$5.50 for a wooden box of healthy Taiwanese style Chinese cooking. Best part: perfectly cooked rice.

A Chowhound post just advised Railroad Bento, previously discussed here, has closed. The owner, Tony, took my email during Chinese New Years week, promising to contact with the new address. So far, no news. Hence it was a delight to finally be able to meet this uber secret Taiwanese bento purveyor.

A&J is tucked in between the “other” Indian/Pakistani grocery store of Alhambra, and a Edible Arrangements. Yes, if you blink, you’ll never find this place. If you blink, and not call in early enough, you’ll never get a bento box around dinner time. They sell out, and they don’t give a shit. There is no place to sit, there’s barely room to stand, but there is good wholesome Taiwanese food: think sticky rice triangles, pastries, etc.

Is this bento as good as Railroad? Hell no. Is it just as homely. Definitely so. The rice is patted down flat in a thin, assembled wooden (bolsa wood?) box. It’s then covered with a few stir fry items (mostly luke warm), the main “meat” dish of the day and a stewed egg. Sometimes it’s curry chicken, sometimes it’s stewed pork, sometimes it’s braised beef. There are usually only 2 varieties of main protein, and the fixin’s remain the same between boxes. It’s like a Hawaiian plate lunch, but square, with 1/2 as many calories. The rice, firm yet pugent, is flavored by all the stir fries. One tastes each nodule, as if sent down by Inari, the Shinto Rice God. Thai restaurants can never get rice right, but this little strip mall shack did. And it’s bril.

What makes this so tasty is pure culinary recollection. It’s what a Taiwanese mom, with a pseudo busy schedule, with a pseudo interest in providing her child a healthy meal, would make for dinner. For those whose mom couldn’t cook for shit, you can buy this piece of lost, past memory for $5.50, tax included.

A&J Bakery (Bento)
1300 E. Man St #102
Alhambra, CA 91801
T: 626-282-5436

The worst meal of ‘09.

After a month hiatus, Sika’s reopened as Face Cafe. If there was no reason to visit this place back then, there’s less of a reason to visit this place now.

Ordered 2 items 10 hours after grand opening (Jan 4th, noon) but OMFG…. that is just about the worst bowl of HK-style beef curry I’ve had in my life.

Retraction. That is indeed the worst bowl of HK-style beef curry I’ve ever had, period. Chunks of parboiled, unseasoned beef brisket twice as wide as a fork, coupled with chunks of potato stir fried in oil, all tossed into a wok and doused with a gelatinous beef gravy spiced up with curry powder. Both the undercooked brisket and the undercooked bland potatoes were not properly stewed in the curry sauce. Think bad BBQ brisket drenched in equally bad BBQ sauce.

This unfortunate dish was given the label of a “house special”. On this tragedy alone, I bet Face will fall flat (hardy har har) in a year. If I wanted actual cafeteria food preparation, I would’ve gone back to my old college dorm’s mess hall.

“Do Not Want”

Triumphal Palace Lunasia grand re-opened on Dec 19th. According to a Yelp post, the name apparently copies some “popular” Hong Kong Drama.

I had to google thrice to confirm this, only to find it’s simply not true when viewed from… say… ENGLISH. Undoubtly the gwai-lo’s visiting Lunasia will completely miss the reference considering it’s only obvious in the Chinese characters. Say it with me: we ain’t no FOB. And this is America.

According to a poster on Eater LA, 1 of Triumphal’s original partners bought out the other partners and re-opened under a new name. TP was completely dead Monday-Thursday during dinner service and it’s dimsum fame from a few years back was beginning to wane.

So how is the dimsum? Not bad, not great. Hit n miss. There are only a handful of “S”mall items at $1.88. The tofu flower was nearly inedible, tasting nothing of soy, completely pathetic compared to the ilks of VP/VK Tofu. The fried mochi dumpling was not bad, but devoid of stuffing, ditto to the trio of baked char siu buns. The economy is seriously but but.. can we get few more grams of filling inside the bao’s? Please? The “phoenix claws” The Phoenix Claw (chicken feet) was very mild w/ nary a scent of fermented black bean, and not oily, hence perfect as left overs.

The tour de force: the OMG shiu mai. Before in depth discussion on these AWESOME steamed goodies, a minor caveat: I don’t chase dimsum like a craving Westsiders during Sunday brunch. 888 hasn’t touched my tongue in God knows how long and I can’t stay I’ve ever set foot inside New Capital. On a lazy Sunday, Ammo / JAR / Campanile trumps Capital Seafood/Sea Harbor/Elite/NBC/blah blah, yada yada yada. But these shiu mais were little balls of dynamite. They were damn good. Not oversteamed, with the shrimp perfectly tender, and the pork’s texture nearly matching the shrimp. No clue how they did this. I don’t even LIKE shiu mai but these got to me.

Price breakdown: Smalls $1.88, Tea service $1/pp

Wait time: 30 min after 11:30, no wait prior to 11am.

Dimsum hours: 10am-3pm daily.

Wing Tin has been around for hella days. I believe it was related to the branch in Alhambra on Main, before that was “shut down”. Nowadays, it’s barricaded by construction catwalks that somehow attracted my otherwise unpaying attention to this full-blown Cantonese restaurant.

They do a kaffir leaf smoked duck & chicken that is unfounded anywhere else in all of SGV. Tho it’s not on Yelp and it’s not on Chowhound, it is the reason why SinoSoul exists.

Broke-Ass Dining (BAD – TM SinoSoul ‘08) items of interest: daily recession specials such as buy 2 oil chicken leg/thigh, get 1 free (enough to feed a family of 4), as well as the entire $2.99 / $3.99 Chinese-only special menu posted on wall as well as banner on construction catwalk.

Other BAD items: $4.99 per entree of stir fry specials, including shrimp in lobster/black bean sauce, satay beef, ad nausea:

Folks will ask: how good is this place? And I’ll reply with: Seriously? Does it matter? When people say: Library Bar’s $10 burger is not bad when there are Happy Hour specials, I think of Won Tin’s $5 combo chow mien (extra crispy please!) and smile deeply to myself. Yes they use MSG, yes they use canned pineapples, but Won Tin’s good enough to keep me living in the Western (626).

Won Tin
1124 W. Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA, 91803
(626) 289-3616

Cotton Candy?!? Used to be called Amazon. Use to be a shoe store(?) before that. Now it’s a Taiwanese-esque themed bar with a buncha jungle motif and other Hot Topix paraphernalia randomly strewn. Hell it’s not even Taiwanese owned, and their schtick is.. cotton candy! But the cotton candy machines don’t even work! Total strike-out, then?

WTF are you doing here, you ask? Beats me. The Vietnamese joint down the street was closed? And there was a sign for.. $2.99 niu rou mien. Are you kidding? $2.99 for beef noodle soup? Sign my big ass beer gut, up!

Wait! let’s not go to the NRM yet. Let’s talk about this plate of stinky tofu. It’s fried perfectly. It’s not cut up into penny-sized bitelets which always render the tofu cubes too dry. And heck! the center’s still soft! and moist.. and wet.. and… It smells like rancid sex dripping out the next morning! The sauce was simple, but it was garlicky and just good enough. It was probably just augmented Weichuan’s soy paste dip, but Weichuan is OG Taiwanese yo. Not overly-fried large tofu cubes + garlicky soy paste & a side of Northern style cabbage kimchi = great stinky tofu! So great that I don’t have to talk about about the $2.99 bowl of beef noodle soup!

Cotton Candy / Amazon / Ex-shoe store
247 E Main St
Alhambra, CA 91801
(626) 308-9385

This place just rubs me the wrong way. I don’t know if it’s the platters of baos just randomly laying around, or the owner with complete apathy… mediocre bao, chunky mi jiang with tame roasted rice taste. Tho there is a saving grace: jiou nian (sweet fermented rice wine egg drop soup). but… not that great of a save, since the jiou nian tastes extremely watered down and there were nary mochi balls.

Ye May
608 East Valley Blvd #G
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 280-8568

Ranks down there with My Way Deli on Atlantic, cept My Way actually has 1 edible dish: the o ah jien.

Bad chive dumplings (wrong shape, deep fried instead of panfried), lumpy mi jiang, completely wack egg omelette. Nothing is right here.

I have lived on that lovely island and this Ye May isn’t it. There are zilch Taiwanese workers left and rumor says it was bought out years ago. Huge downhill alert. Btw, I know it made the LA Times but.. are you going to trust me? The man who spent the last year chasing tofu flower? Or the newspaper guy who thought Yung Ho is the greatest shit ever? It’s not. VP still owns you in all facets of soy manipulation.

I know they’ve both been here for eons but mostly, I don’t blame their kitchens. Let’s blame the customers, blame the changing demo based on new influx of Chiu Chao & Sino-Vietnamese folks. All the Taiwanese? Yah, they’ve moved out to Temple City & Arcadia loooong ago..

Waitamin, I gotta non-doppelganger ringer:

The OG Yung Ho
1045 E Valley Blvd #A105
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 280-9317

Yes, this place is OG. 20 years they say. And it still has Taiwanese patrons. Well slap me silly! How can this place taste SO bad? Look at the color of the mi jiang. What happened here? And the dan bing (egg omelette)? No scallions? No sauce? C’mon! Quit cheatin’ me here! I know Yi Mei on Atlantic makes the finest dan bing in all of LA but… try to put up a fight here! That stuffed rice ball? The size of my wiener. You know what they say about Asian dude’s pen0rs right? Saving grace: none. Yes, the mushroom pork bun itself was big, but the stuffing? Think cute Chinese baby balls.