There’s nothing better than dim sum. Why? Because it’s the perfect cuisine for people who enjoy puns. People like me. Beyond the ease with which one can make dim sum jokes, the food is also really good! There’s all kinds of steamed…things, and meats, and the portions are small enough that you can pick 9 items off the menu and still not leave feeling like you’re about to keel over and die. Plus it’s cheap as hell. If sporadic gastronomic adventures are all you can cling to in a life spent in varying degrees of starvation (ain’t poverty a bitch?), dim sum provides a nice respite from the everyday. I’d heard great things about Elite Restaurant in Monterey Park from two different people! One of whom is Chinese!
That’s a funny story, by the way. I was at a house party, and I got to talking to this cute little girl. We were standing over a table with a terrible spread of cake and chips and a dozen varieties of cheap whiskey and vodka. Our conversation turned to food, and Jonathan Gold’s old LA Weekly column. I mentioned how I probably wouldn’t know anything about the cuisine of the SGV if it wasn’t for those reviews. I told her about some of the places I’d been to, and how of late my friend Ben and I would venture to different lunch spots for noodles and dumplings. She asked if I’d been to Elite Restaurant in Monterey Park. When I said “No,” she described it excitedly. I said she made a convincing argument, and I should check it out. And then she said, “Ohmygod” (you know, in that way girls do) “I TOTALLY have to go back there soon!” Any normal guy would’ve met her enthusiasm with an invitation and a request for her phone number. Me being me, my response was something like, “Ohmygod — I have to tell my friend Ben!” Classic missed opportunity.
A couple weeks ago my friend Sherrie brought up Elite again, and said it was a must-try. She recommended some dishes, pointed me to her Yelp review, and sent me on my way.
Because I felt obligated to see my social gaffe through to the end, I dialed up Ben and asked if he wanted to drive out to Monterey Park for lunch. He consented. He’s not a cute little Chinese girl…but he would suffice.
It’s a pretty simple concept at Elite Restaurant. A menu and a checklist await you at your table. You look at the pictures in the menu (probably 60-75% of the items are pictured therein) and then you cross of whatever you want to order on the checklist. Within five minutes, the food starts to arrive.
Pork Shu-Mai – I get the shitty microwavable ones a lot from Trader Joe’s, but those dry turds couldn’t hold a candle to Elite’s oversized, pork-stuffed steamed dumplings. They do it legit here, topped with roe in true Cantonese style. They were delicious, although a bit bland without any oil or soy to coat the exterior of the thin doughy exterior.
Shrimp Har Gao – I think I fucked up this part of the order. Sherrie told me to get the Shrimp Har Gao, but I think she meant the Crispy Shrimp Rice Noodles, which were something else entirely. The Har Gao was a basic shrimp steamed dumpling. They were definitely cooked properly, the skin was translucent and the pleated wrapper was sturdy enough…but we wound up with so many shrimp dishes this one kind of faded from memory somewhat quickly.
Chicken Feet With Special Sauce – It showed up in over 100 Yelp reviews so we figured there would be something too it. The sauce was really nice if a bit on the sweet side, and the feet themselves were pretty much all fat and gristle. It was okay, but it’s definitely not something I would order again. If I’m going to expend the energy to tear delicious chicken meat from a bone, I’d take a properly seasoned wing over a sauced foot any day.
Shrimp An Asparagus Rice Noodle – These were really good. Garnished with a bit of soy sauce and sesame seeds, the sticky wrappers kept the interiors in place so as to easily be transferred from plate to mouth. You’d be surprised — when using chopsticks — how often this goes wrong for me.
Cha Siu Bao (BBQ pork buns) – Another delicious Cantonese preparation, steamed and texturally unique. The innards were incredibly sweet, syrupy pork mixture. This was probably my third favorite dish we consumed. Visually it wasn’t much to look at, but once you bit into one and got that combination of soft bread and tender, flavorful meat…it was really good.
Xiao Long Bao – Here described as “Shanghai Steamed Buns,” these were a really good — but not Din Tai Fung good — rendition of a soup dumpling. Still, they were good enough to be the second best thing we ordered. Although traditionally served in a small bamboo basket, these dumplings arrived in their own individual aluminum containers (think: like a cupcake wrapper) which allowed for multiple bites without the messy result of soup spilling everywhere. I, being OG when it comes to XLB, prefer to eat the whole thing at once and burn the shit out of my mouth in the process. It’s not about maintaining one’s ability to savor the flavors, guys. It’s about that burst of molten hot soup scalding all your tastebuds, rendering the rest of your meal unenjoyable.
Haam Sui Gok (Deep Fried Stuffed Meat Dumplings) – Basically these are deep-fried rice flour dumplings that have a pork and vegetable filling. While the filling is a bit on the salty side, the dough is both incredibly sticky and sweet. At Elite, the dough also had an essence of cinnamon that really elevated it, I thought. Very, very sticky, though. As in, pry-it-off-the-roof-of-your-mouth sticky.
Elite BBQ Pork Bun – Far and away the best dish we had, the pork bun came out last, glistening like a crown fucking jewel. The perfectly browned, glazed bread was incredible. The pork with green onion filling was equally incredible, and when you put it all together it reaches some rarified air of greatness that not many other dishes ever achieve. Oh, and at $2.38 for an order of three, I could eat these every day for the rest of my life and be totally happy. What’s better than perfectly baked bread and pork? NOTHING.
