The Asian Brunching at Xian Yuan Gourmet

Personally I rarely do brunch. Especially getting up early on a weekend.

I can't lie, I don't think I ever get to see a sunrise or even have three square meals a day as breakfast is foreign to me. Brunch might be a doable because it's partially breakfast that gets lumped into lunch. Something light, but fulfilling enough at a late morning to early afternoon time during weekend. 

Har Gaw - (Crystal Shrimp Dumplings)

Hence, you can tell my brunch time is always during weekend for the late risers who really can't do early breakfast.

Dim sum for me is always the go to "breakfast of champions". It's the Chinese tapas for the uninitiated. If you think about it, instead of wine, you get morning hot tea and more importantly,  the small bites of various Chinese essential imperial items that goes well with the tea. It's funny, Chinese do not do mimosas or champagne cocktails. Tea leaf is the essential hot herbal remedy for all bodily functions.

Steamed Turnip Cake (not pan fried)

Steamed Bean Curd

Rice Roll Noodles

Chicken Feet

When you go to "Yum Cha" (I loathed the phrase "dim sum"), the staples included dumplings, noodle covered proteins, parts of chicken or beef in presentable manner, and cute bite size desserts. Apparently, it's a win for the whole family.

Steamed Taro Buns - Close up of Hedgehog

There are so many options in the West side of San Gabriel Valley, but the trek to Xian Yuan Gourmet was not for the typical fare of Cantonese brunch, but we're in it for the cutesy steamed taro bun that was crafted to a hedgehog shape. It's weird, but that's how it is now in the foodtography world of Instagram where we needed to get good pics of food and a cute shape of a steamed dessert buns was the go-get item of the day.

The inside of the bun

Other typical items you can find at a local Yum Cha places included Chicken Feet, Shrimp Noodles, Shumai (pork dumplings), Crystal Shrimp Dumplings (light wrap skin), Beef Tripe, and Egg Tarts for dessert.

Being fair and honest, I was quite astound to find that this place already was consider the best Chinese brunch place in all of LA by a few well known publication, albeit one of them writing it for that site had recommended other restaurants I have disagreed in the past. I would probably say that the staple of food is on par what I am used to.

Not a bad way to get you out of bed for a dim sum brunch.

Xian Yuan Gourmet
9556 E Las Tunas Dr
Temple City, CA 91780

Dim Sum @ Happy Harbor (Rowland Heights)

Formerly known as Seafood Harbour Restaurant. This palace of a fancy Chinese restaurant was part of a chain of 28 restaurants started in China where they still currently have one at Rosemead. It recently got bought out and renamed to Happy Harbor.

Located in a hell hole of plaza where parking is a total bit*h. Right in front of the restaurant is a sign that proclaimed to be the best dim sum place in LA (no doubt benefited from the reviews by the LA Times as one of the top 7 dim sum place in LA). They employed ten chefs to be working exclusively for this restaurant.

When you walk in, there is a waiting area with alot of chairs. Little did I know every chair will be used as the wait for your number to be call will be a long time before you get seated to a table.

There are no push cart ladies to push the carts around for the items of food. Instead you will be handed a menu with a slip form to fill in your order:

First Page of Menu

I sort like that concept because it would meant the food will come in hot and fresh. Alas, it also meant less employment opportunities out there.

First thing first, I had a decision to make on what type of tea I can order. There's five types of tea: Chrysanchernum, Shou Mei, Jasmine, Pu-Erh, or Ti Kuen Tin. It will cost $1.00 per person. Yep, you guess it ... I took the safer bet and order the Jasmine tea.

The pricing of the items are a little more than I expected. The afternoon dim sum prices of smaller items are $1.98, then it jumps up all the way $3.28 for the normal items, $3.98 for the larger quantities, $5.75 for the Special Order dishes, and the ever popular choice "no way am I ordering those type of dishes" for $6.75. Look over the price and the menu in here:

Dim Sum Prices

I decided to make the decision to forgo the shu mei because it would have cost me $3.28 each where in my local dim sum joints cost less than half of that price. If I am going to come here, I might as well order only the ones I cannot get or the specialty dishes.

First off I started off with :

pork buns

shrimp rice noodle

Then I order the specialty dishes of :

Shark Fin Scallop dumplings

Shanghai Dumplings

Pan Fried Shrimp Dumplings

Let me start off by saying that specialty dumplings were excellent. All Three of those different dumplings were taste great and my favorite ones were the shanghai dumpling. They also offered discounted price for the Shanghai dumpling of six for $6.

You can checked out what other items my party have ordered at the photo albums.

It's definitely one of the better dim sum place I have encountered in awhile. There will be a long wait. Some might say it would rivaled Din Tai Fung as the worst wait in weekend afternoons.

Steamed Taro Cakes with Black Olives

I noticed that the place also offered wines in the wine list. Definitely would be a consideration for a fancy banquet location. The only downside I can see is that they will not hold as big as some other Bigger Chinese restaurants like NBC or Ocean Star.

Sweet Tofu

My only suggestion is that to come early as in 11am or earlier (they opened at 9:30am on Saturday) and be prepared to be amazed.


Happy Harbor Restaurant

1015 Nogales St
Rowland Heights, CA 91748

(626) 965-2020

Grade:

Dim Sum @ The Kitchen (Alhambra)

I am really torn about this place. On one hand, it's actually very reasonable on the pricing for a dim sum lunch. On the other hand, it's nothing spectacular to write about as the lunch was ho-hum. So ordinary for a place that it still gets big praise from a certain Pulitzer prize winning food critic. I think he had just dropped the ball on this one. (Jonathan Gold)

The Kitchen was formerly known as NYC Jumbo Seafood which was a critic's darling, but based on what I heard, another ho-hum for a Chinese food kitchen. I am just beginning to wonder if the place was over hyped because of a few food critics talked it up as one of the best dim sum place in LA (CitySearch was another site that praised this place).

The restaurant does not have a cart ladies pushing the carts to bring food around for dim sum lunches. Instead you will have to order the dim sum items through menus. Obviously, there are some pitfalls by ordering off menu which we have experienced in the afternoon.

First, compared to the other menu based dim sum places, the Kitchen is not very descriptive with their menu items and also does not have photos on majority of their items. It led to a confusion of wrong items ordered as some of group preferred a deep fried taro balls which they thought was salty, but instead got a rather very sweet sesame taro balls like a dessert.

Then even worse, there was confusion with the servers bringing these dishes to our table as they were unsure if we have ordered the items. The system or technique they employed for bringing dishes to the tables might need to tweak a little to get it right.

Some of the items I have ordered are:

Shumai

Hai Gaw

Chicken feet in Soy Sauce

Fried Green Tea Dumplings

Fried Turnip cake with soy sauce

Those are the standard fares. There are not much of outstanding wowsers among these groups. The only saving grace was the roast duck. Keep in mind in that most of the item including the duck will not be served until 11am.

Roast Duck

Presentation wise was not as impressive as Mission 261 or Seafood Harbour. The price was actually very reasonable since most cheap dim sum items are around $2 per dish. We averaged out to $14 for a large group. In taste wise, I'm a little bit underwhelmed. It's not bad, but again not really spectacular where I can distinguished from other dim sum places that is all over the place in this city.

I think the big drawback compared to the other newer dim sum places are the lack of creative dishes for dim sum. The choices for dim sums are conventional with not much of newer choices. Look at some of the photos I have taken and you'll see the standard dishes you'll find at most places.

Rice Congee (Chinese Porridge)

The crowd starts to pick up towards lunch time at noon, but it seemed to get a lot of competition around Valley Blvd (New Capital, 888, MPV Seafood..etc etc). There are plenty of choices to chose from with dim sum.

It's a ho-hum choice for dim sum here.

The Kitchen
203 W Valley Blvd
Alhambra, CA 91804
(626) 289-4828

Grade:

Dim Sum that was Mission Impossible @ Mission 261 (San Gabriel)

Going into the places with the word "Mission", I usually just think that it's old time Missionary places like in Santa Barbara or San Diego. I just didn't think it meant "challenge".

Might as well think of it as challenge...or better yet, I should have ordered Mexican food or Spanish tapas if I was there.Going into this beautiful missionary style building where there is an open courtyard patio seating in the middle, there are some history involved with this place. According to some of the people in my group, this used to be a winery that was converted into the restaurant we were dining at.

The dining room used to be a room where they stumped the grapes. Think of the episode in "I Love Lucy".The place have a beautiful private rooms with a fireplace in front that accompany the elegant decor that comes with this charming place. There's also stacks of wine when you enter the place. It gives the reminiscence of its former self as a winery. Please check the photos for details.

This was an A-grade (more upscale) dim sum place where you ordered the dim sum items from the menu instead of having ladies pushing up the cart like you would see in most B-grade dim sum place (more economized specials).

The menu was presented with pictures and gives detailed descriptions of what's in store when you order.

Right off the bat, I already had encountered problems with the staff at Mission 261. We have a large group where we split into two tables. I sit on the second table all by myself so that I can saved the table for guest arriving shortly thereafter. As I was examining some of the items at the menu, the group at the other table were short of menus and need more for their table. Instead of going to the front counter and get the menu, the hostess decided to grab my menu as I was reading it and hand it off to the table next door.

WTF!? The nerve of that person!

Honestly, I didn't know what to think. After all, she knew I was with the group, but why the idiotic notion in that it's OK to grab the menu considering I was using it and not done with it as I was still reading. There's no need to be that friggin' lazy, but the arrogance really dampens my mood.

There were also plenty of times when our late party finally arrives in that we tried to get glasses of water, it would take at least 4 different people to request it before a third different staff would finally brings it. Details and attention seemed to be lacking in the worst way. As much as any bad service in Chinese restaurant, this place was not very busy at all and was half empty in the dining room where it should not be much of the problem.

The types of dishes we ordered are:

(From Left to Right) Sticky Rice Shumai, Haigaw (shrimp dumplings), and Pan Fried Shrimp & Cheves Sten Cakes

(from Left to Right): Steamed Imperial Dumpling (sticky pork rice dumpling) and Steamed Abalone Mushroom Dumplings

For Desserts we had:

Rabbit Dumpling

This was very cute and nicely decorated. It's great right before Easter as this bunny is packed with exploding custard. It was so cute, I'd almost didn't want to eat it.*Sweetened Chrysanthemum with Red Bean Pudding

A yummy desert with red bean (top) paste in the middle covered by gelatin like pudding. Sweetened Sago Pudding with Green Tea Flavor (below)

Nice green tea pudding with tapioca in the middle. Very sweet!The food was very well presented and almost decorated very well. Pricing wise it's one of the more expensive dim sum place you'll encounter in Southern California.

Taste wise, it's a give and take. Not the most impressive and a bit overrated in my opinion. The items seemed to be some dry in some of the dumplings as it can taste bland with lack of flavor at times. Very inconsistent.

The place is very classy and looked elegant. Food are very well presented. It's something I'll give it another shot down the road, but I would throw wind in the caution as the service is very uneven. It's definitely worth the look.

Mission 261
261 S Mission Dr
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 588-1666

Grade:

Old School Dim Sum @ NBC Seafood (Monterrey Park)

There is something to be said about places like this.

In the old days, NBC can packed up the place like a sardine can. It was a real hassle to deal with the massive wait time and where the numbers for your table was called out only in Cantonese. Personally, it gave me a chance to figure out the numerals in a foreign language.

Now in the present tense, NBC is a reincarnation of their old selves that now catered to all clientele in Southern California. Before, it was exclusively to the Chinese immigrants, now you can see more Caucasians, Filipino, Latinos, and other Asians who help keeping an institution alive. This place was the Chinese version of Canter's if there's ever was one.

Hai Gaw (shrimp dumplings in the full hot steam)

There's much to be said about what is being offered here. It felt like living in the vintage past where the menu don't change often. The dishes still comes out in a shopping cart like atmosphere. There used to be a time when the carts had a hard time circulating around the tables as they are scrunched up together. It gone a tad better, but it is still real tight at this place.

Peking Duck

You can still order some of the more traditional items in their menu that is not on the cart such as the Peking Duck. Hopefully the long congested wait on Sunday morning will not lead to starvation. One of the finest old school dim sum joint in all of Southern California should be respected.

Chicken Feet

NBC Seafood
404 S Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA 91754
(626) 282-2323

Grade: