The Rise of Chinese Desserts

The Rise of Chinese Desserts - Menuism Dining Blog, March 28, 2016

 

 

If there has been a weak link in Chinese American dining, it has been dessert, or the lack thereof.   The Cantonese scene which exclusively defined Chinese dining in the United States for nearly a century and a quarter, was nearly devoid of sweets for dessert.   The only dessert I remember as a kid was the agar based dish which we referred to as “almond jello”, topped with canned fruit cocktail, and which definitely was not something we looked forward to at the end of the meal.  No wonder why fortune cookies were invented to provide a sweet treat at the end of an Americanized Chinese meal!

 

Indeed, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that I encountered a different dessert dish in a Chinese restaurant.  Green Jade was one of the first non-Cantonese restaurants to open up in Los Angeles Chinatown, back when anything not Cantonese was referred to as “Mandarin” or “Northern.”  Not encumbered by the Cantonese disdain for desserts, Green Jade actually had a short dessert section on its menu.   I remembered how fascinated I was with their candied banana and candied apple dishes, dunked in ice water.

 

However while desserts like caramelized bananas and apples were a major improvement, desserts were still an afterthought at American Chinese restaurants for many years to come.  Yes, a small number of sweet dim sum items, like egg tarts, tofu with sweet ginger sauce, bak tong gou, and mango pudding became popular.  But the fact is that to this day, Chinese chain restaurants like P. F. Chang and Hakkasan feature chocolate goodies or Western desserts shaped like wontons for want of well known Chinese desserts.  And desserts are still dismal at many of your larger Hong Kong style seafood restaurants which typically serve a complimentary but often gruesome soupy sweet red bean dessert. 

 

So given all this unencouraging news about Chinese desserts, why has there been an explosion in Chinese dessert eateries in Chinese American communities in the past five years, and reaching the point where one shopping complex in Monterey Park in the San Gabriel Valley outside of Los Angeles currently houses six different dessert shops?  Indeed Chinese dessert shops are probably the fastest growing segment of the Chinese restaurant business in Chinese American communities these days, including a number of small chains opening up multiple locations.  What has turned Chinese desserts from an anomaly into ubiquity so quickly?

 

Obviously there is no simple answer to this question, but a couple of landmark events should be noted.  The first event dates back 15 years with the arrival of boba drinks, a.k.a. bubble tea on American shores.  Tea and fruit based drinks infused with chewy tapioca balls became popular in Taiwan and other Asian locations in the early 1990s, and around 2000 the first boba shops appeared in the San Gabriel Valley.  Soon there were three major boba chains operating in the US—the Taiwanese based Quickly, along with Lollicup and Tapioca Express, and boba parlors became the rage for the younger crowd to go for something sweet after dinner.  Initially, boba shops sold only tea and fruit drinks, but as time went on they began to sell side orders of food, mostly Taiwanese snacks such as popcorn chicken, fried tofu, and fish balls.  However one pioneering eatery, Guppy House, located in the tertiary Asian community of Cerritos, closer to Orange County, added shaved ice mixed with fruit to its menu, and becoming the forerunner to today’s Chinese dessert eateries.

 

The next major event also came straight out of Taiwan.  Six years ago, the Taiwanese chain 85°C Bakery and Café opened its first American branch, again not in the San Gabriel Valley, but in the Orange County community of Irvine.  While Chinese bakeries had operated in the United States for many decades, 85°C was something radically different.  Instead of the traditional Chinese strawberry cakes and Hong Kong baked goods like pineapple buns 85°C introduced a new style of baked good, mixing Chinese, Japanese and European elements, combining sweet, salty and savory flavors, and inserting liberal doses of butter in their buns and breads.  The result was earth shattering.  The first time I drove through the shopping center where 85°C was located, I thought the mob in the parking lot may have been a crowd exiting from a movie theater.  (There is no theater in that shopping center and the crowd was just waiting to get in the bakery, which could take up to an hour.)   When 85°C  later opened their first San Gabriel Valley store, the opening day wait was measured at over two hours. 

 

85°C has subsequently opened quite a few outlets throughout California, so the queue to buy their products has shortened substantially.  But perhaps more importantly, not only have they spawned imitators selling similar baked goods, but they have also opened the door for all sorts of dessert shops to open up in Chinese communities.  In 2013, three dessert eateries popped up in New York Chinatown.   On the same block on Bayard Street one finds Beautiful Memory Desserts which features fruit pancakes and fruit soups, and just a few doors away, Mango Mango, where you can get glutinous rice balls with ice cream or fruit juice.  Another dessert shop, Indessert, opened just a couple of blocks away on East Broadway, though it recently shut down.   But the big news is Eggloo, which opened just a few weeks ago on Mulberry St. and has been mobbed by crowds craving their Hong Kong egg waffle ice cream delights.

 

Meanwhile, in the San Gabriel Valley, Chinese dessert options are popping up all over the place.  The Premier Dessert chain is well known for its pandan pancakes and taro balls while Kung Fu Soy has supersized and dressed up the sweet tofu originally found on dim sum carts.  Ganache’s specialty is lava cake, while Oh My Pan has the best brick toast around.  The Taiwanese based Blackball chain just opened its first outlet highlighted by its grass jelly offerings.  And many Hong Kong style dessert choices abound at the pioneering Phoenix Dessert chain, which has been plying the San Gabriel Valley with desserts for almost ten years. 

 

Things are even looking better dessert wise at some sit down Chinese restaurants.  The first improvement in desserts came when some of the Hong Kong style cafes, such as Café Spot in the San Gabriel Valley, started to serve Hong Kong waffles. Dessert choices on Chinese restaurant menus have particularly improved as the array of regional Chinese cuisines has broadened. San Gabriel Valley Chiu Chow style restaurants 888 Seafood and Seafood Palace now serve a wonderful variety of Chiu Chow style taro desserts.  I was surprised a decade ago when I first encountered Sichuan style rice balls with sesame paste at Szechuan Palace in Phoenix.   Now many Sichuan restaurants serve this and other sweet desserts.  Mei Long Village in San Gabriel serves glutinous Shanghai style rice balls along with other Shanghai desserts.  And Class 302 is legendary for their Taiwanese shaved snow.

 

So if you thought that there weren’t any good Chinese desserts you’re living in the past.  Unless you do your Chinese dining at P.F. Chang’s.

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