Good Alley
Chinese restaurant · Rosemead
8450 E Valley Blvd #108, Rosemead, CA 91770
Highlights
Soup dumplings, Chinese burgers, and unique tea drinks.
Soup dumplings, Chinese burgers, and unique tea drinks.
"This casual Northern Chinese restaurant resembles a well-lit airport lounge equipped with gadgets like touchscreen wait lists and a fancy teapresso machine. The long menu has plenty of eye-grabbing dishes to choose from, like chewy scallion oil noodles that release a plume of garlic-kissed steam when you mix them and a flaky Chinese wagyu “burger” (rou jia ma) with shaoxing minced beef spilling out the sides. Every dish we’ve tried is good, but if there’s one item that can’t be missed, it's the Kaifeng-style guan tang bao, which look like XLB after bulking season, plumped up with thick wrappers and lots of rich, flavorful broth." - cathy park, sylvio martins, brant cox, andrew ryce
"Wait times at this Northern Chinese spot in Rosemead from the Ji Rong people can reach up to an hour on the weekends, and the reason is their guan tang bao. And after trying these bulked-up soup dumplings, we get it. Good Alley’s fills their signature pork and crab variety with so much gravy-like broth each one glows yellow in their steamer basket. Aside from a few rounds of beautiful dumplings, make the wait worthwhile by adding an order of chewy scallion oil noodles and the wagyu-stuffed Chinese hamburgers on flaky pastry buns." - sylvio martins, brant cox, garrett snyder, cathy park
"Get a taste of the Northern Chinese restaurant from Rosemead without as long of a wait. Your choice of honey-glazed angus or wagyu (+$2) (two skewers per order) Your choice of spicy or mild sauce (three per order) Your choice of guava orange juice tea, guava lemon tea, or white bud jasmine lemon tea Two honey-glazed angus skewers, three kurobuta shrimp wontons tossed in spicy or mild sauce, and guava orange juice tea" - team infatuation
"What sets the San Gabriel Valley apart from other dining neighborhoods in Los Angeles is the availability of specific regional dishes from China, Taiwan, and more. Good Alley, a Chinese restaurant from the team behind duck specialist Ji Rong, has joined that lineup, serving guan tang bao: a soup dumpling that hails from the city of Kaifeng in the Chinese province of Henan, located 400 miles southwest of Beijing. In contrast to the delicate xiao long bao, which can be found across LA and has been further popularized at Din Tai Fung, guan tang bao comes with a thicker wrapper that cradles a mix of minced meat, like pork or chicken, and rich broth. At Good Alley, the signature chicken broth is the key; the broth is simmered for hours to remove impurities and has enough collagen to cool to a gel-like consistency. Four filling options for the soup dumplings are available on the menu at the restaurant, including Kurobuta pork and chicken. All meals at Good Alley should start with at least one order of the guan tang bao before adding in some mouth-numbing Sichuan-style Beef zhajiang noodles and an A5 Miyazaki wagyu beef Chinese burger, which is served on a flaky Shanxi-style thousand-layer pancake. Sip on a fresh-muddled lime or lemon tea to counteract the richness of the dishes, and don’t be afraid to order a bit too much — the food here packs up well as leftovers, especially when reheated in a steamer. Must-try dish: Kurobuta pork guan tang bao" - Mona Holmes
"The San Gabriel Valley will never tire of great dumplings, and this latest entrant from the owners behind Ji Rong Duck House plays the part well. Good Alley goes into a strip mall slot serving a range of pleated soup-filled dumplings in the style of Henan, a good 400 miles from Beijing in inner China. Other dishes include beef noodle soup, beef rolls, cauliflower dry pot, and clay pot pork with pickled cabbage. The chic ambience lined with traditional paintings and latticed lanterns could be plucked out of a fashionable district in any large Chinese city. — Matthew Kang, lead editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest" - Rebecca Roland, Matthew Kang, Mona Holmes
