Taking a Vato for some Dim Sum: Elite Restaurant

Living in East L.A basically leaves you stuck with extremely limited dining options; (1) Stay home and put together whatever foods you feel like concocting. (2) Go out to eat a Taco, Burrito or some other greasy Ameri-Chinese-Mexican options kicked up a notch with Tapatio. or (3) Busting a mission to wherever you feel like venturing to.

I usually opt for option 1, even though I would love to do 3 more often.

So anyone that's lived in East L.A all their life and still be willing to eat a Red Clam and Shark Fin Dumpling or Steamed Taro cake at 10:00 in the morning...certainly earns my respect.

As a token of gratitude for guiding my almost-lost friend to register in East Los Angeles College, he decided to take me out to go eat. And since Elite was only a couple of blocks away and i never did finish that post I started on the 2nd day they were Elite (way before Virbila went!). My friend was in for quite a ride.

I tried not to go too crazy with the food: Some chewy Pan Fired Rice Cake laced with sausage bits, some snow ball like Sweet Oatmeal Buns as soft as cotton filled with jet black sesame paste. But I did get Baked Duran Pie and Baked Scallop and Turnip Cake with these buttery, flakey crusts that would make any Croissant look like a slice of Wonderbread ; and he actually checked off the little boxes next to Steamed Spare Ribs with Garlic and Black Bean Sauce, whose garlic-sity was one of the highest I've encountered in my life and some milky Sweet Mango Pudding too.

And to my surprise, he liked everything, shark fins and all. Well except the Steamed Taro Cake topped with chopped up Pork Belly, even though it had that familiar breakfast combination (taro kind of like a potato, pork belly kind of like bacon). I think the unfamiliar purple shade was just too much for him.

If he liked it, you can imagine just how good everything was.

Elite Restaurant
700 S. Atlantic Blvd.
Monterey Park;
(626) 282-9998