H & H

Worst food ever! Bad service too!
Also there is no sign says Cash Only! When we had a question about the bill, the waitresses acted very mean!

Of course the first review is a can’t-be-negative-star type of thing.
I have actually filed a complaint to the local public health department due to what happened to me and my friend in this restaurant.
I’ll try to be subjective but, who am I kidding, when you had a bad experience with the food you eat it’s hard not to make it personal.
So here’s the appetizer: we went in there at around 3pm. No other guest was in the dining hall yet we smelled cigarettes soon after, which means someone might be smoking in the kitchen.
Here’s the main course: we ordered three dishes: the roasted lamb (kao yangrou chuan), hodgepodge (luandun) and stewed chicken with mushroom (xiaoji dun mogu). Don’t worry about the translation though: 99% of the menu is in Chinese, except its name, H & H.
The first two were fine, but when it comes to the stewed chicken with mushroom, you see, my friend tried to take the first bite but spat it out immediately. I tried to take a bite too but was wise enough not to once I put the glass noodles close enough to my nose. My friend should’ve smelled it first: it smelled like a wet mop been left in a dark corner for three months. No damn exaggeration, no sir and no ma’am.
We suspected that the smell came from the glass noodles in the bowl, and we called the waitress who served us first, who, kept saying ‘Impossible, it’s just the smell of the mushroom’ once heard the complaint. She tasted the glass noodles then, claiming it’s just the smell of the mushroom, hazel mushroom, or ‘zhen mo’ for my fellow Chinese friends. Thing is, I once went to the place where hazel mushroom is common (Yanji) and had this very kind of mushroom and it didn’t smell like this, not at all. The waitress then proceed to take some of the glass noodles to another person (another waitress or the boss woman), who insisted this came from the mushroom, despite me kept telling her the mushroom didn’t have this smell, even in this bowl. After she made her conclusion, everybody just went back to where they were, as if the whole thing didn’t happen, left us up in the air looking like this: O. O
Annnnnd the dessert: after we paid the check, for all three courses of course, my friend found a tiny bug in her water, as if I needed something else to make sure of my dissatisfaction with this place. And no, no one asked us if we needed more water.
Did I mention that this place has an A rating from health inspection?

The food here is extraordinary. From Xintian China around the Jinling area at the Northeast point of the country. It is similar to the New York and Boston area geographically as I describe the United States.
The food here is a culture in itself. I’ve tried their cold rice noodles with peanut sauce, fried pork chops, the bean curd noodles, the marinated stir fried lamb, and also the green bean sprouts. Everything ordered is quite tasty. Most dishes has a Northern Chinese spicy kick in it which actually wakes up our taste buds.
The cold rice noodles wasn’t spicy however. I am a lover of flat rice noodles, and that alone made it more enjoyable. Just like the Korean Bibimbap concept, you pour peanut sauce on top and start mixing all the noodles and vegetables together before it’s served. Delicious! My other favorite was the fried pork chops. The batter by itself was more like a tempura. It was tasty. However the pork chop was a bit too thin. Oh well… still enjoyed it. The lamb was also tasty. It was marinated before stir fried with leeks. I’m not a fan of both lamb and it’s green onions, but I also enjoyed since it’s prepared quite differently from other cuisines. You can’t really taste the lamb «after taste» while you chew which is a plus. The green bean sprouts was also delicious. It has a mild spicy kick in it as it’s prepared with tiny peppers. This dish is more traditional, as it’s similar to most Chinese restaurants.
I enjoyed every dish ordered. I have been here a couple of other times, and I left happy. It’s best to come with a person from this region, as it makes it much easier to order while experiencing its authenticity.
The place wasn’t full, and the service wasn’t that good. Nobody comes by to check up until you flag them down. A bit disappointing. I also wish they would serve with a smile instead of looking like they’re having a bad hair day. I think better service and more happy faces would make a difference in their business.
Oh well. The food is good… but the service needs to improve. Three stars. But can easily become four.
Sure, I would come back once in awhile.

Terrible service, waitresses are so bitchy here. Food is terrible and takes forever to serve. Everything is dirty, the table is sticky with grease and food scums. When we tell the waitress about table being dirty, she rolled her eye balls at us and walked away. I could not run fast enough to get out of this bloody hell!

This place has the best lamb skewers in San Gabriel Valley!
PS: They only take debit cars and cash.

This one is pretty good. People talks about the Lanzhou ramen, for me it is understandable. This restaurant is northeast style, so the chief don’t know how to make it. Overall 4 stars plus 1 star for my hometown restaurant in America.

Love the experience! No thrill place, but tasty and uncommon Chinese food. Servers were friendly, not extremely helpful in describing the menu; it just made the dishes more adventuresome! We had the big bone dish, which I liked. The potato dish was fabulous. So was the eggplant and potatoes. The dish with green beans noodles and peanut sauce was interesting too. Definitely worth checking out unusual dishes.

A no frills full-​on delicious Northern Chinese (I know it’s technically Northeast but I’m a white guy so the fact that I appreciate that there is Chinese food beyond Panda Express gives me the freedom to say this) spot where you can bring your own beer!
We tried Quail Eggs, Chicken Wings, Shredded Potato, Lamb Skewers and the amazing Mala Cucumbers. The Lamb was truly awesome, grilled with slight caramelization and dusted with cumin and chili. But the cucumbers were my favorite. Served in a family-​sized portion, the blend of garlic and Sichuan peppercorns, hot in taste and cold in temperature, was pure glee.
Will be back!

If you read Chinese, you will notice that H&H has a big banner that advertises Lanzhou ramen.
ITS A LIE!!! DON’T YOU BELIEVE IT!!!
Their «Lanzhou» ramen is more like Szechuan beef noodle then actual Lanzhou ramen that you will find in North West China. It has none of the five characteristics that defines what actual Lanzhou ramen is.
No way I’m coming back to this place.

A co-​worker came over to my desk last week and told me about a new Dongbei style (northeast style, see also my Shen Yang review) restaurant in Monterey Park called He He Mei Shi. The wife and I decided we’d give it a try if we could find it, not knowing the English name. Figured it out soon enough with a general location search on Unilocal and drove down that afternoon.
Very few reviews on here so far as I write this, but it looks like the review that was somewhat critical ordered the «wrong» items. Being cuisine from the northeast, I definitely would not expect shrimp to be a specialty, nor would anything that came from the ocean. I’ll say this a couple of times: order the lamb! If not lamb, I’m sure the hand cut noodles are good as well as beef dishes, as these are common to the cuisine. Also common and distinctive to Dongbei style is pickled vegetables, served cold, somewhat similar to Korean cuisine. Many of these cold dishes are served with vinegar. I am pretty flexible to eat a lot of different things, but vinegar is something I generally abhor, but most people would probably enjoy those dishes– just be aware some of these meat or vegetable dishes are commonly served cold.
The hit for me was the cumin lamb, which I have had at another Dongbei style restaurant, but while my previous experience was absolutely covered completely in cumin seeds, the lamb at H&H was prepared with more restraint. Lamb gets its own section on the menu, and that seems to be a recommended specialty. We asked for very spicy and it was perfect, as tasty and savory as anything. Huge dish, but they also have lunch special size as well.
We also got the big bone (which I thought I heard as «big bun» when my wife ordered it) which was a giant plate with giant pork bones and flavorful meat. Something of a Fred Flintstone affair that required some manual labor to separate the two. My wife said that it was commonly prepared in a broth and the meat would simply fall off. Great taste, but not something I would order again, ma ma hu hu.
My wife’s favorite was the beef tendon plate which I thought was pretty good. Again, plenty of flavor and that lovely red-​orange color that tells you that it will have a great pepper kick as well. The potatoes mixed in were tender and soaked up much of the beef and pepper flavor, a great combination. After we had ordered, we saw the separate skewer menu, which I’m sure is worth revisiting. 10 skewers per order, I’m sure the lamb is the highlight.
Definitely if you come here, get the cumin lamb, either on skewer or as a plate entrée. Fantastic.
Credit cards, yes! Parking was easy. No beer yet, they’re waiting for the license.

I reeeeeeally wanted this place to have good food… we went in and were blown away by the friendly people and service atmoshere (if you are familiar with Chinese restaurants then you know this is a real rarity)… I also was super happy to hear every single employee and guest of the restaurant speaking Mandarin (no offensive Cantonese brethren, but I am partial to Mainlanders, pu tong hua, and cuisine of Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan, etc etc… not a big fan of much of the Guang Dong or Hong Kong cuisine… especially the American-​ized England-​ized stuff so typically seen in restaurants in America, even the SGV).
So, about the food anyway, a huge dissappointment. The menu is really nice, even with a Huai Yang-​ese section (never seen that in US before) and the prices are good. There is a large section of lunch specials, all $ 5.99 and buy 3 get one free (I should have known better than try at these prices I guess). So, buyer beware, if you are looking for cheap eats, then this will fill your tummy. Don’t expect anything but cheap food though, you get what you pay for. If you like the American style basterdized Hong Kong style cheap food, then this lunch menu might be just what you are looking for.
We had the Gong Bao Ji Ding A14, Yu Xiang Qie Zi A31, and dried bean with shrimp (sorry forgot Chinese name, think is A12 or A13 on menu (sliced dry dofu sheet strips with shrimp), and a fish dish in red sauce, perhaps A22?). It came with hot-​sour soup that just wasn’t very good either, all of the dishes tasted as if they were made with minimal ingredients (read: lack of depth AT ALL, no seasoning but ketchupy-​salty-​fake-​cheap. The plain white rice was well cooked tho :) sigh again…
The Gong Bao Ji Ding was just not good, chicken undercooked, and really cruddy pieces of chicken (tendon, ligaments, etc), swimming in literally hundreds of fragments of chili pieces but lacked any heat whatsoever, it was just a filler for the goopy sauce to make it look like it was more food than was (peanuts were ok, sigh). Dofu strips with shrimp looked awful, like an old clump of bandaids, all stuck together, looked 3 days old, and just sad. The fish dish was also not very good, sauce was impossible: like a watered down ketchup with cornstarch added back to make it sauce-​like, fish itself was ok once cleared under the goop. The eggplant dish was just tolerable, lets put it this way, I have never had worse except at Kang Kang Xiao Mei (ug, barf, huge sigh). The eggplant actually had a couple bad pieces in it, the kind of rotten spots that should have been cut out and thrown away, never served to customers. There were several pieces that were undercooked throughout it, sauce was just acceptable.
Overall, it either felt like the cooks really had no idea what they were doing, or they were just battling with how to make super cheap food as profitable as possible but not giving much of anything into the dishes.
Parking tricky, they share a lot in the back with Lucky City (sort-​of-​ish). Once you have been there, it is easy ot spot, first time not so much.
The waitstaff were incredible, they were super polite, laid-​back, friendly, etc… asked if it was ok to box rice family style or wanted individual boxes, etc etc etc… may have been one of the best dining experiences of my life, and it was for take-​out! It felt like going over to a friends house, but without being kiss-​the-​customers-​butt at all.
I would have given 1 and half stars if it were possible. It wasn’t horrible, because it was inexpensive, but it did nothing to bring me back except for the service.
So, I will give them a couple more chances for sure, hope some of the other dishes can keep me going here… I worry though, the kitchen seems to lack the talent of the front of the house. If any Mainlanders or Northerners out there who care to direct me to a shining spot in the sea of SGV, feel free to let me know… getting tired of failing dozens of times after dozens of times.

Sichuan and Yang Zhou style cuisine. So there are some spicy dishes. Not bad. I just didn’t enjoy the pork with vermicelli, it wasn’t what I
expected perhaps different region of China.
Lunch special– buy 3 dishes get 1 free, free rice, free soup.
This place gets busy fast.