Crystal Palace - Fine Dim Sum and Chinese Restaurant — Restaurant in Monterey Park

What a beautiful restaurant!

Chef Tony is one of the on-site restaurants inside the Courtyard by Marriott Los Angeles in Monterey Park. It is conveniently located on the main floor, to the right of the lobby/front entrance of the hotel.

We stayed at the hotel and made our way downstairs to check out dining options outside of hotel but finally settled with dining on-site instead. We didn’t have any reservations but came right at opening hours for dinner. We were seated right away and were given a menu card to fill out which dishes and how many we liked.

The restaurant itself is small to medium-sized with a private room (Lotus Room) off to the side of the restaurant.

Here are the items we ordered:

Steamed Lava Salted Egg Yolk Bun w/ Gold Leaf (10/10) - This item came with 4 buns and was advertised under the Dessert menu. The flavor was unique balancing the familiar salted egg flavor with a hint of sweetness. I was intrigued with how they made the texture similar to a runny egg (or lava). The presentation was appealing and, if you’re already dining at the restaurant, it’s worth trying. I probably would not drive out of my way to try it though unless you want some insta-worthy photos. I was impressed overall with the yolk-like consistency.

Shrimp and Pork Dumpling with Black Truffle (9/10) - Delicious steamed dumpling with a subtle truffle flavor. I really appreciated the subtleness of the truffle because sometimes it can be overwhelming. This, however, was just the right amount without interfering with the original shrimp and pork shumai I’m familiar with.

Juicy Pork Dumpling (Xiao Long Bao "XLB") (8/10) - This was decent.

Squid Ink Pasta w/ Seafood and Gold Leaf (10/10) - What a beautiful dish. I’ve always enjoyed squid ink pasta and the dark pasta noodles contrasted with the vibrant colors of the veggies and succulent shrimp. The noodles were cooked Al dente - perfect in my opinion.

Fried Rice w/ Dried Scallop and Egg White - unfortunately, didn’t get to try this due to my scallop allergy.

Scallop and Shrimp Dumpling with Fish Roe - same as above.

Our service was great. Although our verbal communication was brief, the server was very attentive. He made sure to keep our drinks filled.

As I mentioned earlier, the restaurant is beautiful. Clean and aesthetically pleasing. What a gem inside the Courtyard Marriott.

There is a paid parking garage inside the Courtyard Marriott. Take it up to from G1 or G2 to the Lobby (1st Floor). From the elevators. Turn left toward the Front Desk and concierge desk, walk across the lobby past Bobaful and you’ll see Chef Tony straight ahead.

Overall, our dining experience was great. We enjoyed the food from the first bite to the last. And we loved the inviting ambiance...

This was not the experience we were expecting. The first thing we noticed is the acoustics are horrible... do not come here to have a meaningful conversation. The restaurant is way too loud, thanks to poor sound dampening. Aside from that the menu is standard. The dim sum selection is nothing special, but their prices are an average of $2 higher per item than what you will find in the immediate area ..and in a few cases, significantly higher. The dim sum was pretty disappointing... mediocre at best. The pan fried radish cake was essentially watery and textureless (it looked appealing until you attempted to take one off the plate and eat). The pork in their char siu bao was equally disappointing. The bao itself was fine, but the pork tasted flavorless. The French style baked pork bao was a huge disappointment. The dough was super thin unlike we've seen at any restaurant that offers this item, and the amount of pork inside was laughably minimal. The one item that was remotely ok was the siu mai..it didn't amaze us, but it was passable. The service here is fine and the staff are actually easy to get hold of if you need something. But, we can't see coming back here unless there are changes made in the quality of the food, and...

Was excited to see Chef Tony's new restaurant. Nestled inside the hotels first floor is a very vibrant and promising looking restaurant. I went on an Saturday afternoon around noon. A solid 2 hours after opening. Food was mediocre, especially for the price. Most are trending towards $10 for what's considered a small dish at other dim sum restaurants. The quality of the shrimp dumplings and the shrimp rice noodle is good and the textures describes good cooking technique. The spare ribs were 100% overcooked. It tasted like it was steaming on high temperature. It was very chewy and tasted good but the meat was too hard to chew. It may be where we were seating (in the corner and not on a walking path) but the service wasn't as I thought it would be. We were constantly overlooked because there seems like there weren't enough servers. They were running around servicing others and I could only catch their attention once in a while to give my order to or ask to pay. When we were serviced by them they were accommodating and very polite. This may have been all a...