Friday, March 15, 2024

15th Anniversary of Chandavkl's Blog

 

Since this year is the 15th anniversary of my writing this blog, and because I did not celebrate the 10th anniversary five years ago, I thought I would put up a brief anniversary post.  Back in 2009, I had not yet been discovered by Clarissa Wei and turned into a celebrity diner, so Chinese food and restaurant topics were only a part of the content on this blog.  

Furthermore I wasn't particularly knowledgeable about some of the workings of the internet, I treated my blog as a personal diary, just to keep track of some events and thoughts that I might otherwise forget.   I was happily uninformed about what it meant to have a blog on Google's Blogspot/Blogger product, until one day when I decided to see a search of what kind of Cantonese food blogs were on the internet.  Yikes, to my surprise I saw my own blog listed on the first page of Google hits.  Up until then I had no idea that anybody might have seen blog posts except myself.  I then did a little digging into the workings of the blog itself and found a tool called stats, and that yes indeed, my blog was attracting a small amount of traffic.  Not that I had posted anything inappropriate, but now I was on notice that I would have to write the blog with outside readership in mind.
 
In the Spring of 2012, Clarissa Wei's article came out and that changed everything.  The effect on Chandavkl's Blog was significant, but not in the way that one would expect.  Rather all the publicity as the celebrity diner who had eaten (then) at over 6,000 Chinese restaurants led to requests to write about Chinese food for other websites.  Consequently, any really serious piece on Chinese food that I would write appeared on these other websites.  Of course, I recognized that people would expect that I had my own blog on Chinese food topics, so I did keep Chandavkl's Blog current, largely with less profound articles about where I ate for lunch or what I ate on my vacation.  And I would post early summary drafts of my outside articles, too.  But the banner on Chandavkl's Blog referred readers to my articles on the Menuism website, where I penned about 90 articles over the course of almost 10 years on Chinese food in America in the context of Chinese-American history, demographics and culture.
 
My run with Menuism ended in 2022 when their blog editor left, leaving nobody there to shepherd articles onto their website.  When I first started with Menuism they had a stable of over a dozen bloggers, each with their own culinary specialty.  By 2022 I was their last writer standing.  In a way it was a relief in that it was getting difficult to write so many substantive articles on a monthly basis.  Shortly thereafter, while the Menuism site carried on, trying to reach the Menuism blog site or any individual articles only generated an error message.  To me that was my worst nightmare, since much of my major work was no longer on the internet.  On the other hand, I had thought about that possibility, so I contemporaneously saved HTML and PDF copies of all my articles as they were written.  While I had no idea of the mechanics of creating a new website with the content, at least I had the raw material.  And after some false starts and experimentation, I decided I could start a second Chandavkl blog to preserve all of my Menuism articles.  In so doing I wasn't even thinking about people finding my articles on the internet, but rather I just wanted to have them on the internet so I could provide links to my writings if anyone wanted to read them.
 
Of course you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men, and as it turns out some of the HTML copies of my Meniusm articles were corrupted.  Furthermore, at some point in time copying and pasting PDF text became a premium item, so I needed a Plan B for some of the articles as I could not copy and paste from the PDF.  That came in the form of locating the original text submissions of my articles, and at least I could copy the illustrations from the PDF copies.  So it took me just a month to get Chandavkl's Menuism Blog up and running.  Indeed, it looks so nice that I've subsequently added some new material to the new blog.  So to that extent, the original Chandavkl's Blog is still just a miscellany of less important topics, while the new Chandavkl's Menuism blog is where more substantive items will be found, even where they were not originally posted on Menuism.

And appropriately, in reviewing my first few posts from 2009, this is a good opportunity to make an addendum to one of them. In 2009 I was describing my trip to Nashville, where my son and I were going to visit for a few days.  However my son's vacation was cancelled by his employer at the last minute and I ended going by myself.   As I said in that post, "I was looking forward to seeing Music Row, since it is the heart of the country music industry where hundreds of record companies and country music related endeavors were located. I was imagining it was in downtown with shops, nightclubs, museums and buzz of activity. Was I ever mistaken. Music Row is two parallel tree lined streets, four blocks long, and the functional equivalent of a business park with low and mid rise office buildings. No retail space, no foot traffic at all."  

While this always puzzled me, it's not like it was a question that I had a burning desire to resolve.   However, I happened to see that a film on Music Row was being shown by PBS, so I made it a point to watch it.  And the show explained everything.  Country music was driven in the old days by Nashville radio stations, which had a need for their own recording facility.  So one such facility was built in a nondescript residential neighborhood which is now Music Row.   This facility was such a success that over the years all the record companies built their own studios here, and related businesses set up shop.  While many of the old residences were replaced by office park type buildings, some of the old houses are still there today.
 
 






Thursday, February 29, 2024

2024 - The Year That Lunar New Year Went Mainstream in the United States

So we're less than a month into the Year of the Dragon, and I cannot believe how mainstream Chinese New Year became this year.  Seemingly every national brand, every major retailer, every designer name, had some kind of New Year special.  Indeed when I saw Lunar New Year Hershey bars and M & M Candies, I almost lost it.  Why so suddenly and why this year?  I haven't the faintest clue.

 

The cynic in me knows it's just a marketing ploy, but I'm certainly not unhappy with this development.  But it's not just the suddenness of being able to celebrate Lunar New Year with Mickey Mouse that I find overwhelming.  Rather it's something deeper than that.

You see, growing up in Los Angeles as a kid in the 1950s and 1960s we never celebrated Chinese New Year.  While that may sound strange, it was a different Chinese America back then.  Most all my family and Chinese friends were American born Chinese. My parents were American born as were all my aunts, uncles and cousins.  My parents' friends were also American born Chinese. The only immigrant Chinese in my life were my material grandparents, and they were so busy working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week at their small neighborhood grocery store near the University of Southern California campus, that there was no time for any kind of family gathering.  

You may wonder how this American born Chinese society developed in mid-20th Century United States.  It was the result of the Chinese exclusion laws, enacted by the United States in 1882, and not repealed until 1943, which prohibited most Chinese from immigrating from Asia to the United States.  And even after repeal of the law in 1943, the annual immigration quota for China was 105 persons, until repeal of the national origins quota system in 1965.  In actuality, there was some continued immigration of Chinese to the United States during the Exclusion and low quota periods, but much of it was illegal.  Indeed, three of my four grandparents came to the United States illegally. 

Actually there were two different Chinese American societies during the Exclusion period.  There was the second and third generation model I described, but to be an American born Chinese obviously meant that both your father and mother resided in the United States.  However during the Exclusion period there was an incredibly imbalanced sex ratio among Chinese in America, as high as 27 males per female.  Consequently during the early 20th century, the American born Chinese model was very rare, and most Chinese Americans were male "bachelors."  

Technically they weren't bachelors, as most of them were married, but their wives were back in China, unable to come to the United States due to the immigration laws.    As time went on, the ratio did begin to equalize as many old bachelors died off or returned to China.  And the American born segment of the community really really expanded after World War II, as the so called War Brides changes to the immigration law enabled many Chinese American men to have their spouses join them in the United States.  

So as I was growing up, there were a good number of second and third generation Chinese Americans in Los Angeles, and indeed there were few Chinese American contemporaries in Los Angeles who were not American born.  It took a while after the end of the national origins law passed in 1965 for the presence of new immigrants to be reflected.  Indeed, as late as 1970 I was stunned to learn that one of my Chinese American friends had been born in China, and immigrated to the United States as a 5-year old.  No wonder it was my generation of Chinese Americans that first applied the term "FOB" to new immigrants from China.

With this background where many Chinese Americans in Los Angeles didn't celebrate Chinese New Year, no wonder why I'm so totally blown away by the mainstream attention paid to Lunar New Year this year.  One final example of this revolution involves Chinese food.  Of course, most Chinese Americans in Los Angeles now follow the Chinese New Year food traditions, and it's been this way ever since the wave of Chinese immigration has swelled the Chinese population in the Los Angeles area from the 10,000 when I was born to the more than 500,000 today.  And it's certainly not unusual for Angelenos to want to partake of a Chinese restaurant meal around Chinese New Year, as I would receive more requests for Chinese restaurant recommendations from non-Chinese friends during this period.  However, I really don't recall any active marketing of Lunar New Year by Chinese restaurants.  But this has changed, as for the past two years Paradise Dynasty in Costa Mesa, which has a mixed clientele of Chinese and non-Chinese diners, has actually developed a limited curated Chinese New Year menu, this year available through March 31. 


 

And me.  I'm certainly not complaining about the new normal.

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Laughter and Tears--Chinese Food on the Sapphire Princess Antarctic Cruise

Since we and everyone else began to take cruise ship vacations again after COVID, I have noticed that the percentage of Asians, primarily first generation Chinese Americans and Chinese Canadians, has been significant.  As such, on the two Mexican Riviera cruises we took out of Los Angeles about a year ago, there was quite an offering of Chinese food, some good, much not so good,  but at least conspicuously present and recognizable at most meals.

Likewise on last month's Sapphire Princess cruise starting in Buenos Aires, cruising four days in the Antarctic, and ending in Chile, there was like a high quotient of Chinese passengers on the boat.  And overall this was the best vacation trip I have gone on.   However on this trip, when it came to Chinese food it was pretty uniformly gruesome.  The overriding feature was the large number of dishes with familiar Chinese names that neither looked nor tasted like the real thing.  

 

Hot and sour soup looked like chicken rice soup and tasted like chicken broth with some pepper added.  


 

Kung pao chicken was big chunks of chicken white meat in tomato sauce.  Peppers?  Peanuts?  What are those?



Sweet and sour pork was unbreaded pork strips of pork (fajita like) in a clear sauce.  (Sorry, no picture.  I couldn't bear to photograph it at the time.)  Sesame chicken looked like McDonald’s chicken nuggets with a dipping sauce.  And mind you, this dish was in the main dining room, not the buffet.


 

They had char siu – in cutlet form in a goopy sauce.  Another day it was the carvery item (without the goopy sauce.

 



Shanghai beef fried rice (what’s that?) looked more like Spanish rice.  

 


And how could you come up with a head scratching version of jook?  Well, by making it greenish yellow, I guess.


 

And unlike the Indian food, which had it’s own section at lunch and dinner every day, the “Chinese” food was very sporadic.  There was one “Mongolian night”, but the only notable feature about that was that it was cooked to your order.  You’d choose from beef, pork, chicken or vegetables, then either chow mein or rice, then spicy or nonspicy.  Oh, and this was the last dinner on the cruise so they wanted to do something special for the Chinese passengers.  (Note that dishes were for "Display Purposes Only.")  Why bother?


 

I posed the question to myself during the cruise "What Chinese recipe book were they working from?"  However, now it's clear to me that Princess did not have a recipe book for their Chinese food.  They gave the names of Chinese dishes to their cooks, and told them to make something up from scratch based on the name.  That's the only possible explanation.



Monday, January 1, 2024

Artificial Intelligence And The Fake Chinese Restaurant Backstory

I'm always on the lookout for new Chinese restaurant openings, particularly in the San Gabriel Valley.  Obviously a newly opened restaurant is the most likely source to add to my Chinese restaurant count.  Also, since I have been eating in the San Gabriel Valley ever since the first authentic Chinese restaurant opened up in the mid-1970s, by catching new Chinese restaurants right when they open, I have been able to eat at the vast majority of authentic Chinese restaurants that have ever operated in the San Gabriel Valley.

One Saturday night we were driving home after dinner in Alhambra, when we drove by a brightly lit new Chinese restaurant near the corner of Valley Blvd. and Garfield Ave.  I noted the name of the restaurant, Chong Yuen Fong, to see if there were any reports on it.  To my surprise, I found a webpage and a most interesting back story indicating this was the new branch of a long time downtown Los Angeles (presumably Chinatown) Chinese restaurant.



As noted above, the story was that Chong Yuen Fong was originally founded in 1997 “in the heart of Los Angeles” , and immediately became a hit with people from all over Los Angeles, and becoming a beloved institution, particularly for their egg tarts and Hainan chicken. Now the founder’s children have taken over the business, with their new location in Alhambra.

Now, as you know I’ve eaten at almost every Chinese restaurant in town, and I never heard of a restaurant called Chong Yuen Fong. I guess it’s possible that Chong Yuen Fong was the Chinese name for a restaurant that had a different English language name. But the only place in Los Angeles where that could be a possibility would be in Chinatown, and if they were located in Chinatown why wouldn’t they say so?

One restaurant which could possibly fit the description is New Dragon Seafood which opened in Chinatown in 1997 and closed during the pandemic, though I ate there a few times and don’t remember seeing egg tarts and Hainan chicken.  And indeed, the more I thought about it, the more puzzling it became because upon deep reflection I don't remember Hainan chicken being available in Chinatown.  Searching for answers I posted all this on the Food Talk Central message board.  The responders all found this strange, and many suggested this description was the product of artificial intelligence.  Surprisingly, though, the posting did eventually clear everything up, as an associate of Jay Leung replied with this post.


It’s a pleasure to see your interest in our restaurant. I’m Brett, the owner’s cousin, and I’d like to provide you with some insights. The website was developed hastily, and I must confess that the “our story” section isn’t entirely accurate. As others have pointed out, it was generated by ChatGPT. The reason behind this rush was that the city of Alhambra mandated that every restaurant have a website, and I managed to create this one in just 50 minutes.

Regrettably, I didn’t have the opportunity to craft a genuine narrative about the restaurant and its menu. I offered a brief overview of the owner, Jay, who originally hails from Guangzhou, grew up in Hong Kong, and then immigrated to Los Angeles. Jay’s English is somewhat limited, and he plans to enroll in English classes next year once things settle at the restaurant. English is my second language too, and I’m currently pursuing English courses in college.

We sincerely apologize for the ChatGPT-generated content. Please allow us some time, and we are committed to revamping the content and story on our website. We appreciate your understanding during this transitional phase as we work on improving. Our restaurant has only been open for ten days, and we’re still learning the ropes. However, the food we serve is authentically Cantonese, and we promise to enhance your dining experience in the days to come.

Thank you for considering us, and we look forward to welcoming you back for more delicious Cantonese cuisine.

 

Mystery solved!  And they replaced the AI backstory with a real one.


 









Sunday, December 3, 2023

Fujianese Style Food Returns To The San Gabriel Valley


So if you asked the typical person on the street in the United States what part of China or Asia produces the lion's share of Chinese restaurant ownership in the United States, very few people would correctly guess Fujian Province.  On the other hand, if you asked any person in California whether they had ever eaten Fujianese style food or at a Fujianese owned restaurant, 99 percent of the people would probably say no.  

As I originally wrote in Menuism a few years back, the Chinese American restaurant world is divided generally into halves--roughly west of the Mississippi River and east of the Mississippi River.  The reason is that in the past 35 years there has been a massive migration of people from Fujian province to Manhattan Chinatown who engage in the restaurant business.  And then these Fujianese migrate outwards from Manhattan Chinatown in all directions through a massive bus system, that permits the heavily undocumented Fujianese population to travel around the country, despite not having the identification to ride airlines or trains.  The extent of their travels roughly parallels the Mississippi River, since that's as far as a bus from Manhattan can get in a long day's drive.

With the Chinese restaurant industry being so mom and pop oriented, hard information on the workings of the Chinese restaurant was hard to come by, until one recent pivotal event.  That is when H F Foods Group, A Fujianese American food service company, filed an initial public offering to sell stock in their corporation.  H F Foods was the dominant Chinese restaurant supplier in the Southeast, and provided previously unknown information about what was going on, including the fact that Fujianese mom and pop Chinese restaurants constituted 80 percent of their customer base.   

So that explains why there is such Fujianese influence in the east, south and midwest, and virtually none in California, except for a longtime Fuzhou grocery store in Monterey Park.   Depending on who's in the kitchen, there might be one Fujian style restaurant in Los Angeles, Foo Chow in Chinatown, best been known for being a filming location for Jackie Chan's Rush Hour movies.   However a few months ago a new restaurant, Zhang Sheng Xian opened up in Rosemead, though at the time it was not evident that they were a Fujianese restaurant.  Rather, they had a wild assortment of dishes which had people suspecting that they were purveying specialty Taiwanese dishes.  Indeed their "characteristic bamboo tube rice" clearly screamed Aboriginal Taiwanese food to anyone who had visited the Aboriginal tourist haunts in Central Taiwan.  Plus the menu included several other Taiwanese dishes, along with Shanghai dishes which are popular with Taiwanese diners.



But, on the other hand...  There was a real puzzle here.  If it were a  Taiwanese restaurant, why would the menu use simplified Chinese characters as used on the mainland, rather than traditional characters used on Taiwan.  And there were at least a couple of Fujianese dishes on the menu, most conspicuously peanut butter noodles.  Oh and one commenter noted that that was a Eastern Guangzhou vibe to the place.  

So not knowing what was going on I returned recently with a Taiwanese friend.  Already the bamboo tube rice was gone, though apparently it really didn't provide a visible superior product to normal cooking to warrant a price premium. And my friend started talking with the staff, and he said they self-identified as a Fujianese restaurant.  But also noted that he felt a Guangzhou vibe too, so perhaps it's a western Fujianese restaurant.  In any event, the one and only in the San Gabriel Valley

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Mystery Chinese Restaurant Opens in Temple City

 

Mystery restaurant Nice Me Snacks and More opens in Temple City replacing the oddly named “#SR’s Fried Chicken” aka Zhi Ma Tang Yuan Kitchen and it’s durian pizza.




The problem is that the menu was only in Chinese, and the only person there did not speak a word of English. Fortunately she had an app which enabled me to order a bowl of spicy tomato beef noodle soup which was great.  
 

 

While waiting for my food I went outside and discovered some English language signs on the window. But they ended up being totally confusing. In looking at the pictures in the printed menu I was guessing Nice Me is a Sichuan style restaurant. This seemed to be confirmed by the banner saying “I Come From Chengdu.” 
 

 
 
But then there was another banner saying Cantones (sic) flavor.
 

 
 
And an English language breakfast menu listing Cantonese noodle soups, rice noodle rolls and Guangdong tea. 
 
 

 
But wait, there’s more. Another poster in the window depicts empanadas, with the captions “Empenadas” and “Venezuelan Cuisine”. 




I’m dying to find out what all this means.

Monday, October 2, 2023

Kato Restaurant

After all these years, I finally managed to make it to Kato Restaurant, the only Michelin starred Chinese leaning restaurant in the Los Angeles area.  The tasting menu was excellent, though for $330 (including the Wagyu upcharge) one wouldn't expect otherwise.

The meal began with amberjack with preserved vegetables.

 

Pig ears with celluce.
 


Freshwater eel with stone fruit.


Caviar custard fish maw.


Curry corn.


Tilefish with basil and clam.


Duck, sticky rice and soy preserves.


A5 Wagyu.


Interesting drink holder.


Strawberry milk dessert with condensed milk, whipped cream, shaved ice, whole strawberries and mochi.



Dessert trio of plum tart, roll cake and egg tart.  Waiter said egg tart was the best thing on the entire menu.  I don't agree though it was very good.
 


A special treat for my birthday.  A literal ice cream sandwich, made with an unfrozen bun and ice cream.
 


The real highlight was meeting with Chef Yao, particularly since we appeared separately in the same video produced by Lucas Kwan Petersen of the Los Angeles focusing on food topics and the San Gabriel Valley.