Champion Provisions Co

chestnuts were yummy, will be back for more BUT a little expensive, still 5 stars!

There is a Chinese tale that tells of a pair of star crossed lovers who only meet once a year. I used to wish I could be as lucky when it came to chestnuts. Whenever I visit Beijing, which is unfortunately NOT an annual occurrence, my mom sends me off with a ton of roasted chestnuts for the road, and I’m always left empty-​handed and melancholic by the time I disembark from the long flight back to LA.
No longer! This is all just a very roundabout way of saying the roasted chestnuts are here to stay. $ 12/​pound which is not the cheapest, but I am not about to start roasting my own anytime soon and my demand for these is fairly inelastic so I willingly pay, over and over again.
Parking is shit, except that one time I came on a Wednesday at 5pm. Heard good things about their other stuff, I might try it someday.
Bring cash or you ain’t getting any!!!

I am so addicted to their duck wings that I will give them the 5-​star, even this is not really a restaurant for the rating.
Champion 冠軍 is a chain stores with branches in Irvine and Seattle. Every time I am in the neighborhood of one of them, I needed to get some duck wings and probably some duck tongues. We go home, open a beer or even hard liquor, roll up our sleeves and dive in. They are chewy, meaty, spicy, covered with the right amount of sauces. Man, that will be a good day!

Good jerky for about $ 20 a lb. Yum!

authentic taiwanese shop for snacks and drinks, beware, take a chinese speaker if you wish to know wtf is going in here

Everyone knows about boba milk tea — well, see if you’ve heard any of the following drinks:
Kumquat lemon juice, osmanthus plum juice, carambole juice, tremella Lotus seeds soup (w/​dates), tortoise herbal jelly (gui ling gao), longan tea, ginger tea, etc.
(By the way, drink menu is listed in Chinese with no English translation and all drinks are between $ 2 to $ 3 — that’s pretty cheap if you ask me)
My friend had osmanthus plum juice and he finished the whole drink within SECONDS. Main takeaway message — these drinks are pretty authentic. Other than drinks mentioned above, They also sell your traditional boba milk tea /​black bubble tea /​green bubble tea.
On the other hand, I ordered one cup of hot grass jelly ($ 3). Ah, I just found my new favorite place for hot grass jelly.
Food /​snacks: They offer roasted chestnuts and various authentic PACKAGED Taiwanese food (Taiwanese meat balls, fermented bean curds, soy eggs, roasted pig feet, Taiwanese pork-​rice tamale, etc.).
It’s best to bring someone who can speaks a little bit of Mandarin. If not, just open the refrigerator and randomly pick a drink — you’ll never know what you’ll find.
P. S. — It’s located inside the San Gabriel 99 Ranch, so good luck on finding an available parking spot during the dinner time.

Hunting for roasted chestnuts in LA is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. If I’m wrong, PLEASE correct me and point me in the right direction!
We finally found this place. It’s situated in a super busy Chinese-​American shopping plaza. Finding parking was like fighting for the last Cabbage Patch Doll that your dear daughter wanted back in the 80’s. We entered CPC (by the way, it says CPC outside in the plaza display) and I was greated by chinese/​taiwanese characters and food that I had no idea how to decipher. I almost wanted to walk out because there was NOTHING in English and that was ok with me. I just realized I was in a legit place and I now knew how non Spanish speakers feel when they walk into some of my old neighborhood shops.
Alas, we were on a mission.
The girl behind the counter luckily did speak English, so she was very helpful. If the place wasn’t so busy I probably would have picked her brain about all their food items and what else they sold. A pound of roasted chestnuts was hot and ready for the mere price of $ 10.
Roasted chestnuts are only sold on weekends. Also, they taste so good. I thought they tasted like miniature sweet corn tamales!

To the uninitiated, the sprawling San Gabriel Square on the corner of Valley Boulevard and Del Mar Avenue is sensory overload. Think «Chinese Christmas», except it’s all year ’round. Come here without a clear-​cut goal, and you’ll end up like an ocean predator confronted by a huge school of herring: TOO. MANY. CHOICES.
Luckily, we already had a quarry in mind: roasted chestnuts The challenge was to first find parking– a nearly impossible feat, requiring sacrificing your firstborn, or a body part, to the parking gods. Good luck to whoever decides to come here.
Unless you can wait for the weekend to buy them from some guy manning a stand in front of a grocery store or a booth at some farmer’s market, Champion Provisions is the only place you can buy your roasted chestnuts.
While my wife bought $ 17.00 worth of roasted chestnuts– the chestnuts are $ 10.00 per «unknown chinese character», which I’m assuming reads as «pound” — I took a look around.
Whenever I’m in these types of chinese food shops, I always imagine that I’m accompanying Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmerman one one of their foodie safaris. Without spending thousands on airfare, I can come here and be out of my comfort zone.
Other than the chestnuts, some of the other products I saw here were some milk tea drinks, all kinds of jerked meat, and a whole section devoted to «prunes», which I translated to plums– dried, pickled, salted, or whatever the chinese folks are doing to prepare them nowadays.
The chestnuts were okay. Not top tier, like the kind you might find in front of a vendor’s stand in Japan, but good enough to scratch that chestnutty itch. Some were shelled easier and cleaner than others, and a few were kind of hard, but definitely a place to go if desperation won’t allow you to wait for the weekend.

Asian snacks: jerkys, roasted chestnut, pastries, and drinks.

The only reason they are getting 2 stars versus only 1 is because the products are reasonable — I have to be fair.
But the service is unacceptable. It is typical for the girls behind the counter to show no expressions on their faces and robotically ask «what else». There’s an older woman who tries to sell you everything in the store and professes how delicious they are, while as they are just A-​Ok but for above average prices.
One girl kind of stands out — she would be nice when serving us (at least nicer than the others, so we’d thought), but immediately wipes any sign of a smile off of her face when we are done ordering, to an almost «get out of my face right now» expression. She would toss the receipt and change on the counter. You can forget getting a thank you from her. We’d watch her move on to the next customer with her not-​so-​long-​lasting friendliness in awe.
Going from «I’ll be borderline nice to you till you pull out your wallet» to «get out you are now completely useless to me» in less than 60 seconds.
Such a short-​sighted and opportunist service model.

What I like about this place;
Sliced haw flakes
Japanese Milk tea with brown sugar
Things you can’t normally get elsewhere except here!

Every time I come here I spend $ 150 – 200
It’s pretty pricey here but it’s soo good so it’s OK.
I drive from Vegas to here to get the roasted chestnuts and the hot black grass jelly with boba, red beans & greens beans my favorite. I always order 5 to go for myself. Their pork jerky sheet and fruit beef jerky is so yummy too. The spicy beef jerky & dried shrimps are my mom’s favorite.
The ducks wings and gizzard are ok, i think the flavoring needs something else in it to make it great.

this place is located in the same plaza as 99 ranch and pretty hidden. u have to park first and then walk around before you could find this shop. parking could be absolutely horrendous to find, especially when u go during the weekend when all those chinese ppl go shopping and dining with friends or family. the crazy asian drivers would make your life even more difficult to find a parking spot as they’ll also test ur patient!
anyways, i finally found this after walking around the plaza. it took me 20 mins before i could find a parking spot. the shop itself is pretty small and definitely not easy to find. but they do have alot different varieties of asian dried fruits and i got the seedless dried prune for about $ 4-​$ 5 (
). the prune has a very strong flavor, much stronger than any other asian prune that i can think of. it taste sweet and sour, but the sourness of the prune could make ur taste bud go off for a bit if u eat more than 2 – 3 pieces of it.
i also got their black rice with mung bean filling for about $ 8 i believe (
). quite expensive but i wanted to try it. the black rice was really soft although some of the rice are undercooked. the mung bean filling compliment pretty good with the rice even though i prefer a red bean filling instead. but is it really worth $ 8?! i dont think so. but most of the stuffs they sell here arent cheap anyways, and could help you to empty ur wallet if you plan to buy alot!
they do accept CC but if they see u have cash, they’ll tell u that they want cash and no CC. so if u r planning to pay by card, make sure u make them think that u dont have any cash with u at all!!!

I used to come here a lot when my hairstylist was in the same plaza.
They have a bunch of cold food snacks. I love the duck wings here! Sooo addicting. Aside from that, they make drinks which are pretty cheap. They also have a fridge on the side for pre-​made drinks so you can easily just grab and go. Their stuff is tax-​free so just hand them the money and don’t worry about carrying change!

I’m a sucker for dried meat and seafood. It’s good for snacking and it’s great with alcohol. Apparently everyone who’s Chinese knows about Champion so I was surprised that 1. I haven’t heard about it and 2. Champion isn’t already on Unilocal!
They dry their own squids, fish, jerky, pork fu, etc. I love their dried squid and fish. The seasoning is just right and the squid is a little bit spicy. It is a little bit pricey but the quality is great. They also wrap it up professionally with a sealed bag.
They serve drinks too. I had lemon tea with honey and jelly. It was nice and refreshing.

It would be nice if I said I come here to get stuff for my parents or gramma. But the truth is I am an old, old lady at heart. I eat stuff my parents don’t even care for yet. So. It’s true. I hate loud neighbors, yapping dogs, and get giddy when I see fiber on the ingredients label. I mean. True story. I bought one of the organic health drinks in powder form (that you mix with hot water), and I went home and no joke it says «ideal for menopause women, ideal for the elderly, dietary fiber-​rich, easily absorbed and digested».
Well then. Obviously I know I’m the target demographic. But all joking aside, the stuff is freaking delicious. They have a good range of health products. I, myself, enjoy the black sesame drinks in powder form. I also like to get the beef jerky (when I’m feeling younger and like I have teeth) and tofu jerky. Their products are fresh and the staff is courteous and really nice. They also have pretty good milk tea (natural and they make it themselves, they said its not powder) and shaved ice.

This place serves lot of jerky type snacks. Expensve, but my parents visit this place often. They are yummy, but pricey.
Roasted Chestnut ($ 8.50/lbs) — delicious small roasted chestnut. Super sweet. Cheaper than the ones you sometimes get in front of Japanese stores. Not a lot of place sell these so this place is a gem for fresh roasted chestnuts.
Taiwanese glutinous rice beef pouch — saw a lady buying 4 of them so I was intrigued and asked about them. She tried to describe it to me in Taiwanese, but all I understood was — very good with beef inside. I was sold. Bought one for $ 2.00. Microwave for 2 minutes (1 minute was not enough) and cut open. Inside was a giant beef patty and some noodle-​like thing, but I assume they are bamboo shoots. Typical Taiwanese food. It was good, but I was not blown away. They give you a side of sauce for it and I describe it to be a little sweet and sour rather than «hot sauce» they lady told me it was.
Overall this is an awesome specialty store.

I too have to buy stuff from this place for my parents every time I plan to visit them. I get it vacuum sealed (a service they offer) so it lasts longer and is perfect for packing in a suitcase or in a box to ship.
There’s so much to get at this place. Definitely not cheap but well worth it if you’re into stuff like this. What is «this»? It’s all kinds of jerky, beef, pork, squid, fish, cuttlefish, etc. They also have roasted walnuts, peanuts, duck tongue, gizzards, duck wings, beef tendon and seasonal specialties. (Yes, I know it may not sound appetizing but most of it is really good.)
In the freezer section (like a convenience store ice cream case) you can get really good wontons, gau gee (potstickers for soup or for frying), and even meat-​filled egg dumplings/​wontons. I usually buy a few bags of dumplings and wontons and keep it in the freezer. When I’m too lazy to cook I open a bag and grab a handful then throw it in boiling water and in a little time they’re done. It’s tastes more like homemade than the others you buy in the market. The egg dumplings/​wontons are good for hot pot.
While you’re waiting for your order to be packaged you can also get a boba drink if you like that stuff. The service is very friendly and one of the ladies (perhaps the owner) is so good at what she does that I always seem to end up buying WAY more than I plan. She gives really good advice on how to prepare dishes using their products. Basically, if you want to find something that is dried, cured, roasted, marinated, or smoked you’re likely to find it here.
They accept credit cards but you have to spend over a certain amount. I can’t remember the amount because I always spend much more than whatever it is.

Great frresh tasting chinese beef jerky, pork jerky and pork soong — so yummy! Thye also sell other stuff that I don’t eat, like dried squid and some other stuffed fishballs or something… I don’t eat it but other pple rave about it. Prices range from $ 18−24/lb so its not cheap! But so worth it. My mom tells me to buy her some everytime I go back to FL. *Sigh Service is very friendly and helpful. You can ask for a sample of everything too. l