Thanks chandavkl 
Some more that didn’t make the cut: Elite was closed until July 13 for a remodel (though the decor doesn’t look any different to me. Kitchen remodel?).
Seafood Palace in Temple City has finally re-opened after their remodel.
Nothingness and its neighbor, Victory Kitchen are still closed after being flooded in early February.
Charcoal Kebab has replaced Lights of City Hot Pot.
Souper Bowl, a Taiwanese snack/build your own single serve stinky tofu hot pot place has opened in Arcadia.
White Prawn has closed in Alhambra.
Hugo Foods was closed at dinner time on a Saturday night. That’s never a good sign.
And lotsa happenings with tea chains arriving and existing ones expanding.
My SAT verbal section mind would have guessed Vacuum. Nature (and the SGV too, I surmise) abhors a vacuum.
I would have gone with nirvana; perfect nothingness.
chandavkl, I also hope you noticed I mentioned your comment on Tasty Dumpling Kitchen.
It’s also worth noting that there are 4 intestine items and 1 stomach item on the menu, so perhaps Tasty Intestine Kitchen would have been more appropriate 
Quite similar to a place called Dim Sum Inn which 30 years ago occupied the space now occupied on Garvey by China Islamic, which had like three dim sum items on their menu. Also there was a food court place in Koreatown called Dim Sum which served no dim sum at all, though that’s slightly understandable since they weren’t targeting Chinese diners. (Kind of like the pre-immigration act Americanized Cantonese restaurants that named themselves “Shanghai,” “Peking,” “Mandarin,” etc.) And one of the most popular restaurants in Philadelphia Chinatown is Dim Sum Garden, which does not serve Cantonese food, so how much dim sum can there be?
Always look forward and enjoy reading your updates on SGV eateries.
i thought ahgoo opened in 2015, which would have made it 3 years, not 5.
Thank you FoodiePanda, I appreciate it.
If that were true, then yes, but there are Yelp reviews for Ahgoo beginning in July 2013. Clarissa Wei wrote about Ahgoo for the Weekly in 2015. Time does fly.
I first ate there in the summer of 2013.
for some reason i thought ahgoo won some sort of best new hole in the wall award in 2015. i guess it must have been some place else.
Pretty good recall there. It made the Weekly’s Best of LA 2015 as “Best Chinese Hole in the Wall”, but no “new” designation.
ah. thanks for the clarification.
i will miss their seaweed fried fish more than the huge spongy pancake, which seemed to absorb any and all subsequently ingested liquid and expand in a geometric manner in my digestive tract.
May also be of interest is that after more than 2 years since my last visit, I went to Shanghai #1 for lunch today and learned from a sign posted outside, dated July 8th 2018, that it was closed for for repairing a kitchen water leak. Could it mean that it is gone for good?
Thanks for the tip on Shanghai #1. I’ll look into it. I try to hit all the plazas, mini-mall, strip malls, corners and cubby holes, yet sometimes one still slips by.
Bumping this old thread to check in - anything new and particularly cool in the SGV? Preferably WSGV, but flexible. Think we’ve been to most of the usual haunts, and of course it’s no disaster if we fall back on one of them, but thought I’d inquire with the experts here. Thx!!
chef geng is a relatively new dongbei place. the five delights with glass noodle is a nice hot weather dish. reminds me of japanese hiyashi chuka.
Auntie Ping Kitchen in El Monte is developing buzz for its Hainan chicken, while others find their rice noodle rolls with eggs to be quite good.
It’s not a good time for new or cool in the SGV. Been that way for a while now. A lot of homogenization going on. It’s a great time to fall back and revisit the favorites, or that place you haven’t made it to yet.