Looking for seafood in the San Gabriel Valley? We've got you covered (2024)

We love hearing from you, dear LAist readers, particularly when you ask for food recommendations. (You can always email me at gchabran@scpr.org)

Recently, I heard from audience member Willie Huo, who was looking for seafood in the San Gabriel Valley. He asked:

Undoubtedly, Willie is lamenting the closure of the last McCormick & Schmick in the L.A. area.

The upscale seafood chain restaurant, known for its shareable plates of oysters, calamari, and clam chowder, recently shut its doors in Pasadena.

Our hearts go out to him and other seafood lovers (but don’t worry; there’s still one in Anaheim near Disneyland if you need to satisfy a craving).

But I couldn’t help but think of other seafood options in the area that I'd been meaning to try out. So, to satisfy Willie, and my own curiosity, I went on my own fishing trip.

Yama Sushi Marketplace

Let it be known that I love a good market that doubles as a solid lunch option. Throughout my travels for Cheap Fast Eats, I’ve been to quite a few. I love that I get a full panoramic view of a culture, which fills me with a sense of wonder and delight.

This was my first time visiting San Gabriel's Yama Sushi Marketplace. Given the selection available at first glance, I immediately started kicking myself for not getting there sooner.

When I entered the small storefront through the back where the tiny parking lot was located, I was drawn to the bustling fish counter, surrounded by Japanese grocery staples of snacks, beer, and sake, and plenty of pantry items, all of which I couldn’t wait to take a closer look at.

While I could wax poetic about miniature bottles of Kewpie mayo and salt and pepper salmon skins in snack form for days, I was there to try the fresh-cut sushi.

Yama Sushi Market Place in San Gabriel offers made-to-order sashimi and premade rolls for your raw fish cravings.

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Gab Chabrán

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I’ll be the first to admit that while I love sushi, I could learn a lot more to understand the dish. But Yama does an excellent job of providing different entry points.

For the more experienced sushi fan, there’s the opportunity to order fresh cuts of fish, including bluefin tuna and buttery Scottish salmon from the Atlantic, that can be cut up in sashimi style and plated.

Each bite melts in your mouth, making you realize what good sushi should taste like.

If that's too intimidating, there are plenty of fresh premade roll options, such as their large tubular California rolls, which may be some of the biggest I’ve ever seen. Think of a silver dollar.

This is not your grocery store sushi; instead, it pops with freshness, from expertly mixed imitation crab salad to cool cuts of avocado. The lemon roll in particular captured my heart that day; made with fresh salmon, avocado, and cucumber, it's topped with the thinnest slice of lemon, providing a translucent exquisite wrapping, not to mention plenty of flavor.

Newport Seafood Restaurant

Before I start, I know that Willie said he didn’t want Chinese food, but I would argue thatNewport Seafood Restaurant, just down the street from Yama, is in an entirely different category.

It's not just a Chinese restaurant, but a unique blend of Chinese and Vietnamese cuisine, containing flourishes of Thai and Cambodian flavors that feel utterly endemic to the San Gabriel Valley and Southern California.

The salt and pepper shrimp at Newport Seafood in San Gabriel tantalizes the taste buds.

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Gab Chabrán

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Newport Seafood is the place to be if you're in a treat-yourself mood. With its extensive lobster menu prepared in six different ways, including the house special made with green onion, jalapeño, black pepper and butter, and the massive crab, which can be prepared steamed or swimming in a curry sauce, you feel spoiled by all the choices.

Sadly crab and lobster weren’t in my budget that day, given their market prices, so I instead opted for the next best thing, their salt and pepper shrimp. The lightly fried head-on shrimp was perfectly crispy, clinging to bits of sliced green onion and jalapeño for an extremely peppery bite, with a splash of freshly squeezed lemon providing an added brightness to the dish. Served with a small side of white rice, it will satisfy any crustacean cravings.

One plate of food is almost too much for one person to consume, given that the dishes served at Newport are family-style. So please don’t make the same mistake that I did. Instead, grab a few of your closest friends or family members and order a few dishes to get the full spectrum of the menu.

The Dive Oyster Bar

Head further down the road to Temple City, to the corner strip mall along Rosemead Boulevard. Dive Oyster Bar is a modern seafood establishment with influences from Cajun and Creole to American and Asian.

The restaurant uses steam kettle cooking, large metal kettles with steam pumped into them to ensure that the dishes are evenly cooked and brought to a proper temperature of 250 degrees. At Dive, the method is used for entrees like gumbo and bouillabaisse (a classic French soup, here’s Julia Child making it from the 1960s)

From the center-left, Kusshi, Misty Point, and Kumamotos served on the half shell at Dive Oyster Bar in Temple City.

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Gab Chabrán

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While it’s easy to gorge on plenty of steamed options, as well as fish and chips and clam chowder, instead, I opted for raw oysters on the half shell, which is a favorite of mine, especially during the warm months of summer. With a revolving menu of what’s currently fresh, that day included a selection of Kusshi oysters from British Columbia, Kumamoto from Washington State, and Misty Peak from the lower Chesapeake bay in Virginia.

The ultra-cool-tasting oysters turned out to be just what I needed. The Kusshi contained a slight salinity to their flavor profile with crisp, earthy notes, and the Kumamotos, with their mild brine and floral-like sweetness, are always welcomed. The Misty Point also contain notes of salty brine with hints of grassy flavors, almost like a quality olive oil that hints at the palate, and the flavors meld perfectly.

Dive does an exceptional job with its accompanying sauces, forgoing the mignonette and instead offering co*cktail sauce with a freshly grated horseradish, along with the surprising addition of spicy green chimichurri sauce with a tangy sweet-meets-spiciness from each slurp.

I couldn’t decide which one I liked more, so I dabbed my remaining oysters with both. L-I-V-I-N,one of my favorite quotes from the film Dazed and Confused, played in my head as I shot back my last oyster. While the combination of sauces might seem overkill, instead, it was the perfect amount and tasted fabulous, leaving me with zero regrets about my decision that day.