Lisa Ling on why Asian food in Los Angeles matters.
A black cod goes from the Pacific to Shibumi.
Keeping cool when the kitchen gets hot.
One restaurant’s many pandemic pivots.
Two different takes on Indian food.
Every day’s a hustle at Woon.
From Asian farms to Los Angeles restaurants.
Why in L.A. they’re not boring.
Three restaurants breaking boundaries.
Mastering values at Yang’s Kitchen.
Two chefs go behind the blade.
Omakase and ramen join the neighborhood.
The coronation of soju and makgeolli.
Three women open the bar they want to walk into.
Indonesian community through cuisine.
On working with Mom and Dad at Anajak Thai.
Los Angeles before sushi.
Inside the staff ritual of eating together.
Three Vietnamese restaurants expand the city’s palate.
One chef has some thoughts.
Waking up Los Angeles to Burmese cuisine.
The couple behind Shiku goes with the flow.
An ode to those who keep them going.
Michelle Bernstein embraces the competition.
One restaurant’s epic journey from debt to success.
The couple behind Boia De and Walrus Rodeo play by their own rules.
Vermouth gets a bar of its own.
On the business of BBQ in Miami.
Recipes for navigating an uncertain economy.
The secret to never getting old in a town obsessed with what’s new.
How two pioneers of omakase introduced Miami to a new way of dining out.
Chasing a childhood memory one arepa at a time.
Why Miami’s mainstays of Middle Eastern food aren’t phased by the influx of glossy newcomers.
David Foulquier on his shapeshifting ambitions.
The Black chefs behind a vegan movement in Miami.
Two Cuban sandwich masters talk shop.
A new generation’s take on the classic Jewish deli.
Miami’s mavericks of sustainable growing and dining.
An intimate glimpse inside restaurants after the last customer leaves.
Creating a culture where employees stick around.
A new kind of bottle service takes root in Miami.
The art of staying put in a changing city.
The city’s ventanitas created a culture all their own.
Philadelphia Magazine’s food critic on the irrepressible attitude that is the key ingredient of the city’s restaurants.
How one restaurant gave birth to many.
The cheesesteak may be the global mascot of Philly. But a contingent of pioneering chefs and restaurateurs have made the city a hub of vegetarian innovation.
The city’s Eritrean-Ethiopian restaurants serve up more—way more—than delicious food.
How Juan Carlos Aparicio baked his way to running a restaurant (that isn’t a bakery).
How Alex Tewfik went from being a food editor in Philly to owning one of the best restaurants in town.
Two restaurants that share a belief in how cooking can be force for change.
How Chutatip Suntaranon channeled her upbringing in Thailand—and life spent flying around the world—into one of Philly’s most singular restaurants.
Stopping by the warehouses in Kensington where artisan upstarts are breathing new life into the city’s food scene.
The Ongoing Evolution of Philly’s Classic Sandwiches.
Chloé Grigri, Amanda Shulman, and Ellen Yin on upending the rules of the game.
Mike Solomonov takes stock of his journey.
When a customer becomes a friend.
Ange Branca was forced to close her beloved restaurant in 2020. That was just the beginning.
How do you build a restaurant in a space that was never meant for a restaurant? In Philly, a city of Revolutionary Warera buildings and colonial row houses and ancient warehouses, it can be a bit like playing Tetris with Benjamin Franklin.
Three Philly couples get frank and intimate in sharing their recipes for romance.
Inside the world of homespun pop-ups and unexpected collaborations that have made Philly’s dining scene like nowhere else.
The classics are easy enough to master by anyone with fine liquor and a recipe.
The city has long been a vibrant hub of Vietnamese food. Today, a new generation is striking a balance all their own—between creativity and tradition, innovation and memory.
An ode to the unsung heroes of restaurant kitchens from a comedy writer who couldn’t take the heat.
A cell phone has been invented that allows you to send one text message to your younger self. What do you write?
Mobbed since the day they opened in 2019, Yang’s Kitchen continues working on the perfect recipe for their values.
Open the door to Yang’s Kitchen, in Alhambra, any day of the week and you find their bright, minimalist dining room buzzing with activity. Diners sip soup made with miso fermented locally by Ai Fujimoto of Omiso on meal trays inspired by Japanese breakfasts. Small bowls of Meiji tofu bathe in house-made ponzu. Toasted slices of Bub & Grandma’s bread wait to be slathered in smoked fish dip. When a cornmeal mochi pancake comes out of the kitchen topped with whipped cream and fruit, you run back to the counter to add one to your order.
Located in the San Gabriel Valley—home to the most populous Asian American community in Southern California and long established as the epicenter of Chinese cuisine in Los Angeles—the packed dining room of Yang’s tells the story of an instantly successful new addition to the neighborhood. Here Chris Yang, chef and co-owner, fills in the rest about all it takes to open a small, independent restaurant and make it a business that can sustain the owners and their staff.
What was your original plan when you first opened Yang’s Kitchen?
We cooked what we called Asian American comfort food. I was born here in Alhambra. My mom is from Vietnam and my dad from Hong Kong. There is a whole generation of us now cooking stuff that is nostalgic to us, but has roots in America too. And we wanted to work with healthy ingredients and try to source organic and more sustainable products when possible.
Then the pandemic hit about six months after you opened. How did you cope?
We didn’t know if people could work or if they would catch Covid, so we furloughed all of our staff and came back with three people. We opened the marketplace. It was more to support the farmers from the farmers’ market and help our community to be able to buy staples like eggs. It was three or four months before we started introducing food again, doing family meals and simple to-go menu items.
Where did you start to reorganize and reimagine the menu?
Before the pandemic, we had been cooking verything from scratch. We put so much work into the beef noodles and the scallion pancakes and the prices we were charging were too low. We took a hard look at how much labor we would need versus what we could produce and the prices we would have to charge.
Before, we were trying to achieve a fast casual concept with high volume, but it just took too much work. So we started making dishes that took a little less prep. We offered a roast chicken dinner and then a prime rib dinner for one of the holidays. Having our marketplace and displaying all of the farmers’ market ingredients gave people an idea of the quality that was going into the food, so they started accepting the higher prices and embracing what we were doing.
“Having our marketplace and displaying all of the farmers’ market ingredients gave people an idea of the quality that was going into the food, so they started accepting the higher prices.”
Now that you have had some time developing this version of the menu, is it working?
In the last year we’ve had to do some adjustments and figure it out. Some people can come in and get a breakfast for $15, like the tofu set meal. But if some people want to do more of a family-style meal, or eat more how they do when they go to restaurants for dinner, they can order a whole spread of multiple dishes, sides, and specials.
Let’s talk about your epic list of ingredients and purveyors, like Transparent Farms for shrimp. Have you been to the farm?
We found out about them on Instagram. We did go visit the farm with the team. It’s a good fit for us because it showcases what we are about. It’s sustainable and better for the environment. Steve, the owner, doesn’t use antibiotics or hormones. When we introduced the dish we put the name of the farm on the dish; we say these prawns are sustainably grown in Downey and explain why they are so special.
How do you connect with the farms you work with?
Lucky for us, we have the Alhambra farmers’ market here on Sundays. A lot of the farmers that we started working with are from this farmers’ market, like Hier Cheemeng Produce, a Hmong family located in Fresno. For us to come across seasonal Asian produce that is so good, it’s a rarity. One of our staples from them is gai lan, Chinese broccoli. It’s sweet, flavorful, tender, never too stocky and overgrown or too bitter.
When you were able to reopen the dining room, how did you approach tackling your goals?
Our goal was to see how this brunch and lunch experiment would go. We added a beer and wine list. We have our sights set on opening for dinner. Right now we’re only open five days a week for brunch and lunch. Rent is fixed. A lot of your costs are fixed. I think we’re doing almost as well as we can for brunch and lunch, but we still need to do more in order to get to where we need to be. We need to make more revenue, get the staffing levels right, and pay people what they need to get paid.
What does it take to launch dinner? How much will be the same menu and how much will be different?
A huge thing is space considerations. We don’t have that much cold storage. We need to make sure our menu is streamlined and that we are not making the same mistakes, like over-hiring and undercharging. We have the core offering, and will add a few specials. We’re looking to start with three nights a week for dinner.
What is your approach for training staff?
I learned a lot from Bryant Ng at Cassia. I learned systems from him like writing recipes in grams and having steps that people can follow. Our chef de cuisine, Elaine Chang, goes over a lot of the training and makes sure people are following the directions. We’re constantly tweaking and improving and updating. A lot of our staff is young and didn’t have that much experience, but they are willing to learn and take direction well.
Are you happy with how things are going now?
It is still really challenging. I am still on the journey—I would not say I have made it. It’s a work in progress. I’m glad for all of the lessons I have learned along the way.
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