Dim Sum At Yung Yee Kee in Honolulu

Honolulu is not especially well known for Chinese food since the Chinese community here is only 4 percent of the city's population.  As such, we don't eat a lot of Chinese food when we come here, since they're are so many other dining options around.  On the other hand, we will reserve a Chinese meal or two just to check on the state of Chinese food here.  As such, it was nice to find another dim sum option here in addition to Jade Dynasty, and indeed Yung Yee Kee, just outside of the Ala Moana Center, is probably a tad better than Jade Dynasty inside Ala Moana.

We started out with the deep fried har gow.  Have only seen this at a couple of restaurants, and this was quite good.

Back home this would be called BBQ pork cheung fun.  However in Hawaii it is known as BBQ pork look fun.  And it's not just a difference in terminology, as the Hawaiian version has a noticeably thinner  skin.  This is akin to the Hawaiian baked BBQ pork bun, which is known as manapua in Hawaii and also has a thinner skin than the version found in the U.S.

Yang Chow fried rice was as good as any I've ever had.

Honestly the best siu mai I've ever eaten!

Har gow was also quite good.

Crispy baked bbq pork buns were good, but last year's version at Jade Dynasty was a bit better.

X O rice noodle logs were much too spicy.

Fish cake with corn was very good.

Turnip cakes

Fried shrimp balls were not what we expected.  Not that they were bad, but they were a little too similar to the fried har gow.

All in all it was an excellent meal, the best dim sum in Honolulu.  And frankly on an absolute scale it was surprisingly good, not what you would expect from a community with a relatively small Chinese population.

Senia In Honolulu--If Only The Stars Fell On Hawaii

As everybody knows, it is a great honor for a restaurant to receive a Michelin star.   Diners rightly go out of their way to eat at Michelin starred restaurants.  But there are many deserving restaurants that will never receive a Michelin star.  That's because to garner a Michelin star, you have to be located in a geographic area where Michelin rates restaurants.  For example,  for years Michelin did not rate restaurants in Los Angeles, and hence there were no Michelin starred restaurants here.

I kind of believe that Senia in Honolulu would garner a star if it were in Michelin related territory.  To my taste, it is the equal of Providence in Los Angeles, a two star Michelin restaurant.  Here are some of the dishes we had at this wonderful restaurant.

Starting off was the ahi tuna cigars, which are actually smoking when they come to your table.

Next was the citrus hamachi, with grapefruit and lilikoi.  What an unexpectedly wonderful combination of flavors.

How about a bone marrow sandwich made with oxtail marmelade using Hawaiian bread?

Seared scallops with crispy kale was a real winner.

Certainly not the prettiest dish, but quite possibly the best, agnolotti with truffle butter topped by truffles!

How about lion's mane mushrooms?

A most interesting dish was the beef cheeks in a bao with red pepper flecks.

Topped off by coconut cheesecake.

And caramello with white truffle caramel.

All in all a star-worthy meal.

Guide To My Audio Appearances (Revised December 2025)

After last year's compilation of my video appearances I decided to do the same for my audio appearances too.  Note that there is a fair amount of repetition between the interviews.

Dave Issac's Breakthrough Thinking.  Dave and I were co-workers some 40 years ago at the CPA firm of Kenneth Leventhal & Company where we used to go out to Chinese restaurants at lunch time.  Who knew decades later we would be talking on Dave's radio show about how we used to go out to Chinese restaurants at lunch time when we worked at Kenneth Leventhal & Company.   https://soundcloud.com/user-904469289/david-chan-celebrity-diner-with-respect-to-chinese-food

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation interview.  In the wake of my BBC website interview and BBC World News television appearance last year, CBC did a follow up interview.  https://drive.google.com/file/d/10POGeA8RNr06LwfsOv1fdXRw9M1RN3qB/view?usp=sharing 

British Broadcasting Corporation radio interview.  BBC followed up their website article and BBC World News appearance with a BBC radio interview on Adrian Chiles BBC 5 Live.  This was an extremely difficult recording for me to find a copy.  The interview was pre-recorded in advance earlier in December, with the comment that it would be aired around Christmas time.  As with many interviews, all of the preliminary contact was behind the scenes personnel, and on a number of occasions my first contact with the actual interviewer was at the time of the interview itself.  No further information was provided to me and I received no further followup from BBC.  I did do some poking around and discovered that there were several BBC radio channels.  Fortunately I eliminated the BBC music channels and focused on their news and conversation channels.  Still I really had no leads as to whether the show ever aired, and even if it did, whether the interview would be posted online.  At that point I decided to review the prior correspondence, which included the name of the on the air interviewer, Adrian Chiles.  At last I finally had a more specific search term to follow up, and indeed, I was led to a webpage where Chiles' most recent shows were in fact posted.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that Chiles did a two hour show, two or three times a week, and each show was posted in a single two hour long file.  And then, even after finding all of his shows from the time I was interviewed through the Christmas holiday, there was no interview with me.  So maybe my interview never made it on the air.  😞  However, a couple of weeks later I decided to give it one last try.  I noticed new post-Christmas episodes were posted so I checked them out.   Success!  I found an episode where Chiles gives a preview of the show and he plays a short clip of my interview.  But going through the rest of the show, the interview in fact doesn't show up.  Fooey! Then I check the next day's show, and again I'm in the preview.  And this time my interview is on the show, and as a bonus, unlike many other pre-recorded interviews I've done, the interview was played in its entirety.  Of course I didn't want to retain and post the entire two hour show, so I forced myself to figure out the voice recording function on an iPhone, so here's my clip.  (Oh and by the way, at the same time I did the BBC Radio pre-recorded interview, I also did one for China Global Television Network's London bureau, again scheduled for broadcast around Christmas.  I never found a trace of this one, and I'm still wondering if it ever made it on the air.)   https://drive.google.com/file/d/12d-Ku4Mku3haT6H6ApDyR7fna1WS_ZsY/view?usp=sharing 

KCRW Greater LA Monterey Park shooting interview.  In the aftermath to the 2023 Chinese New Year shooting in Monterey Park, I was asked to make some comments on how that event impacted the celebration of the holiday.  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1f-2KrgFqqPPuZUQ-2rhoclQZ7GZ8n4JF/view?usp=share_link

MiseducAsian Podcast.   A nearly one hour interview with Tommy Chang and his associates from the MiseducAsian podcast, edited down from a two and a half hour conversation.  Focuses on my Chinese restaurant list that chronicles over 8,000 Chinese restaurant visits. 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/8000-chinese-restaurants-and-counting-with-david-r-chan/id1601351243?i=1000615969597

 

Teen Sheng Tales From Mangri-La.  Longest interview I ever did, clocking in at over an hour and twenty minutes, was a few years ago with podcast host Teen Sheng, talking about the history of  food in America.   https://soundcloud.com/user-904469289/chinese-american-food-and-history-with-david-chan

NPR interview with Scott Simon.   Short interview from when I was first unmasked as a celebrity diner, but apparently widely heard as I received calls from people I knew from all around the country saying they heard me driving to work.   https://soundcloud.com/user-904469289/npr-interview-with-scott-simon

Follow-up Interview With Dave Isaac.   Where we discuss the movie the Search For General Tso with the picture's director Ian Cheney.   https://soundcloud.com/user-904469289/ian-cheney-the-search-for-general-tso

Nevada Public Radio Chinese Food Program.  I had been contacted to speak on a program about Chinese food for Nevada Public Radio, but they cancelled out the day before the broadcast.  But then an hour before broadcast they asked me if I were still available, so here I am starting at about the five minute mark.  https://soundcloud.com/user-904469289/nevada-public-radio-chinese-food-show-2013

BBC Interview With My Interviewer.  My initial interview with BBC last year did not appear as a video, but rather as a Chinese language written article on the BBC website.  However, there is an English language interview with the interviewer about her interview with me, at about the 15 minute mark.  https://soundcloud.com/user-904469289/bbc-interview-with-my-interviewer

Good Food With Evan Kleinman on KCRW.   This interview on Evan Kleinman's show, which came shortly after Clarissa Wei's first article about me appeared in LA Weekly, was my only in-studio radio appearance.  (I turned down an offer to go to the studio for an interview with talk show host Jim Jefferies right at the start of the pandemic.)  For this interview I went to the old KCRW studio on the Santa Monica City College campus where we pre-recorded the interview which was edited down for time.  My part starts around the 43 minute mark, following an interview with Jonathan Gold. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dmK7SKcLyDRgZRaTiReuMUX37cX_C8Hq/view?usp=sharing

Audio version of World Journal Interview.  My World Journal Chinese language was for some reason split into three different articles.  Then the website offered an audio version of each one.  

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-oB-pVOBXrSVGmJex03d0PcKKZfaeZ6L/view?usp=drive_link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14C0UfzjX5mHAvMzTrXo_JjKyaCExQK_s/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_Y6AxDrZQxCXgw2bT8jLBVnO3ZYctpsj/view?usp=sharing   

Not sure what order these are in.

 

United States of Chinese Food.  I actually wasn't interviewed for this interesting podcast compilation on Chinese food in the United States.  However they did include an unattributed snippet of my interview from The Search For General Tso in the show at around the 21 minute mark.  https://gastropod.com/the-united-states-of-chinese-food/

Shared History Podcast.   Another offshoot of last year's BBC interview and I'm not actually on the podcast.  However, programs hosts Cass and Natalie, comedian/historians, go into a deep dive of my BBC interview, doing their own independent research to add to the story.  Discussion begins around the 41 minute mark. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uz9wJdFbRA7OMyh57DPz939A6nHcKOz1/view?usp=sharing

Newly Opened Enlighten Bistro 168 May Already Be The Best Dim Sum Restaurant in the Los Angeles Area.

I’m sure many of you are scratching your heads since few of you have heard of Enlighten Bistro 168. It opened a few weeks ago in the old Marie Callender’s at 820 S. Baldwin in Arcadia, four blocks up from Chef Tony.  But despite its recent opening, I would be surprised that when the smoke clears this isn’t the best dim sum in town. As big of a cheerleader as I am for Los Angeles having the best Chinese food in the country, the one area where we fall short is dim sum, where there are several dim sum operations there which I prefer to anything here in Los Angeles. In this regard, Enlighten Bistro is much more reminiscent to me of Bay Area dim sum rather than San Gabriel Valley.

This is Enlighten Bistro's golden har gow, their equivalent to the squid ink shrimp dumpling with gold leaf, and which conservatively is as good as, if not better than Chef Tony’s.

 

 

Snow cap bbq pork bun a.k.a. crispy baked bbq pork bun, also known as Tim Ho Wan buns. My absolute favorite Chinese dish right now, and the best version in Los Angeles. 

 

 

Strangely the morel stuffed mushrooms have the mushroom on top, rather than on the bottom. Stuffing seems to be a combination of fish and shrimp paste. 

 

 

 

You may be familiar with crispy shrimp rolls. Enlighten Bistro goes one further with crispy lobster rolls. 

 

 

 

This may look like an ordinary beef rice noodle roll, except that the beef is ground instead of being minced. Oh, and it’s made of wagyu beef. Pricey though at $12. 

 

 

 

The pumpkin sesame ball may not look like anything, but it’s excellent. 

 

 

 

Perhaps the most visual item is their spicy pork mochi bun.  As we had these right before seeing the Arboretum Christmas light show, I couldn't help imagine these hanging on a Christmas tree.

A popular item with many people is the crab egg roll, though I didn't think it was particularly special.

 

 

 

And their egg tarts are among the best around.

 

 

 We also tried some dinner items.  Looks like fried rice, but it's really orzo with duck.

Pork belly--the best ever?

Never liked dow miou in broth, until now, with bean curd skin.

 

Interestingly, Enlighten Bistro 168 offers dim sum at dinner, along with a regular dinner menu.   We had a combination of items at our dinner visit.

 

 

The crowds seem to agree that this is one already one of the best Chinese restaurants in town.  At the same time that Enlighten Bistro 168 was packed on a weeknight for dinner, the crowd at the much more heralded  Chef Tony a few blocks down the street was sparse.  And Chef Tony does a pretty good dinner, too.

Great Chinese Food Comes To Irwindale--Sands Chinese Restaurant

On one of the local restaurant message boards I once facetiously posted that there were multiple teams of chowhounds criss-crossing the San Gabriel Valley to be the first to find the latest great Chinese restaurant opening. Well, fellows and gals, we missed one, because Sands Chinese Restaurant, which opened two years ago in Irwindale, is really a gem, one which I’ve never heard anybody mention until I stumbled onto a posting that one of the operators had made on a Facebook group.

Perhaps first order is to explain the name of the restaurant, since there’s nothing Chinese about “Sands.” From what I can tell, the chef here used to work at the Sands Casino in Macao, which would explain the one of the stunning Yelp reviews that claimed Sands was the best Chinese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley, which I assumed came from a relative or friend of the owner. It would also explain the quality of the food here and some of the less common, upscale dishes that they serve here. Unfortunately, most of those dishes are advance order only so I didn’t get a chance to try any this time. Also we were hampered by the fact that one of our group is midway in the tooth implant process and we had to limit ourselves to soft dishes. Nevertheless this was enough to give an idea of the quality of the restaurant.

One other unfortunate thing about ordering only soft foods was that none of the dishes were particularly photogenic. But the food was excellent across the board.

This is the crystal noodle with egg whites.

 

Continuing the egg white theme, Shanghai egg whites with broccoli. Fantastic dish, even better than the egg white dish at the old Embassy Kitchen in San Gabriel.

 

Sweet and sour fish, nice and thinly crunchy and tasty.

Singapore curry chow fun, spicier than usual but very well done.

 

The special advance order menu is something we don’t see very often in Southern California Cantonese restaurants. Items on the Sands Menu include mixed meat and vegetables in egg white pancake, pipa tofu, braised stuffed duck, braised pork belly, sweet and sour fish with pine nuts, and chicken wings with glutenous rice. I actually didn’t see the prices of these, except the pipa tofu at $38. A couple other nice dishes on the regular, fairly short menu were the thousand layer tofu and the rack of lamb.

Sands Chinese Restaurant is closed on Sundays. 

Paradise Dynasty Is So Much More Than Xiao Long Bao

A few months ago I heard about the opening of a branch of the famed Paradise Dynasty Chinese restaurant chain out of Singapore in Costa Mesa's South Coast Plaza super regional shopping mall.  Since South Coast Plaza is  not exactly in my normal geographic territory I didn't have an opportunity to stop by until recently.  Their slogan is "Legend Of Xiao Long Bao", and while the XLB is excellent, what caught me unaware was how good the rest of their menu was.

I don't think you will ever get a consensus on the best XLB around simply because different diners look for different things.  Some diners prefer thin skins, some prefer thick, and no restaurant will do it both ways.  Similarly some people prefer lots of soup, others more moderate.  And these days, the varieties of XLB go in all directions.  With the famed Din Tai Fung also operating in South Coast Plaza, it is inevitable that people will compare the restaurants, and largely based on the XLB.   And I don't think a consensus as to which is better for basic varieties will be found.  However, for specialty varieties, Paradise Dynasty clearly is the place to go.

For sure, Paradise Dynasty's black truffle XLB is the most flavorful single examplar of XLB I have ever had. Nor have I had one with so much truffle flavor.

 

 

The black truffle XLB is part of Paradise Dynasty’s multicolored, multiflavored collection.  It includes the green luff gourd, light brown foie gras, yellow cheese, orange crab roe, gray garlic and red Sichuan varieties.  All of these XLB are naturally colored.  These are not just gimmicks, except perhaps for the cheese XLB, as each variety has its own distinct and wonderful flavor.  I actually liked the cheese XLB also, but I think I'm in the minority on that one.

 

There's nothing wrong with the kurobota pork and chicken (pictured) XLBs either.

They also have shen jen bao on the menu, which is a little fluffier than what you normally find.

Was able to try a few appetizers.  The clear star was the chilled tofu with soy sauce vinagarette.  Absolutely delicious.

There's more than meets the eye to their lettuce rolls.  A refreshing palatte cleanser, it really isn't lettuce, but rather Taiwanese A choy with a wonderful sesame dipping sauce.

 

 

And this is their cucumber salad.

 

 

Interestingly, another signature dish is the radish pastry. The early bird gets the worm as this sells out early in the day. Particularly noteworthy is how the traditional heavy turnip/radish cake dim sum has been turned into such a light and delicate dish. 

 

 

The prawn and Kurobuta pork dumpling in chili vinaigrette may be the best spicy won ton you’ll find anywhere, including the place at the other end of the mall.

 

 

But really, the attraction of Paradise Dynasty is their wide selection of entrees.  Personally my favorite dish was this scrambled egg white with fish and dried scallop, topped by an egg yolk which is then mixed into the dish. Never seen anything quite like this before and this may have been the best thing I ate all year. 

 

 

Yes, this is sweet and sour fish, and you can get it anywhere. But not like this. Excellent batter, but that’s not unique. What distinguishes this dish is the fact that while there’s the crunchy exterior, the fish is soft and juicy. I have no idea how they pull that off. Oh, and there’s a touch of plum in the sweet and sour sauce.

 

Another best in class dish is the pork chop fried rice.  It looks just like the same dish at Din Tai Fung, but even if it is a copycat dish I'd rather have this one.   How do they make the pork so soft and juicy? You can order the pork chop as a separate stand alone dish.

 

 

 

I've paid more before for chicken broth but their double boiled chicken soup is the best.

 

 

Another best in class dish is the ong choy, which I've eaten at hundreds of restaurants.

 

Dan dan mein was a little too soupy for my tastes.

 

But the stir fried noodles with pork was surprisingly impressive.

Another surprise was the shredded pork in black bean paste.  Actually it was a double surprise--not only the taste of the dish, but also the East Coast style thin Peking duck type wrapper was so great!

 

Paradise Dynasty is proud of their dessert creations, and rightly so. For most of my life, Chinese restaurant desserts were primitive at best.  However Chinese desserts are really coming into their own  and Paradise Dynasty has assembled a nice assortment.  Indeed with Palatte in the San Francisco Bay area putting a similar emphasis on desserts, one can no longer say Chinese restaurants don't have good desserts.  This is Paradise Dynasty's red bean glutinous rice roll with peanut topping. 

 

The black sesame peanut topped glutinous rice ball is great, hot out of the oven.

 
Pan fried pumpkin cakes are so good.

And the chilled snow fungus in peach resin.

Paradise Dynasty is a significant addition to the local Chinese dining scene.  A lot of people may assume it's some kind of Din Tai Fung wannabe, but it is certainly much more than that with a broader array on their menu of outstanding Chinese dishes.  Special thanks to the head chef and the head dim sum chef!