Here is my last restaurant report from my visit to Los Angeles—or more correctly, to Southern California in December. Usually, I have a lot more reports from these trips but I had to cut my stay short, leave the family and frantically return to Delhi. On Christmas morning, however, we went out for dim sum. At the end of my last dim sum report from the region I had said that on future trips we would make the trek out to the San Gabriel Valley to eat dim sum. This not because that meal—at Lunasia’s Torrance location—was bad but because it was not in the same league as at the SGV all-stars, including the Lunasia mothership in Alhambra. But on this trip we ended up anyway at another of their satellite locations, this time in Cerritos. The prospect of driving all the way to the SGV from Seal Beach and then waiting for 2+ hours for a table on Christmas did not appeal, you see. As it turned out, we still had to wait at the Cerritos location as well but at least it was for only about an hour.
The restaurant is located at one corner of a large strip filled with Asian restaurants and is quite large, if not quite as large (or attractive) as the Torrance location. As noted above, the place was mobbed on arrival. I put my name and cell number into the sign-in screen on an iPad and then we wandered around till we got the call. It still took a while to get to a table. Ordering was done via qr code and phone, as is the style of the times. Because of the Christmas rush (presumably), service was stretched very thin. Not only did the food take unpredictable and varying lengths of time to come out but it was very hard to flag a server down for water and tea and so forth.
Once the food arrived, however, we were mostly happy. We ordered from our usual long-list of favourites: the boys would riot if we didn’t have shiumai and hargow on the table and here Lunasia has jumbo versions of each with six large pieces to the order. Other family favourites include congee, steamed chicken feet, rice noodle rolls and sticky rice in lotus leaves and we got an order each of those (with fresh tilapia in the congee and bbq pork in the rice noodle rolls). Also on the table were: pan-fried turnip cakes (which the boys don’t like quite as much as their parents do), spare-ribs in black bean sauce, scallop dumplings with squid juice (really, it’s squid ink used to stain the dumplings black), stir-fried string beans, pan-fried buns with crab meat, and deep-fried calamari with salt and pepper. Most things were quite good with only the chicken feet and the pan-fried buns disappointing. The former were a bit too gloppy, and while the latter were constructed well, they didn’t quite have the crabby oomph we were hoping for.
For a look at the place, a (partial) look at the menu, and to see everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.
Cost? Not cheap at $142 before tip. Prices have clearly gone up in the last few years. Ah well, even second-tier dim sum in Southern California is so much better than what we have available in Minnesota that it’s hard to not indulge. Next time we really will make the longer drive to the SGV though.
Next up on the food front: another report from Delhi. Before that, however, I will have a review in a genre that may surprise you. Look for that in just about 12 hours.