Dim Sum Shop Opens Up In West Covina

Besides falling behind San Francisco when it comes to high end dim sum, Los Angeles also trails San Francisco and New York insofar as channels for dim sum sources are involved.  In Los Angeles, you're pretty much limited to medium to large size dim sum palaces.  You can dine in for dimsum at a place like Sea Harbour in Rosemead, or find one of the other sit down dim sum restaurants which has a take out annex such as Longo Seafood in Rosemead or CBS Seafood in Chinatown to get your dim sum to go.

In contrast in San Francisco there are a large number of small dim sum purveyors which stock behind the counter dim sum, which you can order for takeout or eat on premises at tables provided for your convenience.  Yeah, there are a couple of those here in LA, but most locals probably can't identify one of these offhand.  There's also the New York model where a sit down Cantonese restaurant will have behind-the-counter dim sum which you can order for takeout, but you really can't sit down and eat it there.

All of which makes this month's opening of Sheng Hui Dim Sum in West Covina, a seemingly small, innocuous eatery, potentially more significant than one might imagine upon first glance.  It's a model different from anything else mentioned above, a small sit-down dim sum restaurant.   You sit at the table and order from the menu. There's no wait staff, just the cook in back and his wife up front. Certain items are sitting pre-made behind the counter in the familiar metal trays and brought to your table.  Likewise other items are resting in a heated case.  On the other hand, some items are cooked to order and brought to your table.   Most items are $2.88 and the selection is relatively small, comparable to the small Bay Area take-out/sit down eateries.  Dim sum at Sheng Hui compares extremely favorably to the best of the cart places in the San Gabriel Valley.  Their pineapple taro  (below) and pineapple egg yolk dim sum are a revelation.  They apparently also at times stock some fanciful paste filled steamed buns (e.g., rabbit, piggie, panda), but they weren't available when we went there.

Sheng Hui Dim Sum is at 2889 E. Valley Blvd., in a part of West Covina wedged between Rowland Heights and Walnut.

Is Longo Seafood Waking Los Angeles From Its Dim Sum Slumber?

As indicated in my summer LA Weekly piece on the recently opened Xiang Yuan Gourmet in Temple City, the Los Angeles area has not welcomed a new dim sum contender to challenge the existing stalwarts in nearly a decade.   While Los Angeles continues to generally widen the lead over the rest of the United States in purveying the best Chinese food in the country, the Los Angeles area dominance in dim sum which was so wide a decade ago has completely evaporated. The San Francisco Bay area is now the US king of dim sum with its powerhouse lineup including Dragon Beaux, Koi Palace, Hong Kong Lounge #1, the unrelated Hong Kong Lounge #2, and Lai Hong Lounge.  In the words of Chinese restaurant industry maven Robert Lu (known as the irrepressible "ipsedixit" for nearly two decades on Los Angeles area food message boards), Los Angeles area dim sum "has largely stagnated in terms of innovation."  In contrast, the Bay Area has stepped up with new and better varieties of dim sum to catch, and now pass Los Angeles in the past three years or so.  Shades of much of the 20th Century, when Angelinos used to travel up to San Francisco to get a better brand of Chinese food, and it's deja vu again insofar as dim sum is concerned.

However, the worm may be starting to turn, first with Xiang Yuan Gourmet, but especially now with the opening a few weeks ago of Longo Seafood in Rosemead at 7540 E. Garvey Ave.   Game changing dim sum at this street location would be wholly unexpected.  Not that there's anything wrong with this location per se, given that it has hosted at least 10 different dim sum eateries in a three decade period.  It's just that over this period, it has been home to so many undistinguished dim sum restaurants that finding high quality dim sum in this building would be nearly unimaginable.  With the exception of Donald Lam's Seafood City, the first dim sum restaurant to occupy this spot and which reigned here in the mid-1980s, dim sum at this location had been known more for value pricing and not gourmet quality. 

But with the arrival of Longo Seafood, everything has changed.  In hindsight, there were small clues that something was happening here.  Where replacement restaurants at this location previously took just days or maybe a few weeks to open up, this location was closed for the better part of a year while renovations were in progress.  And it wasn't that the remodel was dragging along slowly, as there was clearly continuously activity.   This all made sense when the restaurant opened earlier this fall, revealing a sleek, total and upscale upgrade to the location, highlighted by its gigantic chandelier and similarly gigantic TV screen.  Longo Seafood is definitely one of the nicest Chinese restaurant dining rooms in the San Gabriel Valley.

Of course good decor is nice, but everybody's interested in the food, and the crowds have been enthusiastic, sometimes filling the restaurant by 11 am even on weekdays.  No surprise given the existence of dim sum items not ordinarily seen in Los Angeles, such as lobster rolls at eight pieces for $19.99, black truffle shumai (below) at six pieces for $15.99, and foie gras shrimp dumplings also at six pieces for $15.99.

Steamed rice rolls are not the rectangular cheung fun typically seen at dimsum, but as seen below are elongated rice noodle twists served on regular plates with varieties such as wagyu beef, vegetable and truffles, shredded duck, and using red rice rolls, spareribs.   With their extensive dim sum menu it'll take several visits to get a complete reading on Longo Seafood, but certainly it's so far, so good.

Why Chip Kelly Is A Better Fit for UCLA than USC

For the past few years, UCLA and USC football fans have fantasized about being able to hire Chip Kelly to be their school's football coach.  Between his prickly personality and his brush with the NCAA, however, Kelly becoming coach of either school was clearly a pipe dream.   UCLA was particularly a farfetched destination given that UCLA never had the financial resources like powerhouse schools in Texas and the South, and hiring Kelly would first entail firing Jim Mora and paying off his $12 million buyout clause, which presumably was beyond the school's athletic budget, not to mention a big paycheck for Kelly which would be seemingly be even further beyond the budget.  Yet, UCLA was able to come up with the money to pull the trigger on both.

So how and why did all this become a reality?   With the proper context it now all makes sense.  In the past few years UCLA has upgraded its athletic facilities tremendously, from the Pauley Pavilion remodel, to the new Wasserman football facility and the Ostin basketball facility, which added up to hundreds of millions of dollars.  These were financed through a combination of fundraising, the lucrative Pac 12 media contract, and the record athletic wear sponsorship deal with UnderArmour.    In the context of all the capital expenditures, the extra millions needed to upgrade the coaching situation seem relatively insignificant.   It turns out Coach Mora would have been fired even if UCLA had beaten USC, as the school needed a different kind of football coach to lead the football program to level needed to match the new facilities.  And it wouldn't be surprising to learn if UnderArmour added to the pot, as they were in dire need of establishing a flagship university for their brand.

So why is Chip Kelly not a good fit for USC, but an acceptable fit for UCLA?  Two reasons.  First of all is the NCAA issue.  Chip Kelly was under an NCAA show cause order due to the fact that Oregon made illegal payments to a Texas scouting service.  There was no evidence that Kelly knew of the payments, but as head of the football program he bore ultimate responsibility, and jumping to the NFL probably closed the book on that violation.  Personally I can't believe that Kelly did not have actual knowledge of those payments.  With this in mind, there's no way that USC could have hired Kelly to replace Steve Sarkisian.  Given their NCAA problems in both football in basketball, USC could not afford to hire a coach with any hint of a problem, so Kelly would be a nonstarter.  Furthermore, Kelly is all football and is not the kind of coach to shmooze the alumni and be friends with all of the wealthy donors.  USC is certainly not the kind of place for that kind of coach.

So how is UCLA the better fit?  Well, it's athletic director Dan Guerrero is a highly respected member of the NCAA infrastructure and is known for doing everything above board.  Rick Neuheisel came to UCLA as football coach with a reputation of sometime pushing the envelope with the NCAA, and in his four years as coach there was nary a problem.  Guerrero will keep Kelly under control if there is a need to do so.  Secondly, UCLA does not have the cadre of alumni donors that need to be stroked like USC and many other schools have.  Indeed, there is just Casey Wasserman and probably a couple of others.  So Chip Kelly can spend his time on football, rather than donor relations.

It would have been great had I been able to attend last Monday's introductory press conference with Chip Kelly.  I received an invitation to attend just two hours before the event began, apparently a reward for being a 30 year season ticket holder.  It probably wouldn't have been worth taking four hours off on a workday to attend a 30 minute press conference with just a select number of fans in attendance.  But it would have been fun.