Sea Harbour Seafood Restaurant – LA

When a restaurant builds up goodwill with its community for nearly 25 years, it can probably get away with things that might sink newer businesses. That’s the easiest way to explain why people lined up ahead of us at Rosemead’s Sea Harbour Seafood Restaurant were chuckling rather than freaking out over the L.A. County Department of Public Health’s C rating, which was posted at the front door following a February 2026 finding of 12 non-trivial inspection violations. By the time Sea Harbour’s doors opened at 10am on a Saturday morning, enough people had lined up to completely fill the locally famous dim sum restaurant’s dining room, and no one appeared to be concerned about the sign. Familiar with the years-old social media rule claiming that authentic Chinese places rate exactly “three-and-a-half stars” on Yelp – which notably flags Sea Harbour with a “low health score alert” leading to a list of those 12 violations – we were undeterred, and wanted to experience the dim sum ourselves.

To be clear, we had two major reasons for visiting. First, despite Yelp’s frequently questionable reviews, Sea Harbour has long been recognized for its “slightly elevated” dim sum by critics, most recently including the L.A. Times and the Michelin Guide (Bib Gourmand). Second, some of Sea Harbour’s DNA has spread to Orange County: After arriving in Rosemead by way of China and Vancouver, the small chain expanded to Rowland Heights and Las Vegas restaurants. The Rowland Heights location split off and became Happy Harbor, sister to Tustin’s J Zhou, which still shares some dishes and quasi-fine dining elements with Sea Harbour. And more of that DNA could be on the way: In 2023, Eater reported that Sea Harbour’s owner was planning to open an Irvine location, which hasn’t yet materialized. Between the critical acclaim and these interesting local ties, our curiosity was certainly whet.

Now that we’ve visited Sea Harbour, our view is that it’s neither as mediocre as Yelp suggests nor as notable as a Michelin nod implies: It is essentially a smaller version of Westminster’s dim sum restaurant Seafood Cove 2, minus any cart service and plus a few moderately interesting dishes. Another way to put this is that Orange County residents will not likely find it worth a drive into the San Gabriel Valley, roughly a half-hour north of Anaheim and east of Los Angeles proper – Lunasia in Cerritos strikes us as a better choice on quality, and closer besides. But there are still reasons to consider visiting Sea Harbour for yourself.

After offering a choice of six hot teas ($2 per person) and a handful of alternative beverages ($1.50/water to $8.80/wine glass), the menu continues with a collection of roughly 45 dim sum plates, 25 ancillary congee, vegetable, casserole, and chef’s specials, and 35 items spanning “lunch special,” “rice & noodle,” “chef’s recommendation,” and “Sea Harbour BBQ” sections. Dim sum prices range from $5.38 to $11.98, though almost nothing is at the lower price point, and most dishes are either $6.38 or $7.38. The latter 35 items range in price from $16.80 for stir-fried rice noodles with beef in dried shrimp sauce to $48.80 for a whole roasted duck – take that, Meizhou Dongpo! – while only a single item, abalone, is listed with a fluctuating market price. And though Sea Harbour’s dining room isn’t as opulent or large as the one at its aforementioned cousin J Zhou, guests still have the same fancy white tablecloths, many of the same dim sum choices, and similarly well-dressed servers, all at a markedly lower price point.

We sampled around a dozen items at Sea Harbour, and enjoyed almost all of them, even though only a few were truly standouts and one was actually bad. Thanks to a combination of great flavors, textures, and presentation, our favorites were the squid ink scallop dumplings with XO sauce ($10/3), small but tasty whole pieces of seafood inside shiny black bags, each topped with a powerful dollop of spicy red sauce. Similarly impressive were three red steamed rice noodle rolls stuffed with shrimp and Chinese donuts ($11), thinner, more shrimp-filled, and less oily variants of versions we’ve had elsewhere before. Even a less visually compelling pork and shrimp dumpling with truffle sauce ($7.38/4), which we’d expected to find closer to truffle oil than sauce, arrived topped with minced black truffle bits that actually added to the texture and flavor of the conventional pork and shrimp siu mai underneath.