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Almost every Chinese person who's from China and has been to both areas will tell you San Gabriel has better Chinese food than the Bay Area.......
My another older sister who’s been living in Berkeley and San Jose since 1990’s has been complaining about Chinese food in Bay Area. My friends all act like they are so deprived whenever they “go down” to Southern CA for a break.
( Oakland CA had very good Chinese food though, but still can’t compare to SGV.)
I have not been to New York, but I've been to a Chinese wedding reception in the SGV at which I was almost the only non-Chinese. It was NOT "Americanized" Chinese food, it was the real deal.
I've also been to grocery stores in the area, Monterey Park comes to mind, in which you could go through the meat department and put the entire pig back together.
Thank you for acknowledging the real deal, I think so too. I hate Americanized Chinese food.
If you are interested in knowing if the Chinese restaurant is authentic: 1: if the menu is in both English and Chinese. 2: if there are Asian patrons eating inside. (Instead of just non-Asians.)
The best Chinese grocery chain is 99 Ranch Market. Go to the one in Hacienda Heights because it’s new and clean. The one in Monterey Park was kind of old and dark.
The best Chinese grocery chain is 99 Ranch Market. Go to the one in Hacienda Heights because it’s new and clean. The one in Monterey Park was kind of old and dark.
I used to live close to Hacienda Heights, but now the closest 99 Ranch Market to me is in Irvine.
How would you say SF compared to other the SGV in terms of Chinese food?
My experience with SF Bay Area is a lot more limited, but I found some of the Cantonese restaurants I've been taken to were good. I have heard that there's less wide of a range of regional Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area, so I went specifically for Cantonese among Chinese restaurants because that's what was specifically good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ainsley1999
Please share the “really ambitious” Chinese restaurants in Manhattan. I’m due for a trip in NYC, I’m curious.
Are these “ambitious” Chinese restaurants catered to the rich (given the present day Manhattan) clientele or are they attracting the non-touristy, local, homegrown populations like the ones in Chinatown?
The restaurants in SGV are generally through the word of the mouth from the locals and native Chinese/Taiwanese/Hongkong/Singaporean people. They aren’t the white-washed water down “Americanized” Chinese food with chop suey or kung pao chicken or the horrible Panda Express available in every town USA.
Americans (I assume you’re not of Chinese origin.) often have the different “flavor profile” of what they consider good Chinese food.
For Manhattan and parts of North Brooklyn, it comes in a few varieties. There are old school Chinatown restaurants more like what you mentioned earlier that started in Chinatown and have been able to last and new ones that pop up which even if they aren't Southern Chinese cuisine, they still end up taking a lot of cues from like much milder ostensibly Sichuan restaurants in Chinatown. The rest are generally not in Chinatown. There are branches of restaurants from East Asia and that'd be stuff like Tim Ho Wan, Hao Noodle, and Da Long Yi. There are restaurants that started in the ethnic Chinese neighborhoods and then branched out to Manhattan (and North Brooklyn) like Sichuan Mountain House, CheLi, and Xian Famous Foods. Then there's maybe what you're thinking more towards though the clientele varies. That'd be often pricier standalone restaurants and those run a gamut from catering towards (wealthy) Chinese college students and expat foreign workers like Uluh and Hunan Slurp that are obviously gunning for high end to those going for more moderate but still doing well Chinese students / white collar workers like Mala Project and then to a more ethnically mixed audience like RedFarm, Birds of a Feather, Bonnie's or Win Son. There are also fun old school, white tablecloth and servers in more formal wear kind of fancy Americanized Chinese / Canto restaurants that's still hanging on in parts of Manhattan--think Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills if you've ever been there.
The clientele part is interesting. Manhattan had a large wealthy foreign Chinese visitors contingent and that drove a significant chunk of higher end restaurant patronage including higher end Chinese restaurants. That's gone down to a trickle during the pandemic though may pick up again pretty soon. However, the Chinese students studying abroad, many very well-heeled, seem to be here in larger numbers than ever and that's a lot of NYU and Columbia students along with Julliard, Cornell Medical, the New School (Parsons), etc. as are Chinese white collar professionals. That forms a very different sort of immigrant community than the working class or small business owning Chinese immigrants of the past and the kind of daily back and forth between these communities is pretty limited on a personal level. I usually refer to them as expats* since they're more akin to the North American, Australian, European, etc. doing white collar work in East Asian cities than to the more working class or small business owning immigrant population. My background is sort of in-between. I'm of mostly Han Chinese ancestry likely with Taiwanese aboriginal. I was born in Taiwan and went back and forth going to school as a kid and working as an adult in various parts of Taiwan and LA area (mostly SGV) and lived in various parts of East Asia as an adult. I'm one generation removed from the rice paddies, but ended up going to school with Chinese expats in the US for college/grad school, socializing, dating/marriage, and work. I've been in NYC off and on twelve years and almost entirely on for the last few. My first language is Hokkien, then Mandarin, then English, then a few more broken bits of others languages including some other Chinese languages, so I at least feel familiar with the different flavor profiles that different communities value are to some extent. I feel the outer borough Chinese communities especially northeast Queens which includes but is not limited to Flushing and neighboring Nassau County is much more like SGV and the parts of Orange County that the community moved to than either the expat Chinese or Chinatown in Manhattan, so OP set up a pretty good comparison.
I can like Americanized Chinese depending on the restaurant. I just think of it as a kind of different regional cuisine. It's not my favorite and I don't generally have any nostalgia attached to it, but sometimes it hits the spot. Panda Express I think of as a fast food chain, because it is. I rarely go to McDonald's and don't expect great premium burgers and some fancy sides, but it's cheap-ish and edible.
*My sense is that there's a lot more of this in NYC area than in the LA area while they both have a very large working class immigrant community as well though for both, the working class layer is a lot larger. My take on SF is that it has a lot more assimilated multi-generation Chinese Americans and has a much smaller (but still large) working class immigrant community and an "expat" professional community maybe as large as NYC does but not so densely concentrated.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-15-2022 at 08:19 AM..
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Oy, if ever in the Peninsula in Los Altos (near Palo Alto) try Chef Chu’s—never had a bad meal there. SF is great for Dim Sum….was never a fan of House of Nanking as some are. One needs to get out of the touristy SF Chinatown area and head over to the Richmond district.
Oy, if ever in the Peninsula in Los Altos (near Palo Alto) try Chef Chu’s—never had a bad meal there. SF is great for Dim Sum….was never a fan of House of Nanking as some are. One needs to get out of the touristy SF Chinatown area and head over to the Richmond district.
Nice, I'll keep that in mind. There's a decent chance I end up there some time next year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCity76
You guys are talking all these Chinese restaurants in NYC and I don't think I've even seen one mention of Wo Hop unless I missed it?
Old school, hole in the wall joint in the bowels of Chinatown. That place is on point.
I think Ainsley referenced it, but didn't remember the name. I do like it, though I also think the last decade has seen a massive change in Chinese restaurants in NYC especially outside of Chinatown. However, none of those are going to make better memories than sopping up a bit of that alcohol with a late night hole in the wall joint in Chinatown. I'm not sure when if ever those late night hours are going to return to those places though as they don't go that far into the night anymore. 24 hr Great NY Noodletown was especially amazing to be in.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-15-2022 at 07:54 AM..
You guys are talking all these Chinese restaurants in NYC and I don't think I've even seen one mention of Wo Hop unless I missed it?
Old school, hole in the wall joint in the bowels of Chinatown. That place is on point.
Wo Hop! So that’s the name of the one I mentioned in the 1st post. (basement, near Centre St, Anthony Bourdain went and praised……) I completely forgot the name.
Yes that place is on point. A good testament of a place is if it’s been around forever; not much publicity (I was a fashion publicist so I know how the system works.) and no bells and whistles.
I used to live close to Hacienda Heights, but now the closest 99 Ranch Market to me is in Irvine.
Even better! I bet the one in Irvine is very modern and clean.
Reminds me when my friend lived in Irvine, she would drive up to Hacienda Heights and Rowland Heights for “the fix”. Although I’m sure Irvine has many Chinese food these days. You can find Taiwanese boba tea in Paris too. (Parisians went crazy over the bobas/tapioca.)
My experience with SF Bay Area is a lot more limited, but I found some of the Cantonese restaurants I've been taken to were good. I have heard that there's less wide of a range of regional Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area, so I went specifically for Cantonese among Chinese restaurants because that's what was specifically good.
For Manhattan and parts of North Brooklyn, it comes in a few varieties. There are old school Chinatown restaurants more like what you mentioned earlier that started in Chinatown and have been able to last and new ones that pop up which even if they aren't Southern Chinese cuisine, they still end up taking a lot of cues from like much milder ostensibly Sichuan restaurants in Chinatown. The rest are generally not in Chinatown. There are branches of restaurants from East Asia and that'd be stuff like Tim Ho Wan, Hao Noodle, and Da Long Yi. There are restaurants that started in the ethnic Chinese neighborhoods and then branched out to Manhattan (and North Brooklyn) like Sichuan Mountain House, CheLi, and Xian Famous Foods. Then there's maybe what you're thinking more towards though the clientele varies. That'd be often pricier standalone restaurants and that run a gamut from catering towards (wealthy) Chinese college students and expat foreign workers like Uluh and Hunan Slurp that are obviously gunning for high end to those going for more moderate but still doing well Chinese students / white collar workers like Mala Project and then to a more ethnically mixed audience like RedFarm, Birds of a Feather, Bonnie's or Win Son. There's also a fu old school, white tablecloth and servers in more formal wear kind of fancy Americanized Chinese / Canto restaurants that's still hanging on in parts of Manhattan--think Mr. Chow in Beverly Hills if you've ever been there.
The clientele part is interesting. Manhattan had a large wealthy foreign Chinese visitors contingent and that drove a significant chunk of higher end restaurant patronage including higher end Chinese restaurants. That's gone down to a trickle during the pandemic though may pick up again pretty soon. However, the Chinese students studying abroad, many very well-heeled, seem to be here in larger numbers than ever and that's a lot of NYU and Columbia students along with Julliard, Cornell Medical, the New School (Parsons), etc. as are Chinese white collar professionals. That forms a very different sort of immigrant community than the working class or small business owning Chinese immigrants of the past and the kind of daily back and forth between these communities is pretty limited on a personal level. I usually refer to them as expats* since they're more akin to the North American, Australian, European, etc. doing white collar work in East Asian cities than to the more working class or small business owning immigrant population. My background is sort of in-between. I'm of mostly Han Chinese ancestry likely with Taiwanese aboriginal. I was born in Taiwan and went back and forth going to school as a kid and working as an adult in various parts of Taiwan and LA area (mostly SGV) and lived in various parts of East Asia as an adult. I'm one generation removed from the rice paddies, but ended up going to school with Chinese expats in the US for college/grad school, socializing, dating/marriage, and work. I've been in NYC off and on twelve years and almost entirely on for the last few. My first language is Hokkien, then Mandarin, then English, then a few more broken bits of others languages including some other Chinese languages, so I at least feel familiar with the different flavor profiles that different communities value are to some extent. I feel the outer borough Chinese communities especially northeast Queens which includes but is not limited to Flushing and neighboring Nassau County is much more like SGV and the parts of Orange County that the community moved to than either the expat Chinese or Chinatown in Manhattan, so OP set up a pretty good comparison.
I can like Americanized Chinese depending on the restaurant. I just think of it as a kind of different regional cuisine. It's not my favorite and I don't generally have any nostalgia attached to it, but sometimes it hits the spot. Panda Express I think of as a fast food chain, because it is. I rarely go to McDonald's and don't expect great premium burgers and some fancy sides, but it's cheap-ish and edible.
*My sense is that there's a lot more of this in NYC area than in the LA area while they both have a very large working class immigrant community as well though for both, the working class layer is a lot larger. My take on SF is that it has a lot more assimilated multi-generation Chinese Americans and has a much smaller (but still large) working class immigrant community and an "expat" professional community maybe as large as NYC does but not so densely concentrated.
Thank you very much for such a detailed, patient post. I appreciate you sharing your background and agree with you on many points, here’s a few thoughts of mine: (not to disagree with you but to share a bit food for thought.-no pun intended.)
1: I’ve been to Mr.Chow in BV.-I don’t really think most people go to Mr.Chow for food though.
2: thanks for the recommendations of the newer Manhattan restaurants. A few of them are chains (such as Tim Ho Wan. I dont usually trust chain restaurants but it’s just me. (My favorite Chinese restaurant in Houston happens to be a chain called Mala (its Chinese name is very cute, it’s 小熊, bear cubs.) but it’s only a Houston local chain. The Sichuan flavor is so lingering I went back there two days in a row this past weekend, its 筍尖肉絲 bamboo shoot with pork is my favorite. (Even technically im a pescatarian.)
Personally im also always a bit wary of the places catered to tourists. For example I never ever understand the hype of Magnolia cupcakes. Every time I was on Bleecker St on the way to 14th st I saw a huge line waiting to get their cupcakes.-HBO show Sex & the City plugged it, and people went wild. (I did try when friends bought them, but the cupcakes were nothing special.) I also admit I had that hardcore New Yorker hating on bland gentrified touristy trap places such as Pinkberry, it commits the three cardinal crimes in my book: 1: chain 2: bland with no personality 3: catering to tourists. (They probably aren’t but I hated it they invaded my otherwise quaint and artsy Nolita village.)
Tourists come and go, they are a very transient type of clientele. They also tend to go to a place based on hype/publicity/reviews on sites like yelp. They generally don’t have much discerning taste on what the locals or “foodies” would put stock on. Take Las Vegas for example, yes there are very high end (mostly big designer chefs from elsewhere.) restaurants catering to the high rollers, there’s a booming food scene, but go to any given buffet in Vegas, I guarantee you most tourists don’t know (and probably don’t care) the quality of their meals.
I was a fashion/movie publicist, my job was to push my brand to be seen and raise the public profile, getting the celebrities to wear the brand and to work with the magazine editors for a story/photo shoot featuring the brand. Promoting the film festival and presenting the films to the VIP guests.-all these made me sort of tired of anything with a lot of bells and whistles but instead I was always drawn to holes-in-wall local favorite sort of eateries. (I’m not sure if Freemans is still around.) I ate the best spicy Moroccan olives & oranges on a crunchy toast in Cafe Gitane on Mott St, it’s a tad hipster joint but it serves very nice French comfort food. I’ve eaten at Jean-Georges (one of my former bosses designed their uniform.) but my favorite French restaurants in Manhattan were now-gone Les Halles and this unassuming place in the West Village called Tartine.
Back to Chinese food, I would be happy to try a few places on your list (again thank you! : I noticed you mentioned a few times about the (wealthy) Chinese expats (students and white collar workers.) vs. “working class immigrants”, I’m not sure if that notion stands true in my observation. You were right in pointing them out but when I mentioned people I know in SGV flocking to the local restaurants (that are either chains nor touristy-driven.-although the amount of wealthy Chinese/Taiwanese expats, students and white workers included, in Southern CA must be big too.) aren’t working class, these are people who are lawyers, doctors, Silicon Valley engineers, local white collar professionals. They love the food because the food is good. These places may not have designer chefs, may not have designer prices and designer publicity (again I know how it works.) but locals love them, and they make good returning customers with word of mouth. (Not related to Chinese food but google Sushi Gen in Little Tokyo, I would fly back to LA just for their sashimi. I rather eat here than the hyped Sugarfish sushi.)
I only stay in 5 star hotels, I collect Italian Venetian hand-blown tumblers that are generally around $140 a pop, I LOVE beautiful, exquisitely decorated restaurants. But if I want good, straightforward, homespun food I’d go to the unknown (to the public) locally popular places.
When it comes to food, there should be some kind of soulful connection because food should be represented through warmth, love and pleasant memories. I want to know the value of the things I love, not just the price.
I am also drawn to the eateries with soul. I remember watching an episode of Top Chef honoring the LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold. Local chefs remembered him scouting, advocating and promoting the obscure, unknown and (apparently) not abundantly financially backed by any investors local ethnic restaurants. That episode brought me to tears, because that’s the very soulful part of LA most people don’t see. They just know Hollywood, “sprawl” and “suburban”. Alice Waters anyone?!
Keith NcNally’s Balthazar and Pastis may be catering to the wealthy clientele but these two places have soul. And (to me) their food is very good. I was always very relaxing and happy when I went to his restaurants.
Sorry this drags on and on. Apology for the typos (I typed extremely fast on my phone.) spellings and run-on sentences. I just woke up and need coffee.
Again, thank you for your very thoughtful post.
Last edited by achtung baby; 12-15-2022 at 09:31 AM..
Reason: Horrible typing
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I noticed you mentioned a few times about the (wealthy) Chinese expats (students and white collar workers.) vs. “working class immigrants”, I’m not sure if that notion stands true in my observation. You were right in pointing them out but when I mentioned people I know in SGV flocking to the local restaurants (that are either chains nor touristy-driven.-although the amount of wealthy Chinese/Taiwanese expats, students and white workers included, in Southern CA must be big too.) aren’t working class, these are people who are lawyers, doctors, Silicon Valley engineers, local white collar professionals. They love the food because the food is good. These places may not have designer chefs, may not have designer prices and designer publicity (again I know how it works.) but locals love them, and they make good returning customers with word of mouth. (Not related to Chinese food but google Sushi Gen in Little Tokyo, I would fly back to LA just for their sashimi. I rather eat here than the hyped Sugarfish sushi.) 
