8450 Valley Blvd., Ste. 121, Rosemead 626-573-1888
Type: Chiu Chou/Seafood/Dim Sum
Quality: !!!! Price: $-$$$ Ambience: ***
888 is rightly considered one of the best Cantonese dim sum restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. Unlike some of the newer restaurants, they still have women pushing carts filled with dim sum. Some people call this traditional, but in the old days (i.e. 1970's), dim sum in Chinatown restaurants was carried on huge trays by waiters. They would bring it by your table, set up a portable stand upon which they placed the tray, and you'd select the food. That's truly traditional. But I digress. Anyhow, we got there a little after 9 AM on a weekend. Unfortunately, the "good stuff" (i.e. truly specialized dishes) did not come out until around 10 AM. Of course, we were stuffed by then. The food we ordered was still excellent: shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, steamed ribs in black bean sauce, steamed BBQ pork buns, tripe, and Phoenix Claws (commonly referred to as "Chicken Feet" and cooked in a delicious sauce). For some unknown reason, my friends did not want to eat the tripe or Phoenix Claws. Overall, the food was fresh and tasty. Personally, I prefer the tripe and Phoenix Claws at Empress Harbor in Monterey Park, but this was pretty good. Whenever I go to dim sum, I always get Phoenix Claws. Do I like grossing-out my non-Cantonese friends? Well, yes, but that's not why I order it. I simply love their taste. You should try them at least once in your life. Please note that Phoenix claws are reddish in color. You can also usually get plain chicken feet, but I think they're usually a bit tasteless. I highly recommend this place. But get there before 11 AM on weekends. Otherwise, you won't be able to find parking, and you'll wait forever for a table.
755 W. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park 626-282-3318
Type: Seafood/Dim Sum
Quality: !!! Price: $-$$$$$ Ambience: ***/*
I went to a banquet here, and general quailty of the dishes was quite good. We had a lot of vegetarian dishes and vegetable-heavy dishes. Normally, Cantonese banquets tend to pile on the meat, so it was refreshing to load up on the veggies instead. I can't really recommend any dishes because the ones we had were specially-ordered. I can only write about the general quality. I also had some take-out dim sum from their associated store which is a few stores away toward Garvey Ave (it's close to Kee Wah Bakery). The dim sum was good but not spectacular. Perhaps it would have tasted better if I had eaten them at the restaurant. Anyhow, according to my sources, you can get a 20% discount if you eat dim sum there and pay your check by 11:30 AM. Also, if you order take-out dim sum after 4 PM, you get a discount, but I don't recall exactly how much. Now you may wonder why I gave this place a "***/*" rating for the ambience. Like most Cantonese seafood/dim sum restaurants, the main dining hall is lavishly garish. But the restroom was an absolute nightmare. I've been to a lot of, shall we say, questionable hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Some had nasty restrooms. This place had some of the worst. If you want to eat here, make sure you empty your #1 and #2 before you go. Perhaps it was a bad day for them; I hope the sad state of their restroom was an aberration.