Sunday Bistro

(from December 26)

Another Hong Kong-style cafes on my dad's regular rotation. The service, quite frankly, is shit. Really, what any patron must keep in mind here is that you're not here for the service. You're here for the tea drinks, the cheap food, and the clean restaurant. As long as they bring your food with a minimum of speaking, you'll be fine. This is their new location on Valley Blvd. Enjoy it while it lasts, because it's going to wear out pretty fast.



Every meal is served with vegetable soup. Made with beef broth and lots of cooked-down veggies, this is one of my favorite soups. It's generic, simple, and delicious.



My mother ordered chicken lern mein wong, which translates to "two-sided toasted noodles". A pile of cooked egg noodles are toasted into a crispy patty and topped with chicken cooked in a thick sauce. Sunday does a pretty good job with theirs.



The worst dish of the night as the wor wonton soup. It was a bland seafood soup with a few wontons in it. We wished we'd ordered the regular wonton soup.



Clay pot rice was pretty good. We ordered the classic mixture of Chinese sausage, pork, and shittake mushrooms. It's cooked with a little bit of seasoning, then presented with a side of sauce to add more flavor.



All in all, the food's decent and the drinks are ok. Dad goes here regularly and I tend to visit occasionally whenever I'm home.

Tasty Garden

This is my latest favorite LA restaurant. It's only a couple of blocks from home, so that makes even more fabulous. Tasty Garden is located at 1212 Baldwin Ave. in Arcadia. Arcadia's Asian population has exploded in the last decade or so, resulting in excellent Asian eateries. There wouldn't be a community here if the food was crap. It's a Hong Kong-style cafe, serving up Cantonese entrees and Western-influenced dishes (one good example is baked pasta, which is omnipresent in this type of cafe).



One of the things they're known for here are rice cooked in clay pots. It's rice, a clay pot, and a bunch of types of meat and/or veggies, then cooked in the pot. The rice crusts along the pot, forming a crunchy layer, and the additions flavor the rice. It's quite excellent, but we didn't order it this time. It's a bit much for lunch. We did order the shredded brined chicken. Cooked dark meat is shredded and marinaded in oil, white pepper, and salt. It's served cold and it's fantastic. Lots of flavor. White pepper is much more subtle and has none of the spicy bite of regular pepper.



Another specialty is the wonton noodle soup, which I wanted to try this time around. Holy cow, it was fantastic. The noodles were a little overdone, but the wontons... wow. They were huge, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Filled with shrimp, pork, and spices, it was a little bite of happy. The flavors melded together perfectly and pretty much "popped" as you bit into it. The soup was fantastic and there was crunchy bok choy with it.



We had to order my favorite Peking-style pork spareribs. I've been having them really frequently lately, but it was a multi-year drought before that. Thank goodness China Max does them well or else I'd never eat anything else in LA.



Mom and Dad seem to know every restaurateur in the area. Dad, having been in the industry for decades, likes to chat with the owners and see what they're doing with their restaurants. They've known the owner of Tasty Garden since he was a partner in another Hong Kong-style cafe in the Monterey Park area. So, he comped us a Hong Kong-style "waffle".



It's made the exact same way as a waffle, with the batter being poured between two hot iron plates. However, that's where the similarities end. The plates on this waffle maker have big bubbles in them, which results in the bubbles being cakey and the pastry in-between being crunchy. The batter is much sweeter and cake-esque than a waffle. An American (or Belgian) waffle is pretty bland and the toppings make the dish. This waffle, however, is eaten alone. It's quite good, although Mom and Dad said there's a place in Monterey Park that does it better. If that's so, then I definitely have to meander out there to try it out.

Tasty Garden is absolutely fabulous and there will be plenty of visits in the future.

Day Trip to L.A.

Today, we took a day trip to L.A. to see family. Two restaurants visited. What resulted was a need for improvement in my photography skills. Can't have much of a food blog if I constantly forget to photograph the food.

The first was Har Lam Kee restaurant.

The food was mediocre, but the service was shockingly good. Located on Garvey Ave. in Monterey Park, it's specialties include wonton noodle soup (and all its variations), rice noodle rolls, and various fried rices and noodles. It's yet another subcatagory under "Chinese comfort food". While Dumpling Inn's food is from northern China, these dishes are from southern China, origin of yours truly. Wonton noodle soup is very popular in Hong Kong. Our menu included:

• Wonton noodle soup- wontons are a type of dumpling. They're made with a different type of skin than potstickers or boiled dumplings from the north. The skin is wheat based and ironically, I've seen a lot of Italian recipes using wonton wrappers for ravioli. They're filled with prawns and a small amount of pork (if any) and served with gailan, aka Chinese broccoli. The broth is light, clear, and according to Wikipedia, derived from dried flounder. In other words, fish stock.
• Beef chow fun- A favorite of D.'s, it's rice noodles stir-fried with soy sauce, beef slices, onion, and bean sprouts.
• Fried rice with diced chicken and diced salted fish
• Rice noodle rolls- One of my favorite dishes, we had plain noodles filled with dried shrimp and noodles wrapped around "Chinese donuts", which are long strips of fried dough. They're savory, not sweet like American donuts. But, like the donut we see stateside, they're enjoyed as a breakfast treat.
• Egg noodles fried into a large crispy disk of noodles (like a nest) and topped with chicken in a thick garlic sauce.
• Egg tarts- these are unusual for this type of restaurant, since they're a dim sum dish, but the family ordered them.
  

Like I said, the food wasn't excellent, and props to D. for his finely-honed taste for Chinese food. Hehe. I think my mother was very impressed when he offered his critique of this place.

For dinner, we hit one of my favorite places in Arcadia, which happens to be very close to home. Tasty Garden is, very classically, a Hong Kong style restaurant. The service is fast, the food is mainly southern Chinese with a touch of Western influence, and it's all delicious. I stupidly forgot to take pictures, but here's one of my favorite dish all-time. It's Peking-style pork spareribs and these are the leftovers. Even though they're Peking-style, they're done in the Hong Kong way, which is with a thick sauce. True Peking style, as I understand it, would have involved a tomato-based soupy sauce. The sauces taste the same, it's the consistency that's different.

Pork pieces are stir-fried in a sweet tomato-based sauce. It's not sour at all, but it's slightly reminiscent of Chinese-American sweet and sour pork. Onions are added. The pork is tenderized with baking soda, I think.

We also ordered:

• Salted chicken- brined chicken is boiled and served with a ginger sauce. Simple, but really good.
• Clay pot rice with Chinese sausage and dried pork (follow this link for a picture... scroll down to "little pot rice", which is about the same thing)
  
• Vermicelli with dried shrimp and winter melon
• French-style beef stir-fry- with onions and thai basil. The beef was tenderized and the sauce soy-based.

Great meal all in all. I will probably go back there soon and will have another report and hopefully more pictures.