Fried Dumplings at Luscious Dumplings. Courtesy of the Wandering Chopsticks Blog
Join Flying Pigeon Los Angeles for our June Get Sum Dim Sum ride as we roll out to a great dumpling and soup shop near the San Gabriel Mission. Luscious Dumplings is a place many of you may already be familiar with because they’ve become known for their delicate and delicious dumplings made in limited batches daily. Once the daily supply of say, Beef & Onion dumplings runs out, they are gone. Amazingly, I first heard about this great shop from a Chinese friend who studied biology at Caltech and minored in stopping by Luscious and gazing at the young man that works there. In her words “Adam, I can’t tell you what’s more luscious, the dumplings or the guy bringing them to me.”
Extremely limited hours (open 11-2pm on Sundays) and a small shop keep this place hopping and when we tried to get there once before our crowd was just too big. If the turnout of the ride is over 15 we’ll split the group and eat in shifts with a quick ride down to the Mission for those waiting before or after.
Great Photos and a picture of the Luscious Dumplings menu!: http://wanderingchopsticks.blogspot.com/2007/03/luscious-dumplings-inc-san-gabriel.html
And the old(ish) review from our food reviewing god, Mr. Jonathan Gold :
http://www.laweekly.com/2004-09-09/eat-drink/heavenly-creatures
But a couple of weeks ago I was hit by the thunderbolt, as it was illustrated in The Godfather, a sense that I had encountered some kind of eternal truth lying right there on the plate. (The movie was describing romantic love instead of potstickers, but I believe that Francis Ford Coppola had never tasted these particular dumplings.)
These potstickers are misshapen, less than perfectly sealed, and often unevenly fried. As the product of human hands, they are better some evenings than on others. I have been back to Luscious Dumplings often, and I have always ordered the potstickers, but I have never gotten dumplings quite as they were on that most beautiful of afternoons.
These pan-fried pork dumplings were magnificent things, flattened hemispheres blackened to a luminous, carbon-edged crunch, heavily caramelized where meat seepage hits hot steel. They exploded in the mouth with a blistering, onion-scented pop, a primal flood of juice, of heat, of flavor. These were neither the precision-engineered spheroids of Din Tai Fung nor the assembly-line lumps you find at Dumpling Master, but different, soulful creatures unto themselves, in a homemade style I might call grandmotherly if each of Luscious Dumplings’ employees didn’t look as if he’d just stepped out of a scrimmage with the UCLA volleyball team. The usual cruets of toasted-chile oil, vinegar and soy sauce were on the tables, but it was hard to envision a dumpling less in need of embellishment.
As always, our rides are open to the public, free of charge and full of fun. For this ride, we’ll take the Gold Line from the Heritage Square station and ride to the South Pasadena station. From there, we’ll meander down to San Gabriel and enjoy some Dumplings. On the way back we’ll ride in the Arroyo Bike path. The ride is about 6 miles to and 8 miles back. We go slow but a little to fast for small kids to ride.
Here are the details for this month’s dim sum ride:
Meet at the Flying Pigeon LA bike shop located at 3714 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90065 on Sunday, June 21, 2009 at 10 a.m.
We ride at 10:30 a.m.
Bring CASH ($15 per person ought to cover it) to pay for the food and Metro ride ($1.25) . There is no charge whatsoever to participate in this very, very, slow ride (a walking paced cruise really).
There are a couple of other details worth mentioning:
§ If you’re interested in buying a bike, we’ll loan you one for the ride (for free!) with a limit of two bikes per reservation;
§ Buy a Flying Pigeon bike and lunch is on us!
If you’ve got any more questions, feel free to contact us via email at info@flyingpigeon-la.com or by calling 213-909-8986. We also have a web contact form you can use.
One Major Caveat - If it looks like it will be a scorching hot day, we may change venue to a place with a larger restaurant that everyone can cool down in.
