The idea of 'fusion' and authenticity
I live in a neighborhood in Los Angeles which is mere minutes from Thai Town, and only a few minute drive to Koreatown. Surrounded by the best Thai food outside of Thailand, and the best Korean food outside of Korea a short drive away, I still crave my home cuisine of Cantonese Chinese food. More than that I crave the hybrid colonial British influenced cuisine of the Hong Kong diner, the cha chaan tang 茶餐廳.
Even as Los Angeles is one of the centers of Chinese cuisine in North America, I find I have to drive a half an hour through the traffic choked LA freeway system to the San Gabriel Valley to find what I'm looking for.
The baked rice dishes, the egg and luncheon meat sandwiches, the milk tea, the HK style French Toast are all reminants of a colonial culture that left a permanent mark on Hong Kong's food culture. But they're also an example of the core premise of this newsletter, that where cultures encounter each other is where food culture really begins and fusion isn't necessarily a negative descriptor of a cuisine.
When I first moved to Los Feliz, some reddit investigation pointed me towards Needle Los Angeles, serving updated version of cha chaan tang classics. Chef Ryan Wong and his partner Karen Dang made some of the most delicious versions of Canto diner classics that I've ever had. Their riff on the HK Style French Toast is probably the best version I've ever had. They made a Macanese Pork Chop bun that was better than any that I'd ever had
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But it was also not-exactly-what I wanted. The sense memory of the ideal Macau Pork Chop bun brings to mind a crispy bun that shatters, a thin pork chop, pounded for ease of cooking, and a smattering of onions wrapped inside a greasy wrapping paper. Needles was a delicious brioche bun, sumptious heritage pork with sharp and flavorful homemade pickles - both more delicious but also not quite scratching the specific itch that I often wanted. However, it was truly excellent and the best Chinese food in my immediate area.
Why Needle succeeded , for me, was a strong through line of flavors and the story was clear to me; with origins in Hong Kong diner culture, but somewhere along the line there was higher end training and thoughtful ingredients that both refereneced the original and also built upon those flavor combinations.
Unfortunately the cost of the restaurant business in post-pandemic Los Angeles cost us the Needle continued existance and they closed in late 2023. They are missed.
Sometime earlier this year, Firstborn started getting a lot of press for its combination of Chinese and Chinese American flavors, as well as trying to revitalize LA's long dormant Chinatown restaurant scene.
Rebecca Roland
With that in mind, we rounded up a group of people, eager to try out and support a Chinese American's memories of his childhood visits to Beijing and his growing up in Chinatown. . . and I just didn't understand the meal. Many of the dishes were successful: the Chongqing Fried Chicken was an excellent fried chicken with Sichuan mala. The egg custard was both a riff on the Cantonese steamed egg dishes and the traditional pan-Chinese tomatoes and egg comfort food.
But - and to be sure, I didn't grow up with Chef Anthony Wong's childhood references - but there was no Beijing here. And only some of Chinatown here. It felt like it aimed between the Chinese American "food in white take out boxes" and more traditional Chinese flavors, but failed to hit either. One of the things I really enjoy about ordering Chinese food is putting together a balanced meal, incorporating vegetables, proteins, rice/noodles - but the menu didn't really allow for this. The food was frustatingly served only with a fork and spoon, but with so many sauces and rice (where the duck fat got lost in the cooking) cries for chopsticks and serving out of a bowl. I'm not sure Firstborn's menu had a strong enough POV for me and there wasn't coherence and nothing hung together for me.
The food was tasty enough, with some individual stand-outs, but the concept just didn't work.
Finally, since I'm always lamenting the lack of Chinese food in my neighborhood, I have to keep remembering that there is an ABUNDANCE of Thai-Chinese food within walking distance. One of those places is Siam Sunset, whenever I'm there, I'm almost always the lone non-Thai or non-Thai spouse eating breakfast.
For me, the thing to get is the jok (Chinese congee, jook in Cantonese, zhou in Mandarin). A hearty rice porridge, my favorite is the duck and adding a Chinese donut. The Chaozhou Chinese population in Thailand makes this slightly thinner than the Cantonese verison I grew up, but this is so very credible and tasty.
Siam Sunset is located in Thai Town in Los Angeles.
