looking for a delicate wrapper and a decent amount of natural tasting broth, my personal favorite is shanghai dumpling house, especially at that price point. mama’s lu: order the XLB & scallion pancake and skip the overpriced canto tourist menu. there are three places in prospect plaza that were stalwarts back in the day J&J, meilong village & happy kitchen. P P Pop has a more rustic wrapper, but at $5.50 an order (unless they’ve since raised their price) they’re a pretty good value. there’s also a place south of the 60 that does a buy one order get one order free, but the second order is made up of all the torn & leaky XLB.
the shui jian bao at tasty noodle in the same mall as golden deli are awfully good. the SJB at the shau may/kang kang in monterey park are better than the one in alhambra IMO. there aren’t many good SJB in LA.
EDIT:
i personally am not a fan, but it’s worth noting that they offer XLB sweetened with sugar, which apparently is popular among some shanghai-ese. the OP is free to try them at his own discretion.
If one is on the West side Tasty Noodle House on Sawtelle does serviceable SJB. Not great (too doughy and the bottom crispy varies greatly from order to order) but scratches the occasional itch.
Isn’t Tasty Noodle House like Northern Cafe–the WSGV branch is largely unaffiliated with the others outside the WSGV (except for the new Northern Cafe in Rowland Heights?)
thanks, but let’s take it as given that certain meteorological conditions would have to prevail in the infernal regions before i pay close attention to a thread about a chinese restaurant on the west side regardless of the level of authenticity; assuming a count of roughly 800+ chinese restaurants in the SGV where i reside, there are still some 600 chinese restaurants that i haven’t visited yet. and some close before i can get to them.
I like your estimation of 800. Nobody will come out and say what the count is. I only venture “between 600 and 800”. Luckily I was in on the ground floor when there was a much smaller number, such that I could try them all as they opened. At maybe just two or three openings a week it’s been manageable to eat at most of them.
i started maybe 6 years ago and have managed an average of 1-2 a week and that includes returning to places i like. i’ve listed them all in my FB photo galleries. and a lot of them are gone.
but the pleasure comes in the pursuit and discovery, so i don’t mind knowing that i’ll never come close to trying them all.
glad you liked it. which ones did you try? pork, pork/crab or the spicy versions? everything else on the menu is pretty good, though the portions are not large.
i thought plagiarism was the act of claiming someone else’s intellectual property as their own. the only way you can do that about food might be in the realm of molecular gastronomy, and chefs have been doing that to wylie dufresne for ages.
