Yummy Yummy Seafood Buffet Morphs into a Shandong Style Restaurant

[Chandavkl]

When I last ate at Yummy Yummy Seafood in El Monte last month, I had a feeling they were on their last legs. The restaurant opened up a half hour late for lunch, the food was slow in coming out and many of my favorite dishes weren't even being served. Then they gave me a $2 discount when I paid and I left a large tip. Consequently, when I rolled up to the location I was not surprised to see Yummy Yummy was gone. What did surprise me was that there was already a new occupant at the location, Qilu Restaurant. Qilu appears to be a Shandong style restaurant, based on the dishes with Shandong in their name (e.g., beef rolls), and a large number of "Qilu" dishes (e.g., Qilu fish, chicken, vegetables, fried rice). More interestingly, I saw my favorite Yummy Yummy dishes (including tomato fish and celery beef dumplings) on the menu, as well as the same woman out front. So I guess the ownership and cooks are the same, just in a different format. Not as good of a value, of course, but still worth coming back to occasionally. Qilu is at 10632 Lower Azusa Road in El Monte.

[Chandavkl]

Well that didn't last long. Qilu closed last week for "interior remodeling," a condition which is often fatal to Chinese restaurants.

[Johnny L]

The location is cursed. It has to have been a different restaurant every year. The entire strip mall seems to be disappointing, now if that space were turned into a supermarket instead to anchor it maybe the other business in there wouldn't struggle.

[condiment]

Qilu was a very weird space. An enormous, totally empty restaurant; a long, elaborate menu of dishes from Tsingtao - and I would bet, one, maybe two people in the back cooking. The disconnect between ambition and execution was so extreme that I ended up going back three times just to make sure I hadn't just been ordering wrong.

[soniabegonia]

There comes a time when one has to decide on a name for his new restaurant. What would possess him to name it Yummy Yummy? Good god, is that awful. I know "ethnic" restaurants tend to be some of the worst offenders in this regard, espcially when an "ethnic" name is transliterated into the English alphabet, but no transliteration happening here. Doesn't take a marketing genius to spot a gawdawful name like that.

What's that got to do with anything? Not a thing. Just trolling.

[Peripatetic]

As you've probably noticed, many Chinese restaurants in the SGV don't spend a lot of energy deciding on their English name. Often the Chinese name and the English name have nothing to do with each other. The English name sometimes exists for administrative convenience only, like registering for food facility ratings, etc.

My favorite name (so far) is the Whatever Tea Lounge on Las Tunas, though JTYH (reportedly picked at random) runs a close second.

[Chandavkl]

Actually, Yummy is a very common name for Chinese restaurants both in Los Angeles and across the nation. I've been to almost 20 Yummy Chinese restaurants, though only three of them were Yummy Yummy.

[raytamsgv]

The English name is often just a legal requirement. Many of those restaurants simply assume that their target audience will refer to them by their non-English name.

[TonyC]

The Western slant in this response is.. rather interesting.

Yummy Yummy is/was way, WAY better than JTYH (per Gastronomyblog.dom -- Justin Timberlake, You're Hot).

[Peripatetic]

> Yummy Yummy is/was way, WAY better than JTYH

Food or name? I was only talking about the name.

> Justin Timberlake, You're Hot

Somehow I've never forgotten that mnemonic!

[soniabegonia]

"The Western slant in this response is.. rather interesting." --> then call me a banana if you'd like. And actually, I think quite the contrary - note that I said nothing about Qilu and have nothing against it. In fact I think it's a perfectly fine name.
JTYH (per Gastronomyblog.dom -- Justin Timberlake, You're Hot). --> I had no idea and wish I hadn't seen that

If you have the "opportunity" (requirement) to have an English name, why the hell would you choose such a sorry-ass name as Yummy Yummy? What's in a name? a lot!