Top Leaf

This place is running downhill. They used to put the complimentary appetizer in a separate box in take-​out order. Now they put the same thing all together and it is a complete mess. The tea egg still has egg shell and the chicken is super dry.

I adore this place for the congee— the only place near UCLA that offers this on the menu! It reminds me of home…

I’ve had this place bookmarked for quite some time and finally had the chance to stop in today. I was really hoping I would like this restaurant, but unfortunately, that is not the case.
Given that it was Sunday and that the restaurant was rather empty, the service was incredibly slow. There were two people working today, and every time I needed something (to order, ask for more water, get the check, get credit card BACK after giving them our bill), I had to wave them down. It’s as if the employees were completely checked out or stoned. How do you forget to process our payment when you just picked up our credit card?
On to the food. We ordered the beef noodle soup. Noodles were over cooked. The soup was tasty though. We also ordered the shrimp wonton soup with noodles. It came without noodles. We had to send it back to have them redo the dish. I didn’t think much of the wonton noodle soup. It was rather bland.
I most likely will not be returning. There are too many better options on Sawtelle.

Way too overprice. I paid $ 12 for the double-​cooked sliced pork and there were a couple pieces of meat with tons of onion and chilli oil. And it doesn’t even come with rice. Is it organic pork? I guess not. Soy milk was $ 4. You can buy a whole bottle of organic soy milk for half that price (and I mean authentic soy milk, not those boxed American soy milk). This place is such a rip-​off. Rice was soggy.
The chubby guy at the counter was kind of prickly, and come on don’t yell at your co-​workers in front of customers.

Really wanted to like this place, but the food is fairly… meh. Considering that this is a dingy hole in the wall and understaffed (one poor girl serving 6 – 7 tables and taking care of the register/​phone — on a Sunday), Top Leaf just doesn’t have any redeeming qualities.
The stir-​fried eggplant with minced pork was tender and cooked well, but the sauce was imprecise — lot of sauce, lot of excess ginger and sugar
Zha jiang noodles were slightly overcooked and topped with too little sauce, resulting in a watery, bland taste
Ordered the spicy wontons, but they were out that day

Pretty authentic and really good. Definitely wished for bigger portions. There isn’t a lot of room/​areas there so that will be a concern when you do end up going.
I had their niu rou mian, which I thought was awesome! Really flavorful and good cuts of meat.

This restaurant can definitely get lost amongst other shop fronts on gayley. Idk about everyone else, but as a college student, I just run past it late to class without noticing. Then when you walk in, the sitting area is extremely tiny. I wouldn’t come here with more than one or two other people. My roommate and I actually got seated at the table that held all the take out food, which I mean I really don’t mind. It was nice not to have to wait. I was also seated right next to the speakers, so I noticed that the same 5 songs were playing on a loop but again, kinda drowns out eventually. Anyway, the food. The food came out pretty fast! I ordered the short rib combo and my roommate got the chicken combo. The playing was very nice, but the food itself was a bit salty. I’m usually not one to complain, but my roommate ended up just taking his home to mix with more rice to try to tone down the salt. The combos were ~$ 10 each which was fair – the portion sizes were normal. Overall, very average, nothing extremely special. Just unfortunate that the space is so limited. Probably wouldn’t have eaten here if it wasn’t walking distance from my apartment either since parking in Westwood is a nightmare. But definitely worth trying!

I’ve been meaning to try Top Leaf for the longest time because we all need more Asian food in Westwood. It was advertised quite a bit on Facebook as «authentic Taiwanese food,» so I was sold.
I ordered the pork belly combo that came with rice and vegetables. It was pricey as everything is in Westwood, but they gave a large portion. Unfortunately, the food just wasn’t good. There wasn’t a lot of meat on the pork belly and the meat that was there was really dry. I’m the type of person that prefers quality over quantity. Also, the food came out really fast… I believe they just make a bunch of food and scoop it out when someone orders — that might’ve been why the pork was so dry and not fresh.

I was so excited when I heard that TopLeaf was delivering to campus; I figured, hey, this is way better than Panda Express. So I ordered a crab fried rice and waited for their delivery. I thought everything was going to go perfectly!
I was dead wrong.
When my order arrived, everything looked good. My bowl was filled to the top (yay!). As I was eating, I noticed there wasn’t much crab. But hey, how are you going to make a living giving lots of crab for a $ 10 bowl? So that was okay. The rice was pretty good, actually. Not too salty and plenty flavorful.
Here’s the kicker. The entire bottom of the bowl was SOAKED in oil. I mean the whole bottom of the bowl. It was like a little lake of oil. It’s so off putting. I apologize to my pores and my stomach for not noticing this. But come on, how could you overlook this?!

They read my Unilocal review and improved their service. Now they remind customers that red bean bao should be ordered towards the end of the meal. It was funny as the dish still came out like 2 seconds after the order. So lesson learned for me. I should only order the red bean bao two seconds before I am ready to eat it. I appreciate them taking my review into consideration.
A few other things: 1. no forks or knives — this is inconvenient because my poor friends who never used chopsticks were stuck with using their thumbs. 2. The good thing is that the manager was very understanding of the need for group sharing so he was nice enough to separate the rice from each dish to allow us to pick and try everything. 3. Tried the tea eggs for the first time and it was really yummy!

Very solid and AUTHENTIC Taiwanese restaurant in West LA. I emphasize Authentic since my parents, who are from Taiwan, greatly approved of this place and would love to come back It’s really difficult to find a place that doesn’t cater to non-​Asian palates (like places that only serve walnut shrimp, kung pao chicken). but Top Leaf does it right and does it simple. This place is a bit tiny, but i REALLY hope that they start serving HOT TEA. A Chinese restaurant is incomplete without hot tea.
+ MINCED PORK RICE BOWL: or Lu Rou Fan. This is possibly one of my favorite taiwanese dishes to eat, and Top Leaf does it very, very well. The meat is flavored perfectly and they give you an egg as well. I’ve actually never had it served with corn on the side, but it was delicious… added a great crunch and a nice sweetness
+ TRIPLE FLAVOR CHICKEN: Another great rice bowl. Portions are very generous and the flavor is on point. This place does proteins very well.
+ SPICY WONTONS: This is always a hit or miss dish, even at several San Gabriel restaurants. Not as spicy as I would’ve liked, but flavor was good.
+ RED BEAN BAO: Came out warm and the filling was fantastic.

Still a great restaurant, but please PLEASE bring back your youtiao. I know it’s inconvenient to make, but I’m so damn willing to pay for it. ^_^
Also, could you please serve hot tea? You, me and all the servers know that the customers don’t mean 王老吉 when we try to order tea. I come so frequently to this restaurant that I’ll donate the mugs. I don’t even think I’m joking.

This is some authentic food which there is definitely a niche for in Westwood. It seems like they are doing good business over the last few months which makes me really happy for them.
I ordered some soup spicy wonton and bao and enjoyed absolutely all of it. However the location was really small and cramped and it was weird sitting right in front of the cash register. Our tables basically were touching.
Not being able to pay with credit card on small bills strait up sucks. Be careful you might need cash when you go here. It’s worth making the walk into town for because the food is on point and refreshing compared to the americanized Chinese garbage on campus.

I wasn’t terribly impressed. The small service issues aside, my dish really was pretty exceptionally average. At the end of the meal I realized that all of the sauce was actually at the bottom of the noodle dish. The issue with that is if I would’ve stirred the dish to incorporate the sauce, the minuscule portion of vegetables and chicken would’ve gotten lost in all the noodles. Vegetable Bun was dry and the shrimp wonton noodle soup was pretty bland and unremarkable… And there really weren’t any shrimp.
Sorry to not blindly support an independent new restaurant, but it’s hard to warrant a return visit.

This place is pretty good considering there are not many options for Chinese food. My bf and I had:
(^)Chinese bao.
The Chinese bao was delicious and quite large. The pork inside with chicken sauce tastes great, but the pork is more like a small meatball than a filling because it doesn’t fill the entire inside of the bao. They have the flavors down, but the construction of the bao needs a little work; nevertheless it is delicious and surprisingly filling.
(^)Cold Noodles with Shredded Chicken.
The cold noodles were pretty great with a little bit of spice to the peanut based sauce but pretty subtle. It was a good serving too, probably enough to feed two just on its own.
(v)Sticky Rice Roll with Youtiao.
The sticky rice roll was not so great and is the main reason I didn’t give five stars. That is one of my favorite dishes at other chinese restaurants but at Top Leaf it was extremely salty, as if there were chunks of salt hidden inside. The youtiao inside of the rice roll was also very dense and large so that it took up a good portion of the roll, and in my opinion sort of detracted from the flavor of the rice roll. But considering it was so salty, it was almost a good thing it was so dense and large, yet really nothing could help with that amount of saltiness.
Service was perfect– no complaints. The place is quite small, but I have never seen it packed so far so you shouldn’t have an issue getting a table. I will definitely be back, but I will be avoiding the rice roll for a while until I see they have altered the recipe a bit.

I think this is a great addition to Westwood, especially when I’m in the mood for more authentic Taiwanese/​Chinese food. It is not as good as what you’ll get in Monterey Park, Rowland Heights, or other highly-​populated Asian neighborhoods, but it is not bad. The prices are a little bit steeper than the chinese restaurants I am used to, but they’re still affordable.
My bf ordered the peppered beef… good portions and taste, but I think it had too much pepper. I got the sticky rice with you tiao (chinese fried breadstick) and cold soy milk. Both were decent but not the best I’ve had.
I would give this ³⁄₅ but would probably come back just because it’s so convenient.

Authentic tasty (but not life-​changing) Chinese food, way overpriced, hole in the wall located next to the In-​N-​Out. I ordered the eggplant with pork to go, as there was no place to sit (the restaurant is super tiny). Although I was one of the first people in my group to order, I was the last to get my food. Might have chalked it up to my food taking longer to prepare except the first person in my group to order got her food next to last, and she had ordered the same dish as someone else who ordered later but got his food first. So they still have some service snafus to work out, which is to be expected in a newly opened restaurant.
My entrée was delicious. I love eggplant and have had a lot of eggplant dishes in my life, both good and bad — this was definitely on the good side. It was also way overpriced for what it was. I also ordered a hot soymilk (again, tasty), and the two things together came to almost $ 14 — about $ 4 more than I think it was worth.
They were very busy while we were there with lots of patrons speaking Chinese (good sign). But one Chinese girl took only a few bites and walked out (bad sign). All in all, I would eat here again if I were really craving authentic Chinese food and didn’t want to drive to SGV. But for $ 14 I could get an amazing meal at another restaurant in Westwood, so I probably wouldn’t make this a regular stop.

Update: Not only is the restaurant newly opened, the owners are UCLA students and fresh out of school alumni. As a result, don’t be surprised by the kinks in service. The staff is nice, but they’re sometimes a little confused and food takes a long time. It’s usually well worth the wait though. It’s not really a 5 but what the heck why not… I just finished finals and I feel generous.
Food: 4.5
Three Flavor Chicken: I’m not a fan of the jumbled up flavors both garlic and ginger (pick one please), but my Taiwanese friend seemed pretty satisfied with it.
Crab Fried Rice was on point. Hands down one of the best fried rices I’ve had at a restaurant. It rivaled Din Tai Fung. It wasn’t oily and it was light despite the savoriness.
Service: 4.5
Food still takes forever when they get busy. I’m pretty sure I waited about half an hour, but it’s well worth the wait. The staff is pretty attentive despite their lack of training. They realized our food was taking long so they came out to apologize, asked us if we wanted any water, and offered us pork bao buns for free to snack on. As fate would have it, the bag in which our to go food was in ripped minutes after stepping out of the store. When we came back to tell them what happened, they didn’t question it at all. The waitress actually apologized profusely that she should have double bagged it, and they remade our food (much more quickly than the first time I might add).

I think this place has great potential — and I seriously mean this. The demand for good authentic Taiwanese food around UCLA is boundless. I do think that the food is authentic. I tried their braised pork combo, which comes with 6 pieces of the fatty delicious pork and sides of rice, seaweed and ‘wood ear’ fungus salad. I really enjoyed my meal. They also have real soy bean milk in a fridge on the side. However, I think the price point is a little high for Taiwanese food geared toward students.
My major issue here is the logistics of how this place is run. When I came, they were clearly overwhelmed by the customers. We went to the back where there was a lady at the register. Some people were there to order take-​out, some to pick up, and some to put their name down for a table. There were only two small parties ahead of us, but they told us 30 minute wait with hesitancy. We came back in 20 minutes and they did save a table for us. However, all this time, there was an empty table that could seat 8 people. I think someone made a reservation, but it was frustrating to see such a large empty table in a restaurant that could only fit about twice that number. Maybe they can move the soy bean fridge to the back and use that space to accommodate more tables?
There was only one server, and he was clearly overwhelmed. It took a while just to get water and the bill.
I think part of the problem is that the space is so small so it’s hard to manage the flow of customers. They also need more servers and a better way to manage people waiting.

Surprisingly, this tiny restaurant on Gayley, between In-​n-​Out and Fat Sal’s has pretty good food. Opening just five days ago, I was expecting a disorganized disaster, but the lunch time rush was handled like a pro.
Four of us grabbed the last available table in the very cramped place around noon and after reviewing the menu, we went up to place our orders. The set up is a little odd. There is a small table where the cashier stands. Menus are available at the register and after placing your order, the food is delivered to the table. Despite it being the cashier’s first day, and despite the fact that he admitted that he hadn’t had a chance to try the food, he delegated questions well enough that our table got just what we needed.
Our food came out quickly, which was great for a mid-​day meal. The waiters handled requests without any hassle and expeditiously. I was very impressed by the level of service and cleanliness. The food was also quite good. Among the four of us, we got the beef short ribs, noodles with minced pork sauce, tofu and eggplant, pork belly bowl, and a couple of tea eggs.
It was unanimous that the proteins were well-​seasoned but there was a divide regarding the tastiness of the tea egg. I thought the amount of meat was a little less than what I expected for the price and the amount of rice on the plate was a bit excessive. I hope that they improve that ratio.
Overall though, kudos to Top Leaf for running a relatively smooth operation during their first week.