Super short notice, I know, but partner and I will be heading out to the Huntington Library today and are wondering what might be fun to eat in the area.
Tearoom at the museum is booked out. Seems like Europane fell off a cliff awhile ago? Does Chengdu Taste have a huge line usually? What about QQ Kopitiam? Bulgarini is always an option, but w/ it being Easter Sunday, not sure if that might affect hours. I might even finally make it out to V P Tofu.
Something relatively light and casual (however you want to define that).
Thanks in advance (and I realize this might be waaaay too late for responses).
For you? Definitely try VP Tofu for dessert. Call Bulgarini ahead of time and ask what their hours are, but if Leo’s doing pasta early enough, yes! Get the Tagliatelle / Spaghetti with their amazing 6-hour braised Meat Sauce, something with Pesto and anything else he has on special.
I would suggest going to Northern Cafe for lunch. Get their beef roll and spicy chicken with sliced noodle and call it a day if you’re only a party of 2.
From what I gathered, yes since the menu looks different and don’t carry the spicy chicken with sliced noodle that I recommended. Go to Lit’z and split the Singapore noodle if you’re in for something different but truly delicious. Get their chili oil and slather it all over the noodles too.
Kim Kee Noodle Cafe is another one of my favorite if you don’t mind the food having some offal. Go for their #21 with rice noodle only.
Exit Huntington and go east on California, then south on San Marino, west on Huntington Dr., then south on Mission and then finally west on Main St., Jian Nan Spring restaurant is on your left (across the street from a Firestone tire shop).
And then if you’re lucky you can make it a bang-bang with some gelato from Jasmine Creamery, a mobile gelato cart that may be down the street assuming she’s not (s)trolling some local farmer’s market.
Memories can be a tricky thing, but I think one of my high school buddies lost his virginity in one of the corner booths in the back after a plate of egg and shrimp fried rice.
No. No way. They are totally different owners and menus. The Monterey Park Northern Cafe’s dapangji (big plate of chicken) is the best pasta in LA right now. Their rendition of this dish is better than Omar’s and better than Dolan’s.
Please let us know how you like it! I ate here once about 7 years ago with my dear Singaporean friend on our quest to find passable Hainan Chicken Rice. I remember most the warm Coca-Cola with lemon and ginger that was quite tasty.
Ah thank you for the clarification! I had no idea. I saw the same font / signage on the “Northern Cafe” branches and thought they were the same owners / central kitchen. My bad.
I wonder if @ipsedixit@chandavkl might know if Northern Cafe “group” is like Sam Woo? (I think on our old board @ipsedixit and @chandavkl had clarified that Sam Woo isn’t the same owners for every single branch across So Cal?)
I suddenly noticed that there’s Northern Cafe at UCLA. Northern Cafe USC. Northern Cafe Hacienda Heights. Northern Cafe Temple City. 3rd Street (Mid-City LA) and Monterey Park. (Where did they all come from?)
We had tried Northern Cafe Temple City once a few months ago and it was so mediocre I couldn’t bring myself to write anything about it.
But I’ve bookmarked Monterey Park branch now, thanks @J_L.
i would have suggested cluck2go’s HCR about four blocks north of the huntington north entrance/exit/
the biggest problem with these directions is that mission doesn’t intersect huntington. but if you turned left at the cambridge/west intersection with the stop light, you’d find that west becomes mission leaving san marino and entering san gabriel. plus it’s a lot simpler to take the east exit, turn right and head directly south to huntington drive where the cambridge/west intersection would only be a few blocks west.
From what I can tell, the two spreading chains, Tasty Noodle House and Northern Cafe, both started yards apart in the same shopping center in Hacienda Heights, neither being a household name in their original locations. However both have successfully expanded to the Westside and other Chinese communities, but as far as I know neither has opened up in the West San Gabriel Valley. That means all the Northern Cafes are related to each other except the Monterey Park branch, and all the Tasty Noodle Houses are related except San Gabriel.
i’d imagine that whatever you’d want to order at chang’s garden in arcadia would be good at JNS with the caveat that some items on the chang’s garden menu aren’t on the JNS menu. but when they are, the prices are exactly the same. but you’d expect something like that when owners are allegedly siblings.
Get the Tagliatelle / Spaghetti with their amazing 6-hour braised Meat Sauce, something with Pesto and anything else he has on special. 
