For those of you whose hearts were broken like mine when the dim sum kitchen walked out at Enlighten Bistro 168 in Arcadia, leaving us longing for their many gems, an informant seems to have found where the dim sum staff landed. The restaurant is Bistro 1968, a name suspiciously similar to Enlighten Bistro 168, and it opened up this past weekend with a menu which had items that resemble Enlighten Bistro 168’s dim sum. Coincidence? I hope not. Bistro 1968 is at 402 S. San Gabriel Bl. in San Gabriel, in the former Dong Lai Shun hotpot location. I won’t be able to get out that way for a while, so confirmatory reports would be appreciated.
Here now. Confirm that it’s the same owner and staff at Enlighten Bistro 168 that was in Arcadia before. Nice big space. Already packed with local dim sum cognoscenti. In soft open mode. About to order…
i’m still a little confused on the why. Wasn’t the issue they closed was cause the chef didn’t want to work with the owner anymore?
So now it’s a new location with the owner but not the chef?
Ok I asked more… Same chef. Different owner?
Would put it past chinese restaurants to have nothing in common either.
I was told same owner.
Well at least the food at Bistro 1968 tastes about the same as Enlighten Bistro 168. (Which is: Pretty good dim sum!)
@JLee and @moonboy403 what did you think of your visit?
Still in soft open mode. Some items were not available. Many items felt “heated up”, but tasted good nevertheless.
This place is the new hotness, so people are gonna check it out no matter what. At least the room feels spacious enough to accommodate the interest (unlike its previous Arcadia iteration).
Had a 20 minute wait when we went at noon on Sunday. Based on the amount of folks filling up the waiting area and the aunties and uncles watching the dining room like hawks, the wait went up from there and died back down around 2pm.
Everything was tasty, tofu curd in soup was a favorite. They didn’t fire the macau egg tart or turnip cake (my favorite) when we submitted the original order. We saw the items crossed out so we figured they had run out. We later saw those items on other tables, but were too full at that point to inquire.
Did notice they didn’t have phoenix claws or you tiao cheung fun. Though some of the translations are hard to interpret so we may have missed them.
Sorry no pictures.
Noticed a couple notable chefs there, but totally forgot the names to go with their faces.
Pretty meh to me. 3 of the worse offenders tonight…
Crispy lobster roll…pretty irresponsible for a certain food critic to even promote this item on their piece
Turnip cake
Sesame roll…those who’ve had sesame roll knows this is a sacrilege
Then we have these gems:
Where’s the execution?
Siu mai…tasted fine but is it still a siu mai with no shiitake???
i’ve never had sesame rolls, but if thats how it was named on the menu then i can see the outrage. looks more like sesame bricks.
Those yellow circled ones are shrimp.
The reason why I broke it apart in the first place was because they tasted like shrimp and not lobster. Dissecting them confirmed my suspicion.
shrimp
lol. why does lobster roll have shrimp
Exactly. They put in tiny whole shrimps and passed them off as lobster.
This is the picture of the lobster roll said food critic posted…
Looks pretty apparent that it was filled with shrimp too!
who? maybe I missed a review?