Ug's Grad School Blues: 點心 [Dim sum] at New Concept Restaurant, Monterey Park

My grandparents took me and E out for 點心 (dim sum) at a fairly new and expensive dim sum place called New Concept Restaurant. There were no less than 2 Los Angeles Times food articles on this place: one for dim sum, and one for their non-dim sum dishes. E and I were thinking one of the owners must've had an L.A. times connection, since while the food was executed well, it didn't warrant 2 such glowing reviews.

New Concept Restaurant

The exterior of the restaurant ain't much too look at. The building it's in has housed various other East Asian restaurants. I think the last few were Chinese seafood restaurants.

New Concept Restaurant: Order from menu

Unlike the prototypical busy dim sum restaurant, where the food comes to tables in carts, at New Concept you check items from a menu and the food is brought to you after ordering. This makes for dishes coming out at the right temperature (usually), and is what most high end dim sum outfits do. The carts are normally used in big dim sum restaurant operations, when it would be too slow and difficult to coordinate bring out each table's order.

As dishes are brought to each table, they are crossed of the receipt/list showing the table's entire order.

New Concept Restaurant: Stuff we ordered

Occasionally a waitress will carry a tray with items that you can buy a la carte without having ordered it before. The cost will, of course, be added to your total. That's what we did with this set of taro paste buns, 3 to a plate.

The buns were soft and sweet, with the top exterior of the bun a bit crisp. It was a fairly refined execution.