Dim Sum and Chinese Seafood Palace Coming to Culver City

Americas - USA West Los Angeles
#1

Made a return visit to Ooak Kitchen in Culver City, enticed by the signs offering vegetarian and vegan dim sum. Speaking with the manager, I believe named Wing Lai, he dropped the news that they would be moving the existing vegetarian operation to a smaller location, and converting the existing, fairly opulent space into a conventional (as opposed to vegetarian) dim sum and Chinese seafood operation. Given the fact that Ooak Kitchen is headquartered in Guangzhou (and I don’t think any other Guangzhou based restaurant chains are operating in LA), this could be very interesting.

Implications of this and details of their vegetarian dim sum are too extensive to post here, but I do cover more in this link.

3 Likes
#2

What are the names of their guangzhou restaurants?

#3

They have something like 40 locations in China. Don’t know if they fly a single banner or have different names.

#4

@chandavkl I know you had a poor experience at Wing Lei in Las Vegas, but have you tried their dim sum brunch buffet which happens twice a year? They happen around Chinese New Year and Christmas. Their dim sum were freshly steamed and immediately served to each tables and buffet spread had interesting items like tea smoked duck, certain traditional Chinese soup, and chili oil poached fish. They were all cooked really well. I can honestly say that a lot of the dim sum were better than what I had around SGV where I go on a weekly basis. The quality of the ingredients was also evident.

Here are some dim sum pictures I took:
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Notice the shine on the thin skin of the dumplings. They even had truffle siu mai.

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Siu yuk - Exemplary

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Char siu bao - Excellent

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Best egg tart I’ve had - Flavorful and flaky crust. Smooth and creamy custard with just the right sweetness.

Let me know your thoughts!

#5

Was this recently? Been a few times 2013-2015 and it was great, but when I went twice from 2016-2017 it went downhill.

#6

Went earlier this year for dim sum at Red 8, also in the Wynn, and it was quite good. So I’m not surprised that Wing Lei has the ability to produce good dim sum. Ordinary dinner, however…

#7

I recently had a non dim sum meal at Red 8 and the food was quite good as well.