**** Northern Chinese Restaurant has closed
On our last trip to the SGV (San Gabriel Valley) it was our intention to stop by Northern Chinese Restaurant first, since I read that they open at 1030 am. We'd grab some small eats and head to the next place on hour list. But things change quickly in the SGV, hours are rearranged constantly, and when we arrived at the strip mall that houses Northern Chinese Restaurant, Shin Sen Gumi Hakata Ramen, among others, we were told that Northern doesn't open until 11am (even though the menu lists their hours as 1030am – 10pm). Which is why we ended up doing a return trip to Hunan Chilli King, whose sign says they open at 11am, but were open and going full tilt at 1040 am…..go figure!
After building up a good sweat at HCK, we went through my ever shortening list of places to hit in the SGV, and decided to head back to Northern Chinese Restaurant. When we arrived, the restaurant was fairly empty, but had a table full of take-out orders. In fact, there was a steady stream of customers picking up their orders while we ate. We quickly looked over the menu, and made our selections, which came out extremely quickly….I mean really quickly!
First out of the kitchen, in a flash was the Stir Fried Mushroom ($8.88):
Maybe it was the curse of having Hunan food before returning to Northern Restaurant, but we both found this interesting stir fry of various wild mushrooms to be unsatisfying. There was an interesting combination of textures, but some of the flavors, especially the small, hard, somewhat astringent tasting mushrooms, were rather unpleasant.
Next up was the Suan Cai Yang Rou (Pickled Sour Napa Casserole with Lamb – $9.88):
First off the good; the lamb was prepared well, great texture, good gamey flavor, nie ratio of fat to meat. The wider cellophane noodles went well with this dish. The bad: there was too much cabbage, and not enough Suan Cai, a pickled cabbage much like sauerkraut. This made the broth terribly bland. There was also a large amount of ginger cut into triangles which were bothersome, unless you love biting into pieces of ginger every three bites or so. For my money, I prefer the version at Tianjin Bistro, though the lamb was prepared better here. I had leftovers a day later, and the broth was still much too bland……
For our last dish, the Missus ordered the Xun Rou Da Bing ("Smoke meat and Cake" on the menu – $4.95):
Here we have a winna! Unlike the Niu Rou Chuan (Beef roll), this came deconstructed. You smeared a good amount of the pork and bean paste on your slice of Da Bing, added the shredded scallions, and a slice of the mild, but savory pork. Roll it up, and you have at it! As much as I really, really, enjoyed the bean paste, it was the bread that did it for me. The Da Bing was prepared perfectly, at least for me. Usually, either too much, or not enough oil is used, making the flat bread greasy and soggy or too dry and unpalatable. In this case, it was crisp on the exterior, yet pliable, the thin middle layer was moist and almost flakey, and not greasy at all.
It appeared that we had gone through the menu rather hastily, because looking over my photos of the menu, there were a few items we missed:
We were impressed by the woman who waited on us, she answered all of the Missus's questions in detail (in Mandarin of course), and displayed a good knowledge of the food, to the point of describing the different mushrooms the stir fry, now lost to posterity. According to the Missus, the accents of staff were decidedly "very Northern, like Shenyang Northern", which makes sense. The restaurant is clean, and thankfully on the day we ate, had the A/C going at a nice level. I think we'll be back for the Da Bing…. and maybe some Shenyang Fake Dog Meat????
Northern Chinese Restaurant
8450 East Valley Blvd.
Rosemead, CA 91770