The Most Expensive Chinese Restaurant in the Los Angeles Area

Before starting I need to make a definitional clarification.  For decades, the goal of many Chinese restaurants in the Los Angeles area is to maximize their total number of customers.  One manifestation is that when a Chinese restaurant opens up and becomes successful, they will often quickly open a new branch, and if things work out, will continue to open up more branches if their success continues.  The San Gabriel Valley is littered with little chains who took this policy too far, too fast, and crashed the chain all at once.  A second manifestation is commonly a restaurant has a menu that is all things to all people, rich and poor.  For example, at Grand Harbor in Temple City, customers line up in the take out annex for inexpensive roast meat and rice combos for well under $10, but at dinner time high rollers are offered a $10,000 a table gourmet special.  So technically, you can pay more for a meal at Grand Harbor than at any other Chinese restaurant in the area, but that's not the type of expensive I'm talking about. 

With this background, Chang’An in Tustin has the most expensive menu of any Chinese restaurant I have encountered in Southern California.  As you can see, the interior is correspondingly appointed.  Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles being so nicely decorated are a recent phenomenon, inhibited in the past by the unfortunate image of Chinese food as being "cheap," as well as the above mentioned proclivity of some restaurants to simultaneously service well heeled and regular diners, which tones down the decor.  More recently, though, restaurants like Bistro Na's, Wagyu House By X-Pot, and others have opened up dedicated eateries to target the higher end Chinese food audience, upping the ambiance.   (Note that what may look like a decoration in the back of the first interior picture is really a view into the open kitchen.).

 

The exterior looks fairly nice, but part of the space is actually occupied by an unrelated restaurant called Bronx Sandwiches, and Chang'An is located a not particularly upscale strip mall.

 

Chang’An is the first US branch of a Chinese restaurant chain headquartered in Xi’an, so obviously features Shaanxi style cuisine. When the restaurant first opened last year dining was by reservation only, but they now take walk-ins, though they take your name and phone number, possibly to pretend you had a reservation.  I wouldn't be surprised if headquarters back in China still thinks there's a reservations only policy in effect.  I remember the same policy was in force at Bistro Na's when they opened up a few years ago, and it was strictly enforced, such that diners arriving at the restaurant would return to their cars after being turned away and call in a reservation.

The meal begins with Shaanxi style bread.   Not particularly tasty.

Here are the honey grapefruit spare ribs at Chang’An in Tustin, specifically formulated to emulate traditional sweet and sour taste without vinegar, nicely plated. 

 

Green pepper chicken with biang biang noodles.  Even the mild version was a little too spicy for my personal likes.

Most of the Chang’An menu was above my budget so I cannot judge the restaurant.  Roast duck with caviar is $398 and wagyu fried rice $68.  But both the food press and Yelpers agree that while the food is excellent, it doesn’t match the price. Still the restaurant is busy enough and indeed at one table of six, two of the seats were occupied by first or second grade age children, so they seem to have enough customers willing to spend, and on Shaanxi cuisine at that.  Of note, Tustin is adjacent to North Irvine, where the most expensive tract homes I have encountered are being constructed in large numbers, so I suspect this is a good part of their customer base.

 

Wrapping up our visit to Chang’An, servers wear tags with their name in lights so they can be identified in the darkly lit room.

 

My lunch for one ended up costing a little over $100.  No wonder a lot of people have heard about Chang’An, but I didn’t  know of anyone who had actually eaten there.  But hey it was my birthday and it was worth the experience.