Jay Jiang Photography

The Congee Tried Out / 2009.04.07

The Simple Neon Sign

We went to tried out this place last week because one of our friends mentioned it is pretty good. But at the end all of us just think this store has nothing special and I think it will just close down soon like the previous Wonton Time (云吞生).

We thought the store might have something new since the name changed. To our surprise, nothing has changed. Everything stays the same or too bad that I have to say it got worse actually.

The thing we complained the most is the size of the dishes does not match the price. All the dishes are just way too small compare to the price we paid. The food quality is decent but nothing suprised us. And the food we can order there (like noodles and congee) are just so common that you can order in any other Hong Kong style cafes around. Why would we pay for this price for such common food here again? I believe I will not come back to this place again.

My Ratings:
Average Price: $7~15
Food Rating: 6.0/10
Decoration and Presentation: 5.0/10
Service: 6.0/10
Environment: 5.0/10

Address: 19 E Valley Blvd, Alhambra, CA 91801
Phone: (626) 284-2722

牛肉腸粉 / Steamed Rice Noodles with Beef Wrapped Inside

Dinner at Face Cafe / 03.30.2009

Face Cafe used to be OK Cafe, DJ Cafe and Sika Cafe. It is actually located in a good spot but somehow the management always change, but the people who work there are basically the same, but along with the time, most of the waiters and waitresses I remember left.

Well, many of my friends do not have good impression of this cafe but we decided to give it a try after the new name is adopted.

To be honest, I have neutral views towards this cafe, it is just the same as other Hong Kong style cafes around. With the new decoration, I think the environment is pretty good. I like its newly interior. The food quality is just the same. So far I never found any Hong Kong style cafe is exceptionally better than another. But some cafes do have some unique dishes that are exceptional which I can recall anytime from my memory.

That night we ordered some common dishes like steamed rice noodles with beef / cha siu (bbq pork) wrapped inside. The rice noodle tasted good with very thin rice noodle skin. The congee with order tasted very good as well. The dish I didn’t like is the fried noodles with eggs. It was too oily.

Address: 301 E Valley Blvd, Alhambra, CA 91801
Phone: (626) 282-8899

My Ratings:
Average Price: $8~15
Food Rating: 6.0/10
Decoration and Presentation: 6.5/10
Service: 6.5/10
Environment: 7.0/10

Dinner at Shanghai Southern Mini Town Chinese Restaurant / 小南国 / 2009-03-01

Shanghai Southern Mini Town Chinese Restaurant is small restaurant located on Las Tunas Dr. and Mission Dr. in San Gabriel. It is one of the two Shanghainese food restaurants that I often visit. Another one is  Wok & Noodle Restaurant in Alhambra.

As usual, you can find common Shanghainese food here such as: Fried Bean Curd / 烤麩; Vegetable Duck / 素鴨; Combination Casserole / 砂鍋系列; Shanghai Steamed Dumplings (Bun) / 上海小籠包; Shanghai Pork Spare Ribs / 上海小排骨; Finless Eel / 鱔糊

Tonight we have ordered:
1: Appetizer – Assorted Vegetables / 雜錦前菜: not bad, very chewy with very mild spicy
2: Fried Bean Curd with Black Mushroom (Agaric) / 四鮮烤麩: it was served as hot dish, I prefer fried bean curd in cold dish like the one in Wok and Noodle Restaurant, tastes much better
3: Cabbage with Small Shrimp / 開陽白菜: nothing much special
4: Shanghai Salted Pork with Bamboo Shoot & Bean Curd Sheet Casserole / 上海醃篤鮮砂鍋: same as usual, but we found so little bean curd sheet in the soup
5: Chicken with Parsley / 三杯鷄: tastes pretty good but I found it is more like Taiwanese style
6: Braised Yellow Fish / 紅燒黃魚: my favorite dish of the night, but my friends thought it is so so

My Ratings:
Average Price: $8~15
Food Rating: 6.5/10
Decoration and Presentation: 5.0/10
Service: 5.0/10
Environment: 3.8/10

Address: 833 W Las Tunas Dr., San Gabriel, CA 91776
Phone: (626) 289-6578

February 27, 2009 – Dinner at  Bamboodles / 蓮香竹昇面 in San Gabriel
– a really bad impression on our first visit

Bamboodles is a new Chinese restaurant opened not long ago. From reading its name you would know this is a Chinese restaurant featuring noodles for main dishes.

Chicken Lomein Special / 蔥油鷄絲撈麵

Currently it has a promotion that it serves one dish of Chicken Lomain Special (蔥油鷄絲撈麵) for $1. But do not be fooled, its other dishes are not cheap, lol! Our bill ended up like $30 for 3 people with 3 dishes of noodles and 2 dishes of dumplings. This is the first time we came to try out this restaurant. We did not have much good impression. The food is really so so, even the Chicken Lomain Special is cheap, we would still expect certain quality. We three friends all think the noodle is overly salty. Also that I really hate the strong alkaline processing taste that left on the noodle. Alkaline taste is normal on Chinese noodles but the Bamboodles’ ones are too strong for me. The chicken meat tasted ok but we felt it is a bit raw. The decoration looks pretty good with the green onion on it.

We also ordered the pan fried dumplings (香煎餃子), but the dumplings were totally off from our least expectation. As I have mentioned earlier, its price is not cheap. A dish of fried dumplings (8 dumpings count) cost $6.5, which is really expensive. And it is absolutely over priced for its quality. Yuck!

Pan Fried Dumplings / 香煎餃子

So far it seems my review towards this restaurant are all quite negative but that was how we felt. Besides everything stated above, we also encountered very rude customer service. There is a waitress who is a bit chubby that acted very unprofessional. While she was taking order from our table, she left in the middle of the ordering while our friends are looking at each other surprisingly. We were all like “WTF” (I really do not wanna use this phrase but that was just how bad it could be). My friend who arrived the restaurant earlier to book the table, also mentioned that a previous table he booked (we moved to another table while everyone showed up) was dirty, and nobody came to wipe it even he was asking for that. When our dishes came, the chubby lady was just like throwing the dish onto our table, we were speechless. The only good experience that I had in this restaurant was that there was a manager look like type of guy that filled up our Lemonade for few times without being asked by us.

After this tried out, we think we are not going to come back to this restaurant anymore.

My Ratings:
Average Price: $5~10
Food Rating: 4.0/10
Decoration and Presentation: 6.0/10
Service: 2.0/10
Environment: 5.0/10

Address: 535 W Valley Blvd, San Gabriel, CA 91776
Phone: (626) 281-1226

Benser Tasty, used to have the name of Hui Lau Shan, a healthy dessert store originally from Hong Kong, opened a branch here in San Gabriel [actually they have the same name but I am not sure whether they are really related or not]. One or two years ago they closed for a while then they changed the name to Benser Tasty, but they still carry the same Chinese name though.

The dessert they serve are actually very good, but it is incomparable with the stores in Hong Kong. I guess it really depends on what you are looking for. If you want to get the feeling and similar taste that you can find in Hong Kong, it is incomparable, but if you just want to enjoy some cool dessert, this place is very good.

My Rating:
Average Price: $4~7
Food Rating: 8.0/10
Decoration and Presentation: 8.5/10
Service: 7.0/10
Environment: 7.0/10

Address: 250 W. Valley Blvd., #A, San Gabriel, CA 91776
Phone: (626) 282-8263

Overall, I like its environment and dessert quality. There are not many dedicated Chinese desserts stores around anyway. So give it a try while you have time.

The lunch does not come with appetiser and sweet dessert. Lunch special has great price, we have about 10 people today and we ended up paying $8/person including tips for 9 different dishes.

I found most of the food are overly oily and it somewhat lowered my appetite.

My Rating:
Average Price: $8~10 (Lunch), $15~25 (Dinner)
Food Rating: 6.5/10
Decoration and Presentation: 7.5/10
Service: 8.0/10
Environment: 6.0/10

Address: 684 W Garvey Ave, Monterey Park, CA 91754
Phone: (626) 289-0088