King Hua - Alhambra

For me, the quality of a dim sum restaurant comes down to how well they execute the basics, and King Hua nailed it. The shu mai, har gow, fried turnip cake, chicken feet, and pork spare ribs all came in generous portions and tasted fantastic. I even tried their beef chow fun, and it was one of the best I've had. While they don’t offer any unusual or special items, they excel at the essentials, which is what truly matters. The service was prompt, although it did take a bit for them to remember my request for water, but that’s a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. In my opinion, King Hua is just a notch below Lunasia. Both restaurants are definitely contenders for the best dim sum in L.A. While I’d still choose Lunasia over King Hua, the latter certainly deserves recognition for being one of the top dim sum spots in the city.

I can confidently say that almost everything on the menu is quite good. While the king crab is a bit steep at $60 per pound, the other seafood options are reasonably priced. We ordered a variety of dishes, including Hainan slippery chicken, Chinese-style fried chicken, steamed cod, ong choy (a Chinese vegetable similar to spinach, cooked with garlic and bean curd sauce), sweet and sour pork, black pepper diced beef with red and green peppers, and my favorite—large prawns topped with garlic served over a bed of flat rice noodles (see photo). For dessert, you can choose from walnut, almond, or red bean served in a bowl. The texture is between a custard and a thick smoothie. I particularly enjoyed the walnut, which has a delightful creamy walnut butter oatmeal flavor. Pros: Plenty of parking, excellent staff service, and generous portions with lots of leftovers. Cons: A bit on the expensive side, so be prepared to splurge on fresh seafood.

Food here is delicious. Not all dim sum places are created equal and they have some good dim sum comparable to what you can find in Hong Kong the capital of dim sum. Quite authentic Cantonese experience which is what I hope for at a dim sum place! I tried a bunch of their dumplings with assorted seafood and veggies. The skin was soft and not too thick yet the dumplings didn't fall apart when I picked them up with chopsticks. The shumai had a normal yellow color and tasted like good shumai. Their deep fried dim sum was delicious too, like the soy wrap roll 腐皮卷 and the seafood salad roll 沙律海鮮卷。 The other highlights were their dinner dishes. My friend ordered their soy sauce chicken, roasted pigeon and the Osmanthus mussels 桂花蚌。ooolala, they're top quality! So hard to find roasted pigeon that isn't dry and mussels that are not chewy! The chicken was well marinated, smooth and juicy too without being greasy! We ordered a lot for 3 people plus a kid but we got a lot of leftovers. Definitely would come back again. Just that pigeon is worth it already!

S/O to ZQ for this recommendation! This is the type of place you take the traditional mom/dad for dim sum, despite them not having the rolling carts. Came here with my dad and brother after dropping my mom off at LAX. Pro tip 1: come early!!! Especially if your party is 5 . Pro tip 2: street parking is the only way, unless you snagged a spot in the small parking lot. Pricing: $1.50/person for tea of choice (and it says sauces...but there is sauce on the table already S is $3.58, M is $4.58, L $5.58, SP is $6.58, and C is $8.88 We sat down within 1 minute of waiting, and were quickly given menus to mark off our orders for round 1, and round 2. We quickly ordered: 1. 1 order of Shrimp and pork dumpling (L : fancy fancy! They add some fish roe on top of this. Pretty good! Meat is good quality, and a good balance of fatty and lean. 2. 1 order of Shrimp dumpling (L : The shrimp was plump, and the skin was bouncy! This was good. 3. 2 orders of Beancurd rolls with pork in oyster sauce (M : Yum! My dad and I really enjoyed this, and they give a decent amount of filling inside. They also added water chestnut (or jicama? for the extra crunch. 4. 1 order of chicken feet in black bean sauce (M : Not bad, but not the best I 've had. A classic dish to order, but 1 is good enough for me. They add some peanuts to the bottom, which is like a nice snack. 5. 1 order of Sticky rice wrapped with lotus leaf (L : Oh wow! Pretty impressed with this. Instead of one huge one (that is impossible to split , they wrapped 3 separate ones for easier consumption. The inside had a lot of filling, and the salty egg made a nice addition to the flavors. 6. 1 order of XLB (M : The skin was pretty good, and there was actually a lot of meat inside! The meat was leaner, so the juice was not as explosive (LOL . Not sure if I would get this again, though. 7. 1 order of Seafood congee (L : They gave a decent amount! However...they only had shrimp in it...where is all the other seafood?! The tea was pretty good! The pot was small so we needed lots of refill, but the servers were fast to refill and remove our empty bamboo racks/plates. Service wise- everyone was really....civil. They didn 't rush you, or try to force food on you. Overall, wouldn 't mind coming here again! I would definitely try their other dishes.

I'm currently on a Dim Sum Phase where I'm looking particularly for good value. This means for the price and taste, it has to be a good value. King Hua was on the list, I came here on a Saturday late morning, surprisingly it wasn't that busy at all. The parking lot is nice and big, but it may seem a little complicated to get into. Upon entry, it's a very nicely decorated restaurant, the chairs are nicely draped in in cloth and it's surpassingly not loud. This Dim Sum place definitely feels more upscale. This place also lacks the traditional push carts and is replaced with a menu based, this is good and bad. It's good because you know your food comes straight from the kitchen so it's fresh, and you can get exactly what you want, however the menu of this place lacked a couple of my favorites, the bbq pork rice noodle and the white sugar cake. So for the actual food, it is actually just okay for me. The beef tripe and stomach, it was overly flavored, more on the sweet side and it made me feel sick. The shiu mai was really chunky and I don't recall it tasting anything different. The har gow has a good taste with a lot of shrimp, it was good because it didn't have a weird after taste. I also ordered the radish cake and taro cake. The radish cake was chunky, and not smooth. The taro cake has to be one of the best I've had, it's not pan fried but deep fried, it was really good, a lot better than the radish cake. The beef ball tasted okay, I'm not a fan of water chestnut. The beef rice noodles was just okay as well, again not a fan of dim sum places putting water chestnut as fillers. Overall, the experience wasn't bad, however it's not going to be my go to place. It was nice to try, but for the cost, it's pretty steep for just okay food. You're talking about 5 dollars for 4 shiu Mai, compared to other dim sum places which average 3 dollars... I don't taste the 2 dollar difference. In fact, I didn't even like the texture. I can't really comment on the service since they didn't really do much for my table.