A First Look At Colette

Not that long ago, almost any new Chinese restaurant opening up in the San Gabriel Valley would be guaranteed large crowds for a period after opening as all the looky loo's passed through to kick the tires.  However, more recently the model seems to be that many people now won't try the newest Chinese restaurant until they hear something good about it.  Consequently most new Chinese restaurants aren't terribly busy when they open up.

Consequently, I was recently stunned when a new Chinese restaurant called Colette opened up in the Hastings Ranch neighborhood of Pasadena, an area which was devoid of decent Chinese food, and within less than a month's time became the most talked about Chinese restaurant in the Los Angeles area.  Indeed the buzz was so loud, and the lines so long, that I figured I would have to wait a while until the furor calmed down before driving crosstown to check it out.  But with so much continuous buzz, I decided that arriving right when they opened at 10:30am on a weekday might be a solution, and that did work.  Indeed, at that early hour, the restaurant was empty.

The kitchen at Colette is run by Peter Lai, who had most recently been chef at the rebooted Embassy Kitchen in San Gabriel, having been recruited from the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong.  At Colette he gets to combine his Hong Kong training with what he picked up in his year at Embassy Kitchen.  We were only able to scratch the surface of the menu at Colette, particularly since due to the early hour of our arrival, we paid too much attention to the dim sum, which was just ordinary.

The signature dish is the crispy stuffed chicken, which has been air dried and stuffed with shrimp paste.  This was one of the famous dishes of the original pre-pandemic Embassy Kitchen which was very popular.  However the Colette version is totally out of this world.

 

Fried rice has been elevated in this black truffle beef fried rice.

Something visual, new and delicious is the almond beef cubes, in a delicious honey/fruit sauce.

 

Simple is delicious with this fried cabbage with bacon.

The dim sum is not bad, but with all the interesting appetizers and entrees on the menu, I would recommend passing on these unless you had a hankering for a particular item.

Many more items remain on the menu for us to check out, though after the dining room started to fill up and looking at the food at the other tables, it certainly looks promising.  I wouldn't be surprised if Colette is the elevated Cantonese restaurant that the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles area has never had before.