![]() ![]() I am much keener on his classical-leaning efforts.Īt lunch or at dinner, two sights are all but guaranteed. At Colette, he resumes a style he established at Embassy Kitchen, a global reading of Cantonese cooking that embraces regional specificity as well as the integration of Western notions like salmon carpaccio and chicken salad with truffle oil. ![]() He was recruited from Embassy Kitchen, the San Gabriel restaurant attached to the Embassy Billiards Club before that he worked at the storied Peninsula hotel in Hong Kong. With the extra moniker came chef Peter Lai. It closed briefly last fall, and when it reopened its English name acquired new Chinese characters that mean something akin to “life is a play” or “life is like an opera.” Until last fall, Colette operated under the same name, though serving an unimaginative daytime mix of omelets, sandwiches and salads. To say the restaurant “appeared” isn’t quite accurate. What isn’t great leaves me wondering whether anyone in the kitchen occasionally makes these dishes to taste them and consider their appeal. What is great reminds me of the cuisine’s foundation of clear, true-to-the-ingredient flavors. Dining at Colette can be an experience in extremes. In late November, a new Cantonese entrant appeared in Pasadena with a menu that scrambles together notions of tradition, modernism and personal creativity. Definitive Hainan chicken rice and sticky-glazed char siu? Specials like soy-stained stewed beef over rice noodle? I’m even less certain what each week will bring at Johnny Lee’s ever-morphing Pearl River Deli. One can never predict what cha chaan teng variations Ryan Wong will be serving at tiny Needle in Silver Lake, though I know I’ll either start or finish a meal with his French toast gushing salted yolk custard. Then there are the dim sum stalwarts, and specialists in Chiu Chow cooking from Guangdong’s eastern corner, with its specific traditions of dried seafood, braised meats and preserved vegetables.Īmid the decade’s growth of other regional Chinese cuisines, particularly Sichuan, there are expanding notions of Cantonese food that feel alive and individualistic in the hands of its best next-generation chefs. 42 on the most recent 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. The audience for the San Gabriel Valley’s grand 20th century banquet halls wanes while cha chaan teng, a genre of restaurant derived from Hong Kong’s diner-like teahouses, thrives at places like Henry’s Cuisine in Alhambra (No. As some of its expressions disappear, others unfurl. No cuisine is a monolith, and that seems especially true in the case of Cantonese cooking across Los Angeles right now. ![]()
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