It's True: Los Angeles Chinese Food Has Caught Up With Vancouver

It's True:  Los Angeles Chinese Food Has Caught Up With Vancouver - Menuism Dining Blog, July 18, 2016

 

For over two decades, Mecca for Chinese food lovers in the United States has been Vancouver, British Columbia, and particularly its suburban community of Richmond.   Panic set in during the late 1980s when Hong Kongers realized that control of Hong Kong would indeed revert to Mainland China in 1997. Meanwhile, its 1986 World’s Fair put the spotlight on Vancouver as a prime destination.  The result was a mass exodus out of Hong Kong to Vancouver, turning Vancouver into Hong Kong East, and creating an early 1990s Chinese dining nirvana in Vancouver.   The word about the superior brand of Chinese food being served in the Vancouver area spread quickly.   It wasn’t long before Chinese food lovers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other American locales started trekking to Vancouver in droves to partake of the heavenly fare.

Having visited Vancouver in the early 1970s before the Chinese food revolution, I returned in the early 1990s, enticed by tales of friends and relatives returning from Vancouver detailing how every Chinese restaurant in Vancouver and Richmond, even the stalls in the food courts, surpassed the best Chinese food in Los Angeles.   And indeed the tales were true.  After eating in Vancouver and Richmond, I could not bear to eat the inferior Los Angeles Chinese food for literally weeks after returning, and we couldn't wait for our next trip to Vancouver to once again experience this brand of Chinese food.

Angelinos continued to make the pilgrimage to Richmond B.C. for Chinese food into the 21st century.  As recently as four years ago, I wrote that a top 10 listing of Chinese restaurants in North America would include only Canadian restaurants.  But even then, things were changing.   Fewer and fewer Angelinos made the trip to Vancouver, and those of us who did go came back not as impressed.  Yes, there were restaurants or dishes in Richmond B.C. which exceeded anything we had in Los Angeles, but a lot of others were now only "just as good", or "not any better".  So what happened?

What happened is two things.  The main factor is that Chinese food in Los Angeles has gotten so much better in the last decade.  But it's been a gradual process, such that we here in Los Angeles who eat Chinese food on a day to day basis aren't as sensitive as to how much the food has improved. This was driven home to me by three almost random comments made to me in the past two years.  One was made by the maitre'd at a Michelin 2 Star Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong.  As you know, Hong Kong is ground zero for great Chinese food, and the best Chinese food there knocks the socks off of anything that we have.  Anyway the gentleman commented that he lived in the San Gabriel Valley for many years, had to return to Hong Kong for family reasons, and missed the SGV.  Then he commented that "the Chinese food in the San Gabriel Valley is very, very good."  To hear that from somebody tending one of the best Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong (and the world) was quite illuminating.  

More recently, I met a Chinese foodie from Vancouver who was in Los Angeles for a visit, and who told me that he was surprised at how good the dim sum was at Happy Harbor in the San Gabriel Valley. I like Happy Harbor, but I would rank Happy Harbor probably around #7 in the Los Angeles area dim sum pecking order, so that really opened my eyes about the Los Angeles/Vancouver comparison.  And shortly thereafter a disappointed Midwest foodie returned from Vancouver and declared that the dim sum at the two top rated restaurants he visited in Richmond were no better than mid-tier San Gabriel Valley dim sum restaurants.  Does this mean that as far as dim sum goes, Los Angeles has surpassed Vancouver?   Not necessarily, but certainly food for thought.

In addition, Vancouver Chinese food has appeared to have plateaued in recent years.  There are two elements at play here.  First of all, there has been a degree of migration back from Vancouver to Hong Kong, as fears as to what would happen to Hong Kong under Chinese rule have so far turned out to be largely unfounded. Indeed we've encountered a number of these Canadian returnees in our travels. And of course among the returnees were some of Vancouver's top chefs.  More importantly, in every Chinese community outside of Asia, including Los Angeles and Vancouver, the demographics are changing with non-Cantonese Mainlanders, many of them with tremendous wealth, now moving into local Chinese communities.  Naturally they're bringing in their own regional style of Chinese food, but in this regard Vancouver is actually trailing other areas like the San Gabriel Valley, as the Chinese restaurant scene in the SGV shifted away from Cantonese food before Vancouver did.  As such, Vancouver is playing catch up to the SGV as far as most of these regional cuisines are concerned.   This was brought home by a Food Network show that featured the splash that a new Shandong style noodle house was making in Vancouver, which sounded like Vancouver's equivalent of 101 Noodle Express, which had opened in the SGV over 10 years ago.  However, a scout who went up to try it reported back that it wasn't nearly as good.

The rise of Chinese food in Los Angeles compared to Vancouver has not escaped notice from local Los Angeles food writers.  Last year, Clarissa Wei came out and made the once unthinkable statement that Los Angeles Chinese food has surpassed that of Vancouver.     At first I thought the statement was hyperbole in her article touting Los Angeles Chinese food, but perhaps it should be taken at face value.  Another non-Cantonese Los Angeles Chinese food writer has made stronger comments denigrating Vancouver Chinese food on social media. 

This doesn’t mean that people living in Los Angeles should forget about occasionally visiting Vancouver for Chinese food.  Vancouver still has the larger selection of high quality Hong Kong style restaurants, and which offer dishes found in Hong Kong, but are not available in Los Angeles.  On the other hand, as the focus of Chinese dining around the world turns away from Cantonese style food, Los Angeles has clearly taken the lead from Vancouver in this category.  Top mainland Chinese restaurants that are starting to open up branches in North America are choosing to do so in Los Angeles, where they perceive the action to be, which builds on the advantage that Los Angeles has with regard to non-Cantonese regional cuisines.  So while Angelinos may still want to trek to Vancouver for unique Hong Kong and Shanghai style specialties,  Vancouverites will likewise want to travel down to Los Angeles for better Sichuan food, dumplings, and other regional varieties they can’t get at home.