Six Taste New Chinatown Tour

After I took both the Thai Town Tour and Delicious Dumpling Tour through Six Taste, a food tour company in Los Angeles, I enjoyed them so much that I decided to take all the tours they offered. Next in line was the New Chinatown Tour which focused on Cantonese cuisine in the city of San Gabriel.

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Many people know of the "Old" Chinatown which is adjacent to downtown Los Angeles, but locals know that the best regional Chinese cuisine can be found in San Gabriel Valley, from Rosemead to San Gabriel and all the way to Monterey Park. Suffice to say, the whole of San Gabriel Valley can actually be referred to as "New" Chinatown.  But for the purpose of this tour, the city of San Gabriel is where our walking meal took place, starting with dim sum at New Capital Seafood in Focus Plaza.

New Capital Seafood is dim sum via carts and is one of the larger dim sum restaurants in the area.  They don't take reservations so it's first come, first serve. Luckily, our guide, Judy already had a table ready for us and as soon as we sat down, the first of our seven dim dishes arrived, which was a deep fried pork dumpling.

After enjoying that first dumpling, a plump and tasty shrimp dumpling, a rice noodle dish and chicken feet hit the table. I left for the chicken feet for the rest of the group, but enjoyed the other items.

My favorite of our dim sum tasting was the Lotus Leaf Wrapped Sticky Rice with Pork.

Our dim sum tasting ended with the Pork Shau Mai and the BBQ Pork Bun. The Pork Shau Mai had lots of great flavor while the BBQ Pork Bun was a bit dry when it came to the bread, but was chock full of the bbq pork.

Our next stop was at Sam Woo BBQ, which is also in Focus Plaza. As the name of the restaurant indicates, Sam Woo's specialty is all about barbecued meats.

As soon as you walk in Sam Woo BBQ, hanging behind the windows you'll see roasted ducks, chickens and more. Pick your protein, they'll chop it up for you take home or you can just eat in.

For our food sampling, we tried the BBQ Duck and the Beef Chow Fun. I've had Sam Woo's barbecued meats before and always found them a tad greasy, but somehow that's part of the reason why I like them.  The Beef Chow Fun was actually quite addicting. I could have eaten the whole plate on my own.

After our visit to Sam Woo BBQ, we walked over to Aji Ichiban, a store that features Dried Fruits, Veggies and Seafood as well has having a great selection of candies, including Durian. If you didn't know already, I'm a durian nut, so I definitely brought a few bags home of that durian candy home.

Finally, we walked completely away from Focus Plaza to Kee Wah Bakery, which was next door.

Inside was a wonderland of pretty looking cakes and pastries, both cold and hot.

There was also a really pretty mosaic cake that caught my eye that I ended up buying to take home.

After taking a peek and making purchases, we stepped outside and enjoyed a Pineapple Bun. By the way, the pineapple bun doesn't have any pineapple ingredients. It's only called one because the bread texture is similar to that of a pineapple.

A half a block away, we walked over to our next destination. By the way, I really loved how two of the pictures I took while we were walking turned out.  It was definitely a beautiful day as you can tell below.

That next destination was Happy Kitchen. It's funny because I've been to restaurants on either side of Happy Kitchen before and never even noticed it until now. However, it turned out to be my favorite stop of the whole tour.

The Shrimp and Pork Dumplings were pretty tasty, if not spectacular. It was the other dishes we tried that were the real stars.

First, there was the Beef Roll with the crispy wrapper with the tender beef and cilantro filling. It's definitely one of their signature dishes.

Second, the Tea-Smoked Chicken Leg was superb. It's a cooking process that takes 6 hours and thank goodness for the patience of the chef.  The meat had a lovely smokiness plus it was tender and juicy. I liked Happy Kitchen so much that I've been back already once and plan to return to try even more dishes.

Our last stop was at Tasty, an Asian dessert shop where you can get slushes, shaved ice and more.

It's where our group did some winding down while enjoying Mango, Coconut, Rice, Ice and Red Beans.

Overall, it was a fun hours well spent, eating and exploring San Gabriel and I think you can tell by our smiling faces at the picture below.

New Capital Seafood
140 W Valley Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 288-1899

Sam Wood BBQ Restaurant
140 W Valley Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 572-8418


Aji Ichiban
140 W Valley Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 280-6383

Kee Wah Bakery
150 W Valley Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 280-2515

Happy Kitchen
301 W Valley Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 284-2619

Tasty
250 W Valley Blvd
San Gabriel, CA 91778
(626) 282-8263

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