Road Trip: Dragon Mark – San Gabriel(LA)

**** Dragon Mark has closed

Only in the San Gabriel Valley…..could 3 restaurants selling Xiao Long Bao co-exist in the same strip mall, nearly side by side! Dragon Mark, is the "middle child" of the three restaurants, with Mei Long Village to the West, and J & J right next door to the East. You can see just how close J&J is…..

Like J & J, Dragon Mark is quite tiny, though very brightly lit…..the Missus twice remarked how bright  the lighting was at Dragon Mark. Unlike J & J, Dragon Mark actually serves tea in a real tea cup, not cheapo Styrofoam cups.

You are handed a menu that is both in English and Chinese, but need to order on a check-off sheet, that is written in Chinese! Go figure…..I'm pretty sure that the ladies would do the check off sheet for you.

We only had time for a "snack" during this visit, so of course we had to order the Xiao Long Bao ($4.75):

Soon enough our steaming hot Xiao Long Bao arrived…first thing we noticed was all of the broth on the parchment paper…several of the XLB had burst! Second thing was that these were served with the julienned ginger on top the Xiao Long Bao…so where was the Black Vinegar???? After rummaging through the bottles on the table, we spotted the vinegar, in a Soy Sauce bottle, with a teensy-tiny label!

Here's what the XLB filling and soup looked like:

We found the dumpling to have too much meat, and not enough soup. The pork filling was very salty, and didn't have the unique savory-sweet flavor of XLBs. The wrapper was on the thick side, and the folds on the top of the XLB were hard. Bummer……better than Dim Sum Restaurant XLB, but not very good by San Gabriel Valley standards….still this XLB was better than anything in San Diego.

The Missus noticed a dish I enjoy on the table top placard, and ordered it.

The placard said "Pork and Basil Dumplings", but these are actually Pork and Dill Dumplings($5.25). I've seen these as Fennel and Pork Dumplings, and now Pork and Basil Dumplings……

We really enjoyed these, the dill was soft, without being mushy, and the ratio of pork to dill was perfect.

In most cases the dill overwhelms everything, but this was a good example of great balance. This got the Missus and I talking about how the flavor and texture of the filling was put together….perhaps the dill was blanched? Leave it to the dumpling heads to spend most of lunch talking about Jiaozhi! The wrapper was okay, on the brittle side without enough "pull". The Missus thought that the dough had not been kneaded enough…..too much kneading and you get tough wrappers, to little and the wrapper will be soft, but will break easily without any "pull".

As with most of these tiny restaurants, service is fast, but don't expect much in the way of friendliness…..instead expect efficiency. The restaurant is about the same size as J&J, but we thought it was brighter(much brighter) and cleaner. Though I think I enjoy the XLB at J&J more(and Mei Long Village even more…). Other than versions of dumplings, we saw most everyone else eating Niu Rou Mien.

Dragon Mark
301 W Valley Blvd Ste 110
San Gabriel, CA 91776

Another silly observation……

I kinda take it for granted that almost all signs in the area are in Chinese, or Chinese and English. So we both cracked up when the sign to the right, taped onto the stairway wall to the parking lot was written only in English. Why only in English?

BTW, I did NOT write the LOL on that sign…….