Xi'an Famous Foods Looking To Open in Los Angeles?
When it comes to Chinese food, Manhattan is pretty much in the dark ages. There's no Chinese food in Manhattan Chinatown approaching Sea Harbour, Elite, Lunasia, King Hua, Mission 261, Happy Harbor or even Capital Seafood or Empress Harbor, and there is very little in the way of regional cuisine except for Cantonese, Shanghainese and Fujianese food. Yet, Greenwich Village (as well as NY Chinatown and Flushing) have something we don't have--genuine food from Xi'an, and that's something that annoys me. Xi'an Famous Foods and their wonderful lamb sandwiches and lamb noodles emerged literally from the basement of a Flushing food court and spread across the East River into Manhattan thanks to its discovery by Anthony Bourdain and his Travel Channel TV show. Now, there are hints of Xi'an coming to Los Angeles, through their Facebook inquiry for favorite eating locales in Los Angeles. It'd be interesting if they made the move to Los Angeles, and if so, where they might locate.
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Mission 261 Restaurant
261 S Mission Dr, San Gabriel, CA 91776
Happy Harbor Restaurant
1015 Nogales St # 126, Rowland Heights, CA
King Hua Restaurant
2000 W Main St, Alhambra, CA 91801
Greenwich Village Cafe
3809 S Soto St, Vernon, CA 90058
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wienermobile
Jul 5, 2011 07:18 PM
Here is the link to Xi'an's menu. Boy does this stuff look good.
http://www.xianfoods.com/menu.php›5 Replies -
ipsedixit
Jul 2, 2011 08:56 PM
Between Omar's, China Islamic, and places like Lucky Noodle, I think SGV has everything that Xi'an has to offer, esp. their claim to fame the "liang pi" noodles which you can get a pretty good replica of at Omar's, Shen Yang, and Lucky Noodle.
›37 Replies-
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re: Chandavkl
Chandavki: With all due respect though, the East Village isn't comparable to any place in L.A. The fact that XFF worked there isn't that surprising given that neighborhood's ability to support any number of hyper-specific boutique restaurants. In terms of foot traffic density plus demographic diversity, the E.V. just has no corollary in L.A.
This all said, I think it could work on the Westside, maybe close to (but not in the heart of) Westwood, along Sawtelle, or maybe in Culver (though I'm more skeptical of the latter). Can't see this going over, at all, in any of the beach cities though.
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re: ipsedixit
scoopG
Jul 6, 2011 08:08 AM
It's authentic - authentic street food/night market snacks found in Xian. $2 Cumin Lamb or Pork "burgers" etc. Has been already pointed out - great for a walk-by stop-in but would you really want to spend 30 minutes in your car to get there? Also the owner's son who is running the show says they plan to continue the model of having mostly non-English speaking staff!
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re: scoopG
I'm a little surprised to see "authenticity" being bandied around (this isn't a shot at scoopg, just a general observation) since I think most folks around here would agree that while it's easy to call out the "fake", what qualifies as "authentic" is pretty vague outside of "this doesn't remind me of Panda Express." I couldn't tell you if any of the Chinese places I like eating are authentic to whatever region their food purportedly derives from...though I suppose most of them are "authentically SGV" if that makes sense.
In any case, forget the hype around XFF and just look at the menu and imagine walking into some SGV hole in the wall that had those pictures on the wall or in a menu. You wouldn't be curious to eat there? You wouldn't be eager to come back to Chowhound and or your food blog and write about it if the food was good? C'mon, you KNOW you would.
Hey, I dislike the idea of getting NYC's secondhand restaurants as much as the next guy but if they plunk one down in LA, I'll eat at this restaurant without qualms to its metropolitan history or media presence.
re: the Roy Choi PR joke...wouldn't David Chang actually be the better comparison?
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re: odub
You're right there can be a fuzzy line between authentic and inauthentic. 45 years ago we thought Pauls' Kitchen was authentic. No doubt as to the Xi'an pedigree, though. The original Xi'an Famous Foods opened up around 2005 in a basement food court in Flushing, NY. When I first visited the food court, the decor was depression era soup kitchen, and there was no English language signage or menus, and all the customers were Chinese locals. Somehow, the food court in general, and Xi'an Famous Foods in particular got discovered, most notably by Anthony Bourdain. This led to a second location in a nicer Flushing food court, then a jump to Manhattan Chinatown for another branch. Even though it was in the tourist unfriendly Fujianese section of Manhattan Chinatown, they developed a following of non-Chinese clientele, which led to the East Village branch. Now with their notoriety which is expanding past New York, having been written up in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and other publications, I guess there is a danger of losing their authenticity. We'll have to see.
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re: Chandavkl
Maybe the EV/LA analogy is that XFF would have to open up somewhere in a more Chinese-dense part of town first (Alhambra would make me very happy) and then, if it gains enough momentum, can start popping up franchises in other parts of town. I can't speak for J-Gold but this sounds like the type of place he'd write about in a heartbeat (assuming the LA version was any good).
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re: odub
scoopG
Jul 6, 2011 12:14 PM
Good point - I should have just said that the owner of XFF and his son are from Xian and are turning out Xian style street fare. So in one regard XFF is less of a restaurant and more of a snackin' spot. (Once you put seats in a restaurant you must provide bathrooms and they avoid this whole issue in two of their NYC locations.)
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re: odub
But historically East Village has been a wasteland for Chinese food. At least WLA has some decent authentic Chinese options. East Village is more a parallel to Hollywood, perhaps the biggest local wasteland of all when it comes to Chinese food, home to possibly the worst Chinese restaurant in LA, Kung Pao Kitty, which mercifully has closed. I attribute such voids to the "close enough" doctrine, i.e., some neighborhoods, while not conveniently close, are close enough to a place like Chinatown such that residents will make the effort to go there. Likewise, potential authentic Chinese restaurant owners avoid places that are close enough to a place like Chinatown and settle in Chinatown itself. To me this explains the Chinese food voids in other places like Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Glendale. Ditto for north Orange County due to the proximity to Rowland Heights, and East Village to Manhattan Chinatown.
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Kung Pao Kitty
6445 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028-
re: Chandavkl
I don't know; since the late '90s, the EV is the neighborhood in NYC where I've spent the most time (for years, my brother in law lived literally next door to Chickalicious and I spent a summer on 9th, on the other end of the block from Veselka). For one thing, its culinary scene has changed a lot in the last 10 years - there's cute izakayas out on Ave C now, which is a trip, and the ramen boutique explosion has already been well documented. There just isn't anything about that neighborhood that feels remotely like Hollywood - not in personality, not in spatial design and certainly not in population. That both were wastelands for Chinese food doesn't say much since - as you note - LA is littered with wastelands for good Chinese food (though I'm not going to disagree that Hollywood is particularly bad, but hey, the Thai is good).
But the fact that the EV has evolved to the point where it's now a major testing ground in NYC for all kinds of hyper-specific, dish-oriented cuisine, suggests that XFF's odds were probably better now than they would have been at the beginning of the '00s. I think you're right - it was a risk. St. Marks would never have been my first guess as to where you'd put down a restaurant like XFF and think it might do well. But I think of its success as having less to do with it's Chinese-ness and more to do with just being another good boutique in a neighborhood now swimming in them.
Anyways: I like the "close enough" thesis but what I've always wondered about is why the student population at UCLA wouldn't provide enough critical mass for the right kind of Chinese restaurant to work out there. Something like Din Tai Fong on Westwood, slightly south of Wilshire, wouldn't work?
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re: odub
Yes, UCLA has been a puzzle for me, too. There was a place that sold Taiwanese boxes over on Sawtelle and I think they only lasted a few months. I do think that my favorite restaurant, Union Buffet on Wilshire, is tapping into that market as they seem to have increased their traffic over the predecessor buffets by including some clearly authentic items to tap into that demographic (Fuzhou fish balls, giant sardines (or whatever you call them)).
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re: Chandavkl
ipsedixit
Jul 6, 2011 08:15 PM
Re: UCLA
The demographics for most of the Chinese restaurants in SGV is usu. pretty old and caters to family -- i.e. first generate Chinese immigrants.
The places in SGV where you will see a younger crowd -- i.e. second generation immigrants, or the UCLA demographic -- would be Taiwanese boba places or HK-style cafes.
XFF, DTF, etc. fit into the first category (generally speaking), which is why UCLA and Westwood have had a hard time supporting a die-hard Chinese restaurant.
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re: Chandavkl
TonyC
Jul 6, 2011 08:57 PM
While Asian population at UCLA is 35%+, I don't think you'll find enough Filipino/Indian/insert-whatever students clamoring for lamb burgers or cold skin.
St. Marks is exactly where I'd imagine XFF though. It's packed with NYU kids who slop up anything "hip" (don't get me wrong, I love Yakitori Taisho as much as the next guy). Hire a good graphics designer and a stealth PR firm, voila.
Isn't Dumpling Man also on St. Marks? (Rhetorical Q; it is.) HTF has that place been able to stay open for 6 years is beyond me.
This much we know: NYC != LA.
FWIW, I did have a fantastic Chinese pork burger (shaved off a freakin' trompo, no less) in Hangzhou, for .. $1.40, and welcome any Chinese meat wrapped in a bao/bun/bing.
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Taisho
919 W Huntington Dr, Monrovia, CA 91016
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re: matikin9
Random, but: if you're ever in Vegas, go to China Poblano at the Cosmopolitan and get the rou jia mo there. It's made with pork, Beijing-style, and it is fabulous. I crave it fortnightly. I wrote about it, actually, for http://www.tripouttravel.com. It's very "authentic," too, if you're into that sort of thing.
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re: odub
They don't. There's no shortage of hand pulled, hand cut, and knife shaved noodles here in LA. However, as far as I know, most of the northern style noodle places in here claim to be Shanxi (the other Shanxi from the one Xi'an is in, usually transliterated Shaanxi to disambiguate the two) style noodles, and I've never seen / heard of any place that has the exact style of hand pulled noodles that Xi'an Famous Foods sells, which is a wide, "belt" shape noodle that comes out looking rustic, very similar to dao xiao mian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3uSs...Most of the other handmade noodle shops in New York claim to be Lanzhou style (from Gansu province), which I also haven't seen much (any?) of here.
I've can't speak to the food at XFF, but whether it's good or bad, it does seem like there is a lot of hype involved (maybe they have Roy Choi's PR agent?). I'm not sure how successful they'd be either in the SGV or in other parts of town. Somehow, LA seems to do "really authentic" and "really fake" well, but I think NY has a lot more luck with places that are kind of in-between those extremes.
There's another dongbei place besides Shenyang restaurant that also has the liang pi.
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