Hong Yei Restaurant

This place is not your stereotypical generic chinese/cantonese restaurant. They have a good variety of strange and spicy stuffs in their menu, and they're definitely oilytasty!

They're best eat in with a group of 4 or more people. Their dishes are family portions with really strong in flavor. They meant to be shared, not 1 dish for 1 person, that would be too much. Variety of a few different communal dishes eaten with rice are the best way to enjoy it.

House Specialty Szechwan Style Fish Fillet $12.99

our favorite dish in this place, it has 3 chillis sign on the menu, indicating very hot.
Fish fillet, beansprouts and cabbages smothered in chilis, szechwan peppers and chili oil
We always eat only a little bit of it, mixed with rice.

There's usually plenty of leftover from this one unless you come in with a bigger group of people, and the longer it stays as leftover, the more flavorful and spicier it gets.
Peking Duck $29.99
Have to let them know one hour in advance, since they don't have these things hanging on their window. it's made to order and peking duck takes a while to prepare for the flavor to get it right.


the condiments

pick 1 meat, 1 skin, a scoop of bbq sauce, slivers of shaved cucumber & green onion, then wrap it in the wrapper and eat it like a taco.


whatever left of the ducks they made into a ridiculously mighty flavorful soup.

the picture might not look like much, but its like a really really good chicken soup on crack.
Better consumed while still hot, cos it's really oily, cold duck soup is definitely not oilytasty!

At the time,they have a promotion special if you order beyond $40, you can get seafood special for $1.99.
So we got this Sea Cucumber with white sauce and veggies.

very very tasty

Cold appetizers from the counter
combo choice of 2 meats and 1 veggies in a plate for about $5ish

that one is veggies, pig's ear, and super thinly sliced beef (I was guessing it was tongue, but not sure). The meats are very spicy and flavorful, and the veggies should cool things off. Recently they don't have that same veggies in the picture anymore, they substitute it with cucumbers.
or spicy sliced gizzard for the meat choice (the middle one)


Tasty spicy deep fried lamb chops $9.99, we only had it once, and it was pretty freakin-licious.

there's very little meat in the lamb though, so you need to eat around the bone to get that tiny meat of tastyness.

They have variety of stir fry beef dishes and they're always very soft, flavorful and tasty!
Mongolian Beef $7.99, not spicy, but really good

Black Pepper Beef, served in sizzling plate (we don't have the picture of it while it was on its sizzling plate). We always ate a bit of it with rice.

fantastic while they are served hot in their sizzling plate, not so great as leftover as they becomes too peppery.

Beef with Chef Incredible Sauce

spicy and good, not sure if they have this one on the menu anymore. We had this a while ago when they just opened.

Squid with Yellow Vegetables

good in small portions, eaten with rice and other meals on the table.

This one strike me as memorable:
Triple delight on Sizzling Rice $8.99

3 kinds of seafood and the vegetables in tasty goopy sauce is poured over crispy rice.

They have soup too, it was good, but we don't usually go there for the soup dish.


roasted salted peanut served free on the table


Drinking chinese hot tea is highly recommended during consumptions of these oilytasty food. Cold drinks and soda will solidify the oil, not good.


interior of the restaurant


Their website have all their menus and more pictures of dishes we haven't ordered yet.

Hong Yei Restaurant
288 S San Gabriel Blvd #103-104
San Gabriel, CA 91776
(626) 614-8188‎

Mon- Sat: 11 am - 10 pm
Sun: 11 am - 9 pm

They're located on the intersection of Broadway and San Gabriel Blvd on the complex of 288 Plaza. Parking is pretty abundant inside the plaza.

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Nasi Cap Jay - Stir fry 10 veggies with rice

Nasi=rice (in indonesian), Cap=ten (in hokkien), Jay=veggies (in both chinese and hokkien?), but anyway, it's basically stir frying a bunch of vegetables with a little bit of meat and seafood, add salt and pepper to taste and it's served with rice.
I'm not sure if it's an original chinese food, but it's very common in indo (well at least in java, as far as I know).

Start with the ingredients, I don't think you need exactly 10 type of vegetables, but basically put in whatever you like and however much you want it.

I used celery, bok-choy, cauliflower, tomatoes, brocolli, carrots, yellow pepper, and the usual stir fry always start with combination of onions, garlic, shallots and ginger.


I actually end up making so much food this time, enough to feed a jail full of people, so the amount of food here are a bit much. But you know, leftover can be for lunch the next day.

Let's start chopping all the veggies first. Meat, seafood and garlic etc are later.

carrots are cut about yay big


cauliflower chopped


brocolli, and yellow pepper


bok choy and some mystery chinese veggie I saw on the alhambra farmer's market, forgot to ask what is the name of it.
Separate the leaves and the thicker stalk part, cos the thicker stalk part takes longer to cook, therefore will go in first in the stir fry.

and after all the veggies cut, start peeling and chopping off the onions, gingers, garlic and shallots.

we are always overdosed on these, cos we used an extreme amount of em when cookin hehe

onions are sliced, and I want all the garlic, gingers and shallots to be finely chopped, so I just toss em to the food processor, so the machine can do all the fine chop for me.


after that, peel the shrimp, and rinsed them with salt water. why? I dono, it kinda make sense to me cos shrimp lives in salt water?

so here's all the ingredients are ready before start stir frying.

start from the top left:
-cauliflower
-tomatoes
-brocolli
-carrots
-celery
-meatball (optional, I just toss it in cos I like meatball, and it's premade from supermarket)
-bok choy (and the chinese veggies I dono the name of)
-yellow pepper (I just pick a pepper that has different color from the rest of the veggies to make it more colorful)
-ground chicken (can be substituted with sliced chicken breast, but I'm too lazy to cut the meat, so I bought a pre-grounded meat from supermarket)
-chopped onions, garlic, gingers, shallots
-a bit of shrimp (or scallop)

at this point, prepare to make the rice, so it's going to be warm and ready to go when the stir fry are done.

since all the ingredients are ready to toss
heat up the oil, about 3-4 tbs of corn or veggie oil mixed with a bit of sesame oil.
I dont usually measure them, just however much enough oil so the food wont stick, cook on about medium high heat


toss in a tiny bit of garlic, if it's bubbled then the oil is hot enough
so toss in all the onions, garlic, gingers, and shallots and stir well so they wont stick


when it's half done, toss in the chicken, add a bit of salt and pepper and stir fry well

close the lid to cook a bit faster

then chicken is like half done, toss in the shrimp, and add a bit more of salt and pepper.

btw, the shrimp usually very fast too cook, so tossing them pretty early like this makes them a bit overcooked later, but I don't mind that hehe, so if you want your shrimp soft, maybe it needs to go in a bit later.

also add the carrots, cos they took a while to cook too

add a bit of water
mix well and closed the lid to cook a bit

open the lid, it seems that they're pretty well cooked, mixed well

add a bit more salt and pepper
then toss in the celery stalk, cauliflower,and brocolli

mixed well

closed the lid to cook

after a bit while, toss in the tomatoes, cooked meatball, and yellow pepper
add very bit salt and pepper, mixed well

close lid to cook

after that, the leaves of the bok choy and the mystery chinese veggie goes last, mixed well and close lid to cook.


when it's opened, they all seemed to be all well cooked and theres a little bit watery in the pot.

since this meal supposed to be a bit goopy and thick, I added a mixture of 3-4 tbs of tapioca flour with some water and toss it in the pot.
can also use corn starch to thicken the liquid.
But if you dont like goopy stuff, can just leave it as it is.
salt and pepper is always added to taste.

ta daa! served with rice

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Stir-fry Potato Bok-Choy Beef

I learned cooking this meal from my mommy, I've made it many times and my hubby loves it.
So in the practice of writing my foodblog, I decided to put this as my first recipe.
It's kind of a lot of work compared to the other recipes I planned to put on this blog, but we happened to have pictures ready for this, so here we go.

When I cook something, I'm not set on the idea that you have to put exactly this much of this and that to make the meal, I think everybody have different taste and preference on how much garlic, salt or sugar they want to put in their cooking.
So I'm pretty loose on describing the amount of ingredients. The recipe on this blog is aimed toward people who knows how to stir fry, and just like to experiment with the ingredients themselves.
I put pictures below showing how much ingredients I use, so you can get the idea.

Ok, let's get started

Ingredients:
garlics
shallots
gingers
meat (beef, chicken or pork, whichever you like)
bok-choy
potatoes
vegetable or corn oil (for deep frying)
sesame oil (minor contribution, not always necessary)
Oyster sauce (key sauce ingredient)
soya sauce (also necessary)
salt
sugar
black pepper

Start with pre-marinating the meat. I used beef for this one because beef is the meat my mom originally used on this meal.

cut the beef into small cubes, mix well with oyster sauce, salt and pepper (add a wee bit of sugar, soya sauce and sesame oil if you'd like), and let it marinate for at least 15 min.

Prepare the potatoes for deep frying.

I think I used about 3 or 4 medium sized potatoes and sliced them thin using food processor

Heat up the oil in the frying pan, and when it's ready, fry the potato.
We used about medium-hi heat usually, and potato takes a little while to cook

It's important to not dump all the sliced potato at once, unless you have big enough of a pan to cook 'em all at once.

Also, we're not frying crispy potato chips here. The potato is fried long enough only so that it's no longer raw. It should be a little bit mushy when it's done.

Put it in a strainer, so the oil drips down. Unless you like your food to be super oily hehe. But even I, the oilytasty, would rather strain my deep fried potato for this.

Ok, now that the potato is cooked and out of the way, prepare the rest of the ingredients.
We love garlics, so these are how much garlics, shallots and gingers we used.


Peel all the skins


and cut them all into tiny pieces, unless you like big chunk of garlic and shallots.

I used food processor to cut them all up, it makes things easier.

Move on to prepare the bok-choy


Slice the bok choy into 4, and separate the leaves and the stalks, since they are going to go into the frying pan at separate times.

The leaves will go in at later times, since the stalk will take longer to cook.


Since all the ingredients are ready to go, heat up the oil on medium-hi heat for final stir-fry.

I used about 5 tbs of leftover frying oil from the potato, and the brown streak you see in the pictures is a pinch of sesame oil.

When the heat is ready, toss in the garlic, shallots and gingers.


Keep stir frying so it doesn't stick and burned


when the garlic seems to have a little bit brown on the side, toss in the marinated meat


mix it well with the garlics and friends, and cover the pot so it cooks faster


Make sure its thoroughly cooked (you don't want raw meat in chinese food) and then toss in the bok-choy stalks

add a little bit of oyster sauce, soya sauce, a pinch of salt, pepper and sugar and mix well.
Qyster sauce have a little bit of that fishy taste, so you dont want to put too much of that.
Also, putting too much soy sauce here also will salten your food, so just a little bit is usually good enough.
cover it again, only for a little bit, to cook and soften the stalks

after the stalks is almost done, mix in the rest of the bok-choy leaves

cover it until they're done

and last, toss in the cooked potatoes, and mix well with the rest of them


It's quite a lot of food for two people.
I'm used to cook these much of ingredients, cos when I learned cooking this from my mom, she cooks this much for a whole family.

Also, this meal is always served with rice.
I personally think it's a bit too much to just eat it by itself.
The thing about chinese-indo food is that the meat or veggie meals is always treated as sides to be consumed with rice.

This picture doesn't show a correct proportion of how much rice is eaten compared to how much of the stir-fry meal is usually eaten as sides.
We usually get plenty of leftovers to take for lunch.
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