From Hong Kong to L.A.’s San Gabriel Valley, the snap, crackle and pop of claypot rice
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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.
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Rice crispies
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.
Line-worthy?
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.
A better orange chicken
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.”
L.A.’s disappearing union jobs
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.”
The chicken pot pie endures
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.
The Grocery Goblin x L.A. Times Food
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.”
Cake queen gets pie-eyed
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.
Also ...
- For our most recent cooking newsletter, deputy Food editor Betty Hallock talked with cooks who lost their homes and kitchens in last month’s fires. Cookbook author and video host Molly Baz “wanted to stop feeling sorry for herself” and created a pop-up grocery giveaway for those affected by the wildfires. With a similar thought, cookbook authors Natasha Feldman Bauch and Jess Damuck “reached out to retailers and manufacturers for donations ... to find brand-new kitchen equipment for people who lost their homes.”
- Senior Food editor Danielle Dorsey has compiled 11 different fundraisers and support events for those affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires. Tilda Wine in Echo Park, for instance, is raising money on Feb. 23 to help Altadena Beverage and Market reopen (we’re all waiting for the goose to reappear on the sidewalk signaling that the store is open). And this weekend, Neighbors & Friends coffee and cheese shop in Pasadena “will debut the city’s new community fridge that will offer free food and beverages to residents in need.”
Finally ...
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.
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