Review: two cuisines, both alike in dignity

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Golden Delight offers a combo of Asian cuisines, like previously-reviewed Sisters Cafe, but unlike Sisters Cafe, it is very clearly delineated when you are eating Chinese food or Vietnamese food: there are two different, equally overwhelming menus. An enormous menu sometimes indicates a disinterested kitchen, but not at Golden Delight. Based the food coming out, you picture an army of …whichever profession requires the most precision. Compounding pharmacists maybe, or couture garment workers. Or just highly trained cooks.

(I found out about Golden Delight some time ago on Food Talk Central, a site for food obsessives. I sometimes look at the site but I’m not a participant. It can be a real trash pile of condescension over there and it gets me too worked up. But it is useful for finding out about interesting food across the county, this restaurant being a lovely example.)

Any plate of greens here is perfection. Never soggy, never too raw, not too oily. Just flawlessly done in a way you have to be at least a decent home cook to recognize as quite difficult to pull off.

The pho broth is light, but not so light that you can’t pick out the spices used. The Imperial rolls will force you to burn your mouth more than once, but one bite awakens the spring roll goblin within each of us. (And do wrap them in all the greenery provided. The herbs weren’t chosen at random, you know?)

I really love what’s colloquially known as bún, the cold vermicelli with pickled vegetables, peanuts, nuoc cham, and some sort of protein. It’s been one of my favorite meals since high school, when a Vietnamese restaurant opened in the deep suburb where I grew up. I do feel like bún’s been dropping off in quality lately overall, as if not many restaurants are being specific with the dish anymore, just throwing meat from other dishes onto the noodles. Not at Golden Delight. Here it looks and tastes lovingly composed, topped with fried garlic chips and sautéed green onions, accompanied by another of those perfect Imperial rolls.

These items are, of course, on the Vietnamese menu. If you visit Golden Delight between 11am and 7:30pm, you can mix and match between the two menus, but opening hour is Vietnamese-only and closing hour is Chinese-only. Why two menus, with a staggered serving time? I’m not sure anyone knows. Maybe the employees do, but they demur when asked. Maybe there is a real answer but people asking has just become too annoying.

Two of the highlights of the Chinese menu are deliciously heavy on the black pepper. It seems to be conventional wisdom that white pepper is used more in Chinese cooking than black pepper (same pepper plant, but white pepper is picked later and then fermented), but that’s clearly not a universal rule, especially in southeast Chinese regional cooking. “French style beef cube,” which seems to be the same idea as the popular online recipe for “black pepper beef” (but a million times better), is laden with both black pepper and cilantro, the latter at various stages of heat-induced wilting, which is great for both flavor and texture. I do think it’s done purposefully. E-fu noodles with shrimp is another pepper-heavy dish, and almost as sublime.

I just realized that at Golden Delight you can do a dinner doubleheader, a bang bang, without even leaving the premises. And it'd be delicious all the way through, too. Not every restaurant can be this powerful.

8479 Garvey Ave., Rosemead, CA 91770. (626) 656-6262.

Editor's note: I consider myself a journalist, not an influencer, so I do not accept free food and I do not tell restaurants who I am.

See the map of all How to Eat L.A. picks here.