HOW BAY AREA TRENDS ORIGINATE IN CHINA AND TAIWAN.
The most recent Chinese food trend to make it to the United States is restaurants specializing in roasted whole fish. The concept is like hot pot, but instead of a communal broth, each table gets a large fish served on a miniature grill. Toppings — like chile peppers, onion and peppercorns — are piled high, and the fleshy fish is a conduit for all these flavors.
When I was in Hangzhou last year, I visited Lu Yu, a swanky Chinese restaurant chain decked out in glossy black walls that features an electric oven big enough to fit 20 fish at the same time. I had to wait a solid hour before snagging a seat; lines snaked out of the door with patrons eager to get their fix of fish.
America is paying attention. In Los Angeles, where I live, a Chinese restaurant chain called Spicy Kung Fu Fish (www. kungfu-fish.com) has arrived with the same concept. Several Bay Area restaurants, such as San Mateo’s Sichuan Chong Qing Cuisine, have added roasted fish as an a la carte dish, but single-concept restaurants have yet to arrive. Give it a couple more years.
Chinese restaurateurs around the globe pay close attention to each other, ferrying ideas across the Pacific with little lag time. These days, China sets the trends. Los Angeles quickly becomes the testing ground for the American market, and the Bay Area trails shortly behind, before food trends make their way to New York and other markets.
This flow of culinary ideas is primarily due to immigration patterns.
After the passing of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965, immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan, who were wealthier and more educated than mainland Chinese counterparts from previous waves, began moving to the United States. They chose Los Angeles as their stomping grounds and were able to hire skilled chefs from abroad, ushering in a higher caliber of Chinese dining.
In 2008, mainland China began rising economically, and entrepreneurs made their way to Los Angeles, where they now dominate the Chinese food scene. Over the years, the Bay Area became the de facto secondary market for many of these restauranteurs, mostly because of its relative proximity compared to other metropolitan areas with a hefty Chinese population.
Across California, the Chinese culinary scene now mimics that of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Sichuanese food and hot pot restaurants, for example, have both grown exponentially in Asia in the last 10 years. Hot pot restaurants are so abundant in China that an infinite variety of permutations has appeared: concepts that specialize in spicy broth, restaurants with a menu of the highest-quality meats, and those where each patron gets their individual pot. Many of these concepts have sprung up around San Francisco.
Sichuanese food is another trend that has come to dominate the food scene in China. In 2010, Chengdu, the capital of the province, was internationally recognized by UNESCO as a City of Gastronomy. The international recognition created a surge of interest for the regional cuisine — characterized by its tongue-numbing spices and spicy flavor profiles — and it’s now hard to find a city across the country without a Sichuan restaurant.
That interest was immediately mirrored in Los Angeles with the explosion of Chengdu-centric restaurants (Chengdu Taste, Szechuan Impression) and the expansion and introduction of certain hot pot chains (Boiling Point, Hai Di Lao). The Bay Area has followed suit with fantastic restaurants like Jin Li Yuan in Sunnyvale and Royal Feast in Millbrae.
For the last five years, the trend in China has edged toward chain restaurants. Chains, for many Chinese people, are a hallmark of quality food. This may seem counterintuitive to most Americans, as restaurants with strong corporate backings are often regarded as having less than stellar offerings. But in an area of the world where food scandals are both common and traumatic, consistency is a trait highly prized by the Chinese.
Los Angeles outposts of Din Tai Fung (which specializes in soup dumplings), Mei Zhou Dong Po (Sichuanese), Bistro Na’s (northern Chinese) and Chengdu Impression (Sichuanese) all reflect this phenomenon. The Bay Area has a couple of Chinese chains like Liang’s Kitchen and Boiling Point, mostly from Los Angeles, but not of the same caliber.
“San Francisco Bay Area is still five years behind Los Angeles, but they’re catching up,” says David R. Chan, a Los Angeles accountant and attorney who has eaten at more than 7,000 Chinese restaurants, mostly in California, since 1951.
Amy Duan, the founder of Chi Huo (www.thechihuo.com) concurs. Chi Huo is the largest Chinese-language food site in the United States with more than 50,000 followers in the Bay Area and 100,000 in Los Angeles. “San Francisco Bay Area’s Chinese food scene isn’t as diverse,” says Duan, who splits her time between the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
Even Bay Area restauranteur Jack Wang, the founder of Spices, a wildly popular restaurant with seven locations dispersed across the Bay Area, concedes Los Angeles’ culinary superiority. “Los Angeles is a testing ground for a lot of Chinese restauranteurs,” he says. “If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”
But the Bay Area is quickly catching up. Some aspects of the dining scene up north surpass Los Angeles’, such as dim sum specialists and certain regional cuisines, both well-known (Hunan) and more specialized (Jiangxi). If the Chinese food scene in the Bay Area continues its parallel trajectory with China and Los Angeles, pretty soon the region will be filled with fanciful Chinese chains, more spicy Chinese food and a never-ending staple of regional Chinese specialists.
Geography-wise, Los Angeles’ Chinese restaurants are heavily concentrated in the San Gabriel Valley, a suburban enclave on the far east corridor of Los Angeles County. The Bay Area’s Chinese food offerings are dispersed all around, although the South Bay does tend to have slightly better options than the rest of the region.
Still, the dispersal is far greater than that of Southern California, which means there’s no excuse for Bay Area diners not to have stellar Chinese food.
These days, China sets the trends. Los Angeles quickly becomes the testing ground for the American market, and the Bay Area trails shortly behind.