This post draws to an end the first phase of my meal reports from Los Angeles in June. A couple of days later we embarked on a week-long driving trip up the coast to San Francisco and back again. There was a little more eating out in Los Angeles before we finally returned to Minnesota but those will show up in chronological order in a couple of weeks. Here now is an account of a return to another old favourite that we had somehow not gone back to in a long time: Chengdu Taste in Alhambra. I noted yesterday that our last visit to Ahgassi Gopchang had been in January 2019. Well, my last report on a meal at Chengdu Taste was of a meal eaten in December 2017! Even subtracting three years hit hard by the pandemic, that’s a long time. Part of it, as I’ve said before, is that since we do actually have very good Sichuan food in the Twin Cities, Sichuan meals are not our top priority on our regular trips to Los Angeles—there’s a lot more to eat there that we either don’t get at all or get pale versions of here. It is, however, also true that even the best Sichuan in the Twin Cities metro (at Grand Szechuan) cannot compare to the best in the San Gabriel Valley. This was confirmed at this return to Chengdu Taste. Continue reading
Tag Archives: San Gabriel Valley
Chengdu Taste III (Los Angeles, December 2017)
I’ve previously written up two meals at Chengdu Taste, the celebrated and absolutely essential Sichuan star of the San Gabriel Valley. Though I call it essential—and it is—it has somehow been two and a half years since our last visit. This is partly because it has been one and a half years since our last visit, and partly because on our last two trips we’ve docked instead at Szechuan Impression—essential in their own right. We were resolute, however, that we would return to Chengdu Taste on this trip. Annd we were there for lunch on Tuesday, less than a day after arrival. They are now a mini-empire—with three locations in the SGV and one in Las Vegas—but the original in Alhambra (which is where we always go) is no less busy for it. We got there just after noon and were given one of two empty tables. When we left at about 1.15 there were a lot of people waiting inside the door. On a Tuesday. For lunch. But the food tells you why: our third lunch was as good as our first (and that was just about a year after they’d opened). There’s been no resting on laurels here. Continue reading
Szechuan Impression, Take 2 (Los Angeles, July 2016)
We ate at Szechuan Impression on our trip to Los Angeles last winter and at the end of my review I noted that I expected we’d be back on our trip in the summer. Well, this came true almost immediately upon our arrival in Los Angeles. We got in on the evening of July 1; we ate lunch at Szechuan Impression on July 2. Joining us for lunch were Sku and his family, with whom we eat on every trip, and with whom we love eating (as they are one of very few families whose attitude to eating out is exactly like ours, that is to say, excessive). Since our last trip Szechuan Impression has opened a second branch but we made a return to the original in Alhambra. I am glad to say that expansion has not had any negative effects on the kitchen: our meal was as good as the previous, and that one was one of the best Sichuan meals we’d ever had (and better than the Michelin starred one we ate in Hong Kong a few weeks later). Continue reading
Szechuan Impression (Los Angeles, Winter 2015-16)
Szechuan Impression opened in 2014 and almost immediately became the major rival to Chengdu Taste in what could be called the second major wave of Sichuan restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley. The first wave, by my reckoning, crested in the early 2000s with the debut of Chung King in Monterey Park (on Garfield). Chung King carried on for a decade and a half (about three lifetimes in the SGV), moving to new digs in San Gabriel in the process, but by the time they ignominiously folded up last year they had well and truly been eclipsed by the new standard bearer, Chengdu Taste. I will note, however, that the coverage of Chengdu Taste always seemed to me to forget how good Chung King had been in its prime. Still, Chengdu Taste’s newer dishes were a revelation and their greater attention to ambience was also a far cry from the utilitarian aesthetic of Chung King and Yunkun Garden and co. One way to describe Szechuan Impression is to say that it goes further along both of those axes. Continue reading
Chengdu Taste II (Los Angeles, July 2015)
It’s been more than a month since I got back from Los Angeles but I still have a number of meal reports to go. After a string of sushi reports here now is a brief account of our return to Chengdu Taste in late July. Our lunch there was one of the highlights of our trip last summer; despite noting in the write-up of that meal that we’d be back on each trip, we unaccountably failed to go in December. Well, there was going to be no such error on this trip. Once again we escaped the long lines by going for lunch on a weekday, not too long after they opened. We still had to wait but not for very long. And this time we had our table to ourselves. While the restaurant was full throughout, it does appear that the opening of the new branches in Rosemead and Rowland Heights have eased the pressure somewhat (our meal was again at the original Alhambra location). Though I’m sure weekend lunches still draw the lines.
Chengdu Taste (Los Angeles, July/August 2014)
Chengdu Taste opened right before we got to Los Angeles last year and was immediately anointed the best Sichuan restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley (which is to say in the United States). We opted not to eat there last year on account of my general suspicion of hype. There were plenty of other places to eat excellent Sichuan at, we reasoned, and if it were still considered great a year later we’d eat there on our next trip. Well, the next trip is now and Chengdu Taste is still all the rage and so we decided to give it a go. Continue reading
Chung King (Los Angeles, Summer 2013)
As I noted in my review of our meal at Yunkun Garden a month and a half ago, Chung King was for a very long time our go-to place in the SGV for Sichuan food. This was until we inexplicably switched our loyalties to Yunkun Garden a couple of years ago, since which time we hadn’t been back to Chung King. As I try to trace the timeline of this switch this I think it might coincide with our first trip to LA with both our boys, not too long after the second was born. I suspect that at that point the 20 minutes of total driving time saved by going to Yunkun Garden might have trumped nostalgic loyalty–especially as Yunkun Garden is as good as Chung King. Well, on this trip, with our boys hanging out at my mother-in-law’s daycare till 1.30 each weekday we had more flexibility, and so decided to return to Chung King. Fascinating stuff, I know. Continue reading
Yunkun Garden (Los Angeles, Summer 2013)
The Twin Cities area, as I noted in my first entry in this “Gluttony in Los Angeles” series, has acceptable Sichuan food. The first major restaurant was Little Szechuan in St. Paul. This was followed by Grand Szechuan in Bloomington–opened by the erstwhile chef of Little Szechuan who apparently decamped with the entire kitchen. After this defection, Little Szechuan fell into decline for a while, and then recovered with a new chef who installed a number of new dishes on the menu. I believe he left too–or at least this is my explanation for the decline that followed again, and from which they have not yet recovered. Grand Szechuan, however, continues to be quite good (there are a number of newer places too, but we have not visited them). Continue reading