Bollini's and Dim Sum Express, Monterey Park (and Twoheys and Fosselmans, too)

Bollini's Pizzeria Napoletana

2315 S. Garfield Avenue

Monterey Park, CA 

Dim Sum Express

326 N. Garfield Avenue

Monterey Park, CA

My daughter and I were south for a water polo tournament, and when lunch time came, she wanted noodles.

Monterey Park should have been easy to find noodles in, and we pulled into a strip mall that had some sort of Asian restaurant, but there was a long line for it, and she was hungry, so we tried Bollini's instead.

I like eating with my daughter. She is getting to an age where she is both a bit adventurous in her eating and has a good appetite. I knew walking in the door that this wasn't Pizza Hut, and though the food was going to be a bit more than I wanted to spend, it smelled really good. 

A giant, wood burning pizza oven greeted us at the door, and the idea of a pizza certainly was appealing. Looking at the lunch menu, though, I thought their panini sandwiches also looked interesting. My daughter, bless her heart, was thinking the opposite of me, and we agreed to split our food, allowing both of us to have both pizza and panini.

As we sat down, our waiter immediately put an appetizer in front of us, a bread and pesto dish with a spicy reddish sauce. "It adds a little something to the pizza," he said as he walked away. I tried it on the bread, and it had a mild, flavorful heat to it, which I didn't really expect in an Italian restaurant.

I had a small pizza, named the 'Lulu,' thin crust with sauce, cheese, bacon, basil, garlic and pineapple, and my daughter went with the roast beef panini with au jous and three leaf salad.

The order came quickly and I found it to be quite tasty. The thin crust pizza was excellent, with the flavor blending together atop the thin, almost crispy crust. I really enjoyed the bacon (not Canadian bacon) the was just shy of crispy, and the contrast the of the garlic and basil with the pineapple. My daughter's panini was also good, filled with tender roast beef and melted cheese. The gorgonzola dressing that topped the salad added a bit of tartness that made the salad seem lighter than it would have with ranch or blue cheese. There was enough left over for my daughter's dinner as well.

We headed to Fosselman's, an institution in the San Gabriel Valley that is as good as everyone says it is. I had the sweet corn, which was creamy and sweet, but not overly so, with little corn kernels. It had a hint of corn flavoring, but it certainly wasn't like canned cream corn. My daughter had lemon custard, which though lemony, wasn't tart like a sherbet but instead rather creamy and refreshing. Fosselman's isn't as heavy as, say, Ben and Jerry's, but certainly with a higher cream content than Baskin-Robbins or Rite Aid. Where Baskin-Robins and Rite Aid seem very sweet, Fosselman's has more flavor. It really is worth a stop when you are near, but since there are a wealth of comments on the internet, I don't feel I have to add more.

Over the course of two days, I must have driven by Dim Sum Express a half a dozen times, and each time it had a line. Since it was in a place that was most likely a donut house in a previous life, I figured that it couldn't be too expensive, and since I had blown the food budget at Bollini's, Dim Sum Express was a place that we were definitely going to go.

It seemed a little sketchy walking up Sunday morning, but there was, like every time I had passed it for two days, a short line. We got to the window and took and order sheet. Looking it over, and looking at the pictures on the window, we ordered pot stickers, steamed BBQ pork buns, egg rolls and baked pineapple cream buns, along with a strawberry icy and a passion fruit icy that came in under $12. Not bad for a light lunch.

Looking inside the window, it seemed clean and busy. The phone rang the entire time, with the cashier taking orders in English, and I guess, Chinese.

Our food came up quickly, and though I wouldn't make a special trip from Ventura, it was tasty and filling. I thought the pot stickers were very good, not too greasy, and the pork buns blended the sweetness of the roll with the bite of BBQ pork. The icys were a good size for $1.75, and if I had been paying attention, I'd have paid the additional quarter for tapioca.

Along with the Dim Sum, there were several fast food items listed in the $7 range, something that I'll try when I'm in the area again.


My inlaws are big fans of Twoheys, another San Gabriel Valley institution. Everything on the menu is good, but their buttermilk made onion rings, and the home-made potato chips are excellent. They usually make a very good hot fudge sundae as well, but on this particular Sunday, the sundae was more fudge and whip cream than ice cream. My Father-in-Law said that Twohey's was about to be sold, though, so I don't know what the future will bring for them. Hopefully, the new owners won't mess with the formula too much.

There's plenty of info on both Fosselman's and Twohey's, so I didn't dedicate much space to them. They are good, though.