Chinese Dinner for Christmas

By Jonathan Gold Wed., Dec. 14 2011 at 6:00 AM

Anne Fishbein

the invisible restaurant critic

Dear Mr. Gold:
My husband and I, originally from Connecticut, are fairly new to L.A., and have had a hard time finding good Chinese food. This is our first year as a married couple and we're looking for a nice restaurant in which to restart our tradition of Chinese dinner on Christmas. I'm obsessed with dumplings. My husband, although he loves Chinese food, feels more comfortable if there are some Americanized dishes on the menu -- General Tso's chicken, beef and broccoli, etc. Any suggestions?
--Caylie Marchi, via Facebook

Dear Ms. Marchi:
Welcome to Los Angeles. I think you will find that General Tso's chicken is rarer in good Chinese restaurants here than live geoduck or charcoal-grilled lamb fat in the style of Xinjiang, but this is as it should be. East Coast Chinese food is a genre all its own, and you can find a pretty good facsimile at places like Chin Chin or even Genghis Cohen, where they serve potstickers and beef with broccoli alongside things like the Krispy Kanton Knish. But it is probably my duty to steer you toward a place like Mei Long Village in San Gabriel, a truly good Shanghai-style restaurant with some of the best soup dumplings in town, a range of unchallenging yet delicious dishes like jade shrimp, lion's head meatballs and the infamous pork pump, as well as enough sticky things to keep both of you happy. If you decide that your new holiday traditions need to include braised jellyfish head, Mei Long Village can help you there, too. You can start in on the dried sea cucumber another time.

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Mei Long Village

301 W. Valley Blvd., San Gabriel, CA

Category: Restaurant

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Reddy Kilowatt

Click here for Anne Fishbein's slideshow. I am totally and completely opposed to meatballs from the lion's head. Sharks can at least take a taxi home without fins.

Dave Lieberman

CONGRATULATIONS! You're the first person in history to make that joke about lion's head meatballs. Please make sure you go register your accomplishment at Wikipedia.

Reddy Kilowatt

Sure, I'll explain it for you. There are actually two jokes, neither of which is about lion's head meatballs. The first spotlights the lazy way that the LA Weekly summarizes posts by merely repeating the first few lines verbatim. In JGold's case, that means "Click here for Anne Fishbein's slideshow" is inevitably sprinkled all over the restaurants home page. It's beyond comprehension why management doesn't care about how foolish this looks year after year.

The second joke is slightly more subtle. It satirizes Gold's politically correct piece a month or two ago supporting the new law against shark-fin soup. Perhaps restaurants shouldn't serve shark fins, but with a state that is the political and financial laughingstock of the nation -- with extremely high taxes and an anti-business climate that drives away the tax base -- Governor Brown should focus on more urgent matters. Of course, Brown likely made such a big deal out of saving sharks because he knew it would appeal to many confused, economically ignorant Left Coast voters, thus changing the subject from government mismanagement. I hope Gold was more sincere, but his over-earnest declaration deserves a little satire.

How about reading more carefully in the future? I don't have time to explain simple jokes to the citizens, now that I'm helping my cellmate, Mr. Blagojevich, write his memoirs. I'm wearing out my DEL key on all his "why did the little idiot ...?" stories.