Really!?! I will have to go to all these places to try I love kang king sjbs
Also I can’t believe that so many dim sum restos offer xlb it almost always universally looks terrible or is poor quality
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Why not? Money talks. Most customers either don’t know or don’t care that xiaolongbao has nothing to do with Cantonese gastronomy.
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I get why they do it but it’s just really weird that people order it especially when most of the xlbs look they they are frozen and mass produced
Chong Yuen Fong opens in Alhambra replacing Crepe Love.
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I didn’t know Min Min messed with SJB. My fave soup-filled bun! I used to put away over 15 of Kang Kang’s SJB when I was a kid. I’m still defensive of theirs even though the Alhambra location’s quality has declined in the time I’ve continued to eat there.
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I used to put away 1 order of SJB and a 3 item lunch box back in the day at Kang Kang Xiao Mei.
If anyone is interested in a little SGV history
Next door was a Chinese movie theatre back in the 80’s and 90’s. Showed the latest in HK and TW cinema. I think there was another Chinese theatre a few plazas away from Focus Plaza. Wasn’t uncommon to grub at Xiao Mei before watching a movie next door!
Also I don’t know if they are still there but some of the non-Chinese staff at Xiao Mei could speak Mandarin and a little Taiwanese/Cantonese. At least the basics and food terms.
I have a little nostalgia for that place lol.
Also my impression of Min Min Pie House was suppose to be a replacement of Beijing Pie House. They have xian bings on the menu and kept the “pie house” in their name. Didn’t know they were Shanghainese.
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Even the Koi Palace/Dragon Beaux/Palette group in SF started offering XLB awhile back. Correct me if I am wrong but they brought the multicolor XLB thing to the US (or invented it???) @chandavkl
Is it even a secret? I mean, Gwenyth Paltrow talked the dumplings from Mama Lu’s awhile back, so…
Mama Lu taking over the Chef Tony Pasadena location? That’s what Yelp seems to say.
Probably. First time I saw it was at M Y China, the collaboration between Koi Palace and Martin Yan.
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FWIW, there’s still a storefront with a ‘kang kang’ sign above it on las tunas near temple city blvd. i have no idea if it’s actually open. IIRC, there was a kang kang on garfield near garvey as well.
i think he’s referring to folks who make them at home and sell them using the apps popular with ethnic chinese.
most recent batch of frozen Mama Lu XLB weren’t so great. Thick skins, bland. Hoping it was a fluke.
Apologies, secretasianman. I usually try to check who mentioned a particular restaurant and credit them, but when I posted about Noodle Palace, I was severely under the weather, and probably shouldn’t have even been typing. As soon as you posted, I recalled your mention of the connection to Lao Xi. Interestingly, I don’t see the oat noodles on their menu, though I was so ill, I might have missed the Mandarin characters. I was struggling enough with English 
. As far as Shanxi-style, JTYH seems utterly forgotten and there’s also New Mandarin Noodle House in Temple City, which also used to have the oat noodles. The relatively short-lived Shanxi Noodle House in City of Industry had several different Shanxi items, and wanted to have even more, but the manager told me they couldn’t get enough chefs from Shanxi that knew the dishes.
Jin Hai Pie House is literally the replacement for Beijing Pie House, but many have reported that it isn’t the same. And there has been no replacing BPH’s amazing radish pie or wild green pies. Those things were fantastic. The radish was like a flaky fish.
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One last thing here. On Chinese restaurants offering items from multiple regions, it’s nothing new, but far more common now. It used to be one could stumble across a little hole-in-the-wall that was predominantly one region, but might feature a few items from another region or even very hyper-local municipal items. Usually a query about this would be met with a reply that the chef was from that region/city.
Now, it seems like most places have to have at least some of the omnipresent Sichuan items, or XLB. Clarissa Wei and I both predicted a shift to more pan-Chinese menus years ago. I’d say you could look it up, but since that was on CH, you can’t. The other thing we both predicted was a shift further and further east. While there’s more in Chino Hills all the time, the scene hasn’t quite shifted fully from Alhambra and Monterey Park to Eastvale…but there’s still time for it to get there
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Those xian bings were so good.
I don’t understand why they closed down I thought they were one of the heavy hitters in SGV.
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Who would say has the best knife cut noodles in SGV? Is it still JTYH?
No, it’s not new, but it feels subjectively different (at least to me). I think that, back in the day, such a menu would be largely stereotypical “Chinese” dishes from a mom-and-pop restaurant, but you might see a few regional specialties that were, as you mentioned, b/c of the chef’s personal connection to the region. Offering the stereotypical menu seemed like a matter of survival
A dim sum place (which can already feel large and impersonal to me) is already presenting itself as a regional specialty and experience, and one of my HK friends used to HATE dumplings and XLB. So, in my mind, it’s like, “Of all the other regional specialties to bring into dim sum, why XLB?” And the answer, of course, is b/c it makes $ b/c people want them. And there’s nothing wrong w/ that, even for a big, impersonal restaurant. But it just feels more crass and less about “actual” survival. But, again, JMHO.
Oh, gawd, all I heard growing up (mainly from classmates) was “Xiao [Hsiao?] Mei, Xiao Mei, Xiao Mei.” Marcia, Marcia, Marcia. I was sick of it b/f I even ate myself. 
I personally always wanted A&J.
The main reason our family went to the area near Xiao Mei was for Tokyo Lobby. Which I also didn’t love. But I miss the photo-album menu. Heh.
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Yes, according to the Mama Lu website
