Kicks off on March 7th thru the 16th in San Gabriel Valley, CA. Here 13 restaurants will represent regional cuisines of China presented by Icon Union.
http://iconsocal.wix.com/ccf2014
I visited two of the 13 restaurants in San Gabriel- Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot and Dong Ting Chun.
Dong Ting Chun
Dong Ting Chun is one of the oldest Hunan restaurants in Los Angeles. They always want the costumers to feel like home in Dong Ting Chun, and let the costumers to satisfy their desire of tasting food back in their hometown. Therefore, Dong Ting Chun focuses on making traditional and authentic Hunan food, including all the small dishes, home-cooking dishes, and special dishes. For example, for the stirred fried meat with chili, they only use black meat, with the special bacon from Hunan. Also, in order to satisfy Hunanese who loves soft-shelled turtle with a stronger flavor, they make the soft-shelled turtle in Hunanese flavor. The dish is famous for having 5 flavors, which includes the flavor of chicken, deer, beef, lamb and pork. Besides the spicy soft-shelled turtle, the restaurant is famous for the stewed soft-shelled turtle. Also, spicy crayfish and spicy shrimp are highly recommended. The Chinese style design of the restaurant, together with the authentic Hunan dishes, makes the costumers feel like they are back in Hunan.
The atmosphere here was similar to your traditional style Chinese cuisine restaurant. Large table tops that fit parties of 8, and very simple with white linens, mahogany tables, Plasma TV’s on the wall, and mirrors that grace the walls. The food was tasty and affordable.
Best Bite:
The Crispy Salty Shrimp with pork fried rice
Dong Ting Chun 140 W Valley BlvdSan Gabriel, CA 91776 Tel: (626) 288-5918 Hours: 11:00 am – 10:00 pm
Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot
Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot is a famous restaurant with a very long history. It is established in 1999 in China. Because of their delicious house special broth, they have chain restaurants all over the world, including China, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada, and USA, etc. They use many excellent ingredients, with nourishing quality, for example, ginseng, goji, longan, and black cardamom, to make the house special broth. The broth is in excellent flavor, together with the special ingredients; it can wash away the fishy smell of the meat, and remain the tenderness of the meat at the same time. You do not need any special sauce for the food. Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot is famous for not using any sauce because the broth itself is already good enough. Many people buy the Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot broth when they do hot pot at home because they do not prepare sauce. In this event, in order to make sure every costumer experience the best service, during the Chinese Cuisine Festival, we have designed a set menu for 1 person.
This was such a wonderful experience. I had never been to a Chinese Hot Pot restaurant. As you sit down to a table with a built in stove top, and other than your skewers, dumplings, and appetizers on the menu, the waiter encourages you to order a soup with a base. We ordered the original- and herbal recipe with beef and chicken bone stock that is just out of this world. With the soup base you get Lotus root slices, potato, enoki mushroom, crab sticks, beef meat balls, noodles, frozen tufo, fish balls, turnips, lettuce, cabbage, mushroom, and a choice of beef/lamb/pork/chicken. Once served and brought to a boil, you basically dump all the above into an amazing Hot Pot of happiness. It does not stop at that- they have a sauce bar. Here you can choose fix in’s with minced garlic, multiple sauces, green onions, cilantro, chili sauce, and more. You can add all these delights to the pot for added flavor. I was shocked with how wonderful every bite was. Definitely – I will be returning!
Best Bite:
Adding the pork dumplings and pork belly slices to the pot! No words to describe how good this is- It is a must try.
Click here for the menu- http://www.littlesheephotpot.com/pdf/menu-food-socal.pdf
Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot 140 W. Valley Blvd. Suite213San Gabriel, California 91776 Phone: (626) 307-1901 Hours: 11:30am-3pm, 5:30pm-10pm (Mon-Thur) 11:30am- 3pm, 5:30pm-12am (Fri) 11:30am-12am (Sat) 11:30-10pm (Sun) http://www.littlesheephotpot.com/