Kirbie's Cravings

Monterey Park- Yi Mei Chinese Pastries


Yi Mei Chinese Pastries
736 S Atlantic Blvd

Monterey Park
, CA 91754

(626) 284-9306

When Boyfriend and I used to go to Monterey Park, we had no idea where to go. If yelp was around, we hadn't discovered it yet.  And we didn't read food blogs either.  So we would just go into a random place and try it out. Since I've started food blogging, I've collected a list of places I want to try out in the Monterey Park area.  The week before we were to make our trip, I was so torn.  I didn't know where to go! Too many places were on my list.  I went back and forth, constantly changing my mind, reading every review possible.  Finally, I settled on Yi Mei Chinese Pastries.

Yi Mei Chinese Pastries sells a variety of Taiwanese dishes, including all the usual breakfast items.  The best thing is that they serve the breakfast dishes all day long.

Yi Mei is a very small shop with just a few tables.  While we were there, all the customers either got stuff to go, or were there to order their steamed buns.  Apparently their steamed buns are pretty popular.  When we were there, we saw displays of them.

Since we had no where to go, we opted to eat at the empty shop.  The lady who took our order was really nice. 

We started off with the Taiwanese meatball.

A Taiwanese meatball (ba wan) isn't like a normal meatball.  The outside is a chewy, mochi like texture.  Though much thicker and chewier than mochi.  The inside is filled with ground meat.  I was disappointed when this came out.  It was so flat and the sauce didn't taste right.  The inside meat tasted pretty good though, but the skin wasn't right.

Next, we got beef noodle soup.

Boyfriend has been craving NRM a lot lately.  While eating this, he proclaimed he could eat this for breakfast, lunch and dinner every night. I wasn't very impressed with this version of beef noodle soup.  First, it had sour pickled vegetables.  While this is often found in Taiwanese beef noodle soup, I'm not very fond of it as it makes the broth taste sour.  The meat also wasn't that flavorful.  And the noodles weren't that great either. 

Next, I ordered a rice roll (fan tuan)

At my grandmother's old place in Taipei, there was a rice roll vendor right in front of her building.  Every morning we would go down and get fresh rice rolls for breakfast.  It was fun watching him make it.  He had different ones.  Salty ones, salty and spicy ones, ones made with purple rice, white rice, and also sweet ones filled with red bean paste.  I preferred the salty and spicy ones with purple rice. 

A rice roll is like a burrito/sushi roll.  The inside is usually a chinese fried crueller (yu tiao), dried shredded pork, and pickled vegetables (usually the spicy pickled radishes).

The rice roll was pretty good.  The crueller was still crunchy.  Sometimes places use old, no longer crunchy cruellers which ruins the taste roll for me.

We also ordered a green onion pancake.

The pancake was pretty good.  It had a good amount of doughiness and a good amount of onion flavor. 

Finally, I ordered an oyster pancake.

While the sauce was right, the oyster pancake was completely wrong.  It's supposed to be like a pancake, with a chewy flour base, egg, oysters and some vegetables smashed into the pancake.  This was a giant omelette with all the vegetables and oysters sitting in between the folds of the omelet instead of being blended into the batter.  Plus there were way too many vegetables.

All in all it was a pretty disappointing experience. 

Yi Mei Chinese Pastries on Urbanspoon

Subscribe to receive new post updates via email

don’t miss a thing!

Get new post updates via email:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8 comments on “Monterey Park- Yi Mei Chinese Pastries”

  1. These photos is a great reminder what great hole in a wall Taiwanese bakery. In 2010, Yi Mei’s neighbor was a tenant selling foot massages. Whatever they were brewing burn down the roof of the bldg. Its 2012 and the bldg is still under construction. Dont know if Yi Mei will ever come back.

  2. I guess it’s hard to make a good oyster pancake. Even in Taiwan, not all of the stands made good ones.

  3. I’ve been on the hunt for a decent oyster pancake in the US for years and have yet to find one. I’m sorry this was a disappointment. At least they fan tuan was good, I love that stuff!

  4. Hi Kirk- Really you don’t like rou song? Wow, I think you’re the first person I’ve ever met who doesn’t like it.

  5. I’m glad you liked the post! If you can’t tell, I’ve been having a lot of Taiwanese food cravings lately! Heh. I think it’s because around this time last year I was in Taiwan eating all these yummy foods.

  6. Hi Kirbie – I still haven’t developed a taste for Ci Fan Tuan…..probably because I’m not a great fan of Rousong. The Missus however loves the stuff.

  7. Hi Kirbie,
    Oh i so loved this post b/c of the ba wan and fan tuan pics. One of my best memories of taiwan was also the fan tuan vendor – i love love love the sweet fan tuan.
    The ba wan in your pic looked really yummy – i’m not a fan of the mochi outside, but i love the filling. Too bad it wasn’t as good as you hoped!
    I agree w/ you about the NRM – the noodles look like spaghetti noodles!
    Thanks for the post – have a good wkend 🙂