Pingtung Eat-in Market: Dim sum and a swell patio on Melrose

Asian snacks line the walls, but there's also a bar and plenty of tables

Decent Chinese food is tough to find west of Downtown -- maybe even west of the San Gabriel Valley -- so Pintung Eat-In Market is a very welcome addition in the heart of the Melrose shopping strip. Just a few doors down from where Tommy Tang married New Wave to Thai food, Pingtung is a new wave restaurant of this era: Fun Asian snacks and loose-leaf tea in jars line the wall (that's the "Eat-In Market" part), the back patio offers a couch for lounging, iced coffee is bottled Stumptown cold brew.

spicy shrimp dumplings aren't often seen east of Downtown

About two dozen varieties of dim sum are the star of the pan-Asian menu, which also offers ramen, rice bowls with meat and tofu toppings, sushi and "flatbread" - similar to the beef rolls seen at dumpling houses in the San Gabriel Valley. On a recent lunch visit, we tried pleasant crystal spicy shrimp dumplings, with larger pieces of shrimp than in the typical har gow, drenched in a mild chile oil.

Homestyle tofu is slicked with a mildly spicy Szechuan peppercorn sauce

A spicy bean curd homestyle rice bowl came with a nicely peppery bowl of hot and sour soup and tofu with a decorous but still lightly numbing amount of spicy peppercorns. Chicken flatbread roll slicked with hoisin was even better later that day when the flavors had melded.

hot and sour soup and chicken roll, at rear

 This was all a very promising start for an Asian restaurant in that area, and I'll return soon for some pan-fried pork buns, crispy shrimp balls and soup dumplings.
To drink, there's a large selection of tea, coffee, sake and shochu, beer and Asian sodas.
Pintung Eat-In Market
7455 Melrose Ave.
(323) 866 1866