After getting high marks from Yelp, Chowhound, and even the esteemed Mr. Jonathan Gold, I finally trekked to Monterey Park. Arrived there at 12:45pm, lunch hour crowd, got lucky with the parking. Waited for an hour plus to get seated. Once there, we ordered 10 items of dim sum. For 2 people, that's a lot of food. We ordered the must have's. Har Kaw, Siu Mai, Lotus wrapped rice, egg tart, Shrimp rice roll (their's was different, it's a mixed of shrimp with chinese donut), spare-ribs, almond shrimp ball, noodle with xo sauce, mushroom dumpling with meat, and roasted pork.
Living in Vancouver for 10+ years and having visited HK countless times growing up has given me the privilege of eating some of the best dimsums out there. After much comparison, Elite falls short of that expectation especially with high regards from the sites/people i've mentioned. However, this place is still good nonetheless.
Siu Mai lacked depth of taste, not enough pork flavor. Texture is beautiful though.
Har Kaw, almost opaque outer layer, good sized chunks of shrimp, good flavor but not enough to give you that mouthgasm all foodies look for.
Lotus wrapped rice, I loved this. Very flavorful rice, generous pork, mushroom, and sausage. Almost a 10/10. why almost? It's missing a salted yolk. If they had the salted yolk, this dish would have been magical.
Shrimp rice roll, I like the concept but still falls short in terms of flavor. The rice roll has no flavor which it gets from the soy sauce and the inner filling but being deep fried shrimp/chinese donut in the middle, the flavor got lost. The sauce they poured was generic and not enough of it. I'd go for the traditional ha chong next time. Pass.
steamed pork spareribs, unlike other restaurants who serves small spare-ribs, the ones here are good sized and very meaty. Has a very nice subtle flavor but very very good. Tender pork, good fat/meat ratio on each bite.
Almond shrimp ball, my wife wanted to try it as it seems off to put thinly sliced almond on the shrimp ball. On the first bite, the almond tends to suck all moisture from your mouth that may cause you to cough but once you build up saliva again (sorry for the graphic explanation) you then taste the shrimp flavor. It has very good shrimp flavor, good bouncy texture, but the almond throws it all off.
Noodle with xo sauce. Such a disappointment. No XO flavor at all, lacked taste, and very bland overall.
Roasted pork, very thinly sliced roasted pork but flavor is a-ma-zing. Who would've thought that those thin slices pack so much punch? I didn't even need to dip it in the sauce anymore. Crunchy skin. Makes me want to ask them for thick slices of this bad boy.
Mushroom dumpling with meat. A big sized dumpling, on the first bite, there's a mix of flavor, it's like they wrapped whatever was left in the kitchen to make this dumpling but it works! Very filling and loved the bits of yellow corn kernels.
Egg Tart, I would come back to this. I really wound. Flaky layered crust with a soft as pillow filling. I did not want to share this with my wife. I ate 2 1/2 of it and no matter how full I was, I had to eat it. This is a perfect egg tart.
I also checked off bbq pork bun (cha-siu bao) but they didn't get to put the order in but I didn't argue anymore as we were pretty full at this point. next time.