Dim sum at Happy Together

Happy Together

plus board games and more fooding

Happy Together, inside the Holiday Inn El Monte.

Roast duck and roast pork looks good.

Lo bac guo nicely pan fried and still hot, unlike many of their competitors.

Gai lan cooked just right.

Har gow were beautiful but skins too thick.

Feng zhao (chicken feet) were excellent.

Beef ball also good.

Pai gut very good, if cut just a hair too small.

Char siu bao in the fancy style, we were split on if they were okay or amazing.

Char siu and corn cheung fun, meh. More pretty than anything. Hungry.

Hungry.

Roast pork was very pretty. $Almost too crunchy tho, just a fraction away from being rocks instead of crispy skin.$
Almost too crunchy tho, just a fraction away from being rocks instead of crispy skin.

Ngau paak yip (steamed beef tripe with ginger) was also excellent, although by this time, starting to wonder how much MSG they use...

Happy baby.

Happy baby, part 2.

Neighbors Tea House is not far away.

Taro milk tea is pretty good.

Wally and Lisa gave some beautiful lemons.

Warabi-Mochi Kamakura. Thanks Wally and Lisa!

Fancy NT Air range hood.

Finspan.

Not any less complicated than Wingspan...

Same beautiful artwork.

Happy baby, part 3.

Quacks of Quedlinburg is an old favorite.

Sue scored 112, the best of the rest of us was a high of 69.

Nem nuong cuon at Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa are solid.

Broken rice plate.

Bun bu hue also solid.

There's better in 714, but for 626, this place is good.

SpringHill Suites Corona/Riverside is a bog-standard SHS.

Built in 2009, already looks kind of dated.

Dim sum at Happy Together was excellent, although being a tad bit salty made me seriously wonder how much MSG they use by the end of the meal. Lo bac guo (pan fried turnip cake) in particular were delivered hot and crispy, which is unusual in this day and age, while the feng zhao (chicken feet) were just as good. Roast pork was very pretty, but almost too crispy and into hard, but juuust far back enough from that line to still be good. Har gow were very pretty but skins too thick, but made up for it with some shu mai that, while not as pretty, were plump and tasty.

Ngau paak yip (steamed ginger beef tripe) was tasty, and the char siu bao were done in the fancy pineaple bun style that Tim Ho Wan made famous. Opinions on the char siu bao were a little more mixed, about half the group loved them; I found them just a bit off in quantity of filling. They also mis-read some of our second round of orders so ended up a bit incomplete; to be fair we should have asked them to read the order back to us. Oops.

Board games at Christina and Stanley's place were fun, and their remodel turned out damned good. Finspan, by the makers of Wingspan, but with fish... probably equal in complexity with some new stuff to learn, plus a round of Quacks of Quedlinburg for good measure. And baby Ender is cute as always!

Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa for dinner, with solid nem nuong cuon (grilled pork patty spring rolls) and an even better bun bo hue. They may fall short of Brodard and the best of their competitors, but for a quiet corner of 626, they are a solid place for Vietnamese food.