What restaurant experiences do you miss most during these quaran-times?
I have many, but on top of the list are Korean BBQ and dim sum. More than the food, I miss the communal aspects of both.
Whether it’s plucking a perfectly grilled piece of meat from a smoky grate, or pondering what steamed dumplings to take off the cart next, there’s nothing like sharing Korean BBQ or dim sum with those you love and cherish.
But while the full KBBQ restaurant experience has been mostly out of reach these past few months, I’ve still been consuming a lot of takeout hargow and shumai. Unlike KBBQ, dim sum is eminently portable.
And right now, my go-to to-go dim sum joint is Lucky 1 Restaurant in Rosemead.
Pre-Covid, this modest restaurant had a small dining room. Now it’s blocked off and used as storage space. But the restaurant’s original, no-frills way of offering its dim sum--a display counter filled with all manner of delicacies baked, fried, and steamed--still feed people like me who think that consuming this food (even alone in front of the TV) can bring back some normalcy during times that are decidedly abnormal.
Lucky 1, as you can see by the pictures, is a hole-in-the-wall. It stands in stark contrast to the palatial dim sum banquet halls across town. But the har gow here is surprisingly delicate, the shumai is light and mousse-like, and the enormous baked BBQ pork bun counts as a light lunch onto itself.
I’d even go so far as to say that the dim sum here is better (not to mention orders of magnitude cheaper) than those that I’ve had at the last proper sit-down dim sum house in the “before times”. And these days, I think getting the most out of your money is almost as important as staying healthy.
Don’t you agree?
Lucky 1 Restaurant
7637 Garvey Ave
Rosemead, CA 91770
