TimeOut

There are plenty of great Chinese restaurants in the Los Angeles area.  Old Chinatown in down town L.A., Monterey Park, San Gabriel, and Hacienda Heights has plenty of places to choose from.  But once you head west it is virtually non existent.  There's the long established Ghengis Cohen for New York style Chinese food but most will be Americanized to suit the local tastes.  

Out in the San Gabriel Valley is a popular and favorite restaurant that always gets high regards, New Port Seafood.  This place specializes in a Southeast Asian cuisine which mixes Chinese, Cambodian, Vietnamnese, and Thai flavors.  They have 2 locations and recently added a third...on restaurant row!  Right next door to Lawry's The Prime Rib on the former spot of a place we did a PuristS GTG is their new location.  There's plenty of self parking in their structure as street parking is tough on La Ceinega.

When you walk in they has a large fish tank filled with live lobster.  Our hostess was friendly and offered to seat us in the main dining room or out on the patio.  It's been warm here in L.A. but it cooled off quite a bit when we visited during dinner time so we sat outside.  The place was packed and the staff was frantically running around, they had just opened on August 29 so I guess they are still working out the details.  

Our table on the patio:

The food came out quickly.  Our first item is the Pork Belly Bao:

They do the 'bao' like the ones for Peking Duck and not the traditional bun (similar to the concept of Take A Bao at Century City).  Inside is the Hosin sauce and a slice of Cucumber.  Slivers of scallions and some spicy peppers on the side.  While it didn't visually seem appetizing, the pork belly was tender and had a really nice crisp to it.  Sine the protein is a pork belly the fat was not overwhelming and overall it tasted very good.  

Next up is the Beef Loc Lak aka French Style Beef:

The cubes of Filet Mignon were tender but the sauce was not even close.  This is one of their signature dishes so we were very disappointed.

Next we did a Shrimp Chow Fun, a common dish of pan fried wide flat rice noodles with bean sprouts and onion.  They offer a choice of beef, chicken, or shrimp.  They did a good job with this item, like the other 2 dishes it came out piping hot.

When it comes to seafood I really enjoy crab, dungeness is my favorite and it's pretty easy to find here in Southern Californian restaurants.  Surprisingly they ran out of fresh crab!  They have been open a little over a week and did not stock a regular seafood item on a early Saturday night?  Not good.  

The menu here is a much abbreviated list than the Las Tunas Blvd location so I'm surprised that they also didn't have 3 other items.  Since we were here specifically here to try their seafood, we got the whole lobster instead.  The 'House Special' and 'Salt and Pepper' style is what made New Port famous so we did a House Special Lobster.  When we ordered the waiter told us they only had 3.5-4 pound lobsters available at market price.  Usually I like the 2 lb. ones as the meat is much more tender than the over 4lb ones.  I guess the manager didn't stock properly in anticipation of the weekend crowd.  

Fortunately the House Special lobster was delicious, not as good as the original location but much better than anything west of Chinatown.  The lobster was presented neatly and was cooked perfectly.  It was well seasoned and had a lot of flavor:

They had some deserts but IMO it was clear that they had staffing problems so we skipped it.  I watched the maitre d' struggle to poor wine at one of the small private rooms, our waiter took 10 minutes trying to figure out the ordering/cashier terminal , and just overall lack of management.  New Port in  BH has potential but they have a lot of things they need to work out.  Hopefully they can get things in place soon as this part of L.A. really needs a good Chinese restaurant.

We drive a bit to a friend's house and went to Al Gelato afterwards for some gelato:

This place on Robertson has some good food and pastries but the homemade gelato is delicious!  They do fresh whipped cream and a French fan wafer to top it off...YUM!

2 scoop:  Rocky Road and Vanilla 

1 scoop of their Pistachio!  

Bon Appetit everyone!

-MW

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