Jasmin Garden

They re-​modeled since i was last here.
The dumplings and potato dish are my favorite here.
BUT WOW.
The cook was smoking inside the kitchen!!! We could smell it. At first we thought it was coming from outside. Then figured out it was the COOK!
WOW I am speechless. I hate to say i LOVE their food but that was Gross. That explains while service is slow.
THEY also make you give them four stars on Unilocal for free dumplings but THEY DO NOT HONOR it. Isnt that something. My coworker is fluent and asked them twice. They ignored. I am putting my own two cents.

Extremely slow service and average food. Gosh, I was seating in the restaurant for more than 30 mins waiting for my food to come. There was only one server and three tables of guests. The server seems new and she needs head chef for simple tasks like processing credit card transaction. This is my first time seeing a server wearing high heels boots to work. Food: ²⁄₃ stars
Pork tasted weird
Honey walnut shrimp was okay
生煎包 is about average
Three items for lunch costs about $ 20
Sighhh…Avoid this place.

I’ve been wanting to try this place for a long time and I’m glad I finally did! Prefect choice. Worth the money. Good
for family and friends.

Came here with a groupon. They have a lot of good values here! For starters, check in on Unilocal for a free order of XLB. You can also buy a groupon here. If you spend over $ 35 you can get a lobster for $ 1.99 a lb. The lobster is previously frozen — it’s so so but you can’t beat the price of $ 6 for a 3lb lobster.
A lot of their dishes weren’t particularly memorable, but none of them were really bad either. Come here for the value/​groupon/​yelp check in. The waitress was super nice too!

A very good place for family and friends! Very good Shanghai local food! Service is also nice! I’ve already recommended to my friends, they like here too!
Wontons and fried noodles are tasting

The whole experience was very mediocre.
Came with my family for a quick lunch after getting a Groupon deal. Ordered like 3 dishes, and the prices were very high for a Chinese restaurant. The portions are very tiny and the taste was rather lacking.
Service was also pretty slow and absent. Restaurant wasn’t very clean either. Most likely will not return.

My friend and I came here for a dinner after seeing a new movie. This place is located next to a Chinese grocery. This place is good. The cabbage is very juicy and savory. Love this vegi so much.

Very authentic Chnese Food. Portions are a good size every dish was a winner. With or witgout a coupon very reasonable.

Order-​menu is great design！excellent food and affordable price！ lunch special for 5.79 each dish！ shanghai flavor

Excellent food! With great services.
Also freshly remodeled, very clean.
Had a great time!
:) !!!

We were there for breakfast when the restaurant just opened. We were seated and the guy took our order, but I could tell they are still busy prepping the kitchen. He also told me the chef wasn’t there yet so a few items that we wanted to order were not available.
We ordered salty soy bean milk, Shanghai style wonton. Both were way too salty. We ordered the fried bun, but the meat stuffing wasn’t cooked through and was still pink. My friend from Shanghai was desperate for some hometown food but she had to leave disappointed.
I am not sure if this is their average quality, or is it because we were there too early and the chef was not in yet. :(

Gross and disgusting! This place had cockroach infestation and they never washed there hands. Glad I never ate here

Excellent food, affordable price!
Lunch special $ 6.55, 7 days, many selection.
Fish hot pot under $ 16

Good food, clean establishment and reasonable prices!
Highly recommend the shanghai meatballs.

Review for juicy dumplings (what my 4 y/​o calls shui long bao), pan fried bao, beef noodles, and sweet soybean milk. Throw in a Groupon and call it a day.
Juicy dumplings — yum yum. These make everyone in my family happy. Something about slurping up the soup juice. 8 in an order. Family of 4 needs at least 2 orders.
Pan fried bao — filling and tasty. Nice balance between soft and crispy. 4 in an order.
Beef stewed noodles — Hubby loved the broth. Strong star anise taste. I loved the beef. Kids loved the noodles.
Sweet soybean milk — not your American style sweet but Chinese childhood reminiscent kind of sweet. Perfect in my book. Ordering this again every time we come here.
Groupons — icing on the cake that makes this mama’s wallet extra happy.
Service — nice lady each time we’ve come, even when the 1 y/​o drops noodles all over the place. Server speaks cantonese and mandarin — bonus points!

The server was extremely nice, and tried to help us out with our groupon deal. There are also other good promotions available. The food was very good, especially the beef wrap and the pan-​fried dumpling buns. The Szechuan beef noodle portion was also very generous. Also very clean. Definitely will go again.

We got the groupon with the discount code OFF25 for $ 7.50. We ordered fatty fried doughnut, basil eggplant, xiao long bao, and two soy milk (sweet and salty) total came out to be $ 20.44. $ 18 off for the groupon, the total was ONLY a whopping $ 2.44.
The food was pretty good. My mom has been here before, but she said the quality improved. Xiao long bao was pretty good, bite size and with decent amount of soup. The eggplant melted in my mouth. I couldn’t wait to eat it, but they were pretty hot (temperature wise).
Their fatty fried doughnut was so good my mom had to order another one. So, all in all, solid 4.

The food here has always been good and always hits the spot! Prolly the best dumpling place in West Covina thats literally down the street from me!
The price is decent and good flavors. Never goes wrong with their honey walnut shrimp and their spicy lamb is just amazing!
The only thing is just the wait time after you order your food may take awhile but when your with friends or family it’s really not bad :)

What happened to this place? Last time I came was about a year ago, and I remembered the food was good and the service by the owner was so attentive and friendly, we all felt as if we knew the nice lady personally.
Decided to come back for a couple of dishes that stood out from previous visits: One was the sizzling beef platter: very tender slices of beef, sizzling on a hot iron platter as it’s brought out. The slices at the bottom has a nice charred taste and a bit crispy. The slices on top are equally tasty and tender, great flavor: 4
Also tried a dish (forgot name) that contains shredded pieces of pork and strips of bean curds. Not too bad but wasn’t as good as it was before: 3
A fish filet dish that tasted like it was cooked in wine w/​black fungus (moo-​err) OK, my Chinese is awful but I think that’s what it sounds like. I understand wine is usually used to take away from the fishy flavor of some dishes, but this just didn’t work well together. 2
«Lion’s Head» meatballs. The dish came with 4 giant meatballs and some bok choy. They were extremely tender and almost melts in your mouth, but undoubtedly grounded up with tofu to make it soft and appear generous w/​o using that much actual pork: 3
Another dish which I don’t know the name (I know, I’m so helpful huh?) It’s a Shanghainese dish, should have plenty of edamame beans, some pickled veggies and strips of bean curd. But this turned out to have few beans, bean curds that were not separated or sliced and a lot of stalks of some bitter vegetable that’s cut into small pieces. Awful! 1
This is what it should look like from an authentic Shanghai place, minus the slice bean curds:
What made the whole experience even worse was the complete lack of service and personality from the staff, or I suspect… family. As we entered, we were led to a table by a young girl. No hello, no smiles, just handed us the menu and went to sit at a table to stare at the TV. After we placed the order, she hurried back to the same seat to play on her cell phone. As each dish came out, she consistently rushed back to her seat, back on her cell phone.
Since we were the only ones there at that moment (big surprise) after all of our dishes came out from the kitchen, the chef came out with an apron and shorts. He wipes the sweat off his forehead and sits at the same table as the girl and reads the paper. Then, an older lady comes out from the kitchen looking very grumpy and also sits and reads the paper. No one ever came by to refill our water glasses, asked if we needed anything, how the food was or even glanced in our general direction.
After we paid and proceeded to walk out, not one of them even bothered to look up from their papers or cell phone to acknowledge us.
Some might argue, well… that’s really authentic because real Chinese restaurants don’t focus on service. I’m pretty sure this is family owned, and unless they’re already multi-​millionaires just sitting there to kill time, I’d say they need more business since only 2 people walked in the entire time we were there during lunch hour, and what better way then to engage the customers, get to know them and invite them back. Jasmin has failed miserably in this area, and we will not go back … unless we see a sign that says «New Ownership»

Short Review: A GREAT DUMPLING PLACE THATS LESS THAN A MILE AWAY FROM ME. I would go to this even if it were 10 – 20 miles away!!!
Main Review: First of all I don’t know how i have been going to HK Plaza all this time for groceries, food and things and not even tried looking at this place when it is right beside the entrance. Had i known that these guys served Xiao Long Bao which is something i crave in my deepest soul all the time, i would have probably gone more.
Okay honestly, the XLB was decent. it tasted exactly like i expected it to. I am not sure if they over steamed it because some of the soup was in the base of the steaming pan (which made me think that it might have popped while steaming) and some of the dumplings had a torn base. (not too sure on how its exactly supposed to be served but my guess its that all the soup has to be intact.)
I love how they give you a generous serving of PERFECTLY STEAMED rice when you order. The size is huge and will accommodate sharing with one other person (or three!)
Something was off, they had a 4 foot picture of a dumpling at the entrance and somehow i felt like that was their specialty even if i cannot read mandarin /​chinese. So i looked at the pictures people posted here on Unilocal and saw that it was Sheng Jian Bao or a fried version of XLB. with green onion and black sesame if i am not mistaken. So i called the nice lady owner /​waitress /​manager and showed her the picture and asked her if I can order it.
HORRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYY CRAP. I did not know what to expect. I did not know that there was soup swimming around inside the dumpling so it burst to the floor and table when i took a bite. I just assumed «ah its fried so the soup might evaporate» HOW DO YOU EVEN KEEP THAT IN WHILE FRYING?! It was amazing! The skin of the dumpling was thicker which some people here were complaining about. It was exactly like eating XLB but without the fragile skin that you have to *cArEfUlLy cUrAte* in your mouth this is more like ARRRRRR BITE ME!!! *muscle muscle muscle*
I was probably enjoying myself too much because a random chinese family asked me (in cantonese) if i ordered the XLB or the SJB (it must have been their first time too and were checking if it was good) and like the startled deer that I was i just said «yes» good luck guys. Everyone was Chinese in here btw. Thats usually a good sign that the place is great.
Objectively speaking the SJB was oily. And it would actually make me hesitate to order it again because. Technically speaking, its probably not good for you. But i liked it so much that Im going to have to find either another spot where its not served oily or just simply, wipe it away
SO STOKED that this is right by my house. Im coming back again tomorrow. or tonight. or now. bye.