Kee Wah Bakery

Chien can’t decide if he should get the hot dog buns. The golden breads with sausage peeking out from both ends sit neatly on a tray inside the Kee Wah Bakery in Monterey Park. He grabs two, both individually wrapped in plastic.

This is where, in the series, Charles Sun buys baked goods to bring to his mother’s home in Episode 1.

“I feel like these bakeries are just such a part of being Asian American,” Wu says. “Where I grew up, there was one down the street and my mom would run in and grab like 30 baked things, each in their own individual plastic wrap.”

“These bakeries are also really familiar for me because they’re all built almost the same way, they smell exactly the same,” Chien says. “For Charles, going into that bakery having just taken a 13-hour flight from Taipei to buy stuff for his mom, it makes sense.”

The woman behind the counter recognizes Chien from the show. She points to a stack of magnets that say “Brother Sun x Kee Wah Bakery.”

“We had stickers,” she says, “but we sold out.”

Chien and Wu leave with boxes full of warm dan tat. The bakery makes three styles of the egg tarts, including crispy, original and Portuguese.

Wu declares Portuguesestyle tarts his favorite. Chien is Team Hong Kong. They bite into the crispy tarts first, with flaky crusts similar to the Hong Kong-style dan tat you’re likely to find at a dim sum parlor. The crust is so rich and flaky it borders on powdery, ultra buttery and crumbling on contact.

“It has a really nice eggy aroma,” Chien says, crumbs flying everywhere. “These are my favorite. You get a good proportion of crust to filling. And the crust is seasoned well.”

Next are the original tarts, with the same egg custard filling and a crust like shortbread.

“These are like the kind my great-aunt would make,” Wu says.

They finish the tarts in two