Michelle’s Pancake House

Came here only after Jazz Cat’s wait was too long. along with everything else in that plaza. this place was pretty slow when we came and picked up a little when we left.
food was just okayyyy. don’t get the green onion pancake. that was not yummy. no flavor. the chive box was okayyy. xiao long bao was pretty good. beef roll was okayy. this radish cake pancake was not bad (according to dad). overall. nothing spectacular. wouldn’t return. nothing really stood out.

There was not a lot of choice in the menu, either the ‘pancakes’ which are really pan fried pies filled with meats and veggies. I ordered the Taiwanese Beef Noodle and my friend ordered the dumplings with shrimp, sea cucumber, and chives. We also ordered the pork and zucchini pan fried pies to share. The pies were good, a little juice enclosed, and the dumplings were okay. The beef noodle was unremarkable… to the point whee I dumped some garlic sauce, and a quarter bottle of white vinegar in it. Little flavor, definitely NOT authentic.
The service was a little lacking, just a bit worse than the usual Chinese restaurant service, which wasn’t all that nice to begin with. The servers looked like they would rather be elsewhere, and never brought us tea, we had to ask for it. It says no MSG on their wall, but I left super-​thirsty, and I’m supersensitive to additives and MSG. (My father-in-law’s cooking once left me up all night, downing two bottles of water.)
I don’t think I would return, not for the prices or the food.

I didn’t really fully understand the meaning of 2 ½ stars until after I’ve dined at Michelle’s Pancake House. The food was decent, but I felt like at each bite, I had a dilemma trying to decide whether if it was 2 or 3 stars and here’s the reason.
Each bite was delicious, but it felt as it something was missing. It was salty enough, and hot enough, but… just something (which I sat there for 40 minutes trying to figure out) was just missing…
Seafood dumplings: This is probably better out of the two items, and that’s quite ironic considering the fact that, it’s a restaurant that’s supposed to specialize in Chinese flat pancakes. The dumplings were pipping hot, and the meat filling was different since we ordered the seafood one instead of your regular pork or beef. It was salty and flavorful, but even with vinegar and soy sauce, it just seems as if it needs that something more to be complete.
Beef pancakes: I normally would prefer these fried pancakes over regular dumplings, but in this case, it was sort of a disappointment. The pancakes looked golden brown and delicious, and it was yummy, but it needed something more to it also. The best part though, is that at each bite, soup flows out of the pancake, so be sure to eat these slowly with a spoon or you will burn yourself!
The side dishes weren’t all that impressive either…
Honestly, I have never really wrote a review that looked so. befuddling, but for Michelle Pancakes, I did just that.

My friend once took me to Michelle’s in San Gabriel and I was expecting some flat pancake like the scallion pancakes they have at some places. When some round fried dumplings came out instead, we were wondering if they messed up our order. Then we found out that they call these pancakes for some odd reason…
So when I came to this location, I knew not to expect some flattened pancake. We asked them what’s their best stuff and they recommended #1, the leek, shrimp, egg, thin bean pancake. I had just eaten and wasn’t hungry so that’s all I had. It wasn’t too bad. My friend had some mushroom bok choy noodle soup she said was okay.
The outdoor seating area was nice. Nobody was out there and the service was still decent. There was a $ 20 minimum for credit card but I talked him out of it because we were too full to eat $ 20 worth of food. That was nice.

Good food but greasy a little bland
The Taiwanese «pancakes» are good I suggest you try everything to your liking.
+The Good
+Flavorful
+Juicy
+Out Door seating
+Nice Location
–The bad
–Service
–Greasy
–Communication
Overall this place is alright Id come back here once in a while.

Ugh, are you serious?! I really think they tried too hard to branch out of your typical Chinese dishes by adding crazy spins to them, but in the process… they literally ruined them! The dumplings were weird, bland, and had a really mushy, overly-​doughy texture. Their «pancakes» are definitely unusual — they are actually stuffed pockets, similar to bao zhi’s (stuffed buns). These were probably the best things we ordered, but they still tasted weird and were filled with WAY too much juice. It was to the point where it was just messy!
Their beef noodle soup is probably their best item, but it definitely lacks flavor, although it seems kinda healthy. My bf and I absolutely LOVE Chinese food, but we were SO disappointed with this place! It’s a bit pricey and their menu items don’t seem to match up with what they give you. For instance, if you’re expecting green onion pancakes… don’t even bother going here! In the end, why go here when there are SO many better places in the neighborhood!!! I think I’ll stick to my tried and trued favorite spots, thankyouverymuch.

Beef Noodle Soup — Really salty but decently flavored broth. The actual beef in the soup is rather disgusting chewy and bland. I like their noodles, knife cut, thick and chewy. ²⁄₅
Leek Box — Terrible! The filling was still cold on the inside. Obviously these pancakes can’t be freshly made but at least have the decency to fry them slowly and warm up the middle! sheesh! is that too much to ask china man chef? ¹⁄₅
Beef, Onion Pancake — I actually really love eating fried pancakes rolled up with beef and scallions. Michelle’s version is an average ³⁄₅. There are so many better options out there in hole in the wall joints and even regular Chinese food courts. You’ll be paying a premium to dine here because Michelle advertises «low oil, less salt and more juiciness.» Go elsewhere for cheaper and better fooding.

To anyone not familiar with Chinese food, don’t be fooled — IHOP pancakes these are not.
What Michelle’s Pancake really provides is a simple (and thankfully limited) menu of what they do best — their signature items of scallion pancakes, beef rolls, noodles, dumplings, and signature «filled» pancakes.
I really loved the Beef & Spinach Noodle Soup — to be honest, I think this was one of the best beef noodle soups I have ever had. The broth was savory in the sense that it didn’t need any mild spiciness (or too much salt) to taste just right. The overall portion of the noodle soup is huge (for a little over 5 bucks, I think this is awesome) and they didn’t skimp out on the thick and flat hand made noodles and tender beef bits.
We also had the carrot & onion & beef pancakes and chicken dumplings. The chicken dumplings were good — not the best I’ve had, but tightly wrapped and not too juicy or small either. The carrot & onion & beef pancakes were pretty good too — one or two of these suckers can already make up half your lunch. You gotta be careful with those though because the hot juices inside can come out unexpectedly once you bite into them.
Service wasn’t bad and the prices were very reasonable ($ 5 – 7 per plate) but I have to say that Michelle’s Pancakes isn’t the most obvious place to get to — it’s on the second floor of a Asian plaza bordering the 60, and it’s definitely not located near an elevator but rather a flight of stairs. There should be plenty of parking unless it’s a Friday or Saturday night. I definitely look forward to coming back!

Great beef roll dumplings and green onion pancake. This is the newer one. I’ve gone here a couple of times. Place is small and narrow. Outside sitting is available. But inside is pretty small so large parties might find things complicated. Parking downstairs could get cramped. The green onion pancake is cooked with fresh oil. So it’s not as heavy as other places that have green onion pancake. Beef dumplings are the best. But watch out thy spit! Lol. Bite a hole on the top and drink the sauce. Might be hot though. Be careful.

It looks like people need to know what to order here. Luckily, I had family do the honors and save me any missteps!
The beef pancake rolls were crispy and chewy and very more-​ish. I also loved the pork pan fried dumplings which were so juicy they couldn’t help but spurt out as i bit into them! I really enjoyed the simple napa cabbage, tofu vermicelli noodle soup. It was a little sour/​pickled in flavor.
A great brunch/​lunch place. Definitely one of my faves! Just looking at the pics makes me HUNGRY!

Greasy, soggy, and fried equals no bueno.
Also service is weird, alternatively very attentive when they’re at the table, but then hard to get a hold of again because they forget to check up on you.
I’ll pass on a next time.

I give the restaurant 1 star but I give the green onion pancakes 5 stars.
Filled pancakes– the reason why one presumably comes here– 1 star. The skin was soggy, the filling bland and tasteless. (So you know, an order comes with 8 hockey puck sized pancakes. I didn’t. I’m used to the ones at A&J, where one order comes with a burger sized pancake.)
Vegetarian pancakes: Filling went one too many spins through a food processor resulting in a textureless mixture of barely recognizable vermicelli, beancurd, cabbage, and mushroom. Was also poorly seasoned thus lacking flavor.
Pork and zucchini pancakes: Didn’t order this one but the waitress screwed up. She said vegetarian pancakes when she dropped it off (I don’t eat meat), and I almost it! Anyway, Dad said it tasted OK. Looked soggy on the outside too though. Filling looked like fatty 50% ground pork.
Pork and leek pancakes: A step above pork and zucchini according to Dad, but skin still did not have a good crisp.
Leek boxes (jiao cai huh zi): Greasy, again not crispy, didn’t even have the nice golden brown color, more like a light golden brown. I mean, they claim they use less oil, less salt, no msg, etc, but everything was extremely oily. Maybe by China standards. The filling (of leeks and scrambled eggs) also had a very strong fishy odor, the kind you sometimes get in a bad breakfast burrito. A sign that they don’t use good quality eggs.
Boiled dumplings: These were actually not bad. You can tell the skin is handmade. It’s thick too for those of you that eat dumpling for the skin. Filling was tasty too. I ordered the something codfish. Good spread of table condiments (chili sauce, crushed garlic+soy, soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil infused with crushed red pepper) allow you to make your own dipping sauce too. One order comes with 10 – 12 I think.
Cold appetizers:
Free boiled peanuts: These were really tasty.
Seaweed: Soggy.
Shredded beancurd: Beancurd was hard. Dish lacked flavor in general.
Other:
«Small rice» porridge: Cold.
Zha jiang noodle: Parents said this was really good, both the texture of the handmade noodles, as well as the flavor of the meat sauce.
Finally:
Green onion pancake was excellent! Thin, crispy on the outside, doughy on the inside, not too oily, perfect amount of salt, LOTS of green onion, chopped quite fine so parts of the pancake dough took on a green hue. Sounds weird, I know, but tasty. I’d order these here again, but then again, I don’t think I’d come here again.
Oh, and service was horrible. There was one waitress, during a busy lunch. She was young, even pretty, but she looked like death. Didn’t crack a single smile the whole time, didn’t even seem to make eye contact with any of the customers. Ok I’m getting carried away. This was a long 1 star review.

***READ THIS BEFORE COMING TO MICHELLE’S PANCAKE HOUSE!***
I really think the below average reviews for this joint is due to the fact that these individuals didn’t know what to order (totally my opinion).
I totally agree, everything «else» is mediocre compared to other restaurants. So what shines? As you’ve probably already guessed, it’s their pancakes (juicy fried dumplings). BUT, the key is to know which one to order. The one to try is the CHICKEN & YELLOW LEEK! Try it out and see for yourself. Compare it to the other pancakes and let me know. I can never get enough of the chicken and leek. All the others I could care less for.
The beef roll is here is decent but far from the best.
Oh, and make sure when you order the pancakes they give you a total of eight dumplings. They ripped us one time by only giving us seven and the table had to play Rock, Paper, Scissors for the last pancake!

First off, this place isn’t too bad, but I’ve experienced better.
The service was fine. It was pretty easy to grab the attention from the waiters.
The prices are very reasonable because they give you large portions to share.
In my opinion, the food… has plenty of room for improvement.
Beef noodle soup: I know the noodles were freshly made, but I’ve had better elsewhere. The chunks of beef lacks flavor and isn’t juicy. I prefer to have beef tendons in my beef noodle soup, but there isn’t an option for that here. The soup base was good and they use plenty of spinach. They don’t have any soup veggies to add as condiments. Their hot oil (on the table) adds a nice flavor, but doesn’t add much spice to it. I think they need to have a better hot sauce.
Beef wrap roll: This dish was decent. The pancake that wraps this was decent, but nothing worth mentioning. They DO NOT have good condiments to go with this dish. I prefer to have a nice hot sauce and sour veggies for this dish as well. Eating this with their hot oil doesn’t do the trick for me. And using their bright red hot sauce makes the food too salty.
Turnip cake with shrimp: The wrapping in the outside is nice but the inside lacks flavor. I know that this place promotes less salt in their food, but I am not talking about salt. Even adding some salt, it doesn’t provide a nice juicy flavorful filling (like ones with some sort of meat stock).
Sour and spicy soup: This soup was the only thing I truly enjoyed. I think the soup had a great sour flavor with a nice kick of spiciness. For the price, you get a nice portion to share with 3 or 4 people.
Overall, I have better… a lot better, at other places in this area. I would rather drive down to the Arcadia/​San Gabriel area to get beef noodle soup and beef wrap roll. I know of a better breakfast place to get a VERY delicious turnip cake.

DO NOT GO THERE!!! The food was mediocre, and the servers were extremely inexperienced, but that’s besides the point. I brought home some left overs (fried dumplings of some sort), and as I was chewing I bit into something hard. I thought it was just bone so I spit it out, and I found a piece of broken plastic shaped like a sharp shark tooth. See the picture under photo section.
That is just ridiculous… imagine if I had swallowed that. This place needs to be closed down.

Five part review
1. Noodles: The noodles are not very Q. They are dense though, but not chewy enough.
2. The beef rolls are good, though could be saltier. And this is coming from someone who waters down OJ.
3. The beef pancakes are legit. Thin wrappers and good filling. They claim low sodium and no MSG.
4. The service is absolutely horrendous. They mixed up our order the whole night with another table and never brought 3 items. The waiters are lacking experience and they’ve been opened about a month so I’m not sure how much longer I’m willing to give them.
5. The wait looks ridiculous but actually ends up being more like 15 minutes.

They specialize in northern chinese food with special attention with dumpling and dumpling-​like things. If you’ve been to ding tai fung and dumping 168 and all the dumpling places, you have to add this to the list. What they say is that they use less oil, it’s all fresh and more juice inside the dumpling.
Just ask the guys on what to order (or pick from the pictures). I would highly recommend their pancake (it’s really a pan fried circular dumpling) and their beef rolls.
One of my favorites in the area.

Don’t waste your money here. ZERO STAR if it was an option.
The beef & green onion pancakes didn’t have any smell of flavor like a good Chinese pancake should have; no fresh smell of ground beef & fresh green onion, the turnip pancakes didn’t have any flavor at all and it tasted like nothing, the rice noodle soup was not in any quality at all, and the jellyfish dish was so poorly prepared and became too sticky as it was made too long ago.
We asked for a glass of water, it came with dirty and disgusting finger prints all over the glass, we asked for a second glass, it came the same way. We saw waitress pouring soybean milk to a few glasses for customers, all of the glass were the same, dirty and disgusting with finger prints and dried flour all over. I don’t know where these waiters & waitresses come from, but their sense of hygiene and service are so low.
The people sitting next to us, who came in way before us, received only one or two of many dishes they ordered initially, they were mad and disappointed, ended up
paying for the one or two dishes and left. Later I saw them buying food at another place in that same plaza.
I am very disappointed and will NEVER come here again, and I don’t want to see anyone wasting money on food that’s so unacceptable here. There are better ways to waste money than coming here.

We came with the family since we saw the grand opening sign and all the rave reviews in the newspaper and on the chinese news. This place is pretty much the second location of the Michell’s Pancake Inc. in San Gabriel with the exact same menu with the new locations address stuck on the front. It’s literally a sticker stuck on the front cover… This location is located on the second floor of the new Gale plaza. Being it’s grand opening week there’s always a line out the door waiting for a table. Note you need to literally walk in and tell the waiter to add you to the waiting list because there’s no list at the front door. Note this is the first deficiency and potential downfall for this new restaurant… we’ll get back to this later. The décor of the place is quite modern. The floors are completely tiled in dark wood panels, all the modern tables are dark espresso colored are placed around the entire perimeter. There’s also a huge window in the middle where you can watch the workers inside making fresh dumplings/​pancakes as you order.
We ordered 7 items:
Beef Onion Carrot Pancake $ 6.95÷8 pcs — These reminded me of gyoza but in circular form. They were pan fried perfectly crispy to a light brown yet still semi chewy filled with savory pork, chopped carrots. Note these are SUPER juicy when you first bite into them so be careful not to burn your mouth. They even put a sign at the table warning you… so you’ve been warned.
Overall this was definitely the best dish that we ordered as it was the most consist flavored dish. I would give this dish a 4.5÷5 on flavor and ⁵⁄₅ on overall value.
Beef Roll pancakes $ 6.95 — This is the traditional taiwanese beef rolls you find at most TW places. However the difference with this one is the crust is must thinner then most others and also slightly more greasy. The inside is filled with the usual soy sauced beef/​tendon, cilantro, green onion with hoisin sauce. This is usually one of my favorite dishes and a good measuring stick of the quality of their pancakes. I would have to say i was pretty disappointed with this dish. First of all you’ll notice they really skimp on the hoisin sauce so you don’t get that full sweet/​savory flavor with every bite. The pancake itself is also way too thin and greasy. It’s like they almost deep fried the entire pancake instead of pan frying it. I give dish a ²⁄₅ on flavor/​quality and ³⁄₅ on value.
Scallion Cake $ 3.95 — This again is the traditional taiwanese dish. But similar to the beef rolls this pancake was again fairly greasy and almost paper thin. You could barely taste the green onions. This dish also gets a ²⁄₅ for quality/​flavor and ³⁄₅ for value.
Cabbage shrimp pork dumplings $ 5.95÷12 pcs — These were the usual dumplings stuffed with sweet cabbage, chopped shrimp and pork. The skin itself was again cooked to perfection and perfectly chewy. HOWEVER, again they were totally skimping on the filling. It’s sad though cuz the filling was actually pretty yummy. But in portion to the skin the filling was literally the size of a dime. From what from i could taste the filling was sweet form the cabbage and quite flavorful from the shrimp/​pork mixture. This dish loses marks for the misproportion of the dumpling skin/​meat ratio though. So this dish gets a ³⁄₅ on quality and 3.5÷5 on value
Thin Bean and Tofu Soup $ 5.50– This was a super light pork broth filled with vermicelli, fried tofu, and thin tofu stuffed with savor pork (similar to a typical dumpling filling). topped with cilantro. The broth being super light however almost tasted like it was just straight up hot water however… so you definitely might want to add some fresh pepper or maybe even some salt? This dish gets a ²⁄₅ for quality and ³⁄₅ on value.
We also got the stewed seaweed appetizer ($ 2.95)and a bowl of conjee ($ 0.75/bowl). The seaweed was well mixed and perfectly seasoned. It was slightly savory and sweet yet slightly garlic-​y. The conjee was like a porridge with small barley inside which was your typical porridge dish. These get ⁴⁄₅ on quality and ⁵⁄₅ on value.
The service here is pretty horrible however. This maybe because they are a new restaurant so they’re still learning the system. But we saw a couple customers actually walk out of the restaurant without paying and even a couple customers arguing with the waiter about how slow the service was. They also seem to have a way of bringing the wrong order to the table or even forgetting to bring an order. Or just simply take FOREVER to bring your food. Not to mention they don’t really serve food on a first come first serve basis order it seems. The table that came after us got all of there food long before we even got our first dish. We literally had to remind them 5x «where is our order?» At least the waiter was sorry and comp’ed us a free seaweed. But i can’t speak for the other irate patrons that literally made a scene in the middle of the restaurant. Nor the other table that literally stormed out.

Great food here, meat pancakes are smaller than other places, but they give you more pieces per order. The beef pancakes are significantly better than the pork ones. The dumplings are eh, fried or steamed.
Appetizers and soups are yum too, less salty a little bland, but yummy.