San Marino Seafood Market

During my last visit Vinh suggested going out for lunch at a local seafood joint. This time, he did the research and we ended up at the San Marino Seafood Market for lunch on a calm weekday afternoon. I was a little bit skeptical about such a land-locked location for seafood but it seems like inland seafood markets that double as restaurants are the new rage. I say new because I have encountered a spate of them recently, but I'm sure this particular restaurant is not the new kid on the block.

We were quickly seated and perused the menu. Our waitress was super nice and cheery as she informed us of the specials. I decided to go with the fish tacos since it was "Taco Tuesday." These particular ones were blackened battered bass with a cabbage and guacamole. Vinh ordered the salmon grilled with rice pilaf. He also got a cup of clam chowder.

He enjoys his clam chowder in this obviously posed picture.

When our waitress heard it was our first time there, she offered up samples of their chowders. They have a red and a white. Both samples for me and a red sample for Vinh because he ordered a full cup of the white. I was surprised when they came out because I was expecting a small plastic cup full. These were substantial samples, about 1/3 of a cup. We debated which we liked better, but they both had their merits. The red was broth based, with a bit of spiciness and a lot of flavor that Vinh preferred. The white was the more traditional cream-based that I happened to like better.


My fish tacos came out laden with goodness in the form of guacamole that is made by hand onsite. They were crunchy with the smoky creaminess from the combination of the batter and the guacamole. The only problem I had was that they were so filled that it was hard to eat. By the end I was eating my second taco with a knife and fork.


Vinh's meal started out the the chowders and progressed to a side salad with their signature sesame dressing. Apparently they also hand make all of their dressings. It was a classic Asian-style dressing that went well with the greens.


I think he liked his salmon. He pretty much finished it within ten to fifteen minutes of receiving it. The fish looked like it was cooked well without being too dry. I think the benefit of eating fish at a restaurant doubling as a market is that they don't try to add too much to the fish itself. They let the flavor of the fish be the main star because they know it's the freshest it can be.


I would definitely go back again because the quality fo the fish was excellent and the service was outstanding. It's a neighborhood place that's easy to miss while driving along the expanse of Huntington Drive. The next time you're in the area I highly recommend a stop at this landlocked seafood market.


San Marino Seafood Market
2150 Huntington Drive,
San Marino, CA 91108
(626) 943-8862

Food bites: Almansor Court Sunday brunch and Lee Kam Kee

This past weekend I experienced two contradictions: a new oldie and an not-often visited standby. How so, you ask? Let's start with the new oldie first.

A new discovery: Almansor Court Sunday Brunch

The new oldie in question is the Sunday Brunch at the Almansor Court banquet center by the golf course. It's new to me, but as some fellow Alhambrans can tell you, it's been around for years and years. My family and I went there this past Sunday to celebrate my mom's birthday. Going there was like a step back in time, with mimosas and colored napkins and patrons dressed up in their Sunday best. This is what you see upon entering the foyer:


The buffet is spread out into a few different rooms, which is visually interesting but confusing for my parents, who couldn't find everything they wanted because of it. Choices range from traditional breakfast (custom omelettes, hash browns, bacon) to Mexican offerings (do-it-yourself tacos, enchiladas, and menudo) to seafood (oysters and king crab).



Extensive variation is obviously their strength here. Where else can you put a chicken crepe next to your unagi sushi that's already sitting next to a barbecue chicken wing? Evidence is here on my plate:


I do wish that the seating area wasn't quite so far from the food, and that the seafood was fresher. For the price, it's not that bad. I would say that the breakfast exceeded my expectations but that the rest of the food was just satisfactory.


Hong Kong-style Vietnamese: Lee Kam Kee

In this case, the not-often-visited standby is Lee Kam Kee, a Vietnamese restaurant located on the far west end of Valley Blvd. It's not your typical Vietnamese restaurant, with a nice interior and beautiful plateware. My mom informed me that the owner is from Hong Kong, and so the food is catered to a Hong Kong palate. A quick look around the restaurant confirmed this: almost all the patrons spoke Cantonese, and nearly all of the waiters too.


We go there for the canh chua, a sour soup filled with catfish or shrimp, pineapple, tomato, bean sprouts, and some spongy-looking green stalk. It's slightly sweeter here than at other, more heavily Vietnamese places, but is still good. This time we also had a shrimp and pork papaya salad with nuoc mam and some lemongrass pork chops.


My mom thought that the nuoc mam needed to be a bit more sour as did the soup. I find that's a theme here, to tone down the loud notes of Vietnamese cooking to appeal to the Chinese clientele. Most people who eat at Vietnamese restaurants (myself included) don't really care if the plates match or if the ambiance is any good, which are two key things here. It's not a bad thing to know its clientele, and that's probably why I don't fault it as much as I would another restaurant serving Vietnamese food.


Almansor Court Sunday Brunch
700 S. Almansor St.
Alhambra, CA 91801
(626) 570-4600
10am-2pm every Sunday
website

Lee Kam Kee
2505 W. Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91803
(626)282-7720
11am-9:45pm, closed Tuesdays

Penang

One of my favorite restaurants in the bay area is Banana Leaf, in Milpitas. Its Malaysian cuisine is second to none, and the wait is always busy and the food always good. However, I am not able to get there as often as I like, and this saddens me. I was heartened to learn from blogger Lyndsay that there was an oft-praised Malaysian restaurant in the SGV, called Penang. She sent me the article in LA Weekly about it, and suggested I make the trek out to West Covina.

What caught my eye in the article is that it mentions the quality of the roti canai at Penang. Roti canai is a treat from the gods and should not be missed if possible. Immediately I made it my mission to eat at Penang the next time I got down to southern California. The opportunity came when I decided to treat all of my cousins to dinner for a particular cousin's birthday. Various significant others came along, bringing our party number to 11.

Finding the place was a bit difficult, as it is located in a corner of an ethnic strip mall that is chock full of places to eat. Inside, the decor was a bit tropical, and gave me the weird feeling that I had been there before. Which, of course, I hadn't. We were seated promptly since I had made a reservation, and after a bit of wrangling with my cousins we were finally able to order some drinks. They unanimously decided I would order everything, and left the food decisions to me and my boyfriend.

First I ordered some appetizers: three of the roti canai, the curry puffs, and a beef and chicken satay. The curry puffs came out first and we split the four huge pieces among ourselves. They look plain from the outside, and are stuffed with hearty curried goodness on the inside. It was a good start to our huge meal.


When the roti came out, I warned everyone that they were only good when piping hot, and wouldn't taste as good within a minute of sitting on the plate. They heeded my suggestion and the light, buttery layers were snatched up and dipped into the waiting chicken curry. The combination, as I mentioned before, was heavenly.


Suddenly, the food started coming. I say suddenly, but it took a bit of work on my part to attract the attention of the waiter to order my entree choices as we were eating the appetizers. Not everything came out at the same time, but this was expected and no one seemed to mind. I ended up ordering a couple of Malaysian classics like beef rendang and char kway teow, thrown in with coconut fried rice and sizzling shrimp, and two sambal vegetable dishes.

Everyone laughed as I hurriedly tried to take pictures of everything, but they were much too hungry to really wait. The beef rendang was tender and flavorful, and went well with the rice. I have to recommend the asparagus sambal, but not the samal petai (pictured next to the roti canai above). The green peas in the petai had an uncooked taste to them that my untrained tastebuds weren't prepared to like.




The sizzling shrimp was a hit, but everyone concluded it was a lot of work to get the shrimp out of the shells. One of my cousins decided to save himself the trouble and ate the shell, too. The char kway teow was spicy and reminded me a lot of beef chow fun, while the coconut fried rice was pleasing but uneventful.


At the end we decided to forego dessert because we were too stuffed, but the waiter brought out a small block of jello/pudding like dessert. The flavor was simultaneously salty and sweet, which I didn't really like. However, it did find favor with some of my cousins. Next time I would try one of their desserts off the menu.

It was unanimously decided that Penang was a good place to eat, and that we were all stuffed to the gills. I would return again for the roti alone! It was that good. I must, however, throw in a compliment to Banana Leaf, who still makes the best roti canai I have ever tasted.


Penang
971 South Glendora Avenue
West Covina, CA 91790
(626) 338-6138

Sunday-Thursday: 11:00am-10:00pm
Friday-Saturday: 11:00am-10:30pm

Real Food Daily

Real Food Daily should change its name to Real Good Food Daily. Or just plain Good Food Daily. This vegan restaurant provides healthy and organic food complete with modest proportions and quality ingredients. The dishes look very beautiful and the descriptions written on the menu are detailed and alluring.



I started off my dinner with a nori maki starter plate (pictured above). On the menu it sounded incredible: avocado, tempeh, collard greens, and much much more. However, when I actually tasted it, I was initially disappointed. I found myself dipping it heavily in soy sauce for taste. But then I discovered that each piece was more delectably enjoyable by eating it via small bites. Doing so helped me taste each individual ingredient. Eating it whole actually masks any flavor save for a faint seaweed taste--which made sense as none of the ingredients tasted exceptionally strong aside from the seaweed.

After the starter plate, my friend and I were served our main courses. He had a tofu wrap made from a spinach tortilla that holds an overflow of tofu.



It looked delicious! I only had a tiny bite of a grilled tofu piece from the wrap itself, but it was a rather promising bite. My friend reported that the tofu wrap is one of his standbys at RFD.

My main course was one of the restaurant's weekly July specials: the Bollywood Special.





The Bollywood Special was a curry dish served with rice and spinach. Included with the special was a piece of chapati (a type of flatbread) and mango chutney. The curry barely hinted at being spicy, but it was chock full of vegetables and taste. It was good! The overall combination with the brown rice and soft spinach made my meal extremely appetizing. The chapati by itself is best described as floury. The two sides of the bread provided a great texture twist for the tongue. The top portion (pictured) was tough and dry. The other side, however, was moist and malleable. A dip into the curry made the bread extremely satisfying. The mango chutney was slightly sweet with a tinge of onion taste. I noticed that oil was mixed with the chutney, which leads me to believe that it is of the stored variety and not freshly made.

Although I did not eat this during this trip there, I need to add that the Living Wrap is amazing. Upon my first bite of it, I found myself enjoying a mix of flavors and zest that I did not know could work together so well. Tasty and colorful, the Living Wrap is my standby at RFD.

Overall, this place is worth the time and money. It runs slightly expensive for its portions but the service is attentive and the food is as inventive as it is tasty (which is, very). I went to RFD's Santa Monica location, which I find to be a bit cramped, but that is the only woe I find there.

Real Food Daily
514 Santa Monica Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 451-7544
website

Mon - Sun 11:30AM to 10:00PM

414 N. La Cienega Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(310) 289-9910
website

Sun - Thu 11:30AM to 10:00PM
Fri - Sat 11:30AM to 11:00PM
Sunday Brunch 10:00AM to 3:00PM

Top Island Seafood

I recently had the opportunity to eat two meals at Top Island: dinner and dim sum. For those familiar to the area, Top Island inhabits the space that used to be the Wherehouse music store for many years (where I cultivated my own particular collection of rap, pop, and rock). In between, it was a buffet and another seafood restaurant whose name I can't recall. I had been looking forward to eating there, after hearing tales of $50 fish alongside $2.99/pound of peel and eat shrimp from my family, and seeing pictures of the food on Biggest Menu.

We went early for dinner, and it was pleasantly uncrowded. Most Chinese seafood restaurants are so noisy you can't hear yourself think. I think that the only downside of this place is that you pretty much have to speak Cantonese to really get good service here. However, they aren't totally exclusionary of non-Chinese speakers... you just don't get to read the good specials they have advertised in Chinese.

We ended up ordering the watercress with dried duck kidneys soup, deep fried crispy chicken, clams with black bean sauce, BBQ squab, three pounds of the peel and eat shrimp, and the sliced beef with vegetable. The soup started out with a pleasant taste, but ended with a slightly bitter aftertaste because of the watercress. My mom says that watercress is bitter when it's harvested while the weather is hot, and I suppose this is what must have happened with the watercress in the soup. The chicken was good, but since I didn't dip it in the salt and pepper lemon juice sauce, it didn't have enough flavor for me. I didn't try the clams or the squab, but my family thought that they were both delicious. The shrimp were huge, and came with the heads on (how it should be, in my opinion). They were good with the soy dipping sauce, but most didn't have the right, fresh texture I was looking for.

The best part of the meal was the sliced beef with vegetables. The beef was flavorful and tender and coated with this delicious sauce. The beef was sitting on a plateful of perfectly cooked broccoli. The thing that struck me as weird was that it was literally broccoli, and not the Chinese broccoli (gai lan) that it usually is. It's pretty clear that this was one of the best dishes there if my family didn't really care that it wasn't the right broccoli. Dessert was the hot red bean soup, and that wasn't bad, but it wasn't a standout.

The next morning, we went back for dim sum at around 11, and man, was this place packed. We waited for about 30 minutes to be seated. I was surprised, but it was definitely worth the wait. Almost immediately after we sat down, we had our tea and about 5 dishes in front of us. This included: BBQ pork buns (Cha siu bao), shrimp har gow, pork shiu mai, beef tripe, and steamed rice with chicken wrapped in banana leaves (lo mai gai). Everything was delicious, especially my favorite, the beef tripe. I usually judge my dim sum by the cha siu bao, and here the meat was flavorful and the steamed bun was great, with no soggy bottoms. This is what our table looked like:



The weird thing was that the women pushing the carts did not call out what they were plying. You basically had to keep an eye out and recognize which carts were offering what you wanted, or ask the women what they had in their carts. A part of me liked not being bothered, but the other part didn't like having to put so much effort to find what I liked. We ended up ordering more food which included: Turnip cake (lo bak go), ham siu gok (little football-shaped rice sheets wrapping a meaty filling and then deep fried), and steamed chicken feet (fung jeo). More deliciousness, except for the chicken feet which I did not touch, but which my mom insists were delicious.

Also, when you go for dim sum, you'll be looking around for napkins. Where are they? They are in this cute little pouch that looks like a travel size tissue with the restaurant's logo, address, and telephone number. I kept it for myself at the end of the meal.



I think that I would definitely go there again for dim sum, and I think the flavor was on par with some of the bigger dim sum places like 888 and Ocean Star, minus the 2 hour wait. For dinner, I'd stick with tried and true favorites, and the fresh fish. I was pleasantly surprised by this place, and am thankful for its proximity to my house!



Top Island Seafood Restaurant
740 E. Valley Blvd.
Alhambra, CA 91801
(626) 300-9898

Seafood Village

Seafood Village is a restaurant that I go to for special occasions such as birthdays and graduations because of one thing: the awesome crab. Almost every table orders the "House Special Crab" because it's so good. The pieces of crab come roasted among an insane amount of chopped garlic, with chilies and scallions. If you go, you must order some, it's to-die-for.

The crab is the central part of the meal, but Seafood Village also produces great dishes featuring other seafood and meat items. My family always orders the steamed tilapia (which is not on the menu), and the "Crab Meat and Fish Maw Soup." Another good soup choice is the "Pork Stomach and Black Pepper Soup."

For meat, you can't go wrong with the "House Special Chicken" which is also known as "Princess Chicken" in Cantonese, because it was only eaten by princesses. Now us mere mortals can partake of this salty, juicy dish. I would also suggest the "Crispy Deep Fried Beancurd w/ Bamboo Fungus" which is way better tasting than the name suggests. To round off with some vegetables, my family usually orders the "Pan-fried String beans w/ Minced Meat." It's a great celebratory meal!

As with most Chinese seafood restaurants, the environment is loud, but the food is worth it. There are two locations of Seafood Village. Both are excellent in cuisine, but the Monterey Park branch has substantially less parking., and the decor of the Temple City branch is nicer to look at.

Seafood Village
684 Garvey Ave.
Monterey Park, CA 91754
(626) 289-0088

9669 Las Tunas Drive
Temple City, CA 91780
(626) 286-2299

Mon - Sun 11:00AM to 1:00AM