JJ Cafe

Last night, I went to JJ Cafe on Garvey near Garfield with Chong, the expert on Chinese cafes in the SGV (San Gabriel Valley). Even though to me, the cafe genre of food is pretty much all the same, JJ is one of his perennial favorites. He claims the food tastes better there. And, after having gone to several of these cafes with him and sampling the different fare, I guess I agree with him that at least at JJ's, you get consistently reliable food and service.

If we've reached the prior agreement to share our food "family style,", then we usually get an order of preserved meat fried rice and another, more substantial dish. The fried rice is my favorite -- it has liberal doses of both air-dried pork pieces (sort of a cross between bacon and jerky) and chinese sausage (lop cheung). oh yeah, and there's also small bits of chinese broccoli, green onions, and scrambled egg mixed in there, too. YUM! I highly recommend this dish. Chong's favorite is the breaded and fried pork chop wtih curry sauce over rice -- a great deal if you go after 9 or 10pm, when it's only $6.

But last night we went off the program and tried a couple of new items. We got this stir-fried satay sauce udon noodle dish wtih chicken. What we weren't expecting was that it also came with chunks of pineapple mixed in, which wasn't bad, but a little strange. Then we also got minced beef and preserved vegetable porridge, which was ok. Not bad, I guess, but more appropriate for a breakfast item or a late night snack.

As with all cafes, you get free refills on the basic drinks, which include iced tea, iced coffee, milk tea, and honey lemon (kind of like a do-it-yourself lemonade). And they're almost a 24-hour joint (i think they close at 2am and open again at 6am).