If you’re a fan of pan fried dumplings and soup pork dumplings (xiao long bao), I highly recommend you check out Beijing Pie House next time you’re in the San Gabriel Valley area to try out their meat pies (xian bing).
Beijing Pie House got on my radar after a review from Jonathan Gold in LA Weekly. The Gastronomer gave it good reviews as well. And then when my good friend/ guinea pig for trying new places Kung Food Panda also gave it the thumbs up, I requested we go. Immediately. Okay, almost immediately. We had discussions about it on a Thursday and on Saturday, DH, KFP and I were there.
We arrived in the late afternoon to find the tired staff napping and on a break. But they were nice enough to let us in anyway.
Beijing Pie House is most known for their meat pies. Each one is about the size of an English muffin. The outside is pan fried and the inside is stuffed with the filling you choose.
Lamb Pie (4 for $7.99)
When these arrived, we were warned that they are very hot. I cautiously poked my chopstick into one, in an attempt to split it open, but right away it began squirting out a tremendous amount of soup, much like a xiao long bao/pork soup dumpling. Unlike a XLB though, you can’t just stuff the whole thing in your mouth. So you kind of just have to carefully sip the juice while biting into the meat pie. I definitely recommend breaking it open to let the soup cool a little. If you bite in directly you might end up burning your mouth. I was definitely impressed by how much juice was stored in each one.
The lamb one had a good flavor to it. I could taste that it was lamb meat and it wasn’t too “gamey” for DH.
My one wish was for the outside to be crispier. I think they could have pan fried it a little more as the skin was barely crispy.
Beef Pie (4 for $6.99)
I wasn’t as much of a fan of these because they used a lot of vinegar with the filling and I don’t really like the taste of vinegar. DH liked these better though.
I saw leek pies on the menu as well, but my research showed they weren’t as good so we opted to skip them.
Millet Gruel
To go with the savory meat pies, we were given a complimentary bowl of millet gruel. It was not seasoned at all and tasted startlingly bland on its own. But it actually paired quite well with the meat pies if you alternated drinking the gruel and eating the pies.
Homeland Meat Cake ($7.99)
Layers of savory thin Chinese pancake are stuffed with ground beef. I love meat pancakes/cakes and this was one of the best versions I’ve had.
I’ve also heard good things about their lamb noodle soup with homemade noodles, but giving our eating marathon, we didn’t have room for that on this trip.
Unfortunately Beijing Pie House doesn’t offer frozen premade pies to take home to make on your own. We had some leftovers which heated up well in the toaster oven, but they lost all their juice. We enjoyed both the pies and the meat pancake here and are already planning on making another stop soon.
Beijing Pie House
846 East Garvey Avenue
Monterey Park, CA 91755
Oh, sh*t those meat pies look good!!
Hehe. They were super juicy and pretty good. I wish they would pan fry them slightly crispier, but other than that they were delicious. Need to get more.
One of my faves in the ‘hood for sure! It burns so good!
I really enjoyed this spot!
the pancakes look juicy. make me hungry for some. will have to give this one a try when i go to SD next time.
It’s actually in San Gabriel Valley in LA, a little under a two hour drive. But these were good! I was really impressed with how much soup each one had.
Ohh, those looks so good! Makes me pine again for things like this in San Diego instead all of the way up in LA. I’ll have to mark this on my “to visit” list!
I know what you mean. The chinese food is such a sad scene compared to LA. If I lived near SGV I would likely never cook again. So many places and so cheap!