Chinese BBQ and/or porridge near Torrance?

[Robert Jung]

Hi everybody,

My wife and I have been living in Torrance for about a year now. We're also really into Chinese food, so like any good Chowhound would do, one of the impotant tasks on our "to do" list is to scope out the local Chinese restaurant scene.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we have VERY little free time to go restaurant-hopping. We make a lot of trips to Downtown L.A. and the San Gabriel area for our Chinese fix, but I really would rather find some local places instead. Specifically, we're interested in recommendations for Chinese barbecue (cha sui, roast pork, roast duck, etc.) and rice porridge (jook).

Are there any hidden gems in the Torrance/Gardena/South Bay area for these two specialties? Or are we SOL and have to resign ourselves to more regular trips to San Gabriel?

Thanks again for your help,

--R.J.

P.S. Just to reciprocate, here are some of our Torrance-area Chinese restaurant recommendations:

* Seafood Port -- northeast corner of Hawthorne Blvd. and Torrance Blvd. Small, grungy, and noisy, but the food is very good, and the sizable portions help make your money go farther.

* China Buffet -- half-mile south of Hawthorne and Sepulveda. A bit pricy for a buffet ($11/person for dinner), but they offer a wide variety of dishes, and the quality is surprisingly good, all things considered (the sushi alone is worth the money IMO). Arrive early; the place is JAMMED for dinner, and we've had 40-minute waits every time we've gone.

* China Tea House -- 3314 Sepulveda Blvd. Do NOT be suckered into going here, when the other restaurants listed above are nearby. The food here is a step above the "$1 Chinese Food" joints, but not by much. I actually ate here twice, but the second time was only because I hadn't found the better alternatives above.

Link: http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/

[Chandavkl]

Are you familiar with the concentration of San Gabriel valley quality Chinese restaurants along Pacific Coast Highway between Crenshaw and Western in Lomita? I don't live in the area so I don't recall the specialties of each place, though A1 BBQ (2014 PCH) should have the BBQ items you want. Dim sum at Regal Palace (2166 PCH) is comparable to Monterey Park. Also excellent places include Harbor Palace (1949 PCH), Szechwan Seafood (2107 PCH), and PCH Seafood (1841 PCH). Also, last time I looked there was a Chinese vegetarian place, House of Vege, at 2439 PCH).

[Stan]

I've attached a map for Regal Palace Seafood (which yellow.com lists at 2164 PCH, not 2166, not that it matters), phone [phone].

Link: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?...

[Stan]

Okay, I went ahead and sampled the dim sum at Regal Palace this afternoon. Here's a quick report.

Rice noodles with sausage: I really liked this, but then I always like this.

Roast pork buns: Good flavor, but the insides were a little runny and short on meat, and one of the buns had a couple of stout black hairs in them.

Stuffed eggplant: A little bland without the (black bean?) sauce it comes with, but pretty tasty if you take care to saturate it with sauce.

Sticky rice: Very moist while retaining its sticky integrity, flavor of ingredients not world-class but still quite acceptable.

Veggie dumplings: Crunchy fillings, unusual interesting flavor, chili oil not quite up to snuff.

I didn't have a big enough sample of dishes to determine whether Regal Palace is in the same league as the ones in Monterey Park and surrounds. But it's certainly a respectable, competent place at a minimum.

I also walked along PCH and visited all of the other places that Chandavkl mentioned. I can tell you that the people at Regal Palace, PCH Chinese, and A-1 BBQ are friendly, and the people at Szechwan Chinese and Harbor Palace are more dour. Regal Palace was the busiest place. Szechwan Chinese was busy too. A-1 BBQ is a tiny old place, but I didn't get any sense of the food or crowd.

That's my quick report.

[Joe B.]

i went to A-1 a few months ago - it is a little "depressing" inside. i think the last time that place saw fresh paint was before it was sold to the current owners.

the food is pretty good, though. i was raving over the squid in black bean sauce, and i seem to remember that the roast pork was nicely done, too. however, this opinion was formed on the basis that it's the only decent thing going on in the area (price/food). the wait staff is a little hurried, but they are pleasant and do check in to see how everything is going.

by the way, i second the recommendation for Seafood Port on hawthorne blvd. in my opinion, i think it's some of the most authentic M.P. (monterey park) chinese food served in the south bay!

[shanghaifry]

I would suggest Sea Empress Seafood in Gardena (1636 W. Redondo Bch. Gardena) for dim sum and jook.

For roasted duck, we used to have pretty good luck with the little divey place next to Ranch 99 Market on Artesia. I haven't bought it in a while recently, so I don't know if it's still as good as it used to be. I can't remember the name of the restaurant, but it's just 3 or 4 storefronts east of Ranch Market. You can't miss it since it's the last store front on that side in the strip mall. They also have jook, but it's sometimes kind of bland. Though, the nice thing is they do have a variety of different types of porridge without the long wait.

On a side note, have you tried Sue's Kitchen on Crenshaw Blvd near Home Depot? It's a divey small noodle place, but I get my noodle fix there and it's really pretty decent for chinese noodle soups and beef rolls (beef rolled in a tortilla kind of thing).

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Sea Empress Seafood Restaurant
1636 W Redondo Beach Blvd, Gardena, CA 90247

Sue's Kitchen
23918 Crenshaw Blvd, Torrance, CA 90505

[flylice2x]

China Buffet NY Style -just east of best Buy
3525 Pacific Coast Hwy Ste G
Torrance, CA 90505

Seafood Town - next to America's Tire Company
22922 Hawthorne Blvd,

Fu Yuan Low- http://www.fuyuanlow.com/
26 Peninsula Ctr # F,
Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274

just a few of the many and not mentioned...

[Servorg]

"just a few of the many and not mentioned..."

Perhaps some of those you named (or even the many you didn't name) weren't around nearly 7 and half years ago when this thread first went up? ;-D>