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.

Chinese Fine Dining Comes To -- Los Angeles Koreatown?

The concept of fine Chinese dining in Los Angeles is a recent one, and one which does not have a very deep roster. Consequently it's surprising to find a self-proclaimed (see picture), and indeed based on their pricing in fact, fine Chinese dining restaurant open in Koreatown.

Now finding such an animal in Koreatown would not be a surprise since Koreans like their brand of Chinese food, and there are a lot of expensive places to eat in Koreatown. No, what makes Hong Yeon surprising is the totality of its location. Hong Yeon is located in the Rotex Hotel on Olympic Blvd. at Gramercy Place, which looks like a very nice place to stay. But here's where things break down. The way Hong Yoen is configured, the back of the kitchen looks out to the side of Gramercy Place, directly onto a homeless encampment. Which explains why the entire front entrance to the hotel on Olympic is blocked off, and there is only one small entrance to the hotel, off of the rear parking lot. Oh, and then there are the room rates, which run roughly $100 a night, explaining why the hotel was apparently sold out when I dropped by.

As you can see, the Hong Yeon dining room was full when I was there, with a crowd having the wherewithal to have an expensive meal.

And as I mentioned the restaurant charges fine dining prices. All I could afford was the sweet and sour fish fillet, which set me back $40. It was actually quite different from the typical deep red sweet and sour sauce you see at most Chinese restaurants, rather a tan colored gravy chock full of vegetables and wood ear fungus. Not a bad meal at all. But those prices--I would be hard pressed to find an item on the menu that wasn't a top of the market price. And set dinners are as much as $100 per person.
 

 

If this hotel and restaurant were located someplace else in Koreatown with typical Los Angeles hotel room rates, it would make perfect sense.  But as is, I'm baffled.

 

Perhaps the answer lies in its relative proximity to the USC campus.  USC has one of the largest population of students from Mainland China attending American universities.  Yet, the number of authentic Chinese restaurants proximate to the USC campus is fairly small, none serve what may be considered Mainland style food, and the food trucks which used to park along Jefferson Blvd. offering Mainland style Chinese food appear to have all disappeared.  One suggestion is that the USC Chinese Mainland crowd likes to patronize restaurants in Koreatown, as there is some similarity between Korean food and the Chinese food in the northern parts of the Chinese mainland from where many of the USC students originate.  And since the Mainland Chinese crowd is known to be well heeled, perhaps they may be patronizing Hong Leon.

Return To Rancho Cucamonga

The expansion of the Chinese community in the Los Angeles area which started roughly 60 years ago as Chinese Americans broke out of segregated housing within the City of Los Angeles into newly constructed suburban homes in Monterey Park, has been one incessant eastward march.  I don't know about other geographic areas, but Chinese Americans in Los Angeles have a fixation on recently developed housing communities, and over the decades the path of new upscale housing community construction has been decidedly eastward, because that's where the vacant land has been.  And in particularly, a sizable portion of this development has been along the San Bernardino Freeway and Pomona Freeway corridors, resulting in an ongoing eastward march in the development of Chinese communities.  

One slight outlier to the overall pattern has been the Rancho Cucamonga area, which while definitely east of Los Angeles, is further north, straddling the 210 (Foothill) freeway corridor instead.   Rancho Cucamonga is the city made famous by Jack Benny’s mythical train route that stopped at Anaheim, Azusa and Cooocamonga. Though people in Los Angeles are familiar with those cities, apparently the radio audience across the US found those names wildly hilarious and the names were a running joke for years.  There's even a Jack Benny Drive in Rancho Cucamonga today.   Like virtually every town in California in the late 19th and early 20th century, Cucamonga did have a Chinatown.  But if there were any Chinese residents there back when Jack Benny had his show, they would have been farmers or farm workers as residential housing was highly segregated in LA into the 1960s and 1970s. 

Rancho Cucamonga first came on my Chinese food radar when the 99 Ranch Market Chinese supermarket chain opened up a branch on Foothill Blvd.  (Indeed, I"m in awe of the market research capabilities of the 99 Ranch Market in their ability to be the first Chinese business to open up in new burgeoning Chinese communities across America.)   At that time just a couple of Chinese restaurants opened up nearby the 99 Ranch store serving authentic Chinese food, but also with a menu friendly to non-Chinese locals as there wasn’t the critical mass of Chinese residents for dedicated authentic Chinese restaurants. But it was probably four or five years ago that the Chinese influence in the area really began to grow, with anecdotal information that perhaps 75 percent of the residents in a particular housing development in Rancho Cucamonga called Bella Vista were Taiwanese.  That warranted a return visit to the area to check out more new Chinese restaurants.

After that visit I began to hear more and more about authentic Chinese restaurants opening in Rancho Cucamonga, so I decided a couple of weeks ago to make a side trip on my way back from Orange County to Los Angeles via Rancho Cucamonga.   Mindful of the Taiwanese bent of the new Rancho Cucamonga Chinese community, I marked off Jo Jo's Kitchen: Taiwan Eats as a must visit location.  However as I drove along Arrow Highway I was a little puzzled because I didn't see any kind of storefront that would contain a Taiwanese restaurant.  But I did see something with a large parking lot called Haven City Market, so I pulled in and got out.  That's when I learned that Haven City Market was a large food hall, where Jo Jo's Kitchen: Taiwan Eats was located.

Of course the problem with doing a food crawl 50 miles away from home is that you have to limit what you can order.  Even with a relatively short menu, making a choice at Jo Jo's Kitchen: Taiwan Eats was difficult.  Beef noodle soup?  Fried pork chop?  Taiwanese sausage?   Tomato and egg?   Actually for me the choice was clear--popcorn fish, which is something I really like, and don't see on too many menus.  And of course it was great and I’m wondering when I can get back to try more items from the menu.

 

Actually the entire Haven City Market was a revelation to me.  Indeed, finding this food court here was downright shocking on a number of levels. There are 30 vendors in a spacious and bustling hall, most of which are ethnic and many of which are Asian. 

 

And most unexpected is Saibadee which serves Lao and Thai street food.  I'm not sure where you could find anything like this food alternative closer to Los Angeles.  Why it's available here puzzles me.

 
Rancho Cucamonga had other surprises, too.  When scouting out restaurants, I came across China Republic, which I saw from its menu had an impressive selection of dim sum.  Once again I was surprised by the venue, which turned out to be different from any of the dim sum restaurants I patronize in the Los Angeles area.  As you can see, the clean lines and subdued lighting are something you don't see in the dim sum palaces in the San Gabriel Valley or anywhere else in Los Angeles.

 

The dim sum was good quality, higher than I would have expected in Rancho Cucamonga.  This is their scallop dumpling.

 

Baked custard buns.

Baked bbq pork buns.

The bar area is consistent with the upscale ambiance.

Once again, an unexpected encounter and something quite different from what I was used to.

I was also able to visit Dumpling Village.  Interesting to find an entry for beef pies on the menu, an indefinite term which can mean different things at different Chinese restaurants.  In this case, the reference is to beef bings, which are a little more difficult to find in the San Gabriel Valley these days ever since the demise of the premier purveyor, Beijing Pie House, followed by the rebranding of the next best supplier, Tianjin Feng Wei into Ace Burgers, specializing in knock offs of the spicy chicken sandwiches produced by the Shanghai branches of KFC and McDonalds.  This was a good version.

Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga may have been a big joke to national radio audiences many decades ago, but the Chinese food in Rancho Cucamonga these days is certainly no joke.

What We Ate In San Francisco (In Addition To Eight Tables)

While last month's posting gave a detailed look at our wonderful dinner at George Chen's Eight Tables in San Francisco Chinatown, there were a number of other dining highlights on the trip.  On our previous trip last October, we had planned to eat at Lai Hong Lounge in Chinatown, only to find that they had not reopened from their pandemic closure.  However right before leaving on the trip I saw a news items saying they had indeed reopened, so this was a logical first stop.  The restaurant used their hiatus to do a remodel, the most obvious changes being moving the main entrance to the other end of the building closest to Broadway, and the insertion of a banquet type backdrop on the back wall.  While I have noticed that some restaurants that have reopened after a long layoff have suffered a major drop in quality, Lai Hong Lounge has not.  This is their tofu vegetable trio.  The trio was three different items, a tofu eggplant, a tofu mushroom and an egg tofu variety.  

Meanwhile, the coffee ribs have migrated from the dim sum menu to the dinner menu.  A heavy dose of coffee, which actually affected my sleep.

While looking for new Chinese restaurants that may have recently opened up accessible to my meeting in downtown San Francisco, I ran across bao, in the Mission District, which had an extremely interesting modern dim sum menu.  It was not within walking distance, but before I left Los Angeles I was checking San Francisco transit information and found that they had changed to an app based system where cash fares were actually charged a premium over buying online tickets.  It took this dinosaur a while to figure out, but I did download the app.  And when I jumped on the Muni at Mission and First, I also placed an online order at bao.

The bus stopped on just about every block, so it took almost twenty minutes to get to 16th and Mission.  I then walked the two blocks to 17th and Valencia.  That actually was not much faster than if I had walked!   By the time I got to bao, my order was ready.  The baked Malaysia chicken curry bun was huge!

 

They also had my favorite crispy baked bbq pork buns.   Only some of the restaurants have this in Los Angeles, but they're all over the Bay Area.

My original plan was to stop by the newly opened G & Y Bakery & Cafe on Clay Street, which opens very early in the morning, on the first of my three daily morning walks from Chinatown to my downtown meeting site.  Imagine my surprise when I dropped by and saw that there were no baked goods for sale, and that G & Y was essentially a Hong Kong style cafe.  So I had to wait until dinnertime.  This is the corn in fish sauce, which is offered in either deep fried with batter or pan fried without.  Both this and the broccoli beef were excellent.

 

After dinner I went on an evening stroll through Chinatown to check out to see if there were any more new developments in Chinatown since last fall's trip.   It was great being back at the Royal Pacific Motor Inn, which had closed for two years because of the pandemic.   For last fall's San Francisco trip we ended up staying at the Sam Wong Hotel on the same block.  While similarly located to be in the middle of Chinatown, it can't match up with the Royal Pacific's free parking.  Indeed our bill for four nights at the Royal Pacific was less than the room rate for the Hilton on Kearny St. for just one night, without parking.

 

It was interesting to walk by the House of Nanking.  As usual, business was booming and the outdoor seating was full.  House of Nanking has been the most crowded Chinese restaurant in Chinatown for decades, with nary a Chinese patron for most of the time.  Well, I did eat there once back 20 years ago, and there is an occasional Asian face in the audience.  But generally when you go by the House of Nanking, you might as well be in Copenhagen based when looking at the faces of the diners.  Not to say that the food there is bad, even though it's probably in my bottom 10 for Chinese food in San Francisco Chinatown, but combined with their pricing, most Chinese diners have enough sense to avoid this place.

 

Looking for a snack during break time downtown, I found two nearby branches of the same boba chain, Happy Lemon, one of them apparently a block away at 425 Mission St.  However, when I got to the spot that Google Maps indicated was the location of Happy Lemon, it was 555 Mission St., and no signs of anything looking like boba.  So I went up the block to manually find 425 Mission St., which based on the numbering would be slightly north of First St.  But the first address with a “400" number was 415 Mission St., and the numbers went down from there.  So I turned on Google Maps and asked for directions.  I’ve always had trouble following Google Maps for walking directions, and I didn’t know if it was going crazy or I just didn’t understand.  But I ended up going east on First Street and being directed to something called Minna Street, a short block east of and parallel to Mission Street.  Dubiously I kept going, and magically there was Happy Lemon!  And I could see it was directly behind a building on Mission Street.  555 Mission Street, to be exact.  

Anyway, I ordered what they called a Bubble waffle, which is merely a fancy name for a regular Hong Kong Waffle.  The waffle itself was OK, but I ordered the salty cheese topping which made all the difference in the world.  It was delicious, though it was sweet, not salty.  Afterwards I discovered the mystery of the street address.  This branch of Happy Lemon was in a complex known as the Salesforce Transbay Transit center, which included not only office space, but a transit center, and a third story, blocks long park.  The main entrance to the complex is on Minna Street, but for some reason carries a 425 Mission Street address, and any part of that complex carries the 425 address.

The next dinner was at Grand Harbor in Burlingame, which I chose for the wonderful view of San Francisco Bay on top of the food.

Dinner started out with an exceedingly rich chicken broth.

This is the salty egg yolk deep fried shrimp and pumpkin.  The shrimp is separate from the pumpkin, so you had to pay attention to which one you were eating.

An interesting pairing was diced filet mignon and broccoli with fried egg tofu.

 

The best dish was an old favorite of mine, egg whites on a bed of fried glass noodles.

This was a simple looking vegetable dish, but the gingko nuts turned it into something outstanding.

I thought dinner was over when they cleared the table, but then these red bean buns showed up.

I would have been puzzled by this life sized photo of Guy Fieri in the lobby had I not seen the episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives that visited Grand Harbor.  I am puzzled, however, that Grand Harbor was featured on that program, since it is neither a diner, drive-in nor dive.

Looking to pick up breakfast on my way to my downtown seminar, I passed by Yummy Dim Sum on Stockton St. at 7:50am just as they were rolling open the gate.  I inquired if they were open for business and the lady said yes.  I saw that an order of three baked bbq pork buns was only $1.80, and I got two orders.  I actually had to wait a couple of minutes as they pulled the buns out of the oven, and then brushed on the glazing.  And I don’t think that these buns were better than those at other neighborhood bakeries.  But so hot and fresh out of the oven, they were fantastic.

Right on the edge of Chinatown, where Clay Street meets the financial district, I stumbled onto a new Taiwanese cafe called Yilan Bento.  I ordered the popcorn chicken, which was the biggest order of that item I had ever seen.  It was equal to a full sized entree at a regular Chinese restaurant and I struggled to finish it. 

Another find in the heart of Chinatown on Grant Avenue was the newly opened Jade Chocolates.  Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine a Chinese eatery with “Chocolate” in the name, as any kind of dessert had historically been a deep afterthought in a Chinese restaurant.  However, the 21st century has seen a proliferation of dessert shops, though Jade Chocolates is the first I know of to include an emphasis on chocolates.  I picked up a gigantic baked bbq pork bun for $6 or $7 which was absolutely horrible.  Mostly bread, little filling, and the bread wasn’t even sweet.  

On getaway day I picked up a couple of items in Chinatown before checking out of the Royal Pacific for the drive back to Los Angeles.  At Blue Sky Cafe on Powell Street, I had orders of har gow and pork with vegetable dumplings.

And a block further down on Powell Street I was at a grocery store called Wendy & Moon, which I had read also had prepared foods, such as this chicken banh mi.

It was then over the Bay Bridge to our final stop of the trip at the recently opened Pearl Bay in Fremont. The first thing that struck me about the restaurant was the wall of seafood.

  

Then came the giant video screen, not showing sporting events or music videos, but rather some of their top dishes, amazingly gigantic.

Of course we had to order my favorite crispy baked bbq pork buns.

Fried pork dumplings were excellent as well as visual.

Spinach and shrimp dumplings.

Guangzhou style pork dumplings.

And finally for dessert, mango pudding.

A great way to end the trip.  Pearl Bay has rocketed to the top of my list of favorite large Chinese restaurants for combining food and setting.