Mama's Kitchen

The stars were aligned on Monday. As I drove to Alhambra Bowling Center for my fellow church goer’s once a month bowling event, I saw Mama’s Kitchen nearby! Mama’s Kitchen was on Minty’s Beef Roll Crawl list but we had an old address. It’s supposed to have the best beef rolls in town.

This is what Mama looks like..

Mama did not disappoint me. Her beef rolls were damn good. The rolls were not greasy, overly stuffed with scallions with fatty meat.

Unlike the other beef rolls on the previous crawl, hers had eggs in them. I don’t know if that’s what makes her rolls special..

I’ll have to come back next month for the dumplings. She has over twenty different versions, from pumpkin and mushroom to pork with fennel miller. By the way, my bowling team won too!

Address: 1308 Valley Blvd., Alhambra, CA 91803
Phone#: (626) 289-8984
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VIP Harbor Seafood Restaurant

VIP Harbor Seafood Restaurant is the only dim sum restaurant on the west of the 405. I was a bit nervous coming here for the first time for Chinese New Year Day after church since there are a lot of negative reviews. To my surprise, I enjoyed the food more than the Chinatown dim sum restaurants because VIP’s is less greasy but San Gabriel Valley restaurants still wins all; it’s just a pain to trek to SGV. I wondered if people hate VIP because it’s on the Westside –like there shouldn’t be a good Chinese restaurant. I certainly feel that way with sushi in Minnesota. I’ve been to five highly rated sushi restaurants in Minnesota, and they’re all not good enough for me…so yes, I am basically doing what all the VIP haters are doing.

After Easter service, Down-under and I took her friend to VIP. VIP is another strip mall restaurant on the 2nd floor. There’s only valet parking for $3.50. If you mixed Kim Jong-il and Elvis up, you will get the maître de. The restaurant is not as big as the ones in Chinatown and in SGV but still a good size. This a non-Chinese speaking friendly restaurant. In fact, none of the staff speak Chinese—well, the majority. Maybe that’s why everyone hates VIP...and the haters don’t even speak Chinese? I’ve never had to wait for a table. I bust out my Mandarin.

Since Down-under was getting over a flu and her friend wanted shrimp items, we pretty much ordered are own dishes. Down-under ordered porridge and fried turnip cake, which looked really good but it had dried baby shrimps…argh! I’m allergic to shrimp.

Down-under’s friend ordered shrimp har gow

and steamed shrimp dumplings

Shit had I known that Down-under and I were splitting the tab, I would have made her friend ordered non-shrimp items. Thank goodness he ordered one non-shrimp dish, the scallion pancakes.

I liked that their pancakes are small and non-greasy. It’s just too bad they don’t taste like my grandpa’s. I ordered the rice noodle rolls with BBQ Pork

and steamed vegetable dumplings.

I liked the dumplings and the pork noodle roll so much from Chinese New Year that I ordered them again. I was tempted to order their pork buns (it’s really good) but knew my eyes were bigger than stomach. For desserts we ordered almond Jell-O, which I wolfed down before taking a photo and egg custards.

Yum! I ate all three…they’re small.
We did more damage on Chinese New Year Day:

Oh yeah, their sesame balls are good too – they use the reddish brown bean paste.

My two experiences have been fine, so don’t be scared of VIP Harbor Seafood Restaurant!

Address: 11701 Wilshire Blvd, Ste 16, Los Angeles, CA 90025
Phone#: (310) 979-3377
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Minty's Beef Roll Crawl

Last Sunday I attended Minty’s Beef Roll Crawl. Now, Minty’s food crawls are pretty intense. They are nothing compare to training for a marathon. Most people drop out but only the best eaters make it to the finish line. The beef roll crawl wasn’t as insane as her Bahn Mi crawl, which had 8 or 9 restaurants. We lucked out and only had five restaurants.

The first restaurant was Doe Jon Station. I cheated on the race and skipped this one because I was still at church, but everyone said that the beef roll was not a traditional beef roll. It was more like a sesame pancake beef & scallion wrapped.

I met up with the eaters at the second location, 101 Noodle Express.

I didn’t realized that 101 Noodle Express is a chained restaurant. Luckily we went to the nicer one in Alhambra –take your mom and dad to this one. There’s one in Arcadia and the other is in City of Industry.

As I waited for the crew, I was amazed at how many dumplings they have…

I must come back for their dumplings. The key to finishing the crawl is not to order any other food beside the beef roll….but that is never the case because our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. We started off with a plate of cold sampler appetizer (seaweed, beef, tofu, ec.) for $10.99. This is a good dish to start off if you’re starving and can’t wait for the hot food to come out.

The next food item was the beef noodle.

I’ve had better homemade noodles. Actually if you want to order noodles, get the fried noodles. There’s no meat (pretty sure the stock is chicken though…) and it’s very flavorful.

We ordered the fried pork dumplings next. They were really juicy and good.



The majority thought that the steamed celery pork dumplings tasted better than the fried pork dumplings. I thought they were both equally good.



We finally come to the beef roll…

They were pretty big and oh so delicious! Oh, I shared the food with nine other people. The green onions and beef were chopped. It wasn’t greasy. I liked the sauce that they put in the roll.

Service was great. The waiters were very patient. They didn’t throw any attitudes when I requested twenty small bowls to split up the two noodle bowls We each spent $7 –that’s including a 20% tip!

Mandarin Noodle Deli was our next stop. This restaurant is family owned and they seriously need to consider hiring more staff. I’ve been here before and don’t recall the shitty service. It took forever for them to take our order and we never got our water. However a few people at our table ordered more food and they were served tea. Also, their beef roll was sad this time.

Quality has dramatically gone down. It seemed their roll was rushed?

What the fudge is with all the green onions!?

I had a sneeze fest eating their beef roll.

I am really disappointed with their beef roll and service. I shall not return. Spent $2 – includes the 20% tip that they didn’t deserved.

Michelle’s Pancake was the fourth stop on the list. It’s in the same strip mall as Luscious Dumplings. I was impressed with their “pancakes” menu.

I was very tempted to try their scallion cake and the smoked pork pancake but since we had one more stop, I controlled my urges. Also, they close at 3pm on Sundays and were kind enough to serve us our beef rolls. I’ll be back to try the other pancakes and their dumplings!

Now their beef roll looked like it had more scallions than Mandarin Noodle Deli but the scallions didn’t dominant the roll like MND’s.

I don’t know if it’s because the scallions were more chopped? Their roll was the least fried too but it was still crispy. Spent $2 – includes a 20% tip. Service was great. We got our water here. At this point, 101 Noodle Express’ beef roll was still my favorite.

Our last stop was supposed to be Mama’s Kitchen. They were on Atlantic Blvd. but closed and moved to New Ave. However Minty could have sworn that they moved from their New Ave location. I called up the restaurant to see if they were open. They were….I just stupidly assumed that I was calling Mama’s Kitchen and forgot to ask what restaurant I was calling…and we ended up at Kings Cup. Minty was right.



Kings Cup’s beef roll was the oiliest out of the four restaurants. However, it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I think had they added their own sauce to the beef roll like the other restaurants, Kings Cup could have been the best one out of the list.

Good meat quality and didn’t overkill on the scallions. Oh, they should really redo the interior. It’s really ugly. I hope they do well. Spent $1.50 – includes 20% tip.

Everyone had major food comatose. We didn’t get a medal at the finish line, just the knowledge of where to go and where not to go. I love Minty’s food crawls!

Want to do the beef crawl yourself?

1. Doe Jon Station: 46 W Las Tunas Drive, Arcadia, CA 91006
Phone#; (626) 821-2088

2. 101 Noodle Express: 1025 S Baldwin Ave, Arcadia, CA 91007
Phone#: (626) 446-8855

3. Mandarin Noodle Deli: 9537 Las Tunas Drive, Temple City, CA 91780
Phone#: (626) 309-4318

4. Michelle’s Pancake, 706 W Las Tunas Dr, San Gabriel, CA 91776
Phone#: (626) 293-8098

5. Kings Cup: 1718 New Ave. San Gabriel, CA 91776
Phone#: (626) 289-8984


**Mama’s Kitchen: 1308 Valley Blvd., Alhambra, CA 91803
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Far East Cafe

After a few rounds of drinks at Rickhouse, my friends needed to sober up and there’s nothing faster to soak up the alcohol than greasy Chinese food. The problem was that none of us were familiar with Chinatown. Stumbling around on an up hill, we got tired pretty fast and settled on Far East Café, which has been around since the 1920s so it can’t be that bad, right?
I was expecting the interior to be another dingy Chinese restaurant, but the decor was actually nice (for being Chinatown), and maybe a bit touristy... You can’t tell but there are individual smaller rooms on both sides that are perfect for your party of eight. It has a full bar but we didn’t need any more booze in our system.

My friends ordered steamed chicken with scallions, General Chou’s chicken, and Ma Po Tofu, while I ordered pot stickers. The steamed chicken with scallions is not a dish that I would order but it was actually ok. I must say served warm is much better than cold.

The General Chou’s chicken was good.

Ma Po Tofu is another dish that I wouldn’t have ordered, but I was happy that it wasn’t spicy.

The pot stickers were good—not overly greasy and the skin had the right thickness (not store bought).

The food did its job and it was fairly cheap –bill came out to $15 per person including tip and tax. The only negative is that they drained the fish tanks in the back on to the floor…so if you need to go to the bathroom wear your galoshes.

Address: 631 Grant Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94108
Phone#: (415) 982-3245
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Mandarette Cafe

It's the Year of the Tiger!

It has become a tradition for my former Chinese colleagues, Cathy, Leeanne and I to dine once a year in celebration for Chinese New Year (CNY). Well Leeanne isn't actually Chinese; she's a Pacific Islander although she doesn't prefer to be called that --she's Filipino. Unlike most holidays that happens on the same day every year, CNY follows the Lunar calendar--translation: every year is different and this year, CNY fell on February 14th. Yes...finally V-day does not exist. We decided to celebrate the Year of the Tiger a week earlier.

Cathy loves American style Chinese, so we opted for the Manderette Cafe. The last time I was there was years ago when it was a popular, busy restaurant, and now it is sadly a relatively empty place w/ much older Caucasian men w/ much younger Asian women..more entertainment for us as I updated Cathy w/ all the good gossip on everyone we used to work with since she refuses to be on Facebook.

The interior is spacious w/ high ceilings. I do feel like I'm at a nice restaurant in Taiwan when I'm at the Manderette. We started with the the scallion pancakes, which I failed to take photos as we were ravished. Their scallion pancakes were not oily but lacked taste; it was as if I was eating cardboard. I have yet to find a restaurant that can make scallion pancakes as good as my grandfather.

Thank goodness the green beans came out next because you really can't screw that dish up. My camera has been acting up a bit hence the extra shine....



The spare ribs were on the special menu but they weren't really special. The meat was a bit too chewy for my taste and could use less salt.



I was hoping that their pan fried chicken house noodles would be more like Hong Kong style but I forgot that the Mandarette is Shanghai style. The dish was at least better than the oh-so-special ribs.



I saved the best for last. I forgot what this tofu dish was called but it's fantastic and a must order. The tofu cubes are lightly fried and just melts in your mouth like cotton candy. I can't wait to eat this again.



If you want good Chinese food, you should go to San Gabriel Valley where there are plenty of good restaurants to choose from. If you are too lazy to drive to the East side, then Mandarette Cafe should suffice.

Address: 8386 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90048
Phone: (323) 655-6115

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