One of my very first Los Angeles meal reports on the blog was of a dinner at Shanghai #1 Seafood Village, a then relatively recently opened and somewhat snazzy restaurant. I noted there that the strong reviews it had received particularly made me want to eat there as there are no Shanghai restaurants in Minnesota. This is still true (as far as I know); but, of course, it is not true that Shanghai #1 was in any way a Shanghai cuisine innovator in the San Gabriel Valley. My report today is of a meal at one of the mainstays of the Shanghai scene in the area, the very far from snazzy Mei Long Village.

We’ve been eating here, on and off, for almost 15 years and in the San Gabriel Valley that is a lifetime for a restaurant (it’s been open even longer)—it’s an unforgiving market and places that are not good or slip in quality don’t survive. It’s been a while since we’d last eaten here (about four six years) and so I was hoping that we would enjoy the food as we always have across the years. I am glad to report that this was indeed the case. I don’t want to oversell the place though: it is solid but nothing amazing or revelatory.

Now I do not in any way want to give the impression of being an expert (or anything approaching it) on Shanghai cuisine. I know that it is not one of the eight major Chinese cuisines and that like the city of Shanghai itself (and Los Angeles, for that matter) it can be a little agglomerative; and I know that, on the whole, it is known for milder, often cloying food that often uses a lot of sugar and soy sauce—but that’s about as far as my knowledge goes. And so I can’t tell you with any sort of authority which of the things we ate (or have eaten there in the past) are classic Shanghai dishes, which are Shanghai versions of dishes from other cuisines, and which are just on the menu because they’re now popular dishes in Shanghai. We did steer clear of some of the classics, old and new (lion’s head meatballs, pork pump, jade shrimp etc.) as I did want to try a lot of new dishes; this led to some imbalance (more on this below).

To see pictures and descriptions of what we ate (there were three adults and two small children) please click on an image below to launch a larger slideshow.

This is the jellyfish head from the appetizers section (it shows up elsewhere on the menu as well). This is a cold dish and all about texture. And if you don’t like the texture of chicken cartilage, say, you should pass. As our boys love chicken cartilage we told them it was exactly like that; they took some coaxing to put it in their mouths but then wouldn’t stop eating it.

These pork xlb were quite good in terms of flavour (better than the ones at Din Tai Fung); however, as you can see at bottom left, there was some sloppiness with very unattractive congealed meat juices at the tip of one of the dumplings.

And that was a problem with one of the crab and pork ones as well—and a couple of these had ruptured as well.

Sweet and crispy Shanghai spareribs. My wife observed that this tasted like it could be an ur-American Chinese dish.

Three cup chicken is traditionally made, I believe, with one cup each of sesame oil, soy sauce and rice wine; I’m not sure if that’s how they make it here but this was very good indeed and my favourite at the meal.

I was less crazy about this dish bean curd sheets stuffed wit pork and braised (along with noodles and dumplings) but my wife loved it.

The braised fish tail, on the other hand, pleased everyone. The fish was cooked perfectly and if the brown, almost syrupy sauce tipped over into being cloying, the ginger and scallions pulled it back.

A simple noodle soup to counter all the sweet and salty flavours, this was very nice indeed.

With tax and tip this came to a little over $105. Six or seven adults could have eaten what we ordered so that’s only about $15-18/head. In other words, a good deal.

Everything was quite good but I did order badly as it turned out. There was a little too much sameness among a number of the dishes. If I were to do it again I’d swap out the braised bean curd sheet with pork for something green; and as good as the fish tail was, a spicier fish dish might have made for better balance as well. Still, we did enjoy everything, both at the meal and as leftovers (of which there were a lot). And having gone there for the first time with a 75 yo, and a 6.5 yo and a 4 yo, I can tell you that this is food that appeals across the age spectrum: my mother-in-law loved it all and the boys chowed down on everything from the jellyfish to the braised fish. (It is not, however, food for people who are salt-averse.)

On our next trip we’ll do another Shanghai meal but next time we might go a few doors to the right and check out J&J instead.