If soup dumplings figure among your L.A. culinary obsessions, the compact guan tang bao at @good_alley in Rosemead deserve your attention. The ones featuring chicken, with their concentrated texture of double stock, are my surprise favorite, though the porkier versions bring it home too.

There's plenty more on the menu. Good Alley lands as part dumpling parlor and part tea house, with the drink selection running the milky, citrus-muddled-cheese foam gamut. It's the sort of attractive cosmopolitan mishmash, culling staples from many of China’s regional cuisines, that would fit seamlessly among the modern cafes in one of Shanghai’s high-design shopping centers. It also happens to land beautifully as a new SGV strip mall destination.

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