Golden Shanghai Restaurant

!!
What’s my favorite restaurant ! But the close business now!

Tucked away alongside a small hotel, parking isn’t obvious. You park in the lot shared with the hotel, as it turns out.
The service was good. The owner and staff are very friendly and kind. Unlike most restaurants in the area, they do offer very Americanized Chinese food. This isn’t a knock on them – there is a large segment of the local population that grew up with Mongolian Beef and the like. I get cravings for these kinds of things too, so I ‘d go here to sample their fare.

Food was great, but the customer service is lacking quite a bit. They literally act like they don’t give a s**t about you. Don’t come here if you’re «trying something new»
as they won’t answer any questions or give you any guidance with the menu items. If you know exactly what you want, it’s fine… but if you’re coming in and you’re not sure what exactly everything on the menu is, I wouldn’t recommend it! — unless you’re feeling adventurous and you don’t mind getting 2 of the same dishes, basically; without even knowing.

Don’t know what happen, but looks like they are closed all of the sudden. There’s a chinese note in the front of the restaurant saying they are closed for the moment till June.
I love this place, hope they re-​open soon!

I haven’t been here in 2 years and finally returned! New floors, new menu but same prices = win!
Ordered most of the traditional/​popular dishes
1. Shanghai stir fry: Light with bamboo shoots, celery, pork and peppers. But a little oily.
2. Bean curd & mustard green: one of the traditional Shanghainese dishes, good & not too heavy
3. Shanghainese pork chop: it was good with the right amount of tangy, sweet sauce but there was not much meat. Seemed like more bones than meat.
4. Sliced pork & bamboo in a sweet, sour, spicy sauce (Yu Shian Ro Shih): Mmm, My favorite, another traditional Shanghainese dish and this restaurant does it well!
5. Lion meatball soup: I love this soup! The meatballs are so fresh and it comes with greens and vermicelli inside. (This soup takes awhile to make, so order it first)
Still remains to be one of the best Shanghainese restaurant in 626 after all these years.

Overall a good place to go with mix ratings from different prospectives.
Ambiance & Parking 2-​star: crowded inside though they have a few big tables for large groups, almost no walking space among them after seated. Parking was a bit trouble, it seems they either don’t have private parking or not enough lots, you’ll have to look around and go street parking in the residential areas.
Service 3-​star: Slow, from ordering to checking, though delivering was acceptable. Only two guys server as waiters for the whole night, managing over ten tables at the same time, no wonder the waiting time would be long.
Food 4-​star: most of the order was pretty good and recommendable.
Shanghai pork spare rib — *** nice color and good taste
Braised pork hock (no bone) — ***** soft and flavorful, recommend
Sliced beef with mushroom and bamboo shoots — *** fresh and tasty
Seaweed battered fish — **** fresh and light taste, recommend
Yan Du Xian bamboo shoots, pork ham, bean curd sheet and greens — **** flavorful soup, recommend
House special tofu — *** soft and tasty
Stewed chicken with three cups of sauce — **** flavorful chicken, recommend
Braised pork in brown sauce — **** sweet and tasty, recommend
Sweet and sour mandarin fish — *** average taste
Sauteed sea cucumber with scallion — ** below average, too sweet
Glutinous rice dumplings in sweet rice wine — **** very authentic taste, recommend
5-​star: the price was surprisingly low for each dish, barely saw anything course over $ 10, and meantime the portion was decent as well.

Eat Shanghainese here!
To try if you want something you won’t find in your walk-​of-​the-​mill authentic chinese restaurant:
— Saliva chicken: its in a spicy peanut saucy a-​la dan-​dan noodles and guaranteed to get your mouth watering.
— Zhu ti pang (bad pinying translation) basically a huge cut of pork thigh slow cooked in a soy-​based sauce. Meaty, with lots of yummy skin and some marrow as well.)
— Shanghai small-​fry: its like chop suey, more vegi’s
–Crystal shrimp: very straight forward and simple, ask for it with black vinegar
–Hot and sour soup: A lighter colored, more vinegary version of what you’d get at a Canto place. Not usually a hot n’ sour fan but this was good.
–Peas and soy wrap: crap really butchering this translation, classic light Shanghainese dish.
Haven’t tried all the steamed items but figure if you’re looking for good XLBs, go to a Taiwanese place.

Cheap? Yes.
Casual? Yes.
Basic? Yes.
That’s about all I can say. The food was fine, not great. Flavors ok, not deep, not rich. I’m looking for a chinese place I’d go back to over and over again. This isn’t it unfortunately.

My family and I decided to try this restaurant based on the reviews we read but were sadly disappointed. We went at around 12:30pm on a Saturday and there were only 3 tables there, not even half full. My dad also noticed that the dishes were not cleaned properly. In fact, several of the spoons had this faint yellow stuff on it and we eventually rubbed it off using tea and a napkin. Before you eat, make sure to check the utensils!
For a 4 people table, we only got 3 pairs of chopsticks. After asking for another pair several times, the waiter finally gave a pair to us because he kept forgetting all the times before that. We tried the following dishes:
Celery with Jelly Fish: The celery was really bland. It had little to no seasoning. If I wanted to pay $ 5.95 for celery, I could’ve just made it myself. The Jelly Fish itself was okay but there were very few pieces.
Steamed Xiao Long Bao: Nothing special. It only comes with 8 pieces unlike the 10 pieces offered at other restaurants. Also, there are much better xiao long baos at other places. It tasted pretty similar to the frozen ones found in supermarkets.
Traditional Shanghai Stir Fry: DO NOT GET THIS DISH. This dish was ridiculously oily. Every piece was dripping in oil. Also, it was way too salty. We normally enjoy this dish at other Shanghainese restaurants but I would recommend not getting this dish here.
Pork and Tofu Clay Pot Soup: This dish was mediocre. The soup itself is not as flavorful as other places. It may not have been cooked enough to get the full flavors of the pork. Also, the soup was very salty as well. There were only a few vegetable pieces.
Fried Roll: It was a roll cut into 4 pieces which is perfect for sharing. However, this dish was also VERY OILY. The outside was dripping in oil as well and really shiny. There also wasn’t anything special about this restaurant’s Fried Rolls. There are other restaurants with better Fried Rolls.
I am surprised by the high ratings this restaurant has. My family and I did not think that there was anything special about this place other than the overly greasy foods, overly salty dishes, and dirty dishes. There are much better Shanghainese places in the San Gabriel Valley. Also, the staff is not that friendly. The girl working there ignored us several times when we asked for stuff. Also, she never even bothered to smile. The guy was okay but a bit forgetful. He wasn’t that friendly but at least he was decent. When we asked for dish recommendations, he pretty much said everything is good which was not really helpful –_–

TIP: This place gets very packed on Chinese holidays so make reservations weeks ahead.
The owner recently remodeled the restaurant. It now has wood floors, new chairs, new table tops and new serving plates.
Reasons I enjoy dining here:
1) Dishes are mild on the salt and authentic.
2) Service is friendly and helpful.
3)Prices are very reasonable.
4) Owner will greet/​befriend repeat customers.
Dishes I recommend:
–Celery with Jelly fish (appetizer)
–Lion’s head (meatball) soup
–Steamed xiao long bao
–Stir-​fried rice cake
–Seaweed fried fish
–String beans
Plenty of street parking on Valley and the side street.

Been here multiple times with the family to eat. LOVE all the foods!
Our usual order is:
–Song Su yu (sweet and sour fish with no bone)
–The lima bean, veggies and tofu dish
–The traditional shanghai stir fry
–Tried the shanghai bbq pork dish too (it was mehh)
Pros:
–Food is soooo good!!! Perfect taste and flavor. The portions are decent size.
–Park on the street, there is always space (They also have a back lot, but it’s horribly cramped and people tend to double park)
Cons:
–The BBQ dish was kind of overdone. Lost it’s juicyness and tasted dry. (However, I approve of other dishes)
–Place is slightly ghetto and run down, but don’t judge a book by its cover
It’s not a date place, but it’s def worth checking out with your family when you’re casually looking for some food to eat. Prices are good, but not cheap.

In the area & on Gold’s list
Chinese place that closes @3pm,
Opens again for dinner @5:30pm
Whhha (in my Asian accent)
Phew, made it by 2:45pm.
Pork pump please
Portions are large
Price is affordable
Fell in love w/​Chinese food again
Delicious!
De-​Greased & Braised Boneless Pork Leg Shank (aka Pork Pump): 4 stars
— rich braised pork accompanied by baby bok choy
— pork is moist & tender; falls off the bone
— veggies definitely necessary to cut fatty goodness
— braise sauce ties everything together
Rice: 5 stars
— fresh & sticky like the CalRose brand

It is a place where you wanna come back again. The price is reasonable, and they have so many good dishes.
I came here for the ‘pork pump’, it is really delicious! Tender and moist. A lot of fat and sugar fosho. But it is worth to try once in your life! The pan fried dumpling was not good.

It was Friday night. I had to stay in Alhambra to be on call as a driver for my daughter. I had a business dinner with my assistant who wanted to have Chinese food so I took him here. He liked the Kung Pao chicken, which I thought was passable.
I ordered the fish fillet with black bean sauce. I thought it was too salty. I ordered a vegetable dish, which seemed to be the popular item here. It was very good, but a little too salty.

When I was here, I ordered the Shanghai ribs… and they were really dry. I heard this is the place to go for Shanghai food, so I was pretty disappointed. I figured that was their centerpiece…
The food is cheap, but other than that, it’s nothing to rave about. Move along.

I’ve been coming here for a while and I didn’t realize that this place had a four stars on Unilocal!Well. It has a B rating, and it’s in Monterey Park — therefore it must be an authentic Chinese restaurant.
FOOD QUALITY:
When coming here I usually go for the dumpling, rice noodle cakes, and soup noodle. I like their dumplings very much because usually they’re filled with plenty of juice. Delicious. Their rice noodle cake don’t disappoint either. Though they are drizzled in oil, they have that ‘wok-​he’ flavor that makes taste much better. I think their soup noodles are a little lacking in flavors though, probably because I’m too accustomed to strong soup bases found in other noodle soup cuisines. Just a personal preference.
SERVICE:
They are pretty easy to flag down and they’re usually polite and helpful. If they see you are having trouble, for example, with separating two steamed dumpling plates apart they will come and separate it for you.
ENVIRONMENT:
This is a pretty small restaurant, and truthfully I don’t really ever see this placed crowded at all. This leads to a nice, quiet environment to dine in but makes it so easy to hear other tables’ conversations. Other than that, seating is spaced well apart and can accustom small parties to large parties with ease.
Overall, I still will continue to come here if I feel for Shanghainese food. Good to try at least once since it’s pretty cheap for plenty of food.

Shanghai soup dumplings.
This stuff is very authentic. The skin is a littl thick, but super tasty.
Ong Choy
Fresh and tender with mild hints of garlic.
Shanghainese Rice Cake
Tender and tasty
I have been driving past this place for years and never knew there was a restaurant here. The prices were very affordable. This is my kind of restaurant.

OK, here’s my pre-​review confession: I don’t really like Shanghainese food. From what I’ve tried, it tends towards too sweet, not spicy enough, and doesn’t usually have that super savory, even fermented kick that you get from other regions.
I was ready to concede though, that maybe I just hadn’t tried the right place yet, which was why I headed to Wok and Noodle the other day. Based on the reviews, it had to be something different, right?
Nope, it just tasted like all the rest of the sweet, cornstarchy plates I’ve had before. I even tried really hard not to order like a white person: shrimp with spicy chili sauce and shredded pork with bean curd cake and yellow chives. But the shrimp sauce was just like that bottled Thai Kitchen stuff — more sweet and sour than chili. As for the pork dish… sesame oil all the way.
I appreciated that the shrimp was very delicately fried, so that it was nearly still translucent. It would have gone over better if a few of the shrimp hadn’t fallen apart in my chopsticks and smelled like old seafood.
They were very nice and the restaurant was full of happy families with overstacked tables on a Friday at lunch time. Personally, I guess I just don’t get it.

I love this place.
I went for the first time in April when I visited LA and the food was delicious, authentic and cheap.
The service was amazing and the employees were so friendly and even ran after me when I forgot my keys on the table. It probably helps that I’m shanghainese, but just watching them interact with the other tables who weren’t just showed they really care about their customers!
I’m going back to LA next weekend and I’m so excited to go back!!!

Greasy authentic Shanghai style food. Dishes are served family style, so come with a group to sample multiple items! :) Bring a Chinese speaking friend to order for you.
Recommendation
*CLOSED ON WEDNESAYS!
*There’s parking in the back, but it’s really narrow. So if you’re good with the wheel, this may be an alternative to trying to find street parking in the front
*Shanghai Noodles is my staple dish here, but I also always order A-​tsai with spinach, kung pao chicken, and boneless fish
*SAVE ROOM FOR DESSERT! The rice ball with wine soup dessert is my absolute favorite!