Lake Spring Shanghai Restaurant

It may have taken a while for it to reach my mouth, but I’ve found the best Shanghai restaurant in town! Everything from the Lion Head (Large Meatballs) to the Four Treasured Delight to the Sweet Rice Ball Soup dessert is scrumptious! Their House Special Ham Hock is a must try. It felt like royalty when this dish was brought to my table. The texture of the meat is extremely tender and juicy. Each bite of it feels like I’m in heaven! The chefs have created an awesome menu and it’s a shame they only have about 10 tables to serve. The service is pretty decent and I hope to dine in again another day.

This restaurant has shrunk in size but the food is still top quality. The lake spring minced beef soup is a most. Let’s not forget the orange peel chicken which is one of the best in town. Kids love the steamed fish. This place has been a favorite after two decades coming here. Kids grow up on thier soup.

I ordered the sea cucumber with brown sauce, taste average but pricey $ 39/​-​. I also order the Shanghai style spare ribs is pretty good but the great and the dried shrimp with Chinese squash is fresh and nice crunch texture & salted shrimp flavor to it. I’ve been to this restaurant probably more than 20 years ago. Back then, this is my go-​to Shanghai family restaurant. I suspected the owner has changed. Would I go again? Maybe but I think there are plenty of restaurant choices in that area for me to explore.

The best walnut shrimp! I have eaten walnut shrimp from many different restaurants, but the one here is the best. The sweet mayo glaze was sweet just enough without overpowering the shrimp, and the walnut is sweetly crispy. What I like especially is how the shrimp was LIGHTLY battered in such a way that I didn’t taste much batter, and yet the shrimp’s crispiness was maintained, and at the same time not overcooked. Normally this dish only tastes good when it first comes out because it gets soggy quickly due to the typical thick batter, but the walnut shrimp here was still delicious the next day refrigerated. Amazing!
Their complimentary hot & sour soup was addicting, but I couldn’t figure out why. It looked common and normal just like any other restaurants’s, nothing special really, but for some reason I just couldn’t stop eating it. Maybe the devious chef here sneaked in some kind of addictive drug as part of the ingredients for this soup?
Service is always great. Jenny and Polly are the best!

This review is for their pig feet. I only know about this place because it was recommended to my parents by their friends (specifically for the pig feet). The pig feet is awesome — the meat is moist and tender. I always make a soup from the bones after so the $ 20 gets you a couple of meals.

I’m putting one star because the restaurant is closed. Went there for lunch today but the doors were locked with no explanation. Hope it wasn’t a mandated closure.

Shanghainese restaurant. The food is pretty mediocre, I ordered a bunch of typical Shanhainese dishes and wasn’t impressed by any of them. I actually ate here today for lunch and am having a hard time remembering most of the dishes I tried.
Pork pump was not bad, somewhat pricey at $ 19 compared to similar restaurants in the area. Fried fish with seaweed was kinda soggy and unremarkable. Service was pretty awful even by Chinese standards, the table next to us was seated after us and got their food first. They also forgot one of the dishes we ordered. We pointed out these shortfalls and they comp’ed one of our other dishes, which was nice, but it still isn’t enough to make me ever come back here.
Apparently this place has been in business for 20+ years, and after taking a look around the restaurant I was starting to figure out how this place has been able to stay afloat with such «meh» food. Every single person in the restaurant except me, probably 20 or so people, was over the age of 50, I shit you not. This place depends heavily on regulars who have been coming in for years, probably since before there were other, actually decent Shanghai restaurants in the area. The owner told me «See you next week!» when I left, even though this is the first time I’d ever set foot in there.

Food here is not Shanghai style but Cantonese cookiing. Came here for lunch on Saturday and I was totally disappointed. The shrimp was undercooked, the meatball tastes terribly salty. The four treasure delight has no meat in it. Service is slow as there are only two waitresses. I keep wondering how this restaurant can survive in this area.

I came here in a party of 7 adults+1 toddler and we ordered 7 dishes. Maybe my review is biased from having skipped lunch, but I really really enjoyed our dinner here on a Wednesday night. There were just a couple other tables so service was very attentive and quick. Food started coming out probably within 5 minutes of ordering and just kept streaming out until we got everything.
Our server recommended the ham hock, their specialty, so we got that. It was the first to come out since I guess they have it cooking all day and ready to go whenever. It was really good: meat falling off the bone, the skin was soft and gelatinous, and very flavorful.
Also got the walnut shrimp, which was cooked to perfection: the batter & sauce was light and not overly sweet (I hate heavily battered things and don’t like it drenched in sauce), the shrimp was perfectly crisp and not overcooked which I was impressed with since many restaurants overcook it, and the walnuts were perfectly candied and really crunchy.
Other things we ordered: snow pea sprouts, bean curd tofu with minced pork, kung pao chicken, yu-​xiang eggplant, and bamboo shoot with minced pork. I think the bamboo shoot was the least flavorful dish but it could easily be because it was a last-​minute order for the table after everyone was mostly done with everything else so our tastebuds could’ve just been overloaded at that point.
We got a sweet sticky rice with red bean paste (ba bao fan) for dessert on the house and our bill came to $ 91 before tip, which I think is really reasonable. There was a bit of leftovers but I think we wouldn’t have had any leftovers and just the right amount of food if we didn’t order the last dish or if our 8^th person were an adult.
We parked in the lot of the plaza west of Lincoln along Garvey, where there was plenty of space: same plaza as Quickly & Ma Ma Lu’s Dumpling house. There’s some street parking out front if it’s not busy.
It’s a small restaurant that I think had 4 large tables and a handful of smaller ones. Perhaps keep that in mind if you are going during a peak time like the weekend or lunch during the week as I imagine it would get slammed.
Highly recommend!

This is place is amazing. One of my favorite places for Shanghai style food. I would recommend this place. Will be back for sure!

I love this place. My review may be biased because my family and I have been coming here for over 10 years and we have a great rapport with the owner/​waitress, but it’s a great restaurant.
Everything is family style, the food is always of a good consistent quality, and if you come for lunch, the prices are SO GOOD. We came last week with a party of 7 and ordered a million things for lunch, we’re huge eaters and we had leftovers to take home, and the total came out to $ 85.00.
Definitely worth checking out if you like Shanghai style Chinese food.

The fried crispy noodles was sooo goood her! We also had XLB (skin was too thick), special pork hock (I loved it!), soup with twisted bean curd (ok), fried crispy Kale (really really good!), steam fish (meat was too tough), walnut prawn (too fishy and did not taste fresh), Mantou (very nicely done), appetizer combo (not good) and dessert soup with black sesame small ball (pretty nice). Service was really slow because it was a small kitchen.

As far as Shanghainese food goes between this place and Shanghailander Palace in Hacienda Heights, S.P. wins hands down! I haven’t been to this place in over five years, and I felt that these place had changed… a LOT.
We didn’t order much yesterday for the lunch specials, but my favorite… the Lion’s Head was really not at par… at all.
Where was the head? I mean… where was it?
All I saw was just two «meatballs» like I could see on a plate of Italian spaghetti! And the taste? You don’t even want me to go there.
And I wanted to put the «meatballs» on the plate or rice, and even the RICE didn’t even TASTE like rice!!! The [rice] tasted mealy and soft, and BLEH! After they changed the owner, things really went downhill for this place!
I’ll go back to Shanghailander Palace (yes, even if it takes me an extra 20 – 25 minutes from work!)

Still the best place!
SEriously, a place I would consider having my wedding food catered from. Yup, that’s how serious I am

This is my hands down favorite Chinese restaurant in the SGV. If you want traditional family style food, the food is great here and I’ve lived in China before. Try the garlic sauce fish pieces, some stir fried green beans, and xiao long bao appetizers. I had a birthday dinner there once and they even roasted a pig for me. (2 day advanced notice). This place is delicious and clean.

I’ve eaten here many, many time’s and we are fans. LS is Shanghai style food — they serve soup dumplings and these are tasty with the skins being a bit thicker than your «typical» soup dumplings.
Our favorite dish is the house special shrimp. It has a sweetish glaze but is very tasty. We also like the garlic fish and the shanghai style ribs which are small and quite tasty.
Overall the menu is good. Nothing special, just a good food Chinese restaurant.
The restaurant is on the small side with about 10 tables, including a few large round ones large families. The décor is so-​so and the service is fast but a bit impersonal, although the two waitresses work really hard.
My one big complaint and it’s not their fault is that there is no AT&T signal.

Our friend visiting from Newport Beach took us to Lake Spring Shanghai Restaurant last night. She knows Monterey Park like the back of her hand since her mom used to live in town. We left the ordering up to her and she rattled off a string of dishes in Chinese to the waitress and off she went to the kitchen. I was hoping for subtitles but I waited patiently to find out what we were going to eat. Here’s what came to the table…
Sauteed Four Treasures in Hot Sauce — Diced Green Beans, Pork, Red Pepper, Onions in a savory sauce (not hot at all but very tasty). This also happened to be my favorite dish of the night.
Seaweed Fish — A very delicately fried seaweed battered fish. Tasty but I would have liked some sort of dipping sauce. My husband liked it as it was.
House Special Ham Hock — A seven hour steamed ham hock. Not a pretty sight but the meat was delicious! This one came with a dipping sauce of ginger and soy sauce. Of course my husband went right for the pig feet.: (
Shanghai Style Spare Ribs — Fried sweet ribs… what’s not to like.
The waitress was terrific and when I asked to see the menu so that I could see what we ordered, she went the extra mile and brought me a to go menu and circled all of the dishes we had. We are definitely coming back to try more dishes!

Lake Spring Shanghai Restaurant
Overall
4.5 Stars
Gold medal — Super nice server
Silver medal — 8 Treasure Sticky Rice Cake
Bronze medal — Soupy Dumplings
The service here at this little restaurant was off the charts for a chinese restaurant. Most of you that have dined at chinese restaurants know what I mean. The super nice server talked to our table with a smile. Yes, believe it a smile at a chinese restuant. She offered a free vegetable dish, since she noticed we didn’t order veggies. The super nice server also gave up a free super sizing on our 8 treasure! Two thumbs up for the super nice servicer!
This restaurant serves the rare asian dessert, eight-​treasure glutinous rice cake aka Sticky Rice and in chinese Ba Bao Fan. Historically the «8 treasures» included lotus seeds, almonds, red dates, sweet bean paste and pieces of preserved or candied fruit, over which a sugar syrup was poured at serving. It requires some effort to make and involves steaming the rice twice. Since, the cooking process is so rigorous most restaurants do not waste their time and efforts. Lucky for us, we can get the 8 treasure here!
The soupy dumplings (Shao Long Bao) were pretty delicious here and for $ 3, you can’t beat that.
HAPPY 8 TREASURING!!!

I used to come to this establishment back when they had a restaurant in Rowland Heights, but ever since that place closed down, I haven’t been to another Lake Spring. I didn’t even know this place existed until my parents suggested having dinner here one night for their anniversary.
The place itself is nothing to wow over. Really stark white walls with a few hints of Chinese wall décor and adages written in gold calligraphy. We came on a Monday night, and there was practically nobody there. I asked my parents whether this was normal, and they said yes. They get the bulk of their business later on in the week.
We ordered a simple set menu that consisted of Braised Pork and Taro, Fish Maw and Seafood Soup, Assorted Stir-​fry vegetables, Braised Sea Cucumber, Tofu, and some other dishes I can’t remember. The food overall was pretty good, especially the sea cucumber. That was definitely the star to me. What I didn’t like was the overall oil content. Given that it is a Shanghainese style restaurant, where oil usage has a tendency to be on the higher side, every dish had so much of it! A few here and there I don’t mind, but when it’s in every dish, the flavors are not allowed to shine.
However, I did appreciate the freshness in the ingredients. Most were well prepared, but next time, I’d probably ask them to add less oil.

Just learned my grandfather use to come here… old-​g shanghai place. Was told it was the first Shanghai restaurant either in the US or in California/​West Coast. Pretty interesting face to know.
So this place was twice its size before but now its small but with 5 or 6 big round tables and probably 2 smaller tables for 4ppl. Parking is in the front, not sure about back… hard to find or see the place.
Food: Love it, I’ll list it all after I find my pictures to post it… but if you know how to order right then its gooooddd food for dinner at least. Looking at the below reviews, doesn’t look like much ppl order the same things my dad did
Causal local dinky place. Love it! But it is a little pricey compare to other places, but I think its worth it just order what I got.
P. S. This is a pretty chinese restaurant, meaning definitely not the taste american folks like but they’ll probably like to go to see how Chinese cuisine is like or taste.