The onetime Rowland Heights Sam Woo has recently changed hands and is now Big Skyy Cuisine. I had forgotten about the Rowland Heights location since it flipped over a dozen years ago to the new moniker of Leung Kee. However like the Chinatown Sam Woo change to Hong Kong BBQ, it was only a name change with the operation being largely unchanged, choreographed for the nefarious purposes we now all know about. Indeed, the Rowland Heights flip predated the Chinatown change by a couple of years, which is significant because this flip, as well as the Chinatown flip, predated the tax assessment period levied by the state of California. Which means that they got away with this flip, as well as Chinatown.
I presume the new owner is the same Big Skyy that has a restaurant location near UC Riverside. Yelpers say that the Rowland Heights Big Skyy is clearly inferior to the Rowland Heights Leung Kee/Sam Woo, which probably shows that what satisfies the customers in Riverside doesn’t cut it in the San Gabriel Valley.
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to be fair, rowland heights is only slightly closer to riverside (34 mi) than santa monica (37 mi) but you don’t see many reviews of even a WSGV location from folks who live west of DTLA, much less west of the 405. OTOH, big skyy shows yelp 5 star reviews for the riverside location from people travelling from places such as menifee, irvine, temecula, el cajon, even lake arrowhead & cathedral city. for them, it’s the best they have access to. from a business standpoint, the location is an astute choice and the lower quality/higher prices doesn’t make them that different from places west of DTLA; you don’t see many reviews for these locations coming from SGV residents. in the southland location trumps quality for the vast majority of the residents.
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True, the establishment of a number of decent Chinese restaurants near UC Riverside in recent years is a godsend to people in that part of the world. I remember reading a review of a dim sum restaurant that had just opened up in Palm Springs I’m guessing 15 or more years ago, quoting a customer as saying how grateful they were as they didn’t have to drive to Rowland Heights for dim sum any more.
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