Mothers Day

My parents and I planned to celebrate Mothers Day on Saturday this year. And of course the destination would be the San Gabriel Valley for Chinese food. I got my mom a bouquet of fruit from Edible Arrangements. It had strawberries, pineapple, chocolate covered apples and cantaloupe.

As we left for SGV, we did not have a specific restaurant in mind, some of the ideas mentioned were Luscious Dumplings, Chung King, Hong Yei and MPV Seafood. We decided on Chung King on San Gabriel blvd for Spicy Szechwan food. None of us had been to this location before. It was lunch time and when we entered the restaurant, it was pretty empty. We turned around and left. We decided to go to Luscious Dumplings, but it was closed, so MPV Seafood it was.

It has been awhile since my last visit, actually two years. As we sat down, were served a complimentary soup and my personal favorite, iced chrysanthemum tea. My mom ordered enough food for a family of six or three members of my family. The first dish to come out was a nice roast chicken with a sesame dipping sauce. The chicken was served traditional Chinese style, on the bone and chopped. I love a basic roast chicken, the skin was crispy and the chicken was moist.



The dishes came fast and furious after that, chicken and black bean sauce, salt and pepper shrimp, thinly sliced beef tendon, chicken and salted fish fried rice. The tendon was shaved thinly and served with a chili oil and julienned scallions, I love beef tendon, but this dish was a bit bland. The shrimp was delicious, but lacking the salt and pepper seasoning and the fried rice was awesome. I thought this was it, but I was wrong. My mom does not mess around when it comes to eating. The next set of dishes were for advanced eaters only, tripe sauteed with vegetables, deep fried pig intestines and salt pepper silkworms.






The tripe dish was good, the pig intestines were crispy and came with a sweet dipping sauce. The texture of these intestines were interesting, the outside was crispy, but once you got by the crisp, the rest of it was chewy. This was the first time I have had intestines prepared like this. They were good, but I could only have a few pieces because they were so rich.







The salt pepper silkworms were labeled on the menu as "ground cucumber with and salt and pepper." But the picture of the dish showed what looked like worms to me. My mom had tried a similar dish in Hong Kong, she said was good. The worms were sauteed and served with fried garlic, I did not taste the salt pepper seasoning at all. The worms had a very nutty earthy flavor. I felt like the dish need more spice, but since it was basically a Cantonese restaurant, spicy would be hard to find. I tried a good amount of the worms, but they really didn't appeal to me.

I loved this meal, we had a nice variety of dishes. Any many things that I have not tried before. The most important thing was my mom had a good time. Looking forward to the next visit SGV.