Almost every year since 2003 we've visited New York either the last week of January or the first week of February. For native Californians it has been a learning experience, being introduced to sweater hats, scarves, gloves, wool overcoats and the occasional sweater mask. But in a way, Manhattan in winter is the best time of year because there aren't the insane crowds you find the rest of the year.
Arriving in Manhattan Wednesday around 7 pm, we headed to Katz Delicatessen to compare their pastrami to that at Langer’s by MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, so we could join the national debate as to which is better. After being so impressed by Langer’s pastrami a few months ago, that made me start to wonder about Katz. Upon entering Katz you are given a ticket (one per person, not per group) which you have to give back when you leave. Some kind of security measure, but I don’t exactly understand it. My conclusion is that Langer’s is better because of the bread–the Katz bread was surprisingly bad. The Katz meat may have been better, though. The sides (steak fries, macaroni salad) were meh. Also seeing the “Harry Met Sally” table there was quite interesting.
Since my seminar didn't start until 9 am Thursday morning, I was able to make a quick dash on the B train from the Bryant Park subway to the Grand St. station. Quickly I made my way to Feng Cheng Yuan on Bowery for a tasty bbq pork bun, and arriving at both stations at the same time as the train, I made it back to my program in time. (I tweeted my visit and by the time I got back to the PLI building somebody had responded and asked how it was.) At lunchtime I went back to Chinatown for fried fish balls at Funny BBQ (restaurant #6900 on my cumulative list) on Bowery. I also stopped for an onion pancake at Savory Kitchen on Grand St. The latter restaurant was so incredibly busy between in person take out orders and telephone orders, I really felt sorry for the lady in charge. Meanwhile, Funny BBQ made an amazing makeover of its premises, taking over for the well known, but notoriously dirty The Congee Restaurant.
We got tickets to An American in Paris which started at 7 pm, so we decided to skip dinner before the show. I hadn’t realized that An American in Paris was a combination ballet and Broadway musical, so there was a little too much dancing for my tastes. But since I like Gershwin music, the show as a whole was OK. Since the show ended relatively early around 9:30pm, we then caught the subway to Koreatown for dinner. Having no idea which restaurants were good and which were not, we decided to play it safe and go to the BCD Tofu House (which had a 4 star Yelp rating). We ordered the bulgogi, jap chae and beef dumplings, which were generally so so, and clearly not as good as the BCD in Los Angeles.
Snow prevented me from doing a Chinatown breakfast run on Friday, and I was stuck eating two breakfast bars and an apple from the seminar. The snow wasn’t that heavy, but was a messy combination of rain and snow. At lunchtime I headed straight to Chinatown to get something to eat. I only got one dish, the noodles in peanut sauce from Min Jian Mini Cafe on Eldridge and Hester since I didn't know what Mrs. Chandavkl's plans might be. I was happy to find that you could still get a good sized order of noodles, which I always considered the hallmark of economical dining in Little Fuzhou, for just $2. Going back to my hotel room, I also helped polish off a beef and chicken rice combo that Mrs. Chandavkl had picked up from the Halal Guys cart near the hotel.. Dinner was at Café Hong Kong on Bayard St. in Chinatown. One of the waiters immediately recognized us as the crazy tourists from Los Angeles who dined there three consecutive days the previous winter. We had a nice dinner, ordering garlic chicken, Chinese broccoli, sauteed beef with pineapples, and chicken salted fish hotpot, which were all pretty good.
Saturday was a very long day. I had received an email a couple of weeks previously touting a Chinese New Year celebration on Madison Ave. on the Lower East Side, consisting of a parade on Madison Ave. from north to south and street fair at the south end. Madison Ave. was a most unlikely locale for such an event, and the list of participating sponsors including Coach, Michael Kors, Bally, Fendi, Mulberry and other designers. However, when we got to Madison Ave. there was no sign of anything, traffic as usual and no street closure. We walked all the way up Madison Ave. and only at the north end did we hear lion dance music and saw a dragon on top of a bus. The lion then started going up the street, presumably stopping at various participating merchants. And that was the parade Obviously an experiment in celebrating Chinese New Year on the UES (somehow the city of Shanghai was involved) and I wonder if they'll do it again.
Actually it wasn’t a wasted trip because it left us close to the Metropolitan Museum of Art which was one of our potential venues for the day. As soon as we walked into the lobby, we heard–lion dance music. Yes, the Museum was also celebrating Chinese New Year. We stopped for lunch at the Halal trucks outside he museum–my chicken sandwich was one of the best I’ve eaten. At dinnertime it was back to Café Hong Kong. Arriving at 5:50 pm we thought we were early, only to find it full up with the prospect of a long wait since most of the diners had recently been seated. With nothing else any good in the immediate area, we waited out the 30 minutes until we got a table. We decided to have all new dishes so we had lobster (2 for $30), snow pea leaves, fish and bean curd stick hotpot, and Singapore mei fun. Everything was good except the mei fun, and this is a reminder that we should never order mei fun or chow fun at Café Hong Kong. After returning Saturday night to the Sheraton New York we heard the longest succession of loud booms from our room. Meanwhile Mrs. Chandavkl happened to be in the lobby and the security guard thought it might be some kind of attack. Since there weren’t any sirens I wasn’t particularly worried, just curious. Later on the news we saw that it was a massive Chinese New Year’s fireworks show on the Hudson River.
Sunday morning was our usual departure day pattern, with noodles at our favorite noodle soup place on Lafayette St. in Chinatown, which once again changed names, this time from Hing Huang to Pang Huang We also bought bakery goods for the flight home from our standby location,(which also just changed names from Dragon Land to Sweets Bakery).
An interesting sidelight to the trip was the fact that while in New York I was contacted with regards to two possible interviews. One message was received from Eater New York, which is doing a series of videos on immigrant cuisines in New York. However the series was being shot in March. Also the morning we left I received a message from one of the Fung Bros. who wanted to talk about ethnic identity. Just another reminder that you never know who is reading your tweets.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Why I Don't Crave Vancouver Chinese Food Like I Used To
For over 40 years I have periodically travelled from Los Angeles to Vancouver in search of superior Chinese food. My first trip was in 1970, which predates the "modern" era of Chinese food in the United States and Canada, as the effects of the repeal of discriminatory anti-Chinese immigration laws by both countries had yet to affect the local dining scenes. The Chinese communities in Los Angeles and Vancouver were still essentially Toishanese/Cantonese, as were all other North American Chinatowns. While the Chinese food we ate in Vancouver Chinatown in 1970 may have better than what we were used to in Los Angeles (as much due to L.A.'s tertiary status as a Chinese community back then), it was only marginally so, and indeed what impressed us the most was how much larger the portion sizes were in Vancouver Chinatown.
My next visit to Vancouver did not come until 1993. Really there was no reason to travel to Vancouver as far as Chinese dining was concerned, until the panic that set in during the late 1980s as Hong Kongers realized that control of Hong Kong would indeed revert to Mainland China in 1997. The mass exodus out of Hong Kong to Vancouver created an early 1990s Chinese dining nirvana in Vancouver that the entire Chinese community in Los Angeles knew about. Tales of Angelinos returning from Vancouver detailed how every Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, and the suburb of Richmond, even the stalls in the food courts, surpassed the best Chinese food in Los Angeles. So we all went to Vancouver whenever we could. And indeed the tales were true. Returning from Vancouver, we could not bear to eat the inferior Los Angeles Chinese food for weeks after our return, and we couldn't wait for our next trip to Vancouver to partake in the Chinese food.
Angelinos continued to make the pilgrimage to Richmond B.C. for Chinese food into the 21st century. But in the past five years things began to change. Fewer Angelinos made the trip to Vancouver, and those who did go came back not quite as impressed. Yes, there were restaurants in Richmond B.C. which exceeded anything we had in Los Angeles, but a lot of others were now only "just as good", or "not any better". So what happened?
What happened is two things. The main factor is that Chinese food in Los Angeles has gotten so much better in the last decade. But it's been a gradual process, such that we here in Los Angeles who eat Chinese food on a day to day basis aren't as sensitive as to how much the food has improved. This was driven home to me by two almost random comments made to me in the past couple of years. One was made by the maitre'd at a Michelin starred Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong. As you know, Hong Kong is ground zero for great Chinese food, and the best Chinese food there knocks the socks off of anything that we have. Anyway the gentleman commented that he lived in the San Gabriel Valley for many years, had to return to Hong Kong for family reasons, and missed the SGV. Then he commented that "the Chinese food in the San Gabriel Valley is very, very good." To hear that from somebody tending one of the best Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong was quite illuminating. More recently, I met a Chinese foodie from Vancouver who was in Los Angeles for a visit, and who told me that he was surprised at how good the dim sum was at Happy Harbor in Rowland Heights. Given that I would rank Happy Harbor probably around #7 in the Los Angeles area dim sum pecking order, that also says a lot about the current state of our Chinese food.
In addition, Vancouver Chinese food has appeared to have plateaued in recent years. There are two potential explanations for this factor. First of all, there has been a degree of migration back from Vancouver to Hong Kong, as fears as to what would happen to Hong Kong under Chinese rule turned out to be largely unfounded so far. Indeed we've encountered a number of these Canadian returnees in our travels. And of course among some of the returnees were some of Vancouver's top chefs. Secondly, like every Chinese community outside of Asia, the demographics are changing with non-Cantonese Mainlanders, many of them with tremendous wealth, now moving into North American Chinese communities. Naturally they're bringing in their own regional style of Chinese food, but in this regard Vancouver is actually trailing other areas like the San Gabriel Valley, as the Chinese restaurant scene in the SGV shifted away from Cantonese food before Vancouver did. As such, Vancouver is playing catch up to the SGV as far as many of these regional cuisines are concerned. For example I had heard about a splash that a new Shandong style noodle house was making in Vancouver, which sounded like Vancouver's answer to the SGV's 101 Noodle Express group. However, a scout who went up to try it reported back that it wasn't nearly as good.
I think the bottom line assessment is that there are some Chinese restaurants in Vancouver, Hong Kong style, Shanghai style, and hotpots, that are clearly better than anything in Los Angeles and an occasional visit up to Richmond B.C. is warranted. However the number of such restaurants is diminishing. Furthermore, top mainland Chinese restaurants that are starting to open up branches in North America are choosing to do so in California, where they perceive the action to be. So as the focus in both cities turns to other regional Chinese cuisines, Vancouver loses its advantage over Los Angeles.
My next visit to Vancouver did not come until 1993. Really there was no reason to travel to Vancouver as far as Chinese dining was concerned, until the panic that set in during the late 1980s as Hong Kongers realized that control of Hong Kong would indeed revert to Mainland China in 1997. The mass exodus out of Hong Kong to Vancouver created an early 1990s Chinese dining nirvana in Vancouver that the entire Chinese community in Los Angeles knew about. Tales of Angelinos returning from Vancouver detailed how every Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, and the suburb of Richmond, even the stalls in the food courts, surpassed the best Chinese food in Los Angeles. So we all went to Vancouver whenever we could. And indeed the tales were true. Returning from Vancouver, we could not bear to eat the inferior Los Angeles Chinese food for weeks after our return, and we couldn't wait for our next trip to Vancouver to partake in the Chinese food.
Angelinos continued to make the pilgrimage to Richmond B.C. for Chinese food into the 21st century. But in the past five years things began to change. Fewer Angelinos made the trip to Vancouver, and those who did go came back not quite as impressed. Yes, there were restaurants in Richmond B.C. which exceeded anything we had in Los Angeles, but a lot of others were now only "just as good", or "not any better". So what happened?
What happened is two things. The main factor is that Chinese food in Los Angeles has gotten so much better in the last decade. But it's been a gradual process, such that we here in Los Angeles who eat Chinese food on a day to day basis aren't as sensitive as to how much the food has improved. This was driven home to me by two almost random comments made to me in the past couple of years. One was made by the maitre'd at a Michelin starred Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong. As you know, Hong Kong is ground zero for great Chinese food, and the best Chinese food there knocks the socks off of anything that we have. Anyway the gentleman commented that he lived in the San Gabriel Valley for many years, had to return to Hong Kong for family reasons, and missed the SGV. Then he commented that "the Chinese food in the San Gabriel Valley is very, very good." To hear that from somebody tending one of the best Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong was quite illuminating. More recently, I met a Chinese foodie from Vancouver who was in Los Angeles for a visit, and who told me that he was surprised at how good the dim sum was at Happy Harbor in Rowland Heights. Given that I would rank Happy Harbor probably around #7 in the Los Angeles area dim sum pecking order, that also says a lot about the current state of our Chinese food.
In addition, Vancouver Chinese food has appeared to have plateaued in recent years. There are two potential explanations for this factor. First of all, there has been a degree of migration back from Vancouver to Hong Kong, as fears as to what would happen to Hong Kong under Chinese rule turned out to be largely unfounded so far. Indeed we've encountered a number of these Canadian returnees in our travels. And of course among some of the returnees were some of Vancouver's top chefs. Secondly, like every Chinese community outside of Asia, the demographics are changing with non-Cantonese Mainlanders, many of them with tremendous wealth, now moving into North American Chinese communities. Naturally they're bringing in their own regional style of Chinese food, but in this regard Vancouver is actually trailing other areas like the San Gabriel Valley, as the Chinese restaurant scene in the SGV shifted away from Cantonese food before Vancouver did. As such, Vancouver is playing catch up to the SGV as far as many of these regional cuisines are concerned. For example I had heard about a splash that a new Shandong style noodle house was making in Vancouver, which sounded like Vancouver's answer to the SGV's 101 Noodle Express group. However, a scout who went up to try it reported back that it wasn't nearly as good.
I think the bottom line assessment is that there are some Chinese restaurants in Vancouver, Hong Kong style, Shanghai style, and hotpots, that are clearly better than anything in Los Angeles and an occasional visit up to Richmond B.C. is warranted. However the number of such restaurants is diminishing. Furthermore, top mainland Chinese restaurants that are starting to open up branches in North America are choosing to do so in California, where they perceive the action to be. So as the focus in both cities turns to other regional Chinese cuisines, Vancouver loses its advantage over Los Angeles.
Monday, December 14, 2015
Best Chinese Restaurant in Los Angeles Chinatown? It's Back To The Future!
Before talking about what might be the best Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles Chinatown, we first need to make it clear that we're talking about a "Tallest Midget in the Circus" type of topic. It's been 30 years since the best Los Angeles Chinese food was located in Chinatown, and over 15 years since there has been a destination Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Still sometimes you want a Chinese meal and it's too late or traffic is too bad to trek on over to the San Gabriel Valley, so knowing the best Chinese food around Chinatown is a useful thing.
That last destination Chinese restaurant in Chinatown was ABC Seafood, which opened up in 1984 as the first high quality Hong Kong style seafood restaurant in the Los Angeles area, and for the first decade of its existence was the best Chinese restaurant in the United States. Indeed, we probably showed up there for Saturday night dinner three times a month. While ABC Seafood is still there, the owner-chef retired in 1999, selling it to a group headed by one of the waiters, Jackie Liao. Two or three changes of ownership later, ABC Seafood is an also ran in the very pedestrian collection of Chinese restaurants operating today in Los Angeles Chinatown.
Now when the new owners took over ABC Seafood in 1999, they tried to continue to operate the business as usual. The menu was completely unchanged, and visually the dishes were identical. But the old owner took his recipes with him, and the food was not the same. Apparently a couple of the cooks from ABC landed at the sister NBC Seafood in Monterey Park, so the food there was the next best thing to the old ABC, though it wasn't quite there. A few months later in 1999, a larger group of former ABC Seafood waiters got together and bought the Dragon Inn location at Spring and Ord, christening their new enterprise CBS Seafood. They declared that they were the true successor to ABC Seafood, and indeed their menu was also completely identical to that of ABC Seafood, except that the menu covers were green instead of red. But they didn't have the original ABC recipes either, and while we continued to dine there regularly for a while, it was because we knew the waiters, and not because of the food. And as the food began to spiral downward, we stopped going there altogether.
Well actually we never stopped going to CBS Seafood completely. You see it has one thing that no other Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles Chinatown has--a large and convenient self-parking lot. So once in a great while when parking is the most important consideration, we end up at CBS Seafood. This was the case last month, when we went there for dinner, perhaps for the first time in four or five years. A couple of the old waiters and manager David Ho were still there and they greeted us like the long lost friends that we were. We ordered with little expectations, though we wondered why the prices were equal to or greater than in the San Gabriel Valley. But guess what? The food was pretty good. Not San Gabriel Valley good, but a fairly decent imitation. Indeed, the French cut filet mignon ranked with the best, and a number of other dishes were quite good. A return visit a couple of weeks later confirmed the tallest midget classification.
As far as a runner up restaurant is concerned, it's even more retro than CBS. Phoenix Inn may have been the first Hong Kong style restaurant to open up in Los Angeles Chinatown in the post-1965 immigration reform era. They subsequently opened up in Alhambra, and then a few years ago started the pioneering Phoenix Boutique dessert chain in the San Gabriel Valley. The Chinatown Phoenix Inn seems to have revived itself by patterning itself after the San Gabriel Valley operations, including a display case full of dessert items. The Chinatown branch also has the greatest concentration of millennial aged Chinese clientele of any Chinatown eatery aside from the boba shops, certainly a good sign.
And for those of you who are wondering about the revived Empress Pavilion, my assessment is that the old Empress Pavilion closed in part because the food wasn't very good, and the new owners really haven't improved on that. Hopefully the need for a banquet facility of that size in Chinatown is so great that Empress will survive. But I certainly can't recommend anybody go there for anything other than a banquet where somebody else is paying.
That last destination Chinese restaurant in Chinatown was ABC Seafood, which opened up in 1984 as the first high quality Hong Kong style seafood restaurant in the Los Angeles area, and for the first decade of its existence was the best Chinese restaurant in the United States. Indeed, we probably showed up there for Saturday night dinner three times a month. While ABC Seafood is still there, the owner-chef retired in 1999, selling it to a group headed by one of the waiters, Jackie Liao. Two or three changes of ownership later, ABC Seafood is an also ran in the very pedestrian collection of Chinese restaurants operating today in Los Angeles Chinatown.
Now when the new owners took over ABC Seafood in 1999, they tried to continue to operate the business as usual. The menu was completely unchanged, and visually the dishes were identical. But the old owner took his recipes with him, and the food was not the same. Apparently a couple of the cooks from ABC landed at the sister NBC Seafood in Monterey Park, so the food there was the next best thing to the old ABC, though it wasn't quite there. A few months later in 1999, a larger group of former ABC Seafood waiters got together and bought the Dragon Inn location at Spring and Ord, christening their new enterprise CBS Seafood. They declared that they were the true successor to ABC Seafood, and indeed their menu was also completely identical to that of ABC Seafood, except that the menu covers were green instead of red. But they didn't have the original ABC recipes either, and while we continued to dine there regularly for a while, it was because we knew the waiters, and not because of the food. And as the food began to spiral downward, we stopped going there altogether.
Well actually we never stopped going to CBS Seafood completely. You see it has one thing that no other Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles Chinatown has--a large and convenient self-parking lot. So once in a great while when parking is the most important consideration, we end up at CBS Seafood. This was the case last month, when we went there for dinner, perhaps for the first time in four or five years. A couple of the old waiters and manager David Ho were still there and they greeted us like the long lost friends that we were. We ordered with little expectations, though we wondered why the prices were equal to or greater than in the San Gabriel Valley. But guess what? The food was pretty good. Not San Gabriel Valley good, but a fairly decent imitation. Indeed, the French cut filet mignon ranked with the best, and a number of other dishes were quite good. A return visit a couple of weeks later confirmed the tallest midget classification.
As far as a runner up restaurant is concerned, it's even more retro than CBS. Phoenix Inn may have been the first Hong Kong style restaurant to open up in Los Angeles Chinatown in the post-1965 immigration reform era. They subsequently opened up in Alhambra, and then a few years ago started the pioneering Phoenix Boutique dessert chain in the San Gabriel Valley. The Chinatown Phoenix Inn seems to have revived itself by patterning itself after the San Gabriel Valley operations, including a display case full of dessert items. The Chinatown branch also has the greatest concentration of millennial aged Chinese clientele of any Chinatown eatery aside from the boba shops, certainly a good sign.
And for those of you who are wondering about the revived Empress Pavilion, my assessment is that the old Empress Pavilion closed in part because the food wasn't very good, and the new owners really haven't improved on that. Hopefully the need for a banquet facility of that size in Chinatown is so great that Empress will survive. But I certainly can't recommend anybody go there for anything other than a banquet where somebody else is paying.
Monday, November 23, 2015
Flushing Update
As I wrote a couple of years ago in my Menuism article on Flushing Chinatown, Flushing's Chinatown is the most vibrant Chinatown in the United States, making it one of my most favorite Chinese communities. Unlike touristy Chinatowns that roll up the carpet earlier in the evening, the streets of Flushing remains full of activity well until late at night, and without the gift and souvenir shops and other tourist trappings that mar other Chinatowns.
Since it had been two years since my last visit to Flushing, I was pleased to be able to take a long lunch break while working in Manhattan and take the 7 train to Flushing. So much had changed in Flushing in just two years. One Fulton Square, the retail and hotel complex which was under construction during my last visit (and which I remember from my first Flushing visit 20 years ago as being the semi-paved and somewhat sketchy parking lot to Golden River Restaurant) was complete and in full swing. Meanwhile, across the street, Flushing Mall, which was constructed after my first visit to Flushing, but which had the ambiance of something built in the mid-20th century, was in the process of being torn down.
Perhaps the main attraction for me was to see the recently opened New York Food Court on Roosevelt St. With roughly 20 spaces, I was surprised to find a new eatery operating at each space. This was truly amazing given that the New World Mall with its 30 or so eateries had opened up just three years previously. True, the closing of Flushing Mall did eliminate the occupants of that mall's food court. But when you take into account the fact that New World Mall, New York Food Court, and the Golden Mall combined play host to over sixty eateries, that is truly mind boggling as that number of restaurants is by itself half as many as all of the Chinese restaurants in San Francisco Chinatown.
I was quite intrigued by the recently opened Happy Food Court on Main St., taking over the location formerly occupied by Corner 28 and it's mini-Peking duck bites. Food court might be a misnomer since this is a single restaurant operation. But then again maybe it isn't because there are nearly as many food choices here as you find in a legitimate multi-tenant food court.
One thing that made me especially happy was finally being able to find my single most favorite Chinese dish, fish dumplings, in New York. Fish dumplings came to Los Angeles more than a dozen years ago, and since being introduced have spread widely throughout the Los Angeles and San Francisco Chinese communities. But as if to validate my comment from a few years ago that New York Chinese food is still stuck in the 20th century, fish dumplings were unavailable and unheard of in New York, with the closest thing I previously found being the fish won ton at New Bo Ky in Manhattan Chinatown. However earlier this year a tipster sent me a note that a new restaurant called Dumpling Galaxy was serving fish dumplings on Main St. Unfortunately my lunch break time did not stretch long enough for me to visit Dumpling Galaxy. But as I was making the rounds at New World Mall to see what may have changed in the past two years, there I saw the sign touting fish dumplings at Szechuan Dish in stall #25. Light and fluffy as just as good as back home in Los Angeles!
A couple of other things worth noting at New World Mall. There was a lot of turnover in the lineup at the mall from my last visit there. In addition, I noticed that a lot of the eateries there now had Chinese language only signage. (I found this distressing since how could I catalog a restaurant for my Chinese restaurant spreadsheet if it didn't have any English language signage?). Chinese only signage isn't normally an issue since Chinese businesses throughout the United States generally are required to have an English language name for public safety purposes (i.e., so non-Chinese police and fire responders know where they're going). But that's not an issue when you're in an enclosed food court. And aside from Flushing, Chinese food courts are not particularly common in the United States.
I don't get to Flushing as often as I like. The food doesn't match up to that in the San Gabriel Valley, but it's the most exciting Chinatown in the US because it's a true community that doesn't go to sleep with the chickens.
Since it had been two years since my last visit to Flushing, I was pleased to be able to take a long lunch break while working in Manhattan and take the 7 train to Flushing. So much had changed in Flushing in just two years. One Fulton Square, the retail and hotel complex which was under construction during my last visit (and which I remember from my first Flushing visit 20 years ago as being the semi-paved and somewhat sketchy parking lot to Golden River Restaurant) was complete and in full swing. Meanwhile, across the street, Flushing Mall, which was constructed after my first visit to Flushing, but which had the ambiance of something built in the mid-20th century, was in the process of being torn down.
Perhaps the main attraction for me was to see the recently opened New York Food Court on Roosevelt St. With roughly 20 spaces, I was surprised to find a new eatery operating at each space. This was truly amazing given that the New World Mall with its 30 or so eateries had opened up just three years previously. True, the closing of Flushing Mall did eliminate the occupants of that mall's food court. But when you take into account the fact that New World Mall, New York Food Court, and the Golden Mall combined play host to over sixty eateries, that is truly mind boggling as that number of restaurants is by itself half as many as all of the Chinese restaurants in San Francisco Chinatown.
I was quite intrigued by the recently opened Happy Food Court on Main St., taking over the location formerly occupied by Corner 28 and it's mini-Peking duck bites. Food court might be a misnomer since this is a single restaurant operation. But then again maybe it isn't because there are nearly as many food choices here as you find in a legitimate multi-tenant food court.
One thing that made me especially happy was finally being able to find my single most favorite Chinese dish, fish dumplings, in New York. Fish dumplings came to Los Angeles more than a dozen years ago, and since being introduced have spread widely throughout the Los Angeles and San Francisco Chinese communities. But as if to validate my comment from a few years ago that New York Chinese food is still stuck in the 20th century, fish dumplings were unavailable and unheard of in New York, with the closest thing I previously found being the fish won ton at New Bo Ky in Manhattan Chinatown. However earlier this year a tipster sent me a note that a new restaurant called Dumpling Galaxy was serving fish dumplings on Main St. Unfortunately my lunch break time did not stretch long enough for me to visit Dumpling Galaxy. But as I was making the rounds at New World Mall to see what may have changed in the past two years, there I saw the sign touting fish dumplings at Szechuan Dish in stall #25. Light and fluffy as just as good as back home in Los Angeles!
A couple of other things worth noting at New World Mall. There was a lot of turnover in the lineup at the mall from my last visit there. In addition, I noticed that a lot of the eateries there now had Chinese language only signage. (I found this distressing since how could I catalog a restaurant for my Chinese restaurant spreadsheet if it didn't have any English language signage?). Chinese only signage isn't normally an issue since Chinese businesses throughout the United States generally are required to have an English language name for public safety purposes (i.e., so non-Chinese police and fire responders know where they're going). But that's not an issue when you're in an enclosed food court. And aside from Flushing, Chinese food courts are not particularly common in the United States.
I don't get to Flushing as often as I like. The food doesn't match up to that in the San Gabriel Valley, but it's the most exciting Chinatown in the US because it's a true community that doesn't go to sleep with the chickens.
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Thank You, NIMBYs
Los Angeles is a wonderful place to live. With the climate,
geography, glamour and amenities it's no wonder that people from all over the
world, from rich Chinese and other investors, to pro athletes who don't play
for LA teams, have been flocking here. But there are
downsides to living in paradise. Housing costs are incredibly high,
traffic congestion is ridiculous (it takes my co-worker about 2 hours each way
to commute a little over 20 miles), and people are forced to live long
distances from where they work. Interestingly, the three problems I
just mentioned have all been greatly acerbated by the "activist"
community. Typically we think of activists as being progressive and standing
up for the little guy. And in the case of NIMBY (not in my back yard)
activists, they think they are taking that path. But in the way the world
really works, they have created a world 180 degrees apart from what they
intend.
The latest act of NIMBYism was just chronicled in the newspaper,
where activists are pushing a ballot measure that would have the effect of
stopping high rise residential construction in Hollywood. The idea behind
the construction boom is to build high rise apartment buildings near transit
stops is to move people off the freeways and onto
public transit, to ease the housing shortage which makes rents and home prices
so high, and to generally revitalize the center part of the city. But the
activists want nothing of this, saying high rise residential construction will
destroy the character of their neighborhoods. Now
if there were just one group in NIMBYs in town there wouldn’t be a societal
problem. But there are NIMBYs all over
Los Angeles, creating what is referred to as high barriers to entry for the
development of new residential housing in Los Angeles. This NIMBY
created restriction on the supply of housing means a shortage of housing, high
prices, and long commutes for people who are relegated to moving into the
boondocks in search of affordable housing.
Indeed, the contrast between housing supply
and prices in places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, as opposed to parts of
the country, like Texas, where there are no restrictions or opposition to the
development of new housing stock, and developers are free to build new projects, is stark.
I remember being on vacation a few years ago and having breakfast at
Denny’s. I was talking to my waiter and
learned that he was originally from Los Angeles, but left because of the high cost of
housing. His next revelation floored
me. He had just bought a three bedroom
house with a pool. On his salary from
Denny’s. Of course there is a flip side
to living in a city where there is a plentiful housing supply. The value of your house will only keep up
with inflation, and generally not appreciate above that rate. In contrast my house in Los Angeles is worth
at least four times what I paid for it.
Oh wait. Thank you, NIMBYs. I love you.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
The David R. Chan Collection at Stanford University
You could imagine my surprise last night when I stumbled upon a reference on the internet to the David R. Chan Collection at Stanford University. The two most likely reactions are (1) it's a joke or (2) it's another David R. Chan. But, as it turns out, the reference really is to yours truly. Now I have no real connection to Stanford aside from the fact that I dropped a big bundle there sending my son to law school on The Farm. So obviously there's a twisted path here.
As I have previously written, I was finishing my undergraduate studies at UCLA right at the time that the formal study of the history of the Chinese in the United States was just beginning. I hadn't even dreamed of logging in Chinese restaurant visits back then, but I was always a collector of things. And back then, materials on the Chinese experience in America were so precious that I tried collect everything I could on the topic. I spent probably hundreds of hours photocopying articles, and even books, from the UCLA library, and I subscribed to any English language Chinese American publication I could get my hands on, including the weekly East West newspaper out of San Francisco.
Of course after the years things really piled up, particularly the newspapers. In a way it was fortunate that East West ceased publication in the 1980s, stopping further additions to that collection. The historian in me prevented me from tossing the newspapers out, but I didn't want to be stuck with storing them forever. I approached the UCLA Asian American Studies Library about taking the newspapers, and they were receptive, saying they would get back to me. However they never did. Meanwhile, my daughter enrolled at UCLA so I sent her to the Asian American Studies Library to follow up. She actually found the person I had spoken with a few years previously (who had gone on medical leave in the interim), who was again receptive. But once again there was no follow up.
A few years later my son moved to the Bay Area to go to law school. At the same time, the Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco hired their first professional curator, Anna Naruta, and I told her about my newspaper collection. Anna said there was no known collection of East West newspapers (only a curator would know that) and that CHSA would gladly take them. Of course there's the question of how you transfer 20 years of newspapers from my house in Los Angeles to the CHSA building on Clay St. in Chinatown. Now I always did look for excuses to visit the Bay Area, and with my son in school there, I had the perfect excuse to regularly drive north. Indeed in three years of law school, I made the trek 18 times. And during 2006 and 2007, a number of those trips were made with boxes of newspapers in my trunk. Actually, the hard part was the parking in S.F. Chinatown. Basically there isn't any. On some occasions Anna gave me access to a parking spot on their premises. But when Anna wasn't around, I was reduced to carrying the newspapers from my car parked at the Royal Pacific Motor Inn on Broadway to the CHSA building five blocks away.
After delivering the newspapers (and receiving my charitable contribution tax receipt) I didn't give any further thought to the newspapers except to be glad to have found a good home for them. Consequently it was a bolt out of the blue when I saw the "David R. Chan Collection" referred to in the latest CHSA Bulletin, announcing that Stanford University Library was making available four listed CHSA "archival collections to researchers, in its Department of Special Collections in Green Library", which had apparently been transferred by CHSA to Stanford some time before. (It would have been nice if somebody had told me what was going on.) But I'm happy to make this contribution to academic research. And happy as I am at this turn of events, I have one regret. I probably should have taken a larger charitable contribution deduction in 2006 and 2007.
As I have previously written, I was finishing my undergraduate studies at UCLA right at the time that the formal study of the history of the Chinese in the United States was just beginning. I hadn't even dreamed of logging in Chinese restaurant visits back then, but I was always a collector of things. And back then, materials on the Chinese experience in America were so precious that I tried collect everything I could on the topic. I spent probably hundreds of hours photocopying articles, and even books, from the UCLA library, and I subscribed to any English language Chinese American publication I could get my hands on, including the weekly East West newspaper out of San Francisco.
Of course after the years things really piled up, particularly the newspapers. In a way it was fortunate that East West ceased publication in the 1980s, stopping further additions to that collection. The historian in me prevented me from tossing the newspapers out, but I didn't want to be stuck with storing them forever. I approached the UCLA Asian American Studies Library about taking the newspapers, and they were receptive, saying they would get back to me. However they never did. Meanwhile, my daughter enrolled at UCLA so I sent her to the Asian American Studies Library to follow up. She actually found the person I had spoken with a few years previously (who had gone on medical leave in the interim), who was again receptive. But once again there was no follow up.
A few years later my son moved to the Bay Area to go to law school. At the same time, the Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco hired their first professional curator, Anna Naruta, and I told her about my newspaper collection. Anna said there was no known collection of East West newspapers (only a curator would know that) and that CHSA would gladly take them. Of course there's the question of how you transfer 20 years of newspapers from my house in Los Angeles to the CHSA building on Clay St. in Chinatown. Now I always did look for excuses to visit the Bay Area, and with my son in school there, I had the perfect excuse to regularly drive north. Indeed in three years of law school, I made the trek 18 times. And during 2006 and 2007, a number of those trips were made with boxes of newspapers in my trunk. Actually, the hard part was the parking in S.F. Chinatown. Basically there isn't any. On some occasions Anna gave me access to a parking spot on their premises. But when Anna wasn't around, I was reduced to carrying the newspapers from my car parked at the Royal Pacific Motor Inn on Broadway to the CHSA building five blocks away.
After delivering the newspapers (and receiving my charitable contribution tax receipt) I didn't give any further thought to the newspapers except to be glad to have found a good home for them. Consequently it was a bolt out of the blue when I saw the "David R. Chan Collection" referred to in the latest CHSA Bulletin, announcing that Stanford University Library was making available four listed CHSA "archival collections to researchers, in its Department of Special Collections in Green Library", which had apparently been transferred by CHSA to Stanford some time before. (It would have been nice if somebody had told me what was going on.) But I'm happy to make this contribution to academic research. And happy as I am at this turn of events, I have one regret. I probably should have taken a larger charitable contribution deduction in 2006 and 2007.
Monday, October 12, 2015
My Chinese Food Articles and the 40th Anniversary of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California
In the three years since Clarissa Wei indirectly launched me on an avocational career writing on Chinese American restaurant topics, I've written a few dozen history and cultural laced Chinese food articles. (For the uninitiated, most of those articles aren't here on my blog, but rather can be found at this link to the Menuism website. ) But writing these articles has not been a brand new experience for me, but rather a revival after a 30 year writing slumber. Indeed, the period of writing inactivity was so long that I almost forgot about my previous writing bouts, and really was just reminded of it now as I was just interviewed in connection with the upcoming 40th anniversary celebration of the founding of the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California.
During that interview it was brought to my attention the forgotten fact (as far as I was concerned) that I was CHSSC member number 8, At that point in 1975 I was a couple of years out of law school and had written a number of articles on Chinese American history in the six years since I received my undergraduate degree from UCLA. My specialty areas were the history of the Chinese in Los Angeles and the Chinese Exclusion laws. Back then the field of Chinese American history was so undeveloped that a rank amateur like myself could make real contributions to the literature of the day. My term paper from the undergraduate "Orientals in America" class at UCLA on the Chinese in Los Angeles was immediately published in the pioneering Asian American movement newspaper Gidra, and other iterations of that topic appeared in Bridge Magazine out of New York Chinatown, and in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce 1975 Chinese New Year souvenir program. My magnum opus, so to speak, was my piece also from 1975 entitled "The Tragedy and Trauma of the Chinese Exclusion Laws", presented to the bicentennial related conference The Life, Role and Influence of the Chinese in America, sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America, and included in the proceedings from that conference that they published.
I then went on to a different area of concentration--American Chinatowns as depicted in turn of the century post cards, as well as cards from later eras. I took some of my duplicate postcards (didn't want to risk the originals) and put together a display and presentation, first given at a meeting of US government employees in the San Fernando Valley at the Van Nuys Federal Building (at this point in time I have totally forgotten how they got a hold of me--I think the guy's name was Hyman Lee), and later to the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California and the Chinese Historical Society of America's second conference on the Life, Role and Influence of the Chinese in America held in 1980. A paper was published in connection with the CHSA conference, though the book wasn't actually published until 1984. I think that was the last of my historical articles to be published, though probably not the last I had written, as I did write some articles for both of the Chinese Historical Societies between 1980 and 1984.
I guess there was a precursor of my current Chinese food writing activities back in 1977 when I wrote my one and only published restaurant review, of Hong Kong Restaurant in Sioux City, IA for East West, the Chinese American Journal, a weekly newspaper out of San Francisco. But even then, the review was as much about the setting of the restaurant, as the food that they served, particularly the fact that I ended up driving by the Sioux Bee Honey Factory before reaching the restaurant.. After the early 1980s, life got too busy to continue my writings on Chinese-American topics. But in 2012, thanks to the publicity resulting from Clarissa Wei's write up on me and my 6,000 Chinese restaurant visits, I received offers to write on Chinese food. Well meaning people contacted me under the presumption that having eaten at 6,000 Chinese restaurants I was an expert on Chinese cuisine and had the knowledge to be a Chinese restaurant critic. Nothing was farther from the truth--I was like the guy my co-workers once talked about, who had 15 years experience in taxation, but which did not impress them because they said it was like "fifteen 1 year experiences". Nevertheless I have taken the ball and run with it, using the opportunity to bring out the themes I used to write about decades ago--the Chinese Exclusion Laws, racial discrimination against Chinese Americans, and to tell these stories to new generations who had little idea of such events that had transpired in the past.
During that interview it was brought to my attention the forgotten fact (as far as I was concerned) that I was CHSSC member number 8, At that point in 1975 I was a couple of years out of law school and had written a number of articles on Chinese American history in the six years since I received my undergraduate degree from UCLA. My specialty areas were the history of the Chinese in Los Angeles and the Chinese Exclusion laws. Back then the field of Chinese American history was so undeveloped that a rank amateur like myself could make real contributions to the literature of the day. My term paper from the undergraduate "Orientals in America" class at UCLA on the Chinese in Los Angeles was immediately published in the pioneering Asian American movement newspaper Gidra, and other iterations of that topic appeared in Bridge Magazine out of New York Chinatown, and in the Chinese Chamber of Commerce 1975 Chinese New Year souvenir program. My magnum opus, so to speak, was my piece also from 1975 entitled "The Tragedy and Trauma of the Chinese Exclusion Laws", presented to the bicentennial related conference The Life, Role and Influence of the Chinese in America, sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America, and included in the proceedings from that conference that they published.
I then went on to a different area of concentration--American Chinatowns as depicted in turn of the century post cards, as well as cards from later eras. I took some of my duplicate postcards (didn't want to risk the originals) and put together a display and presentation, first given at a meeting of US government employees in the San Fernando Valley at the Van Nuys Federal Building (at this point in time I have totally forgotten how they got a hold of me--I think the guy's name was Hyman Lee), and later to the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California and the Chinese Historical Society of America's second conference on the Life, Role and Influence of the Chinese in America held in 1980. A paper was published in connection with the CHSA conference, though the book wasn't actually published until 1984. I think that was the last of my historical articles to be published, though probably not the last I had written, as I did write some articles for both of the Chinese Historical Societies between 1980 and 1984.
I guess there was a precursor of my current Chinese food writing activities back in 1977 when I wrote my one and only published restaurant review, of Hong Kong Restaurant in Sioux City, IA for East West, the Chinese American Journal, a weekly newspaper out of San Francisco. But even then, the review was as much about the setting of the restaurant, as the food that they served, particularly the fact that I ended up driving by the Sioux Bee Honey Factory before reaching the restaurant.. After the early 1980s, life got too busy to continue my writings on Chinese-American topics. But in 2012, thanks to the publicity resulting from Clarissa Wei's write up on me and my 6,000 Chinese restaurant visits, I received offers to write on Chinese food. Well meaning people contacted me under the presumption that having eaten at 6,000 Chinese restaurants I was an expert on Chinese cuisine and had the knowledge to be a Chinese restaurant critic. Nothing was farther from the truth--I was like the guy my co-workers once talked about, who had 15 years experience in taxation, but which did not impress them because they said it was like "fifteen 1 year experiences". Nevertheless I have taken the ball and run with it, using the opportunity to bring out the themes I used to write about decades ago--the Chinese Exclusion Laws, racial discrimination against Chinese Americans, and to tell these stories to new generations who had little idea of such events that had transpired in the past.
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