Tasty Noodle House - Sawtelle - Los Angeles

I went to an EDM concert and crashed with my friends near Sawtelle. It was go hard or go home, and we went hard and crashed hard. Getting up for lunch was painful, almost as painful as Sawtelle on a Saturday, which is more crowded than Disneyland at Christmas. Painful.

Tsujita: line. Marugame Udon: long-ass line. Tsujita Annex: Line wraps around the block. Blinded by hangovers, hunger, and hanger, we finally stumble across Tasty Noodle House, the only place in town with tables.

The menu is huge, and it has a page of XLB, but after we order, it's not hard to see why no one else wanted to eat there. Their quality is low, far lower than t0he location in Lomita. For starters, more than half of our XLB were actively leaking. No point in soup dumpling when all the soup is gone. We would have sent them back if they didn't take half an hour to make.

The Sheng Jian Bao have fluffy shells, but the bottoms are more soggy than crispy - someone needs to learn to pan-fry. Plus the filling is such a heavy boulder-ball of pork that it drops your stomach like a loopy roller coaster. 

A couple dishes do hit the spot. Not quite a bulls-eye, but close enough to that little green zone on the dartboard to be disputable. The Black Pepper Seafood Rice Cake has the texture right, and we appreciate curative carbs that neutralize our ethanol, but the seafood mix they stir-fried into it tastes like a generic bag from the frozen food aisle at Trader Joe's.

I believe we got the House Sauce Noodles, but the menu didn't depict it with canned carrots and peas. Still, the sauce is something. It packs some peanut punch, channeling a dan dan-brown sauce mash-up. A bit on the mucky side and I had to pick out the peas, but that didn't stop me from slurping.

We always order something green to break up all the heavy meats. The Sauteed Shredded Snake Gourd sounded pretty rad, but it turned out to be something pale, an undercooked green vegetable in a bowl of slimy, tasteless water. Someone needs to learn to saute. 

If there weren't so many lines and I wasn't so short on time, I would have run the other way. The prices here are high for Asian food, and the prices are exorbitant for BAD Asian food. Sad, because my experience at the Lomita location was decent, but after this lunch, I'm never coming back. 

Tasty Noodle House - Lomita

I love Lomita. So many tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurants, and they pop up suddenly, unexpectedly, like a rainbow after a storm. And finally, a Shanghai restaurant, promising dumplings without the line at Din Tai Fung. 

The dumplings are made to order so the Steamed Chicken with Spicy Sesame Sauce boosts my blood sugar while we wait. I get what the were trying to do here, but they really could have done much better. The sauce tastes like a combo of sesame and peanut, and t's thick and smooth and sweet. Not at all spicy and in a quantity that is so excessive. Still, it didn't cover up the pieces of chicken that felt a little slimy, a weird, slippery texture that skeeved me out a bit.

I was super excited to see Shanghai Sticky Rice Shumai as well. There, however, are gross. The rice is sticky, but some of the appealing adhesive is negated by a muddy flood of soy-sauce overkill. Highly disappointing.

The XLB are the opposite. Not quite as juicy as Din Tai Fung, but the broth is sweeter and almost as savory. Tender, flavorful filling, the very definition of this Shanghai staple.

These are the first Shanghai Grilled Pork Buns I've seen in LA. The steamed-bun wrapper is soft comfort-food, and the bottom is sesame-coated and seared to a just-right crisp. The filling is the same as the XLB, and it's perfect. Unfortunately, there's a weird coat of oil all around the outside, which turns a good thing greasy.

I don't love them, but it's worth going for the XLB. Won't be ordering much else next time, but the dumplings do hit the spot.