Message: | We just went to what had been our favorite dim sum place in the San Gabriel Valley: Empress Harbor Seafood at 111 N. Atlantic in Monterey Park, near the corner of Garvey. This used to be Harbor Village, a branch of the San Francisco dim place in the Embarcadero -- the place where I had my first scallop dumpling (a revelation!) back in the early eighties. LA's Harbor Village never was anything like its SF counterpart (nor are any dim sum places as good now as they were twenty years ago, but that's another story altogether). The restaurant got markedly better after it changed it's name to Empress Harbor Seafood (I always assumed that it had merged with Empress Seafood downtown). And so we went regularly. The dim sum was a step up from NBC on Atlantic: the pi (dumpling shell) was thinner, chewier, less pasty; the turnip cake was served steamed; all the routine items: fried tarro, sticky rice all first rate.
I REGRET TO INFORM ALL OF YOU THAT ALL HAS NOT CHANGED!
The shrimp dumpling was inedible: dry on the inside; the pi thick and falling apart. Even the chicken feet were tough. And turnip cakes -- fried or steamed -- were nowhere to be found. A real disappointment!
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