I got a 17/22 sentences and 61% chance that the review by Brett Yu on Google was AI generated.
Most early reviews I assume are family and friends.
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The reviews refer to Hainan chicken and egg tarts. Did they actually have those?
Egg tarts yes. No Hainan chicken rice but they have Macao chicken rice.
Just did this place. Review forthcoming…
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FYI, attempting to detect AI-generated text is currently such a crapshoot that I basically wouldn’t bother - false positives & false negatives are both so likely as to make any results basically meaningless. (That said, it doesn’t seem crazy to me to think that the text was AI-generated. There’s a lot of fluff in the story that I’d expect a competent copywriter to leave out, but is pretty emblematic of e.g. ChatGPT.)
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Plus there are specific references that make no sense upon a deeper reading, like a restaurant in the heart of Los Angeles (why not Chinatown?) founded in 1997 becoming renown for Hainan chicken, when that dish was not available in the city limits of Los Angeles at that time.
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This seems like a whole lot of fuss over a random restaurant? Even if false.
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It’s not about the restaurant per se but about how weird it is for a business to make up such an elaborate, patently bullshit back story.
Seems entirely possible that it was a ChatGPT hallucination.
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The MinMinKangKangBangBang™ - This had to be done. And I can now put it on my resume.
For me, Min Min Pie House, situated on Main Street in Alhambra, represents the spiritual successor to the now-defunct Beijing Pie House. With the exception of the scallion pancake (which was good but not outstanding), every dish I ordered at Min Min that day I craved repeating the next day. Thank goodness for leftovers!
Scallion pancake… Good, albeit a bit too thick and “fried” for my taste buds, but again, this could simply be the case ‘cuz I am biased towards the thinner, more svelte Taiwanese version with a lighter sear.
Steamed fish and chive jiaozi… Fan-frickin-tastic!!! Huge bite! Loved these. Perfect skin, and delicious filling. (The filling at Min Min is what sets this place apart, IMHO - One can feel the love put into the dumpling and pie fillings here). Even cold, as leftovers straight outta the fridge the next day, these fish and chive dumplings were tremendous.
Shenjianbao (SJB)… Beauties on a plate. Perfectly prepared. Luscious porky filling. Crunchy dough sear on the bottom, and pillowy bun chewiness on top. So wonderful! This taste instantly transported me back to the iconic Yang’s Dumplings in Shanghai. Huge bites!
Beef and cilantro pancake (jianbing)… Another winner! Min Min’s jianbing are just the right size (I don’t like it when places make monstrous sized anything just to make it seem like it’s a value play - It messes with the balance of the intended item). And they are terrific to eat. Just be careful when gleefully biting into these piping hot things when they first hit the table - HMFJS® (Hot Meat Filling Juice Squirt) is a real danger here.
Fresh off the heels of such glorious shenjianbao, I found it necessary to compare them with the OG SGV SJB at Kang Kang Food Court (pictured:HMFJS® lolol):
… and here they are, those familiar hometown favorites. The dough / skin was fine, but the oil tasted a bit less fresh, and the biggest difference between the Kang Kang and Min Min was (again) in the filling department - The Kang Kang version is certainly serviceable, but nowhere near as good as Min Min’s.
Impulse buy at Kang Kang: Mango pudding… Instant regret. Chemical mango-like taste; no joy whatsoever. I’ll skip this next time. What was I thinking?
Chong Yuen Fong (AKA CYF on this board AKA the Fake A.I. Legend AKA FAIL)… I gave it a shot, as it was next door to Kang Kang:
The menu here seems to be primarily focused on pseudo-medicinal Chinese soups and teas (but only 3 soups on offer at any given time, alternating every two days of the week). There is no sign of Hainan chicken rice anywhere. What little food (other than soups) on the menu were just Char Siu Rice, Macau Chicken Rice, and egg tarts.
I tried ordering the Char Siu Rice. Sorrowfully (see what I did there?), I found out that it wasn’t available. So plate-wise, there was nothing left but the Macau Chicken Rice. The chicken was dry, and the curry sauce saved it somewhat. Zero fireworks.
Egg tarts… Were just OK. Each one was relatively large, with an uneven crust - This made for kind of an odd experience when I bit down on it.
Medicinal soup: Old Chicken Soup with Five-Fingered Peach… Hairy fig (五指毛桃) root, or five-fingered peach, is a common ingredient in Chinese soups. Though I appreciate what they’re trying to do here, this soup was pretty bad. It was watered down, lacking any soul. The chicken was too tough, and the tasteless accompanying berries and fruits, with their innate taste long since leached out, could not salvage this bowl for me.
Due to my schedule crunch, I did not have enough time to query the young gentlemen staffing the restaurant about their origin story as purported on their website. So that concludes my experience at CYF…
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iykyk
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#GoC #BestMovieEver
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That’s hilarious that they put that poster up front. Would be better if they used James Wang
Hello Chan,
It’s a pleasure to see your interest in our restaurant. I’m Brett, the owner’s cousin, and I’d like to provide you with some insights. The website was developed hastily, and I must confess that the “our story” section isn’t entirely accurate. As others have pointed out, it was generated by ChatGPT. The reason behind this rush was that the city of Alhambra mandated that every restaurant have a website, and I managed to create this one in just 50 minutes.
Regrettably, I didn’t have the opportunity to craft a genuine narrative about the restaurant and its menu. I offered a brief overview of the owner, Jay, who originally hails from Guangzhou, grew up in Hong Kong, and then immigrated to Los Angeles. Jay’s English is somewhat limited, and he plans to enroll in English classes next year once things settle at the restaurant. English is my second language too, and I’m currently pursuing English courses in college.
We sincerely apologize for the ChatGPT-generated content. Please allow us some time, and we are committed to revamping the content and story on our website. We appreciate your understanding during this transitional phase as we work on improving. Our restaurant has only been open for ten days, and we’re still learning the ropes. However, the food we serve is authentically Cantonese, and we promise to enhance your dining experience in the days to come.
Thank you for considering us, and we look forward to welcoming you back for more delicious Cantonese cuisine.
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Hello, you are absolutely right. The owner, Jay, doesn’t speak English. I’ve been assisting him in creating the menu, while also continuing to improve my own English. I tried to use a dictionary to look up the words for each menu item, but you still caught some errors. Could you kindly point out the misspelled words so that I can correct them? As a token of my appreciation, I would like to offer you some free egg tarts. This will help us, as non-English speakers, to enhance our language skills. Thank you.
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it is AI generated. ignored the story behind.
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Thank you for coming on to this forum to clarify and being so forthright.
I think we tend to forget how hard it is to open a restaurant, and to open one without English proficiency to deal with paper work and regulations is even tougher.
I didn’t mean to imply your menu has errors or mistakes, I meant that in general, there are often mistakes and translation faux pas due to the language barrier.
Wishing the restaurant much success.
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Thanks for the explanation. Interesting that Alhambra requires a website.
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Interesting. I’ve had the 24 hour medicinal soups elsewhere. Usually after the cooking the ingredients aren’t really all that good, but I thought the point was to eat the broth and pretty much leave the other stuff - not to eat say the astragalus
So I guess you are supposed to eat it…
I’m glad some explanation was provided for the curious and questionable origin story. Hope to try CYF soon and also wish the restaurant success in the future. Thank you FTC snoops/Hounds for digging into this one. This story had me head scratching as well.
Props to J L for the Min Min Kang Kang Bang Bang. That was worthy of a stand alone post.
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Winner, winner, word-of-the-day!
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