Wang Xing Ji

I had one reason for wanting to come to this restaurant on a recent LA trip: giant soup dumplings that you eat/drink with a straw.

An American branch of a popular dumpling house in Wuxi, China, this restaurant serves a variety of dumplings and noodle dishes but is most known for their ridiculously large crab and pork dumpling which is presented in its own steamer and with a straw.
Upon entering, there was a window displaying the dumpling making happening.

The menu was quite long, but we stuck with dishes given a “thumbs up” sign, which are the recommended ones.

Deep Fried Crispy Eel

I really love eel and was excited to see it on the menu. Since it was also a recommended appetizer, we decided to try it out. This was almost like eating eel fries because the eel was deep fried to the point that it was completely crunchy. Normally this may be a good thing, but you no longer could tell you were eating eel.  Given how expensive eel is, I wanted to be able to taste it, so we weren’t a fan of this dish.

Juicy Pork Dumplings

We also decided to give the juicy pork dumplings a try. Wuxi style cooking tends to be on the sweeter side and their pork soup dumpling (xiao long bao) actually is sweet. I don’t usually enjoy sweet and salty mixed together but thought we might as well give it a try.

Unfortunately, we didn’t really like these. First off, the tops of several of the dumplings looked quite unattractive with the gray stuff from the pork coming out of the top of the folds. In addition, the skin did not have the elasticity required for a good soup dumpling, breaking almost immediately upon contact with our chopsticks.

We also didn’t really like the soup. The sweet aftertaste just didn’t work for us.

After two misses, the famous dumplings arrived.

Lemon Mug Cake

I’ve been getting a lot of requests for lemon recipes: lemon bars, lemon cakes, etc. I’m working on trying to get some on the blog but I rarely have fresh lemons in my house and I’m not a very big citrus dessert person.

I recently had a few lemons laying around and decided to try making a lemon mug cake.

Islands’ New Menu Items

I was recently invited to check out some new menu items at Islands. After seeing some of the options including poke and miso glazed salmon bowl, I went to go check it out.

Poke

This diced raw tuna appetizer is something I constantly see as a passed hors d’oeuvre at parties and weddings but not something on a restaurant menu, which is a shame because Mr. K and I both love it. So I was really excited to see it on the menu at Islands and thought it was a pretty good rendition. The tuna is marinated in soy sauce and sesame oil. It’s served with freshly made wonton skin-like chips as opposed to the regular Islands chips. It’s a new dish on their appetizer menu and something we’d get again.

Hawaiian Sliders

I hadn’t been too impressed with the beachside sliders that they introduced previously. I opted for turkey instead of beef and that made a huge difference. The turkey patty was moist, with ground turkey loosely packed and a little bit of a spicy kick. The buns were warm and toasted and I loved the addition of the grilled pineapples. This is one of the appetizers currently only offered during their Beach Break Tuesdays, which is from 4pm until closing at the bar on Tuesdays ($5.95).

Miso Glazed Salmon