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Los Angeles Times
22-02-2025
- Los Angeles Times
From Hong Kong to L.A.'s San Gabriel Valley, the snap, crackle and pop of claypot rice
The beauty of claypot rice, the comfort of chicken pot pie, Panda Inn's orange chicken redo, a Grocery Goblin's art discoveries, pie from a cake queen, plus line-worthy sweets and a last meal at Cassia. I'm Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week's Tasting Notes. The crackle of hot rice sizzling inside a covered clay vessel is the happy sound you hear at Nature Pagoda on a busy weeknight in San Gabriel just before your server lifts the pot's lid. It had been several years since I'd eaten at Nature Pagoda, one of the last restaurants Jonathan Gold reviewed for this paper before his 2018 death, but after a phenomenal claypot rice meal in Hong Kong recently, I've been seeking out the dish here at home. Hong Kong, which remains one of the world's great eating cities even after the political crackdowns against pro-democracy protests, is packed with restaurants and shops that specialize in one specific dish. Roast goose. Beef brisket noodles. Wonton soup. Pineapple buns. And, of course, claypot rice. Despite the many exciting high-end restaurants that garner Michelin and World's 50 Best attention, some of Hong Kong's best eating is in more egalitarian places where you often wait in line for a spot at a table you might share with other diners. At Kwan Kee Claypot Rice, two of us were seated with three Hong Kong students who showed us how to rinse our chopsticks and bowls in hot tea before the food arrived. I ordered my clay pot dish with white eel, pork and liver sausage and an egg. After drizzling the rice with the restaurant's specially flavored soy sauce, I dug in. The sausage, with just the right amount of funk, was a terrific counterpoint to the eel — surf and turf at its best — with the egg yolk bringing everything together and a few slices of red chile to heat things up. My reward at the end: crisp, beautifully charred crust from the bottom of the rice pot. Back home at Nature Pagoda, some of the claypot rice combinations include catfish with black bean sauce, frog, mushroom with chicken, pumpkin with preserved meat plus the classic spareribs with Chinese sausage. Broccoli florets top the rice. Whenever I can't decide which topping to order, I default to spare rib and sausage with an added egg. It's hard to beat Kwan Kee's charred crust in Hong Kong, but the burnished brown crust at Nature Pagoda is reliably satisfying. While waiting for the rice to cook, most Nature Pagoda customers order mini tureens of herbal soups, such as black chicken with either ginseng or a blend of Chinese herbs. Earlier this week, the restaurant had a special of tian qi chicken soup, which is supposed to be good for blood circulation and had a fantastically intense chicken flavor. Chong Yuen Fong, nearby in Alhambra, is another rice specialist that also offers different health soups to sip while you wait for your rice. I tried one with bitter melon, soybeans and pork ribs — not for everyone, but I happen to love the stark bitterness of the melon. Among the claypot rice toppings at Chong Yuen Fong, which has a tearoom-style decor with a view of the kitchen, are barbecue eel, chicken feet, beef brisket, pork belly and salted fish. A stalk of Chinese broccoli lays atop the rice. The crust at the bottom comes out crisp and golden brown. For dessert, there are Portuguese egg tarts, the tops caramelized. And in the same building, just a few doors down, is Kang Kang Food Court, seller of Jenn Harris' favorite sheng jian bao — 'part yeasted bun, part potsticker and a soup dumpling all in one,' as she writes of the pork dumplings. After our claypot rice at Chong Yuen Fong, we couldn't resist stopping at Kang Kang to get an order of sheng jian bao for the road. (Grab plenty of napkins if you eat these in your car.) I headed home with extra egg tarts and dumplings to share, thinking about the incredible meals I'd eaten in Hong Kong (some of which I'll describe in coming weeks). But as I drove along Valley Boulevard, past one great Chinese restaurant after another, I also thought about the wealth of good food we have right here. Food reporter Stephanie Breijo has explored two popular places recently where customers wait in line to be served. In Long Beach, San & Wolves Bakeshop, a former pop-up operation run by Kym Estrada and Arvin Torres, serves 'some of the most sought-after pastries ... gushing with ube,' Breijo writes, 'slathered with fresh salted caramel or showered in shaved cheddar — they're Filipino, and they're vegan.' Over in Koreatown, the line for dumplings, noodles and pastries at Liu's Cafe has been joined by a line for the new Liu's Cafe Creamery, 'a Taiwanese-influenced ice cream parlor ... where cilantro syrup helps replicate night-market flavors,' writes Breijo, 'and nearly every component is made from scratch' by pastry chef Isabell Manibusan. Food columnist Jenn Harris grew up eating at the original Panda Inn in Pasadena, opened in 1973 by Andrew Cherng and his father, chef Ming-Tsai Cherng. 'In its previous incarnation,' Harris writes in her review of the recently remodeled restaurant, 'the Pasadena Panda Inn was where you went before a school dance, met the extended family for birthday parties or found yourself on a Wednesday night because it was the only place everyone could agree on.' Now the mothership of the Panda Express chain (with some 2,600 locations worldwide) has been reconceived as 'a bustling Chinese American brasserie' that also has a sushi bar — 'an overzealous play at fusion,' Harris says. As for orange chicken, the now-ubiquitous dish that most people agree was invented at a Panda Express in Hawaii in 1987, it's also received a makeover. 'Every other orange chicken, whether in your neighborhood Chinese restaurant, freezer aisle or even the Panda Express near you,' Harris says, 'will pale in comparison.' Union jobs for food service workers have been in decline for decades — last year, just 1.6% of employees in 'food services and drinking places' were union members, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Los Angeles, even Musso and Frank, whose workers originally organized in 1937, had its union contract decertified in 2015 after a healthcare plan dispute. Now, as Food reporter Cindy Carcamo reported this week, the union jobs at the Original Pantry Cafe are under threat. A trust set up after the death of former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan — who bought the 100-year-old restaurant in 1981 — currently owns the Pantry, but is looking to sell the property. When the workers' union tried to get the trust to 'agree to keep on the employees and their union representation even under new ownership ... the trust threatened to shutter the restaurant.' The trust says that the Original Pantry Cafe could close as soon as March 2. 'Given what we know of former Mayor Riordan, he would be rolling over in his grave over this situation,' Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, told Carcamo. 'He loved those workers and his restaurant was part of him and his life and legacy.' It may not be as old as the Pantry, but Moffett's Family Restaurant & Chicken Pie Shoppe has been serving Arcadia diners for 50 years. Recently, columnist Jenn Harris, seeking 'something that felt familiar and stable' after evacuation orders from the Eaton fire were lifted, found herself eating chicken pot pie at Moffett's. There she discovered that Juan Valerio Garcia, hired at Moffett's as a dishwasher in 1980, had moved up through the ranks to cook and is now the owner of the legacy restaurant. With the help of his family and other longtime workers, Garcia hopes to keep Moffett's running at least another 50 years. Many of us at L.A. Times Food are followers of Vanessa Anderson's Grocery Goblin dispatches on TikTok and on Instagram. Her soothing voice guides viewers through grocery store aisles as she seeks to learn more about international ingredients and food history as well as the people who run the shops. One of her most moving posts was her recent follow-up with John Hopkins, longtime owner of Altadena's O Happy Days vegan cafe and natural food store, who lost his home and store in the Eaton fire. Anderson also takes time to appreciate the artistic labels she finds on packaged goods. And in the first of what we hope will be regular contributions to L.A. Times Food she highlights some of the spontaneous art and ephemera displays inside grocery stores, or as she puts it, 'museum exhibits hidden in plain sight.' She finds a mysterious knife display at LAX-C ('the Thai Costco'), brass Jesus plaques from Armenia at Sahag's Basturma in Hollywood and a mural on the wall of Vince's Market in Atwater Village painted by Rafael Escamilla. 'Neighborhood markets,' Anderson says, 'often offer something the Broad or the Getty simply cannot. The artifacts within them live and breathe, signs of age like rust and sun stains tethering them to our world in a way that traditional exhibits divorce.' If you follow the reviews of restaurant critic Bill Addison, you know that he is a huge fan of Echo Park's Quarter Sheets, not only for Aaron Lindell's fabulous Detroit-inspired pizza but for Hannah Ziskin's way with cake. ('I have become a Ziskin cake zealot,' Addison wrote a while back in Tasting Notes.) But when we invited Ziskin to the Times test kitchen to make a video for our Chef That! series, she didn't want to make cake; she wanted to make pie. Grapefruit pie. The recipe is a twist on a citrus curd pie with lemon olive oil drizzled on top. It was so delicious that Addison may have to become a Ziskin cake and pie zealot. Watch Ziskin make the pie and share her baking tips here. Tonight, as Stephanie Breijo recently reported, Bryant Ng and Kim Luu-Ng's Cassia, 'one of the most singular Asian restaurants in Los Angeles, will close after nearly a decade in operation.' (In spring, the Ngs will open a more affordable fast-casual restaurant called Jade Rabbit.) Last week, I had a chance to eat one last meal at Cassia, which frequently appeared on the L.A. Times 101 Best Restaurant list and was 2019's Gold Award winner. The food and wine, as always, was wonderful. Mapo tofu, tender with lovely spices, was just one of the standout dishes. More than the food, however, I loved the camaraderie of the staff. Chefs who had worked at Cassia in earlier years returned for this final stretch of dinners and the restaurant's sommelier and general manager Marianna Caldwell was pouring glasses of wine from bottles she had been saving for a special occasion. The meal was one more reminder that behind every great restaurant is a team of dedicated workers who at their best treat each other and their customers like family.
Los Angeles Times
20-02-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Review: The originator of Panda Express is back. Is the new orange chicken better?
Servers at the newly reopened Panda Inn restaurant in Pasadena glide around the dining room with massive trays hoisted over their shoulders, each one overflowing with platters of orange chicken, bowls of hot and sour soup and orders of mu shu pork. If food running were an Olympic sport, I'd bet on team Panda Inn. For someone who grew up going to the much darker, lower-ceilinged original restaurant, the new Panda Inn digs are unrecognizable. And a newfound, brighter energy is palpable, with a dining room that swells with diners even in the middle of the afternoon. Reservations for both prime-time evening and daytime tables have been difficult to procure, and the first question you'll be greeted with at the host counter is if you have one. Andrew Cherng and his father, chef Ming-Tsai Cherng, opened Panda Inn on a sleepy stretch of Foothill Boulevard in 1973. Andrew and his wife, Peggy, would later go on to introduce the first Panda Express at the Glendale Galleria food court a decade later. Now, the Panda Restaurant Group includes more than 2,600 Panda Express locations worldwide and four Panda Inns in Southern California. The company also is both a franchise operator and an investor in restaurants such as Hibachi-San, Uncle Tetsu, Yakiya, Raising Cane's and Whataburger. In its previous incarnation, the Pasadena Panda Inn was where you went before a school dance, met the extended family for birthday parties or found yourself on a Wednesday night because it was the only place everyone could agree on. Last November, the restaurant reopened after a complete overhaul and renovations that took nearly two years to complete. Now it's a bustling Chinese American brasserie in an area of town known more for its chain-heavy strip malls than destination dining. The entrance, which once faced the San Gabriel Mountains, now looks west, accessible past the sort of half-moon driveway you might find at some of the finer McMansions in town. There's a plush red carpet leading up to the front door, flanked on either side by two outdoor seating areas. The dining room is vastly hipper and more upscale, with high ceilings, warm wood walls and a sleek floor that shines like marble. The space is broken into five main sections, with private rooms, semi-private booths hidden in elaborate alcoves, a full bar slinging yuzu lemon drops and even a sushi bar. It may look different, but its warmth is oddly familiar, bringing to mind the sweeping dining rooms of chains like Din Tai Fung. While lunching with deputy food editor Betty Hallock, she remarked that though she'd never been to the original, it somehow felt nostalgic. Even if you've never dined at a Panda Inn, you're likely familiar with the specific brand of American Chinese food it helped popularize. Dishes like orange chicken and General Tso's chicken became part of the greater American culinary vernacular in the woks of the Panda restaurants. On a recent visit, I heard a server tell his table that this is indeed the original Chinese American restaurant. And that yes, everyone orders the orange chicken. The Panda restaurants may have made the greatest contribution to Chinese American cuisine in the last century. The most widely accepted origin story for orange chicken comes from Andy Kao, who is credited with inventing the dish at a Panda Express in Hawaii in 1987. Loosely based on a chicken dish spiked with citrus peel from the Hunan province in China, he first prepared it with skin-on, bone-in chicken. Panda Inn is where beef and broccoli, mountains of fat, chewy chow fun slick with soy and sizzling soup are all the apotheosis of the Chinese American stalwarts. But the new Panda Inn is a restaurant ambitiously reaching for a wider audience, and the chance to turn more regional Chinese dishes into new classics. Echoed in the artwork behind the bar and on the menu's new pages is an attempt to bring the Cherng family's journey to America to life. Panda Inn executive chef Aiguo Yang expanded the original menu with dishes that have roots in Yangzhou, China; Taipei, Taiwan; and Yokohama, Japan, all areas significant to the Cherng family. The braised lion's head meatballs are a regional specialty of the Yangzhou province, where both Ming-Tsai and Yang are from. They come as four orbs the size of tennis balls (they're meant to evoke the shape of the head of a Chinese guardian lion) immersed in a rich, thick brown gravy over a bed of wilted cabbage. They're soft, supple and barely formed, like giant balls of juicy dumpling filling. There's an attempt at flair with a few of the tableside preparations. Mapo tofu is transferred from a bowl to a sizzling pot just before service. The presentation is a bit of a flop, but the mapo tofu is an exemplary version of the Sichuan dish, with soft, silky tofu in a deeply savory red sauce. The heat is accumulative but not terribly aggressive in spice, and the bits of water chestnut offer freshness and crunch. Yang said that nearly 40% of the menu's dishes are new, with items like Taiwanese popcorn chicken, representative of the years Ming-Tsai and Andrew lived in Taiwan. The geographic history of the Cherng family provides a loose throughline for the menu, but not all of the new additions fit neatly into place. The mango tea smoked duck salad involves a bed of romaine lettuce with shreds of smoked duck, crispy wontons, fresh mango, honey walnuts and banana chips in a sweet champagne dressing. It's a conundrum of a salad I ordered multiple times, trying to draw out the logic of this particular combination of components. If I combine the banana chip with duck, will it make sense? What if I add a walnut to the party? I'm still undecided. One of my dining companions simply called the salad 'unfathomable,' but we continued to clean our plates. A desire to honor Ming-Tsai's time as a chef in Yokohama means that there is a team of five people who prepare nigiri, sashimi and maki rolls at a dedicated sushi bar. Tucked into the back of the restaurant, it's mostly populated with couples and singles who walked in without a reservation. But if you'd like to have an omakase experience, the chefs will oblige. The sushi bar is where the Chinese American brand (which the Panda restaurants have so painstakingly worked to establish) gets muddled in an overzealous play at fusion. Hong Kong-style shrimp with mayonnaise is reimagined as a shrimp tempura roll, but the best components of the dish — the crunch of the shrimp, the balance of the sauce and the sweetness of the nuts — get lost in the rice. Squares of eel are splayed over a torched, cut California roll with a mascarpone foam and the restaurant's chile eel sauce. The creamy Italian cheese and eel do not make great friends in a maki roll. If you're intent on having sushi, the sashimi tends to be more focused. Slivers of olive flounder are dusted with nutty dry miso and fanned out onto an eye-widening sauce made from yuzu and ponzu. As for the famous orange chicken, the Panda Inn version is the one you know and love from the food court steam tray, only served at a temperature that implies it took mere seconds to get to your table, with a lighter, much crisper coating and a glaze that clings rather than goops. The intense orange flavor is more sun-ripened citrus than artificial and there's a whisper of chile heat that slices through the sweetness. Every other orange chicken, whether in your neighborhood Chinese restaurant, freezer aisle or even the Panda Express near you, will pale in comparison. If this orange chicken tastes better than what you're remembering, that's because it is. According to chef Jimmy Wang, executive director of product innovation and development at Panda Express, the Pasadena Panda Inn bumped up the citrus with both orange zest and peel in the new recipe. Wang said they also made some adjustments to the signature Panda beef, a dish of crispy, fried sliced beef tossed in a light, sweet and sour sauce. The specific frying process leaves the beef tender and the coating brittle. The sauce is adjacent to the orange chicken but with a less specific citrus flavor. Most of the people sitting at the sushi bar are actually hunched over plates of orange chicken or Panda beef. The new Panda Inn is a sushi bar, a budding Yangzhou specialist and the Chinese American neighborhood restaurant you love. If you try to experience them all at once, it can feel a little disjointed. Pick one (or even two), and it's exactly the place you want to be.
New York Times
13-02-2025
- General
- New York Times
The $3 Billion House That Orange Chicken Built
This orange chicken has not been waiting for you on the steam table. It has not been bouncing and sweating in the darkness of a clamshell container while you wheel your luggage to the gate. At Panda Inn, the Pasadena restaurant that started Panda Express, the orange chicken is made to order, strewed with whole dried chiles, scallions and a few threads of orange zest. It arrives craggy and glistening on a blue stoneware plate. Is it good? Trick question! It is sticky, and it is familiar. It is relentlessly crunchy, with a flatly precise and habit-forming ratio of sweetness to acidity to heat. It is better, though not dramatically different from the one that waits on the steam table — always there, always waiting — but sometimes presentation can be everything. Orange chicken, all dressed up, reminds me of when my parents set out cloth napkins and silverware while unpacking boxes of takeout, transferring everything to serving plates (yes, even pizza). I used to find this absolutely unhinged, but now I see it as a tender gesture that underscored the luxury of their taking the night off from cooking — they did it so rarely. When the Cherng family opened Panda Inn in 1973, it was a popular Chinese restaurant that catered to the neighborhood. Early menus from the 1970s and '80s included a bone-in tangerine-peel chicken, sizzling beef hot plates and a 'Chinese Pasta' section of noodle dishes. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
