Toishanese Pressed Almond Duck at Kim Restaurant

While much of the old style Toishanese/Cantonese Chinese food of the early and mid-1950s is forgettable, one dish I've always enjoyed is pressed almond duck, a.k.a. War Shu Opp.  In Los Angeles where Chinese food tastes are more sophisticated than anywhere else in the country except the San Francisco Bay area, which is equally progressive, pressed almond duck is probably still available only at a handful of Chinese restaurants.  Undoubtedly the leading purveyor is Paul's Kitchen where I grew up enjoying the dish in the 1950s and 1960s before real Chinese food arrived in the United States in the late 1960s.  And while I never gave up my fondness for this dish, neither was it worth going out of the way to Paul's Kitchen location in the City Market section of downtown Los Angeles, which was the real Chinatown of Los Angeles from the 1930s to the 1960s, or places like Canton City and Chinese Garden in Montebello.

However just recently I found this dish at a most surprising location, Kim's Restaurant on Crenshaw Blvd. in Los Angeles.  This was a surprise to me for three reasons.  First of all Kim's hasn't been around nearly as long as Paul's Kitchen, and secondly I lived near Kim's Restaurant for probably 25 to 30 years and was not aware that had that dish on the menu, though that was many years ago.  And over the years there have been a number of discussions on the food message boards about the dwindling number of restaurants serving the dish and Kim's never came up.  Actually, Kim's was probably the closest Chinese restaurant to where we lived, but we seldom ate there.  That's because of their more Americanized Chinese cuisine, so we did most of our Chinese dining in the City Market area at locations such as Paul's Kitchen, On Luck, New Moon, Paul's Cafe, and Li Wah.   Only when Johnny, our favorite waiter from On Luck landed there did we visit Kim's Restaurant more often.

Actually I had pretty much forgotten about Kim's Restaurant until they were involved in an incident at the start of the pandemic in my first Menuism article on the effect of the pandemic on Chinese restaurants. As many of you recall, when COVID-19 arrived in the United States it was often described in terms like "Chinese virus" and "kung flu" which lead to a backlash against things Chinese, and particularly Chinese restaurants.  As a result of unspecified acts of anti-Chinese harassment, the owner of Kim's Restaurant closed down, apparently with the intention to never reopen.   Word of this episode spread throughout the Crenshaw neighborhoods and the restaurant's customers were highly distressed and expressed their feelings in dozens of postings on the local online message board.  Trouble is none of the customers had any idea of how to communicate their outrage as to the event and their affection for Kim's Restaurant and its food.  Fortunately the message board thread ultimately came to the attention of somebody who had contact information for the owner, so they printed out the messages and delivered them to the owner.  Less than a month later Kim's Restaurant was back in business.

After seeing these events unfold with the ultimate reopening of the restaurant I thought it would be a good idea for me to revisit Kim's Restaurant after a 30 year absence.  I actually looked at their menu a couple of times before noticing the almond duck.  Finally getting to stop by the restaurant, this was the old familiar fried duck cubes with a little crunch inside, a few nuts on the outside, that wonderful gloppy brown sauce and lettuce on the side.

Actually the Kim Restaurant version is less greasy that the historic version I remember, which is definitely a good thing.
 

 

How I Joined Bugs, Daffy, Elmer and Porky As A Warner Bros. Animated Character

So what do Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig and yours truly all have in common?  Why, we're all animated characters in productions from Warner Bros. Studios.  Now I don't think too many people wonder how Bugs, Daffy, Porky and Elmer made their way to Warner Bros. animation, but there are plenty of blanks to fill in as to how I got to join that distinguished group.  It all happened quite suddenly and I really didn't figure it all out until after the fact.  

Now as a Z-list celebrity I have become used to receiving random requests.  It could be a request to write an article, a request to be interviewed, or it could be a distraught consumer in the rural south who finds their local grocery store no longer sells some gloppy Chinese American sauce and asks me for an alternate source.  (Have you heard of Amazon?)   Anyway one Monday evening I receive an email from the Associate Producer of a "digital show" called Family Style, to the effect that they were doing a segment on Chinese buffets, and could I help them out with expert opinion.  They ask me whether I had time to do a conference call on Wednesday with their group to answer historical questions about Chinese buffets.  Since I would be stuck three hours waiting for my car to be repaired, I told them I had plenty of time.

There were three or four people on the call, which I decided to take while walking on a residential street in Van Nuys to minimize background noise, and right off the bat I could see they were going way off track because they were working off the premise that Chinese buffets had something to do with some ancient Chinese eating tradition.  Silly them.  For the first 100 years of Chinese presence in the United States, it was just us rural Cantonese peasants in America who knew nothing about refined Chinese traditions.  Rather, Chinese buffets were an offshoot of post-WW II Vegas Buffets and 1960s and 1970s Smorgasboards and buffets in Los Angeles and other cities.  Anyway I straightened them out and gave them a brief history of the Chinese in the United States.  They then asked if I could come into their office Friday afternoon to shoot some scenes.

On Thursday they sent me the video schedule on a "call sheet"-- had never seen anything so professional in my life.  Shooting would be in Burbank in an office tower near the Warner Bros. lot, at someplace called Stage 13 and it listed a production crew of 20 people.  Anyway I drove down there and when I got there it looked like regular office space.  I saw a Warner Bros. logo along with a large sign saying Stage 13.  I figured maybe these people were leasing space from Warner Bros., though I was also puzzled as to why these people would need an entire floor of office space.  Anyway, they took me down to a conference room to shoot the video, which took nearly 2 hours.  There were two camera operators, a gal who operated those little blackboards that they say "Scene 1, Take 1", an interviewer who was introduced as the animation director, a producer, and some other woman.  The final sequence was shot outdoors, with me walking along Magnolia Blvd. toting a large canvas bag filled with hundreds take out restaurant menus, which they asked me to bring along as a prop.  One of the conference room scenes had me go through some of the menus and describe the particular restaurant.

Even at this point after leaving the video shoot, the Warner Bros. connection was murky to me, since it was not actually in the studio, there were no other Warner Bros. trappings in the office, and nobody at any point in time had mentioned a relationship between Family Style and Warner Bros.  So when I got home, I decided to go on the computer and sort things out.  I found out that Stage 13 is actually a project of Warner Bros. to create short form unscripted content.  They have 10 different YouTube shows.  That explains the permanent office space, as many of the workers support the entire Stage 13 agenda, not just the show I was working on.  I looked up prior Family Style episodes from Season 1, and found they were built around well known Asian American talent like Daniel Dae Kim, Harry Shum Jr., Jon Chu and Hudson Yang.   As it turns out, they were affiliated with Warner Bros. TV shows and movies and hence available for cross marketing. Even the show's stable of revolving hosts are credited Asian American performers.  And finally the Warner Bros. presence explains why the call sheet included language not to discuss this project on social media.  

A week and a half after the video shoot we went into lockdown.  And with the pandemic raising havoc in the restaurant industry in general, and buffet restaurants most of all, I figured that my episode would never be released.  So it was a surprise almost five months later to receive an email from the Executive Producer of the show saying that they were finishing post production work and asked if I could send scans of a couple of dozen Chinese menus for an animation sequence.  What?  They were going to show Chinese restaurant menus singing and dancing?  Okay.  They were very happy with what I sent them, and said the the episode would be released in the Fall, and would update me when that happened.  And actually, I never got that update.  But I do a daily self-Google, so I picked up on it the day after it was released.  And who knew the animation scene would include me playing multiple roles as Maitre'd, waiter, chef, buffet server and baker, as well as walking through rice and wheat fields?

 If you missed the episode, it's here.

 

 

  

  

 

Me And General Tso

As many of you know, I made an appearance in the wonderful 2014 food documentary "The Search For General Tso" which had a limited theatrical release and played in numerous film festivals, and is still available on numerous streaming platforms today.   After just rewatching the film here it occurred to me that while I have mentioned some elements of my involvement in this film in passing on this blog and elsewhere, I never did a comprehensive reflection of my experiences with the film.  So now, primarily for my own edification (and perhaps of interest to my imaginary agent Judy I. and my imaginary publicist Linda K.) I'm chronicling the events surrounding me and General Tso.

When Clarissa Wei's 2012 interview with me and my 6,000 Chinese restaurants  went viral, it apparently caught the attention of documentary filmmaker Ian Cheney.  Cheney had been working on what turned out to be a very successful project in Iowa, when looking for a late night place to eat stumbled upon an open Chinese restaurant in the middle of nowhere, where he was stunned to find the same General Tso's Chicken dish in rural Iowa that he was used to eating in New York.  That set him out to solve what seemed to be a mystery to him of how General Tso's Chicken came to be such an ubiquitous Chinese-American dish, and to collaborate with Chinese-American author Jennifer 8 Lee, whose book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles included a subplot involving where that dish came from.  I received a communication from Lily Spottiswoode in Brooklyn, an associate producer on this General Tso movie, who turned out to be the granddaughter of famed character actor Jack Palance, asking if they could interview me when they came to California to shoot some scenes.  Well, why not?

Well, it took quite a few months, but Ian Cheney and his crew finally came to Los Angeles on their way back from shooting on location in China.  Originally their plan was to film at a Chinese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley that served General Tso's Chicken, but I told them this was problematical for two reasons.  First of all, General Tso's chicken was in fact nearly unheard of in California, as the orange chicken dish found here had preempted the fairly similar General Tso's.  Secondly, General Tso's chicken was an Americanized Chinese dish, while virtually all of the Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley were authentic Chinese restaurants catering to Chinese diners.  In combination, these made finding a San Gabriel Valley Chinese restaurant serving the dish a longshot.  Consequently, the film shoot was set for Mission 261, one of the better dim sum restaurants in the City of San Gabriel at the time.

The film crew of Cheney, Spottiswoode and director Amanda Murray ended showing up late for our 12:30pm meeting time, as they were delayed at their previous filming location, the corporate offices of Panda Express, where they had interviewed the founders of Panda Express, Andrew and Peggy Cherng.  My interview lasted two hours, during which they asked questions about the history and demography of Chinese food in the United States, not unlike the other interviews I had been doing in the wake of Clarissa Wei's article.  It became immediately evident to me that most of what I said in the interview would not be the part of the final movie, as the two hour length of the session exceeded the running time of most movies.  

Since my interview was one of the last they conducted, they indicated that they would soon start the editing process.  I don't know anything about filmmaking, but I figured it would take maybe 6 to 9 months to pull the film together.  I did get a short informational request four months after the interview, followed by total silence.  As the months rolled on I started to suspect that the film would not get finished, my guess being funding problems being the culprit.   Not only did I not hear from anybody, but the General Tso account on Twitter fell silent.

Then out of the blue, a little more than a year after the interview I saw a notice that the film would be premiering at the TriBeCa Film Festival in Manhattan in April of 2014, and received confirmation from the director that I had indeed made the final cut.   What a miracle!  The film didn't die.  Even more amazingly, I was scheduled to be in New York the week of the film festival and while I would not be able to attend the premiere, I would be able to attend one of the scheduled screenings of the movie and actually get to watch myself on the screen.  When I told them of my attendance, they sent me two passes to the showing, and also asked if I would be willing to come onstage after the screening to be part of the post-movie audience Q&A.  Well since I'd be in a suit anyway for my all day meeting, why not?

The festival was not held in TriBeCa, but rather in Chelsea at the Bow Tie Theater.  Mrs. Chandavkl and I took the subway to 23rd St., along with Mrs. Chandavkl's cousin from Los Angeles, Barbara, who was in town to attend her niece's graduation from culinary school. As we approached the theater, somebody yells out “David.”  I turn around and it’s Ian Cheney.  I asked him whether we needed to wait outside (there wasn’t anybody waiting but it was early) and he said he didn’t know the procedure, but he told me go inside with him and meet some of the people who worked on the film.  

 

After meeting the film editor and some technicians, we then went upstairs to the theater.   The Bow Tie cinema was just an ordinary multiplex with perhaps 200 seats per theater, and General Tso was in theater 7.  The theater was still very empty 20 minutes before screening time, which made me wonder whether the film really sold out as I had read.  However, as 9 pm approached, the theater did fill up.  A little after 9pm somebody from the festival went on stage to introduce Ian Cheney.  Ian said a few words and said there would be a “real treat” for the Q&A after the movie because one of the “cast members” would be there.  Who, me?

The movie was great.  My first scene appears about 25 minutes into the movie and it was really weird watching myself, such that I didn't pay attention to what portion of my interview was used in the movie. After the movie Ian went on stage and called me up.  Given that it was Ian's film and I was a bit player with maybe 3 minutes of screen time, I didn't expect to answer any questions. In fact because of this I grabbed the microphone when I was called onstage to make what I figured to be my only chance to say something. You see the film while the film did solve the mystery of the origin of General Tso's Chicken, it also essentially delivered my message about how Chinese food in America was tied to the Chinese exclusion acts, anti-Chinese discrimination and the pure Cantonese roots of Chinese-American food for the first century. So I as a Chinese-American wanted to thank Ian for telling "our" story.  

 

As it turned out I got dragged into a couple of questions where a questioner started out "Both of you..." or Ian responded and then said "What do you think, David."  Fortunately I had become relatively adept at answering the question I wasn't asked if I didn't have a good answer to the real question.  Somebody asked Ian what the best Chinese restaurant he ate at and he kicked that to me, so I responded Koi Palace in Daly City.  Then somebody asked if there was anything good in New York.  I said that I didn’t want to start a food fight, but "No", which drew a pretty loud reaction.   I think Ian was very happy that I was on stage with him for the Q&A because it’s easier having somebody else standing there instead of being by yourself.  Here's a brief clip from the session. 

After the Q&A a couple of fans came up to talk to me about the movie, so by the time we left the theater it was almost 11 pm.  We were all a little hungry since we really didn't have time before getting to the theater to have an elaborate meal, so I thought we’d have a snack.  I was looking for a deli or fast food, but a half block from the theater we saw Chinese Fast Wok was still open.  I would never suggest going to an Americanized Chinese restaurant to Mrs. Chandavkl as she is not a fan of inauthentic Chinese food.  But Barbara said she had never eaten General Tso’s chicken, nor had Mrs. Chandavkl, so they agreed that if the restaurant had it on the menu (which was a foregone conclusion) that it’d be appropriate to eat there. So they did have the dish and we ate there. 

Critical reaction to the movie was very good.  Both Variety and the Hollywood Reporter gave excellent reviews to the movie.  Even though my total screen time was short and there were 25 interviewees in the movie, the Daily Variety review specifically mentions me early in the review, the second interviewee named, albeit apparently as an example of the "assorted characters" in the movie, and also put me near the front of the cast listing in their review.   Therefore I found it surprising that the film only showed up at a few other rather random film festivals in 2014 and nothing remotely close to California.  Oh well, at last I was able to see myself onscreen, which is something that not too many of the other interviewees could say, even though I didn't remember what I said in the movie. 

But perhaps the biggest surprise was yet to come.  At the end of 2014 it was announced that The Search For General Tso was being picked up for distribution by Sundance Films.  While this didn't mean that the movie would be coming to thousands of movie screens in multiplexes throughout the country, it did mean that more than a few people might see the movie and I might be able to see the movie again.  Indeed the movie did actually make it to a multiplex in Phoenix, where coincidentally my former co-worker turned radio talk show host Dave Isaac put me and Ian Cheney on his show to talk about the movie after he and his staff were actually able to view the movie.  Or in Park City, Utah, where my 1970s co-worker Steve Chin attended a screening of the movie, and partway through the showing turned to his wife and said "David Chan should have been in this movie."  Moments later I came on screen, resulting in such an outburst from Steve that after the movie ended he stood up and apologized to the audience, explaining why he reacted the way he did.

In Hollywood, the movie played at the 99 seat Arena Theater, where I was able to buy tickets and bring several family members to see the film, and where I could actually concentrate on watching the film.  I found the second viewing of the movie quite interesting since there were details I had missed the first time around.   Also during the movie I tweeted that it felt strange watching myself on the screen.  Shortly thereafter, one of my Twitter followers who saw the movie that same day in New York, tweeted I was great in the movie.  (Yeah, all 3 minutes of my appearance.)

The screening was followed with a Q&A by the producer, Jennifer 8 Lee and moderated by Evan Kleinman from KCRW who once had me on her show, and Zach Brooks, the publisher of an LA dining blog.    I was wondering whether Evan remembered me, but since she had already seen the film she recognized me as soon as I walked in and we had a nice chat.    When the Q&A started, Zach announced there was a “celebrity in the audience” and introduced me, so I stood up and waved.   Somebody shouted out how did I stay so slim eating at all those restaurants.  "Exercise and portion control" was my reply.

After the Q&A I went up to speak with Zach who said he was a fan of mine.  I complimented him on his blog though I only occasionally read it.  I spoke with Jennifer 8 Lee who I had never met in person though we follow each other on Twitter and had a nice talk with her.  Afterwards they served small samples of General Tso’s chicken.  People started coming up to talk to me, including a couple of Chowhound message board regulars, I believe Dommy! and Mattpointset.  (First time I ever met Chowhounds in person.)       Also one of my son's former co-workers, who heard me spoke at a foodie night gathering with the Chinese lawyers association was also there.   Wish I could have stayed longer, but we had a previously scheduled family gathering to attend.

 

But the real audience for the General Tso movie was streaming video, and though I don't think this made General Tso a commercial success (despite once cracking the daily Top 100 streaming videos), it had a viewership far beyond what I could have imagined.  I really didn't tell a lot of people about the movie, nor did I urge them to rent the video.  So it was stunning to be contacted by people I knew who actually watched the movie, without any advance warning that I was in it.  Besides numerous instances with family members and family acquaintances there were interesting examples at my workplace.  One day one of the hundreds of anonymous faces that walked our hallways stopped me and said "I just saw you in a movie at home last night."  Likewise a person in our New Orleans office with whom I worked with peripherally started a phone call about having seen me in the movie.  And just months ago I bumped into a former co-worker who had also just retired who said that he and his son were watching this movie when I appeared on screen.  He went on to gush about my major role in the film, and that I must have been on screen for at least 10 minutes.  I wish.  At Chubby Rice restaurant in Gardena, the guy behind the counter said "Hey, I saw you in that movie last night."  And in my most recent video shoot at Warner Bros., the director of photography, Daphne Qin Wu, asked whether I had seen the General Tso movie.  Well, yes, I was in it.

 

Through Genera Tso I received a real insight on movie making.  I knew from the beginning that most of my scenes would not be included in the movie, but until I saw the final cut I really didn't realize what a massive undertaking, and what skill was required to cut the movie down to size and into a coherent and compelling product.  I also felt fortunate to be included in the movie since I didn't comment about General Tso's chicken, indeed a dish with which I had little familiarity.  And in fact the Panda Express people weren't even included in the movie,   I guess being an assorted character made the difference in preserving my appearance.

     

 

 

 

 

  

Sam Woo Gets 3 to 9 Years In Prison

Of course there isn’t anybody really named Sam Woo running all those Sam Woo restaurants.  Rather Sam Woo is one of those Chinese businesses that are given lucky or propitious names, Sam Woo equating to something like "Three Happiness."  Still, when Sam Woo opened their first Orange County branch a local OC restaurant reviewer did refer to Sam, the man, as being in charge. 

And Sam Woo isn’t a monolithic chain, but rather various family members in a loose confederation under the Sam Woo banner, mostly in the Los Angeles area.  Consequently when a news item comes out regarding the Sam Woo restaurant chain,  not all branches are involved. With this clarification in place, one of the Sam’s is in big trouble, engaging in various types of tax and insurance fraud, being sentenced to 3 to 9 years in prison and having to paying $3 million in restitution.  The actual length of the prison sentence seems to be tied to the amount actually repaid to the defrauded taxing agencies and insurance companies.  

Of course, we knew stuff like this was going on in the Chinese restaurant community and occasionally we heard a few details now and then.  Indeed in my Menuism article on why some Chinese restaurants frequently change their names, I made reference to a couple potential tax avoidance scams that could be associated with restaurant name changes.  Meanwhile, a few years ago, the unofficial "Mayor of Chicago Chinatown" Tony Hu, who owned a string of Chinatown restaurants, was sent to prison for a year and fined $100,000 on vague tax evasion and money laundering charges.  But the Sam Woo episode is the most specific information that has ever gone public regarding this kind of activity, and given the magnitude of the punishment here compared to that received by Tony Hu, we can imagine the Sam Woo situation was, in the words of the state of California, egregious.

It is interesting to go through point by point as to the schemes that some of the Sam Woo restaurants took part in.  They are detailed in a news release from the State of California as follows.

Sales tax underreporting.    For over thirty years, the Sam Woo branch in Los Angeles Chinatown was one of the busiest restaurants in Chinatown.  It was also probably the biggest one that operated on a cash only basis, which was a pain when dining there.  But now we know why this, and other branches of Sam Woo in the Los Angeles area operated on a cash only basis.  Actually, in the Menuism article I described the more notorious sales tax scam than merely underreporting restaurant sales.  In this scam, after not reporting all of your sales, you then dissolve the corporation operating the restaurant, then open up a similar or identical restaurant at the same location, but in a new corporation and operating under a new restaurant name.   Practically speaking, this reduces the period of time that the government has to catch up with you for sales tax evasion.  It appears that Sam Woo took advantage of this strategy once, back around 2010, when the Sam Woo in Los Angeles Chinatown closed down and was replaced by something called Hong Kong BBQ.  Now they did print new menus, so while the look and feel of the restaurant was the same, I couldn't be sure if maybe somebody came in and bought the business and decided run it in a similar manner, but a waiter assured me it was the same operation.  Now given that the current criminal action against Sam Woo only goes back to 2012, it does appear that they got away with something with their Hong Kong BBQ maneuver.  And as I will indicate later, the waiter had one other piece of interesting information.

Income tax underreporting.  Obviously income tax underreporting goes hand in hand with sales tax underreporting when running a cash only business.  However what most people don't realize is that sometimes it is the desire of employees that drives the restaurant into the underground economy reliance on cash payments.  Many Chinese workers prefer being paid off the books in cash.  As a young accountant over 40 years ago I was surprised to learn that Chinese restaurants used unreported cash income not to line their own pockets by avoiding income tax, but rather to make under the table cash wage payments to their employees, for which the employer received no tax deduction.  While tales of employer exploitation of Chinese restaurant workers are well known and undoubtedly not uncommon, it was interesting to learn that some Chinese restaurant workers could dictate the terms of their employment.

While the obvious assumption is that these workers want to reduce their income tax liability by reporting less income, there are more important factors involved.  There are many government benefits tied to a worker's reported income, such as Medicaid (known in California as MediCal) eligibility. If I didn't realize this is common knowledge in the Chinese community I certainly would have caught on when I encountered a Chinese restaurant owner many years ago who drove a luxury car and casually mentioned he was on MediCal.  The desire of restaurant workers for at least some of their wages to be paid in untraceable cash has actually caused an operational dilemma for some Chinese restaurants as restaurants skew more toward credit card payments by their customers.  These restaurants simply don't have the cash receipts available to make under the table wage payments coveted by many restaurant workers.

Payroll tax underreporting.  In my Menuism article I also speculated about another possible tax scam that I had not heard about, but was suggested by a cryptic comment made by an unnamed waiter who attributed the change in identity as being forced by the government for being in business for so long.  That conversation was actually made at the former Sam Woo turned Hong Kong BBQ noted above and indeed payroll tax fraud was one of the counts against Sam Woo, by underreporting employee wages and also misstating the rate of employee turnover, which lowers your unemployment tax rate.

Last on the list was worker compensation fraud tied to underreporting reported wages.  I suspect this was done to be consistent with payroll tax reporting, and might not have been intended to be a separate source of fraudulent gain.

Mind you these are just the enforcement actions carried out by the state of California.  Federal income tax rates are roughly triple that of state income tax rates.  Can you imagine what the IRS is going to do to them?