Still No Sichuan or Hotpot in Chinatown—But It’s Now In The Garment District

[chandavkl]

Perhaps the greatest anomaly in the state of Chinese food in the United States is the lack of Sichuan style food, hotpots ,and most types of other Mainlander style food in Los Angeles Chinatown, even though those Mainland cuisines are basically the face of Chinese food in every other Chinese community in America. Indeed, Sichuan style food is otherwise so ubiquitous that you can now get it in the Garment District.

It’s at Mala Master on 12th Street near San Pedro Street, historically part of LA’s secret but true Chinatown from the 1930s to 1960s, in the City Market produce district, but which has since been absorbed into the fashion district. The menu is small at Mala Master but at least you can get Sichuan Hotpot and dry pot there.

With the arrival of legions of Mainland Chinese students at USC starting about 15 years ago, it was obvious that Sichuan and other Mainland regional food would show up in Chinatown. Yet 15 years later all we have are Qin West and Mama Lu’s, neither of which serve hotpots or Sichuan food, the two biggest Chinese genres in the San Gabriel Valley.

So where did all those Mainland students eat if not in Chinatown? In hindsight it looks like that gap was filled by a combination of food trucks parked on campus offering Mainlander food, and Korean style Chinese restaurants in Koreatown which serve a type of Chinese food similar to the native food that the students were used to. Also the wealthier students had no problem ordering delivery from the San Gabriel Valley where a dedicated delivery system between the SGV and USC developed.

Recently a number of Mainlander restaurants have opened up near the USC campus in the last three to five years, displacing the trucks and delivery options.

Mala Master is located in an amazing new roof dining complex called Sky Garden with several new Asian and Hispanic restaurants.

[Dommy]

There is now a hot pot restaurant over where La Taquiza used to be!!

FIG's Corner - Los Angeles, CA

And one of those BYO Soup places over were Dirt Dog used to be…

https://www.yelp.com/biz/ygf-malatang-los-angeles?osq=Hot+Pot

The village got a Bruxie and now Sweet Green is opening up soon. Thankfully Tierra Mia Pizza has been a certified hit for us. Need to try that new Smashburger place on Hoover… Otherwise, nothing really great and new in the area.

[Clayfu]

@chandavkl

With the arrival of legions of Mainland Chinese students at USC starting about 15 years ago, it was obvious that Sichuan and other Mainland regional food would show up in Chinatown. Yet 15 years later all we have are Qin West and Mama Lu’s, neither of which serve hotpots or Sichuan food, the two biggest Chinese genres in the San Gabriel Valley.

it is not that surprising to me that a bunch of well to do mainlander Chinese kids do not want to go to a 3 block wide chinatown that’s run down with terrible parking to eat terrible cantonese food O-O.

[chandavkl]

Perhaps the question should be rephrased. With Sichuan restaurants present in all the other Cantonese Chinatowns like San Francisco, Manhattan, Chicago and Boston, why are there none in Los Angeles? I mean it’s not like Los Angeles Chinatown is a food wasteland. Didn’t the New York Times call Chinatown the top dining district in Los Angeles? Admittedly that was while Pearl River Deli was upholding the honor of Chinese food in Chinatown amidst the Howlin Ray’s and Majordomo’s. But still.,.

[J_L]

The extremely wide distribution of various populations/pockets of Chinese inhabiting the greater LA area drains what potential vitality LA’s Chinatown might otherwise may have had.

[paranoidgarliclover]

@Dommy

BYO Soup

What is a bring your own soup concept???

[boourns]

It’s the same in Toronto where there is a huge Chinese (especially Cantonese) population. The original downtown Chinatowns are older, run down, being substituted with other cultures, and being slightly gentrified. Most of the Chinese folks live in the suburbs where there are some big concentrations of folks. The most well regarded places are all in those suburbs and most of the new Chinese places open there. Even Scarborough is getting left behind by Markham. Sounds familiar, right? IMO it’s the proximity to people who can appreciate differences in execution, authenticity, and quality level in the specific regional cuisines. I think that helps the better and more interesting places survive, even in the face of strong price competition.

[J_L]

Yes. Diaspora within the diaspora…

[robert]

Build your own? There’s a layout like a salad bar where you choose whatever you want to go in your own custom soup, then they cook it for you.

[paranoidgarliclover]

OH! Build your own, not bring your own. Got it.

[Gr8pimpin]

@paranoidgarliclover

not bring your own.

Lmao, I thought the same thing… at least you are brave enough to ask!

[secretasianman]

i find it a little ironic since a lot of what i’ve learned about LA chinatown’s history comes from you. IIRC the modern day chinatown location was actually built by non-chinese as the result of the actual chinatown being demolished to expand union station; there would be no ‘sentimental’ reason to open a non-cantonese/toisan restaurant there by non-resident chinese (of chinatown).

during the last century non-affluent immigrants regardless of ethnicity typically found residence near the inner city of a metropolis to facilitate use of the public transportation system until their financial situations improved enough so as to acquire personal transportation and/or be able to move out of the inner city - with other ethnic groups filling in the gaps like we’ve seen with the vietnamese in chinatown. folks who had opened restaurants during that time might be expected to commute back to chinatown - when rents were more affordable. but i wouldn’t expect that now myself. then there’s the financial demographics; mainlanders emigrating from china nowadays typically are much more afflluent and a lot of them purchased homes in the ESGV. i don’t see them wanting to drive all the way into chinatown when there’s already a lot of good authentically ethnic restaurants where they reside. and then there’s the financial demographics of the people opening new chinese restaurants; the most recent seem to have a significant amount of financial resources compared to the restaurants that came into existence say, pre-2010 - those places were being opened by people using the business model of immigrants arriving with little and opening more of what might be categorized as mom and pop places and the restaurant owners typically didn’t have much culinary training. i perceive that a significant percentage of new restaurants specializing in a non-cantonese regional cuisine have financial backing/investors looking for a return on their investments which in turn results in a significantly different business model which doesn’t consider opening a restaurant in present-day chinatown to be a good choice.

[chandavkl]

Obviously it’s a very complex question but if you had to boil it down to one question, it’s why didn’t somebody in Chinatown convert to Mainlander food or add a Mainlander menu when thousands of Mainland students showed up three miles away at USC 15 years ago? I mean that’s what happened in dozens of university towns all over the US where local chop suey joints saw the students arrive and figured out how to cook authentic Sichuan style food. That one escapes me.

[secretasianman]

fair enough. while i focused more on the SGV side of chinatown, it seems to me that the major points made still hold; mainlanders, who would be predominantly non-cantonese in ethnicity wouldn’t (or shouldn’t?) feel any loyalty to a “chinatown” that was a non-chinese construct to begin with and then factor in the demographics in terms of affluence as well as business model involved. i don’t see anyone opening a mom & pop model shop targeting affluent college students while folks operating under a different business model would consider the cost of rent being a major deterrent to opening a place near UCLA (which might also limit the ability to find workers willing to make that kind of commute) while USC’s unfortunate location would IMO be a deterrent from opening any place near their campus due to the neighborhood not being conducive to generating much foot traffic. and anyone who can travel to chinatown from the west will probably see not much of an additional inconvenience to travel to the WSGV during non rush-hour due to the inconvenience of finding parking in chinatown, etc. and those willing to avail themselves of service such as doordash, etc. it’s not going to be that big a deal IMO.

it occurs to me that LA is unusual in that UCLA is located in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood while USC is pretty much at the other end of the spectrum - which in turn has an impact on rent, target demographics, etc. which all play factors depending on the business model. .

[theplankt]

It can be up to 40 minutes to Chinatown from USC at rush hour … tough way to get there. Students won’t be going for lunch. And until the regional connector, it just required too many transfers on metro to be worth it. Not too surprising … it’s not close enough for students, though the delivery platforms do it

[chandavkl]

Forgot you’re not a native Californian so there’s one additional quirk. While LA now ranks with SF and NY in current Chinese community magnitude, historically the Los Angeles Chinese community was tiny. When I was born there were only 5,000 Chinese in LA compared to like 75,000 in SF. So we’re not like SF or even NY with a large historic Cantonese infrastructure. Which makes the continued near Cantonese exclusivity here more puzzling.

[paranoidgarliclover]

Perhaps a bit off topic, but, when the 5000 Chinese people in LA back in the way wanted to go out to eat, were they mainly interested in Cantonese/HK style food? And would the non-Chinese people at the time find Cantonese/HK style food more accessible?

Back in the 1960s–1980s, I assume the Chinese immigrants in LA were not from the mainland…

[secretasianman]

you mean to chinatown? apparently i’m not tracking here; it seems to me, beyond the fact that the current location was a non-chinese construct and more a tourist trap than a ethnic neighborhood, the financial demographics come into play. as i mentioned previously, immigrants coming into the US with little more than the clothes on their backs typically moved into neighborhoods near wherever the public transportation hubs were because public transportation was going to be their main means for commuting. the restaurants that arose in chinatown reflected that clientele. when residents could afford to move out (and typically east to the SGV), i imagine that a fair amount of them returned to chinatown to patronize their favorite places until more restaurants went into business in the SGV. and now a significant number of vietnamese places now in chinatown reflecting how the population has changed and the businesses are reflecting the change in local clientele.

i moved out here from the midwest (motivated to ‘find my people’ so to speak and eventually discovered that ‘my people’ were asians born and raised in predominantly white suburbs but that’s another long story) and i got hooked up into the asian community because i’d played volleyball in college and got into the asian volleyball leagues prevalent at the time. even then, when folks wanted to get chinese food, no one suggested going into chinatown when other places were more convenient geographically.

the non-cantonese mainlanders, especially in the last decade or so, clearly come from a different financial strata. i think it was you that has commented on how the influx is arriving and buying property further and further east. i don’t see them wanting to drive all the way in to chinatown, and i can’t imagine anyone wanting to open a restaurant with a business model that reflects investors, etc.seeing chinatown as an ideal place to to open featuring authentic chinese cuisine in general, much less an “authentic” non-cantonese regional chinese cuisine. the two ‘asian’ places you mentioned in chinatown i would choose to categorize more of fusion places - and one of them closed.

the ones going to school west of DTLA are a unique demographic in that anyone catering to their patronage shouldn’t expect that patronage to last beyond their time in school; i recall reading somewhere that a lot of the mainlanders - especially if they’re HCC (high cadre children) - are expected to return to the mainland - which is probably a lot cheaper than industrial espionage - you might be better off creating a cottage industry driven by wechat or whatever it is they use nowadays so as to avoid having to deal with inspections, etc. and this would completely off the radar to people like us.

even the folks opening places nowadays seem to be a completely different demographic. i visited hengry last month and i got a vibe that i’m still kinda deciphering. i think that i mentioned that the seating features a number of couches. it felt more like eating in the lounge at the four seasons in beverly hills (i went there a lot when barbara morrison (RIP) used to sing there every friday night and a few of us would dance to her stuff all night). the owner (who spoke pretty fluent english) casually mentioned how all the prints on the western most wall came from a south african artist living in brazil (in a way that suggested to me that he’d been to a lot of places all over the world) and the menu was completely ipad driven; one transmitted their order directly to the kitchen through the ipad.

the sauce that came with the eggplant looked and tasted like it came out of jar of lao gan ma

which prompts me to speculate whether he’s from their family (same region) with some serious dough and he’s just indulging himself.

if anyone is inclined to try the place, order the fish in sour soup; every other table in the place had an order.

interestingly, they offered a condiment for the soup that seemed to have been the main spicing ingredient for this dish (whose name now escapes me)

[chandavkl]

When I was a kid there were three areas in Los Angeles for Chinese dining. There was New Chinatown encompassing Broadway and Hill Street, but only from College St. northward; North Spring St. from Ord to Sunset; and the City Market Produce Terminal on San Pedro St. between 9th and 11th Streets. Note there was quite a gap between New Chinatown and Spring St., part of today’s Chinatown but Italian back then. (Remember Little Joe’s?).

Inasmuch as Old Chinatown was torn down in the 1930s and New Chinatown had little housing except for a little on Yale St., and a few apartments upstairs from Chinatown’s shops and restaurants, there were few Chinese residents in Chinatown. Hence on a daily basis most New Chinatown restaurants had few Chinese customers. However what did bring Chinese residents to New Chinatown’s restaurants were the large banquet sized facilities. Indeed until reaching college age, which coincided with the new wave of Chinese migrants after immigration reform, my only connection to Chinatown was to attend banquets at places like Hong Kong Low and New Grand East, later replaced by Golden Palace. Also we’d go to Spring Street for banquets at Lime House or New Hung Far.

So for casual dining that left the City Market, for stalwarts like New Moon, Man Fook Low, Paul’s Kitchen and Moon Palace. But even then those restaurants had their share of non-Chinese diners as there were plenty of non-Chinese residents and workers in the area. I believe Mae West was a fan of Man Fook Low.

Until the late 1960s almost all Chinese Americans were rooted in the poverty stricken rural areas 60 or so miles outside of the city formerly known as Canton. Essentially they were the first wave of Chinese immigration which was stopped largely cold by the Chinese Exclusion Act passed in 1882, and not fully repealed until 1965. Meanwhile those Chinese living here in the Los Angeles area through the 1960s were precluded from living in most local neighborhoods. Even through the 1920s and 1930s Monterey Park was a hotbed of Ku Klux Klan activity.

[chandavkl]

I guess the point I’m dwelling on is that there is zero Sichuan or hotpot in LA Chinatown, while there is some to be found (not necessarily in tremendous amounts) in every other Cantonese Chinatown, some having far more impressive Cantonese credentials than LA Chinatown. When added to the fact that in the nearby SGV, over the past decade only about 10% of newly opened Chinese restaurants serve Cantonese food, you have at least a statistical impossibility at work. Now I do have sort of an answer to my own conundrum—no other Chinese dining neighborhood has a majority Hispanic dining clientele plus a substantial Chinese clientele too. But if we can get one Sichuan place in the garment district, we should expect one in Chinatown too,