QQ Kitchen - Yum & Vegetarian Friendly Too

[cakelicious]

We had a great Taiwanese lunch at QQ Kitchen last Saturday. This place serves all my favorite street snacks from Taiwan. To my surprise, they also have a good selection of vegetarian dishes on the menu and off. We had gua bao (steamed sandwich), rou-gen noodle (meat paste noodle soup), zhong zi (leaf steamed stuffed sticky rice), oyster cake and green onion pancake - all vegetarian. Generally their flavor is on the mild side, so a little salt here and a little hot sauce there might be required. They do state on their menu that they're a "low salt" restaurant, so it's a bonus if you are watching your sodium intake. This is a nice alternative to Happy Family or other strictly vegetarian Chinese restaurants - which serve mostly standard and "pretty" vege / tofu / mock meat dishes. I'm glad to find another solid Taiwanese restaurant in the neighborhood - I love LA!

[Chowpatty]

Which corner of our far-flung empire would this gem be found in?

[ipsedixit]

QQ (9441 1/2 Las Tunas Dr., Temple City, 626-292-1128) is literally a hole-in-the-wall, but if it's Taiwanese street food you want then you'll find it here (website: http://www.chineseypage.com/rest/food...

)

Be warned though, that the food is on a serious downward decline. I was told that the original owner sold the place a while back and on further inquiry it was discovered that he actually had to stop working due to medical reasons.

[cakelicious]

"Be warned though, that the food is on a serious downward decline."

So the food at QQ tasted even better before? Nice. I left feeling more than satisfied, both with their service and the dishes we ordered. If I had been going there longer, I would have known about the difference.

There's always SinBaLah, of course, which has been pretty consistent :) However, they don't have a good selection in vegetarian dishes - QQ offers a generous vegetarian menu in a conventional, non-vegetarian, Taiwanese restaurant. That is not easy to come by.

[ipsedixit]

Yeah, for example, the chicken rice used to come with a real peppery, savory sauce. Now, the sauce is too oily.

Also, the rice noodles (or "mee-phen") is very dry.