices.

Below is the other lame broth, the “mild” mushroom broth. Above that is the “classic” spicy Szechuan broth that doesn’t use the heavy ox fat.

I exclusively used the fully leaded traditional gut cleansing medicinal purgative spicy ox fat broth — as should anyone who isn’t a wuss.

But what, you say, does one do with these punishing broths? You cook stuff in them. But the format at Malu is interesting. Out in the dining room are about 10 refrigerators filled with skewers and boxes of food. You just wander over and grab the stuff (which seems a touch “unsanitary” but never mind). The staff count your skewers and containers at the end to calculate your bill.

Malu’s particularly unique bit is the whole skewer thing. These cost about $0.35 each and you just shove them in your pot and easily withdraw them. But for some reason I found this a bit awkward and preferred the plates of stuff.

There are a lot of skewer types including nearly all the vegetables, tons of marinated meats, the usual meat/fish etc balls and whatnot. Each bit on a skewer is pretty tiny. Often even half a meatball or the like.

They also have a bunch of plates with more meats and various other “exotic” stuff like duck blood or duck intestine (anyone want a whole bowl of raw duck intestine? we did!). I mostly ate off these because I found it easier.

Fried pork. This is a menu order item. It was just okay.

Spicy beef stomach. This was quite delicious — and chewy.

Special house spicy beef. This was amazing. Tons of flavor (and heat).

Spicy glass noodle. Really mung bean jelly. It was actually warm, which is unusual for this type of typical Szechuan street food.

Crab sticks. Imitation crab. Tasty, but they come apart in the pot.

Luncheon meat. This is always one of my hotpot favorites. Pure pork and fatty goodness. We went through at least 3 orders of this!

Beef. A Staple.

Lamb.

Weird spongy shrimp rolls. I don’t know what to call these, but they actually cooked up as delicious things.

Shrimp balls with actual shrimp and row. These also cooked up great.

Skinned frog. This was just too sad.

Noodles, lotus root, and strange veggie cake.

Pig ear on a stick.

Plus tons of things I forgot to photo.

Odd rice jelly. This was like water jelly. It had a jello texture and was totally clear and absolutely zero flavor. The brown stuff was some kind of syrup and very mildly sweet. You could barely taste it. I suppose it was meant to cool the palette after the inferno.

Fried rice cakes. Another typical Szechuan dessert.

Overall, this was a great experience and TONS OF FUN. The broth is awesome. The format is weird, but fun and flexible because you can get your own stuff. The problem is that the ingredient quality isn’t quite as good as at Hai Di Lao, Chun La Hao and Shancheng Lameizi. Also the sauce bar is only adequate.

Service was fabulous though. Usually hot pot service isn’t the greatest, but it was here. They kept checking on us and the owner came over and was super nice, the manager was super nice. Really friendly and helpful.

It’s very inexpensive too. A skewer is only $0.35!

So I highly recommend if you are adventurous and into new things. Mind your bottom.

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: Chengdu, Chinese cuisine, hedonists, hot pot, Rowland Heights, SGV, Sichuan, spicy, Szechuan cuisine

Mandarin Plaza Crawl

Sep18

Earlier in the year, Yarom and I hatched and plotted this particular all afternoon mega crawl at the Rowland Heights Mandarin Plaza — partially at least while sucking down some serious hot pot in said plaza. This place is far from LA proper, way out 40+ miles to the east but is in the heart of the “new Chinatown”.

Restaurant: Leung Kee

Location: 18908 E Gale Ave, Rowland Heights, CA 91748

Date: August 3, 2019

Cuisine: Chinese BBQ

Rating: check: roast pig before noon

We start at 11am, “meating” (haha) up at the former Sam Woo BBQ, now Leung Kee Chinese BBQ.

It’s right smack in the middle of this huge mall that contains tons of Asian restaurants, including Chinese, Korean, Thai and more.

They do a lot of takeout biz, pigs and ducks and the like.

The space is typical old school SGV.

Boba must be a new thing.

The menu.

Tea comes in a mug!

And there is free eggdrop soup — which was pretty darn good.

Macau style roast pork. Must have just been reheated as it landed on our table in 2 seconds, but pretty tasty.

Crispy beef. Very fried, but very delicious.

Peking Duck. It wasn’t the best peking duck, maybe a bit soggy, but peking duck is always pretty good.

Buns instead of pancakes.

And sketchy extra duck meat — that was actually pretty good.

Overall, just fair. Pretty much what you’d expect. But I like pretty much all (real) Chinese food at a good bit.

Restaurant: Mandarin Bay Seafood

Location: 1015 S Nogales St, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 839-7738

Date: August 3, 2019

Cuisine: Cantonese Chinese

Rating: check: Just ok

Next up, we leave the actual mall and cross the street on foot to:

Meet up with more people at noon at:

Cantonese Mandarin Bay Seafood Restaurant.

The gang (minus yours truly).

The takeout menu.

It’s noon, by 1 minute or so, so time for wine.

From my cellar, a touch too dry — bone dry rose sparkling from France.

Nice.

Second free soup of the day, hot and sour — this was not good hot and sour. I saved the stomach space.

Marinated Jellyfish. Vinegary and chewy good.

Salt and Pepper Shrimp. Salty, crunchy, very tasty.

Salt and pepper squid — somehow we ended up with the same prep twice. These were good too.

Ginger and Green Onion frog. Kinda fried, but the sauce was great.

Overall, Mandarin was fine too, but nothing super exciting.

Restaurant: Spicy Moment

Location: 1015 S Nogales St, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 581-4966

Date: August 3, 2019

Cuisine: Szechuan Chinese

Rating: check: Surprisingly good, big menu

Next up we walked 2 doors down.

To a new style Szechuan place.

This is what I mean by new style. They still have the ugly drop ceiling, but they have made a tiny effort at decorating.

The menu is gargantuan.
This is a great wine on any day, and particularly great on a hot day with Chinese.

Recycled from the Vietnamese crawl.

Grilled pork jowl with Yunnan sauce. Delicious.

Fish in pickle pepper soup. This wasn’t spicy, but it was amazing. Really, really delicious. Soft tender fish and very distinct and lovely sour flavor.

Dry pot pork rib and shrimp. Also filled with potatoes to sop up the sauce. I generally like dry pot and this was particularly delicious. Lots and lots of flavor.

Black pepper lamb shoulder. Not spicy, but very tasty with a strong onion flavor.

Eggplant with garlic sauce. Fine rendition.

Overall, I was very pleasantly surprised by Spicy Moment and would totally go back for a full meal. Plus they let us drink our wine on the down low. Menu is huge and execution was good — and interesting. It should be noted, that as of Feb/March 2020 Spicy Moment “rebooted” into a totally different, more homestyle Szechuan place with the same name. I have, of course, already eaten there.

Restaurant: Hunan Restaurant

Location: 1015 S Nogales St, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 964-8458

Date: August 3, 2019

Cuisine: Hunan Chinese

Rating: check: Solid

Then we popped back to this spot:

Located in between the Mandarin Bay and Spicy Moment.

Hunan is more old school than Spicy Moment, but it also has a vast menu:

Vast menu.

More sweet wine.

And a rhone blend.

Peanuts.

Shredded minced pork with corn and pickled vegetable. Super tasty — pork really helps a veggie. Sure to make things really move along later.

Sautéed lamb. Tasty.

Crispy pork ribs with garlic and chilies. Lots of flavor, not so much meat.

Fish filet with fire cracker salt. Very delicious boiled fish with garlic and chilies.

Spicy pickled cucumbers. Also delicious. Generally a fan fave.

Overall, Hunan was also very good. Sort of a blend of (more old school) Szechuan AND Hunan, but who cares. It was excellent. While the pictures above cover what we ate during the crawl, I’ve also been to this place my specifically, and a more detailed write up can be found here.

Restaurant: Happy Tree House BBQ

Location: 18904 E Gale Ave, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 581-9886

Date: August 3, 2019

Cuisine: Chinese Skewers

Rating: check: hmmm

When I was spotting during the hot pot night, this place seemed intriguing.

Happy Tree BBQ. It’s a new style skewered meats place.

Very snazzy new interior.

Real coals.

And this warmer thing on the table where they put your skewers.

Powders.

Seaweed salad. Tastes like it looks.

Spicy octopus salad. Ok, but the sauce tasted a lot like Sriracha.

Beef skewers. Not bad.

Shrimp skewers. You eat shell and all.

Hot dogs. Well they didn’t call them that, but they basically are.

Chicken skin skewers. Crispy!

Lamb skewers. Pretty good too.

Chicken wing skewers. Just so so.

Overall, we were kinda disappointed in Happy Tree. Chinese skewers aren’t nearly as good as good Yakatori. They’re fine, but not super exciting. This place looks good, and is probably packed with young people on dates in the evening, but it just doesn’t feel as “Chinese” somehow. I’m not really sure where in China this kind of food is actually from.

Restaurant: Silk Road Garden

Location: 18904 E Gale Ave, Rowland Heights, CA 91748. (626) 581-9886

Date: August 3, 2019

Cuisine: Uyghur Chinese

Rating: check: great

So our final place is all the way west.

And merely across the parking lot next to the first spot.

It’s Uyghur Chinese like Dolans and has the decor to match. Very cute and intimate.

Being Uyghur doesn’t mean their menu is any smaller! They have skewers here too — I bet they would be better.

Garlic pickles. Nice crunchy garlicky cucumbers.

Yellow noodle with cumin lamb. Delicious tender cumin lamb on top of spaghetti-like noodles.

Meat and Vegetables in Homemade pastry. A giant golden meat pie. Extremely hot on the mouth, but tasty.

Special homemade noodle with minced beef. A western Chinese bolognese — tons of flavor. Nice thick al dente noodles.

Manti, meat and onion filled dumplings. These were superb, with really delicate skins. They could have used a dipping sauce though.

They had a little freezer of ice cream macarons.

Overall, I was also very pleasantly surprised by Silk Road. First rate execution. Small, intimate, and clearly cooked with precision. The dishes are typical of the region — half way between Shaanxi and Afghan — focused on lamb, and delicious.

In Summary, we only hit 6 of the perhaps 20+ restaurants in Mandarin plaza, and we “only” had 8 people, but we dined like Emperors on a cross China trek! Seriously, so much variety of style. The far SGV (aka Rowland and Hacienda Heights, Dimond Bar, etc) is where a lot of exciting culinary growth is.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Chevy and Mary may have skipped the first place (the BBQ) but they made up for it by getting shave ice and boba tea!