Taste Gui Zhou

Planned a family lunch here. The dishes were amazing in terms of taste and proportion. Often times, Chinese restaurants in America give proportions that are waaaay to big, without any sort of precision or detail. This restaurant, however, surpassed my expectations. If you are trying to plan a group lunch/​dinner, I would definitely recommend coming to this restaurant!

I love their spicy dishes! The spicy fresh fish in soup is the best. Fresh ingredients maintaining great quality is difficult these days! I’m willing to pay a bit more to get better food.
The BAD:
We got to know some waitresses after coming here often. These girls are being ripped off by the owner on their tips. They get their tips payout every two weeks and the owner takes a big portion of it without doing any work. I told them to start gathering evidences and get EDD involve. The girls are afraid.
The married bald man (manager) sexually harasses some of the waitresses continuously trying to get them to be his girlfriends. This has been happening since the opening of the restaurant. He’s been smart targeting only those that are afraid and/​or willing.
This place is going to end when the girls get some help or find the courage to call me!
Typical Chinese greed and selfishness management directly from the mainland. I REALLY HATE THESE KIND OF PEOPLE! Shitty culture!

Authentic guizhou food. Taste great especially the appetizers.

Really poor service. Called them and confirmed @ 3 pm. But they called back at 5pm and told us no seats. As I think, they just offer the table to the old customer and do never think about the sequence.

warning !!! Do not order that boiled fish pot on the first page of menu!!! I cannot taste anything except the un-​freshness of the tilapia.

Came on a Friday night. It was empty which was good for us since we got seated immediately.
We ordered:
–Cold Jelly Noodles
–Pine Nuts Fish
–Double Pork
–Spicy Chicken
–Garlic Spinach
Cold Jelly Noodles was really salty. More salty than I thought. I mixed it but still salty. I did like the vinegar though.
Pine Nuts Fish– I wanted to love this. The sauce was good. However, the fish was overcooked. It tasted too fried, too crispy almost burnt. It was sad because it looked so good. The fish meat was completely fried. You couldn’t taste the fish.
Double Pork– this was good. The meat wasn’t too fatty and perfect blend. The flavor was good. Not too salty nor spicy.
Spicy Chicken– I liked the flavors on this BUT I hated the bones. There were so many small bones in this and it was so hard to eat! Good flavors though. I would recommend this.
Garlic Spinach– enough said. Lol. Typical.
Service was average. Not too fast but not too slow not was fine.
Overall, good food. Price was a bit high for what it is.

The boiling fish is the best. I love it.

To be honest, I really wanted to give this place a 4 or 5 star. After all, Gui Zhou is the cuisine of my old home town.
My credentials:
I can confidently say that I am probably one of a very few Unilocal elites that is familiar with the Gui Zhou province of China. My parents grew up there, and I was born there. Whenever you bring up our province to anyone who’s familiar with Chinese geography, they always bring up how poor of a region it is. It’s true, Gui Zhou is known for very few things, being poor is one of them, the another one is the most prestigious Chinese liquor in the world-​MouTai. There’s also a very successful chili sauce that comes from Gui Zhou called «Lao Gan Ma.» Our cuisine is very similar to that of SiChuan. Most of the dishes are spicy, and because it’s a fairly poor region, we are known for using humble ingredients, using wild herbs, and their roots for cooking.
Some of my favorites here were mainly the simple dishes.
The two cold dish appetizers were very nostalgic. Cold mung bean noodles (similar to the Sichuan style, but slightly different) and the Gui Zhou salad made from «Zhe’ergen» leafs. Zhe’ergen is the root of a wild herb that is indigenous to our region. It’s dressed in a soy sauce vinegar base, topped with crushed red pepper flakes. It’s an acquired taste. Since I grew up eating it, I love the flavor. These two are probably the most authentic Gui Zhou dishes you can find. People from Gui Zhou pride themselves in the unique chili peppers that grew on the land. No wonder an old lady was able to make millions off of selling a chili sauce from Gui Zhou (Lao Gan Ma).
The other two dishes I thoroughly enjoyed were very simple as well. One is the famous Gui Zhou fried rice. It’s made with a very special pickled chili pepper paste with garlic. When you stir fried some rice with this chili pepper paste, it produces the most addicting aroma. The other one was the Mapo Tofu; I know, how cliché to favorite two extremely popular Chinese dishes (fried rice and mapo tofu). Well, let’s just say that this is mainly why this place deserves 3 stars instead of 4 or 5. However I give them credit for making the basic dishes very well. The Mapo tofu was very spicy and numbing (from the SiChuan peppercorn). The thick sauce is full of flavor and the rice adds substance to your bite. It is divine when you pair the two together.
We also tried the DanDan noodles, beef stew noodles, smoked duck, one of the fish dishes, soft fried bacon, and a stir fried water Spinach. Most of these dishes don’t really stand out. The fish dish we ordered was suppose to come with fresh fish, but they didn’t have it. So we got frozen filet variant instead. The flavor was just not good. Suppose to come with pickled mustard greens, but they just used tomato paste instead. I’d avoid all fish dishes here unless it’s doused in fiery hot sauce or if it’s fresh.
Had extremely low expectations coming in with all the negative reviews. But luckily I was able to salvage a few strong points for this restaurant. It’s definitely no the best representation for my old home. But I’m glad someone is trying to bring the culture to LA. I noticed they have buffet style lunches during the weekdays. I would love to come back and check that out. Hopefully next time, I’ll see some improvements.

Service was a little slow, there’s barely any people inside, the food isn’t that much great quality, as a chef. everything was oily and had absolutely no taste, BLAND. the szechuan was meh, I’d rather go to Yunan Garden and Chengdu Taste and Chili King for 川菜。。just feels like the chef put everything together and was lazy to even cook. 不用心煮飯！

weekday lunch try out!
Service-​ordinary, we had to ask for soup bowls when our big bowl of sour fish soup arrives… waiting, waiting… after 10 min. ok, I guess we had to ask for it if we want some soup!
Spicy beef cooked with chili $ 16.99-spicy and spicy, salty, if you like it on the salty side, but not me.
Big bowl of sour tomato fish soup $ 22.99-very good but on the salty side, again. if it’s toned down a little, it would actually be very very good! lots of fish filet with tomatoes and bean sprouts.
Water spinach $ 10.99-stir fried with dried chile, spicy. but tolerable.
Golden fried rice$ 6.99-enough for 4 people. fried rice with egg and chive. good
smoked and fried duck ½ $ 15.99-pretty good with smoky flavor and comes with steamed buns to eat with.
overall– food is tasty with most on the salty side, but most people would be ok with that. but really, too much salt if NOT good for you! and it masks the true flavors of the ingredients.
service-​really needs improvement! be pro-​active and not have the customers keep asking for spoons, bowls or napkins…

Not a good day to order sour fish pot … The fish stinks! Sometimes I feel they made everything spicy sour so that we don’t sense the food has gone bad. It costs more for so called «live fish» pot and all we got is dead fish taste.

DOUBLE COOKED PORK SLICES
Double cooked in love… and fat… lots and lots of fat.
That’s a good thing.

I have to give this Restaurant 5 Stars, for good food, hospitable service & Clean and Updated modern Restaurant.

I like this place. I’m not one that eats too much Chinese food, but, this place was excellent. Certain items can be a little pricy, but there are a lot of items on the menu that are very reasonable. Tonight I had the sweet and sour jellyfish, chicken with green pepper and a bowl of steamed rice. When they say that the dish is hot and spicy, it is hot and spicy. I will definitely go back and try something different. Maybe even the pork intestines, they didn’t look too bad. The staff was attentive and eager to help. They were even able to answer all of my ignorant questions about the food without laughing at me. Lol

Flavors of China come back to me! For me their dry pot is one of the highlights of Chinese cooking here in the SGV. The flavors of cumin, chiles, and other spices come together in an amalgamation so good, it’s almost criminal. The house spicy chicken is another champ of Chinese cuisine.
So with all this effusive praise why the 4 stars? It seems like they opened up not too long ago and the service wasn’t quite right. A step too slow and a bit of a blasé attitude. Nothing horrendous, but nothing that states I’m the best. Plus, the pork belly dish we ordered was not stellar.
Still, I’d come back here for the Intestine dry pot alone. Give me that offal, garlic, spicy, goodness!

Food: my family ordered pork belly, chicken, soup. The soup (forgot the name) but it taste very similar to the Thai soup — Tom Yum. Except it was filled with fish, wash pretty good. Pork belly was great, very soft and tender. The chicken we order was good, but had lots of bones.
Food rating: ⁴⁄₅
Service: Overall service was good.
Service rating: 3.5÷5
Price: Expect to pay about $ 12 per plate
Overall: While the food is good IMO, there are a lot of competition within the area. I do think the food is slightly pricey for Chinese cuisine, but the place is new and with good service.

We came here on my birthday.
Friday night 6:30 and there was no wait — it’s still new. We were promptly greeted and seated. Unlike most Chinese restaurants, this place has got private party rooms, if that’s your thing. It’s nicely decorated and there’s plenty of room to move around without having to bump into people at the next table.
We ordered spicy water-​boiled beef, steamed veggie with sliced pork (with fat! yay!), house fried noodles, and green onion pancakes. As we were trying to decide which steamed veggie with sliced pork to order — they have two kinds — the manager came over and told us the one called Fen Zheng Rou was actually a sweet dish with sweet potato in it. So, we opted for the other one, which was a bit sweet, too. But I was curious to see just how sweet the other option would be.
Food came after 10 minutes, hot and fresh, just the way I like it. Everything was absolutely delicious — spicy, full of flavor, and definitely authentic.
As we were halfway into our dinner, the manager stopped by and checked on us. I told him I had never heard of a sweet steamed pork dish. The hunger in my eyes must have been so obvious that he informed us that he had told the kitchen to prepare that dish for us free of charge! What? That’s right! It’s on the house.
When the mysterious dish finally arrived, we were almost done — it took a good 15 minutes for it to be prepared just right — but it did not matter. It was just as the manager described, sweet and soft! I’ll have to order it again next time!
If you are looking for orange chicken or kung pao or chop suey, steer clear and find someplace with «dragon» or «panda» in their names. Guizhou Flavor is not for those who can’t handle the burn (more than once!), or if you don’t care for real southwest Chinese cuisine.
Service was excellent! The waitresses are VERY personable and constantly checking on us without interrupting, a subtle art many Chinese restaurants need to adopt.
Did I mention everything was to die for?

I don’t know why there are like 3 different kind of name for the same restaurant… but I’ll review it on this page.
This place is so so. The thing about this place is that it’s way over price. As for the food, it could be that we got the wrong dishes so we couldn’t full enjoy this place but as for how much we paid for the meal I consider taking your money elsewhere.
We got the sizzling beef cubes, oil fish w/​red pepper, green onion pancakes and a vegetable dish.
Vegetable dish ($ 8): you know your typical wok vegetable at those chinese restaurant. A bit over salted but it’s it’s not bad. I mean I wouldn’t assume any chinese restaurant to get this place wrong.
Sizzling beef cubes ($ 16?): I mean it gets addicting to eat. It’s quite nice until I realize how over price it was. The beef was okay quality, it’s not even like the filet mignon cubes (like Duck house). Cook w/​onion and has a black pepper sauce to it. There is a decent amount but really? way over price.
Green onion pancakes: forgot the price but it was alright. I had to use the sizzling beef cube’s sauces to slze the pancake for it to have taste. It tasted pretty good then haha.
The oil fish (at least $ 18): The way it was presented was the most unique but it was also my least favorite dish. So basically they cook this dish with bunch of oil and when they bring it over, all the filet fish are bathed inside this oil and the fish are on top while all these beans sprouts are on the bottom. It’s kinda cool… but at the same time… when you taste it, there’s nothing special except how extremely hot it was (obviously cause it was bathed in oil). The thing that bugged me most is that there isn’t even much taste to it and it was like 30% fish filet and 70% beansprouts –_​-​. So we took it home and my mommy use that oil and added more fish and made fried fish which was really good.
service was okay and they open door for you and such… so i guess you’re paying for that haha. I don’t know… try at your own discretion maybe we order wrong dishes… but to me it’s simply over priced.

Nice place to eat, waitress is very supportive and thoughtful! If you are really good at taking spicys, try their specials! Taking one star for long waiting time for the dish

One of the first Gui Zhou cuisine around the area. Right now it’s only soft opening, so there not many customers inside. The place is very modern and clean. Most of the dishes here are great, not overly spicy so I can try most of the food here with no problem. The service is awesome, and the boss lady and manager is so kind to us. Maybe it’s because they’re newly open. Overall, great experience. I’ll definitely come back again.
Service: ⁵⁄₅
Food: ⁴⁄₅
Price/​Value: ³⁄₅
Ambience: ⁴⁄₅