Dong Ting Chun

Service was slow. My spoon was dirty with some food sticking on it. It’s disgusting. I should have walk out when they gave me a new spoon which smelled of bleach, but we were hungry & the food was already served. Fish order tasted pretty good, it was not clean well. I had to keep splitting out the fish scale. Steamed tofu was very salty.
I appreciate 10% discount with check in, but probably will not return again.

Their food is so tasty. Me and my husband go there almost every weekend. I order the frog boiling in the chilly source (馋嘴蛙) every time. I just feel all their food taste very good compare with other restaurants. I almost have tried all the restaurants in San Gabriel, this is my favorite one.

Good food!!! Delicious authentic Chinese food. If you love spicy food, this is the place to be! I definitely would come back again

UPDATE: 9÷12÷15 — favors still good. Service mediocre. Ordered two new dishes off the menu. Two noodle dishes. The Beef chow Mein which has odd, very thin noodles. We were told it was now made spicy and we said please make it extra spicy. It was totally bland. I would not recommend this dish.
The other dish is a new one not on the menu yet. It is a rice noodle with beef, peanuts, pickled string beans, cilantro, and cucumber sauces in a mildly spicy sauce. This was pretty good overall but not mind-​blowing.
The village pork with green peppers and the crispy fried chicken with chilis were as delicious as in past trips. The one thing I noticed was prices and portions have decreased. That’s fair, but they were an expensive restaurant to begin with.

Great food here and the service is awesome too… I just wish they told me about the 10% off for Unilocal check in tho lol I was looking on Unilocal and showing them pictures as I was ordering. I don’t how I missed it. Try their eggplants/​egg/​pepper dish, it was really good :)

Excellent xiangcai,
It’s pretty difficult to find authentic Chinese food in america, but that’s certainly not the case for San Gabriel and the rest of the 626. Went here with family and found even my traditional parents loved the food. Highlights include the fish head, the spicy intestine, amd evem a mortar and pestle eggplant dish. Very good service, but beware of the spiciness, as the menu is sometimes mislabled. we ordered the cumin lamb, which came out spicy, even though it wasn’t labeled as such.
Prices range from 8 – 20 dollars a dish, which is standard for traditional Chinese fare in San gabriel. Overall atmosphere was good, but typical loudness and chaos of a Chinese restaurant. Service good for Chinese speakers at least. This is very much a place for traditiomal Chinese lovers.

The food is very authentic and spicy. Eggplant is perfect. Traditional Chinese taste. I love the food so much here, I have stayed LA about almost 6 months and ate a lot foods here, but this restaurant is first one leave me hometown taste. The people here is friendly, the owner is really friendly and good for us. Anyway, definitely I will back here in future with my friends.

Don’t go there. The dinnerware looks dirty. The service are bad and the dishes is not spicy, only salted, and we ask for more spicy but it only get more salted, lol. And the fish head we ordered tasted tough. One more thing, their iced water was from the sink directly. So not going anymore!

I’m from China, I’ve never been any restaurant like this before, very good Chinese food from Hunan. I came from Hunan, have to say here the food is pretty decent for a local.

Not worth to go, not enough meat in there but a lot of red pepper, garlic, and vegetable

Used to come often but no more. Now it is under new management, the woman/​owner only serves her friends. The food not as tasty as before. Soup used to be free on weekdays now no more. Tea was barely warm. The white rice used to be fluffy and tasty now the rice is mixed with leftover rice so hard in texture, horrible!

To be fair the regional style of cooking does not suite my taste. I do like Sichuan, but not all Sichuan restaurants are tasty. It is possible I have not found the right Hunan restaurant?
The most notable dish here is the eggplant. That is a five star dish but the rest were meh. Avoid the fish head, it was fishy and the after taste was really nasty. The rest of the dishes were not that memorable, please see the pictures of the dishes posted with this review.

It is soooooo delicious, the eggplant is special and so so good. And the fish is tasty. If u try this restaurant, u will never regret to be there.

This is my favorite Hunan restaurant. The food is tasty but not too spicy. You should definitely come to have a try!

The plan was Hot Pot at Little Sheep. Decided to not wait 2 hours for a table. Wandered down a few restaurants to give Dong Ting Chun a try. Tried three dishes:
1. Soy Bean Curd with Vegetables: Sautéed in soy sauce and green chilies and insanely delicious! Pairs perfecting with steaming white rice.
2. Stinky Tofu with Intestine Chili Hot Pot
Very stinky fried tofu served with intestines in a hot dry chili oil hot pot. Great flavor but definitely strong stinky tofu odor, an acquired taste for most people. FYI– I only eat the tofu. It is my boyfriend who handles the intestines :)
3. Braised fish with Glass Noodle and Soft Tofu. Easily the weirdest presentation of fish dish I have ever had. Noodles are thick glass noodles. Unknown white meat fish served braised and whole. Quite flavorful and light. Soft tofu to complement the fish but really didn’t add much to it.
Service very slow as the restaurant was very busy. Chinese speaking dining partner would be useful.

Meh. This place is just «A-​OK». My complaints? The bathroom is dirty. On the way to the bathroom, you get to peek into the kitchen too. This restaurant also charges $ 1 PER PERSON for rice. Service kind of sucks.
The food was actually pretty tasty; although some dishes were a little too salty for my taste buds. Such a shame.

Buy 3 get one dish free! But service sucksssssss
But can’t blame them since they’re pretty legit lunch specials after all. Dishes come out to around ~$ 6 and even comes with rice.

My new favorite Hunan restaurant! Or maybe just my general favorite spicy food restaurant.
Spicy and salty in the best kind of way is the best way to describe this place. All the dishes we got were fantastic, mouthwatering, and exceptionally executed. It’s quite spicy (for all you heat lovers) but you can still clearly taste the meat/​veggies and seasonings in your burning mouth.
The stinky tofu is THE BEST here. Super stink, super delicious broth it’s cooked in, lots of spicy, I could eat this every weekend.
Sliced Lamb (non spicy version): Just so we would have a palette cleanser, this was loved by all and was very flavorful. Would recommend this if you want something tame to balance out your meal.
Spicy Pork Belly: SO GOOD! You must get this. The salty and spicy comes into play here but tastes great and mixing the meat bits with white rice balances all the flavors out.
Stinky Tofu: You can do the standard fried, but we requested they give it the same treatment as the stinky tofu + meat just without the meat cooked in that little tin foil thing. This was my favorite dish overall!
Spicy Green Bean: Great as a veggie dish, perfectly cooked. It also has some garlic bits that was really good.
Hot and Sour Pig Blood Soup: Their big blood is super clean tasting, really enjoyed it and the hot/​sour broth was very delicate and not as strong as some restaurants which was really pleasant.
There’s a million restaurants to try in this plaza but be sure to check this one out if you’re not sure where to go and love spicy food.

Chinese: Hunan Cuisine
Due to being located in a highly agricultural area of China the ingredients used to comprise Hunan Cuisine are many and varied.
I ordered what was listed as the «Preserved Beef with Lettuce» off the «secret menu.» Flavors of the beef are unique and spectacular. Delicious. It’s a tough cut of meat that has apparently been aged or dried and then seasoned with Chinese five spice flavor. The morsels of meat were dry on the outside but moist on the inside with delicious fatty bits. Lots of texture, lots of flavor, tons of spice.
The vegetable that was described as lettuce was not what I know to be lettuce. Not sure what the vegetable was. Texture Seems like a cross between cooked celery and jicama. It has a lot of bite.
Your nose will be running from all the dried chili in the dish. Secret menu. A young Chinese couple was eating the dish and the waiter pointed it out. It didn’t look impressive or unique to me but waiter was certain that I should order it and would like it. I reluctantly followed his earnest recommendation and was hugely rewarded with an unusual dish. A secret dish!

I don’t like to criticize unless I absolutely must to to protect the safety of other Unilocalers. There are many Chinese food eateries in San Gabriel Valley. Choose any of them but steer clear of this one.
Here’s why:
1. They are very understaffed. I’m not sure if this is family ran or just lack of staff but there are 2 people on the floor and service is below average.
2. Customer service is sadder than talking to automated phone service. This is because of #1 and because the waiters are rude. They do not serve food in the order it is received.
3. The food is sub par. It’s not equal to but less than café food. Chinese food is aplenty and this place does not differentiate itself except in the fact that it is below average.
4. The sanitation. If the above reasons do not deter you from this place. Then maybe the lack of sanitation will. I’ve attached a picture of what I found in my tofu. It’s a nice piece of the metal or aluminum (not sure) scrubber used to wash the dishes.
Steer clear unless you’re looking for a bad time.