Lucky City

These are some of the dishes I had for dinner last night at Lucky City in Monterey Park. It's located at 415 W Garvey Ave, between Garfield and Atlantic. Above is a shrimp chow mein. The noodles are pan fried in oil, so one side is super crispy. It's flipped onto the plate, and topped with a shrimp and chinese broccoli in sauce mixture.

Above we have geoduck clam prepared two ways. The belly is deep friend, and the neck is thinly sliced and sauteed in oil with garlic, soy and other spices. This native of the Northwest tastes so amazing, with the differing textures. By far the best dish of the night.

Above here is a winter melon soup prepared using the melon as a serving bowl. The soup, made with chicken, dried shiitake mushrooms, dried scallops, among other things, is garnished with a little crabmeat. Quite tasty, but more impressive visually.

The three dishes above are calamari, fried and topped with fried chiles; lobster in garlic and green onion sauce; and cod over veggies. All three were prepared perfectly. The calamari was crispy and light. The lobster was sweet and tender. The fish was light and flaky.

For this meal, we had about 9 dishes. Not pictured dishes were a chicken, some pork spareribs, fried tofu and chinese vegetables. My parents and older brother live in Monterey Park, so we've been to a lot of restaurants out there. Lucky City has been in our regular rotation for the past 6 months or so. I have to mention, like many restaurants, they have an issue with consistency. My favorite dish, the geoduck, was horrible the last time we were here. But last night, I couldn't get enough of it. I've been thinking about that dish for 26 hours now.

The menu here is similar to most of the other Chinese seafood restaurants in Monterey Park. To generate business, they have specials, such at buy 1 lb of lobster, and you get one free. I believe the geoduck special is five dollars a pound, but I forget. For geoduck, that's an amazing price, since wholesale of sashimi grade geoduck can run $12 a lb. The food is fresh, and when they're on their game, among the top 10 Chinese seafood restaurants in Monterey Park.