Green Island Empire Crumbles

About seven years ago Green Island made a splash with their Hong Kong style cafes, spreading successfully from its original Temple City location to Monterey Park, City of Industry and Chino Hills. Food was pretty good and the restaurants were busy, and they had nice specials including lobster. However last year the original Temple City location closed down, and early this year the Industry branch rebranded itself as Gourmet Fish, though they kept a Green Island subtitle. But after just a few weeks, that location closed down. Now the Monterey Park location is closed, being replaced by O K Cafe, which presumably leaves only the Chino Hills location. (Perhaps that one might survive since there aren’t many Cantonese options out there.)

I’m not sure what went wrong aside from the fact they went way downhill. My last visit there a few weeks ago found the restaurant empty on a Saturday night and the food not very good, which surprised me because my one meal at Gourmet Fish was excellent.

I have a feeling the last remaining location shall faulter as well. With the area of Chino Hills getting more options in the Chinese/Taiwanese genre, Green Island seems to price themselves higher than the norm. I went to the City of Industry and Chino Hills locations, and the food was decent but hard argue for a repeat visit given the options.