East Gourmet Seafood - Rosemead

This dim sum restaurant earns 3.5 stars. While it’s fairly typical in offerings, it stands out as one of only two places serving pork feet in sweet vinegar as part of their dim sum menu. This particular dish is said to promote youthful-looking skin, and the portion size is significantly larger than what you'll find at other restaurants. Plus, it tastes really delicious!

This isn’t a bad dim sum restaurant in the Rosemead area. The prices are quite reasonable, averaging around $2 per dish. The food is tasty and well-prepared. The service is prompt and courteous, which is impressive given the high volume of guests they need to attend to in a short period. The carts come around frequently, so it's easy to catch a server if you’re looking for something specific that you don’t see.

Another standout dish was the “Schneeberg” bao, a sweet bao topped with a thin layer of white, sugary crust. Generally, these baos are filled with some custard, but here, the filling is sweetened taro root—and it was excellent! So delicious, especially when fresh. Unfortunately, that was about the only highlight of my meal. The siu mai was disappointing—too large chunks of pork with an off-taste and poor texture. The scallop cheung fun was also lacking; the scallops were muddy and had a fishy flavor, and the fun was too tough. The har gow was mediocre. The lotus leaf-wrapped sticky rice was pretty good, featuring chestnuts, which was a nice touch. The tofu leaf-wrapped pork roll was decent, and I must say the chicken feet were excellent. I also plan to try the char siu bao tomorrow, although that’s not really my preference. We must have ordered some other items, but I can't really recall. The dim sum prices are incredibly reasonable at $1.88 each, but it's unfortunate that most of the food didn’t meet expectations. The snow mountain bao and the lobster/yee mein deal earned an extra star, along with the tea we ordered. We typically get a mix of pu erh (po nay) and jasmine tea, liking it dark and strong—and we certainly had a lot of it! Surprisingly, the teapot held up well, remaining strong even after three or four refills. As for the service, it was mostly good, but a number of the servers zoomed past our table without any communication. We were seated right next to the kitchen door, which at first seemed like a noisy choice, but later felt advantageous as we got our food fresh. However, after a while, I noticed that some dishes were delivered right to tables further away before ours. The server with the snow mountain baos rushed by so quickly that I had to chase after her just to get a plate. For dinner, I returned, and it was slightly better than the dim sum. The prices were standard, but the portions were small. The duck and bun were cut into overly large pieces. They offered lobster, hot pot, and chicken dishes for dinner, and the service was very good.