A sneak peek at San Gabriel Valley's newest food hall

I have the usual Simpsons image, but I don’t have a personal story or flashback to start this post. This time, the background for this post is simple. Last week, Happy Hours Group invited me to a media food crawl for Haven City Market’s new West Covina location. Immediately, I was in and said yes.

Haven City Market Rancho Cucamonga is the Inland Empire’s biggest food hall and now, they’ve expanded to the San Gabriel Valley in West Covina. The 626 location has over 25 unique eateries featuring sushi tacos, souffle cloud pancakes, Filipino BBQ and so much more. It’s primed to be a new SGV hot spot.

The Grand Opening will be next week on Saturday, November 2nd at 10:30 a.m.

• The first 50 guests will get a bag, pen, apron
• The second 50 guests will get a bag, pen, and T-shirt
• Raffle prizes include 2 Laker Tickets, 2 Clipper Tickets and gift cards from their vendors!

During the preview, I didn’t try all 25 eateries — not all of them were open and I only have so much stomach space. And full disclosure: I worked out that morning, didn’t eat lunch until I got to Haven City (so I was hella hungry when I got there), and tasted some stuff on-site, but mostly took home leftovers (see above).

Here’s what I tried.

Cluck2Go - Hainan Chicken Rice (Dark Meat Only)

This was the first food spot I hit because Hainan Chicken Rice is an old favorite of mine. The Dark Meat Only plate is their most popular and was the only one they gave out during the preview, but I have no regrets—the meat was incredibly flavorful and juicy. But how were the sauces? The other major part of Hainan Chicken Rice was really good. I especially liked the red ginger chili sauce. It was a nice combo of spice and ginger.

On + On Kitchen - Classic BBQ Beef Bowl

Here you can build your own bowl or opt for one of their Signature Bowls. I opted for the Classic BBQ Beef Bowl, which I enjoyed a lot. There’s a good variety of veggies (salad, brussels sprout and kimchi, pickled carrot and radish, broccoli, corn, cucumber, hot sauce, crispy seaweed and sesame oil.) with the BBQ Beef and you can get the hot sauce on the side if you don’t like the heat (like me).

Lucky Tacoshi - Two Salmon Sushi Tacos

In the newsletter email edition, this text is missing, so I’m filling it back in for the web version. As you can see, the salmon in these sushi tacos were massive. The seaweed shell also had a nice crunch.

JAWS TOPOKKI - Rose Topokki Soup

Considering I was in SGV on a warm day and I don’t do well with spice (anymore), I hesitated walking up to this place. But I hadn’t had topokki before, so I wanted to try it during this food crawl — a good decision. My server recommended the Rose topokki, which has a milder cream sauce plus bacon (!) and it was absolutely divine, but still a tiny bit spicy to keep things interesting. Definitely one of my favorite dishes of the day.

KZ Mori - Mixed Katsu Plate

When I was about to leave, I started chatting with fellow foodie Tram, who highly recommended I visit KZ Mori before heading out with my bags of leftovers. I’m so glad I did! The servers recommended the Mixed Katsu Combo (pork + chicken + curry) and it was so good. I’ve been all about Japanese curry lately and theirs was so delicious pared with the perfectly cooked Katsu. It was worth one more stop!

Take Ur Seat - Ube Cloud Pancakes

Of course, there’s always room for a sweet brunch treat. Take Ur Seat specializes in brunch treats and everyone said the must-try was the Ube Cloud Pancakes. I was so excited to try these fluffy, indulgent pancakes, made with coconut cream, caramel and creme drizzle and Jackfruit bits. Though it may look very sweet, the cloud pancakes weren’t too sweet and had a nice ube flavor. There’s also a nice texture added from the Biscoff crumbs on top!

Partea - Strawberry Green Tea

Partea NYC aims to “capture the essence of Taiwanese night markets into a stand alone brick and mortar.” And now, the concept has a spot in Haven City Market West Covina with lots of drinks and snacks on the menu. My server said the Strawberry Green Tea was one of the most popular drinks, so I opted for that and it was so refreshing, especially as I ran from vendor to vendor during the food crawl. She also recommended to get it at about 70% sweetness, which was perfect for my taste buds.

Local Coffee - Pandan and Palm Sugar Latte

As soon as I took the first sip, I knew it — this Pandan and Palm Sugar Latte was hella strong and extremely good. It was the one latte they served up for the media food crawl and for good reason — it’s a great combo of flavors and a good base coffee. The palm sugar added a subtle, unique sweetness. I can’t say enough great things about this latte. As a self-professed coffee addict and accidental coffee snob, I want to go back and try their other lattes.

To see all of this in action, here’s the IG reel:

Coming soon…

Just a few weeks ago, I defiantly wrote that I would not be making a Couch Potato Cook podcast on here or anywhere else.

And then I thought of all the folks I wanted to chat with about food. Q&As in text format are fine (and I’ve done them for years on the blog), but I wanted to do something different. I also now have all these audio skills I got from my time working at Spotify.

All that to say…a podcast is coming soon on here. Stay tuned! 🎙️