Dim sum and 626 Night Market

626 Night Market

It's been a while since we'd been to New Capital Seafood, so with Sophia in town we decided to go! Got everything we wanted except the plain white tripe (none!), har gow (only one was to be found!) or har cheung fun (too full to eat more than one)...

626 Night Market's take 3, following the first (utter disaster) and second (actually pretty fun) ones. Shifting from a ridiculously undersized location in Pasadena to the second event's much larger location in front of Pasadena City Hall, the second 626 Night Market felt about right, or even a little too spread out. Whoever planned it finally understood the power of advertising, though-- for the third time, they moved it to Santa Anita Park's massive infield.

Fortunately or unfortunately, this meant lots more parking (but not well signaged) and lots more room to handle crowds (7 or 8 areas instead of 4), but much like the second event, it felt like they didn't quite have enough people to make it really feel packed. To be fair, we hit it on Sunday evening, which may have been past peak crowds? And who did an event this big with so many cash-focused businesses with only a single ATM?

Still, it was pretty good. The food trucks were okay, with many of the usuals there (including Kogi BBQ and Lobsta Truck), the two absolute favorites from the 2nd event (Mama Musubi and Takken) returned and were well worth it (Mama Musubi's long line moved quick, and Takken had no line at all), and a few more places doing Chinese-style lamb skewers were all packed-- Tan San was almost worth the wait, tho! Kogi is the original noveau food truck and they remain damned good, while Paradise Cookie's root beer float was surprisingly decent. Roti and curry at Indonesian Street Food was very good as well.

About the only serious disappointment was Hugo Food, where a very long line got us popcorn chicken that was bland and cold along with merely ok pork soup. Covina Vegetarian's pearl milk tea, which was awful, was somewhat more forgivable, as was Bling Bling dumpling's horribly overpriced, mostly-flavorless garlic pork dumplings (they had no line and were $5 for 4? Yep, didn't expect much). Another vendor's Asian-influenced burgers were only so-so, and a place called "GangNam Style Food" looked like horrible fail, but we didn't actually try it.

End result was pretty good. The cooler fall weather probably didn't help, and they still need to work on screening their vendors better-- we saw enough empty places with no lines and food sitting far too long under heat lamps, yuck-- but for an event that's gotten this big, it wasn't bad at all. Next time... more skewered meat, maybe we'll finally try the stinky tofu, and maybe a decent cup of pearl tea?