The Unexplored Secondary Ramp In The Decades Long Eastward March of Chinese Food Out Of The San Gabriel Valley

As I had written numerous times for the old Menuism site, as well as in other articles and speeches, after the beginnings of a Chinese community in Monterey Park in the 1960s, there was a decades long, eastward march of an expanded Chinese community coupled, of course, with a corresponding, though lagging establishment of authentic Chinese restaurants.  As described in that article, the eastward march centered between the San Bernardino Freeway (Interstate 10) and the Pomona Freeway (Highway 60), though extending to adjacent territory to the north and south of these boundaries, following the path of new residential housing community developments, often in hillside areas, that are so beloved by Chinese Americans.  Around the turn of the 21st Century, the eastward march advanced beyond the San Gabriel Valley and Los Angeles County, and veered down Highway 71 into Chino Hills and then Corona, and then ultimately up Interstate 15 to Eastvale, as new residential community development spread farther and farther from the San Gabriel Valley.

While I had focused on the the six decade trek of the Chinese American community from Monterey Park to Eastvale since it did cover the bulk of the increased residential and culinary influence of Chinese Americans in the region, this wasn't the complete story.   I had separately detailed the rise of the Chinese community in Irvine in Orange County and most recently Irvine's evolution into a wealthy Chinese enclave with perhaps the most expensive Chinese food in the region.  However, until now I really had never focused on the separate Chinese community in Rancho Cucamonga, some 45 miles east of Los Angeles and 35 miles east of Monterey Park.

Rancho Cucamonga is the city made famous by Jack Benny’s mythical train route that stopped at Anaheim, Azusa and Cooocamonga. Though people in Los Angeles are familiar with those cities, apparently the radio audience across the US found those names wildly hilarious and the names were a running joke for years.  There's even a Jack Benny Drive in Rancho Cucamonga today.   Like virtually every town in Southern California in the late 19th and early 20th century, Cucamonga was an agricultural town and did have a Chinatown housing Chinese farm workers.  However the Chinese population of Cucamonga disappeared a century ago, and like most of the "Inland Empire" areas of San Bernardino and Riverside counties, had few, if any Chinese residents for the most of the remainder of the 20th Century.  

At roughly the time that the eastward march of Chinese Americans had reached the eastern boundary of Los Angeles County, Rancho Cucamonga, which had recently become an incorporated city encompassing Cucamonga and other adjacent areas, began to boom as a bedroom community.  Surprisingly little information is available as to exactly when this began,  However perhaps the mid-1990s would be the logical point in time, as Diamond Bar was maturing as a Chinese American community and Chinese American homebuyers would be itching to move into another community full of spanking new homes, even if it were further north along the 210 Freeway, as opposed to the San Bernardino and Pomona Freeway corridor.  This conclusion is consistent with the 2000 census showing 7,500 Asian residents, representing about 6 percent of the population of Rancho Cucamonga.

Rancho Cucamonga first came on my Chinese food radar in 2005 when I learned about China Point, a Chinese restaurant on Archibald St. in Rancho Cucamonga.  It was said that China Point puzzlingly had a menu which included a few authentic Chinese dishes.  Fortunately I had driven to a meeting in Las Vegas, so on my way back I stopped by China Point.  There I found a Chinese restaurant which while catering to non-Chinese tastes, also had some dishes you would never find at an Americanized Chinese restaurant.  As my prior studies had shown, there is typically a multi year lag between when Chinese Americans first establish a presence in a community, and the local establishment of ethnic businesses such as restaurants and grocery stores.  So finding China Point in 2005 is also consistent with the arrival of Chinese in Rancho Cucamonga in the mid to late 1990s.  Passing through again 2007, I visited a boba parlor, Boba Planet, and another restaurant with some authentic dishes, Emperor's Kitchen.

The maturation of the Chinese community in Rancho Cucamonga was validated when the 99 Ranch Market Chinese supermarket chain opened up a branch in 2010.   Shortly thereafter a couple of Chinese restaurants opened up nearby the 99 Ranch store serving authentic Chinese food, but like China Point with a menu friendly to non-Chinese locals as there wasn’t the critical mass of Chinese residents for dedicated authentic Chinese restaurants. But the Chinese residential community was gaining traction.  By 2015, the Chinese community in Rancho Cucamonga made the news when authorities shut down a Chinese maternity birthing center, where female tourists from China would overstay their tourist visas so their newborns would be native born American citizens.   When the upscale Bella Vista residential neighborhood opened up, it was reported that 75 percent of the buyers were Chinese.  At that point, and hearing about truly authentic Chinese restaurants opening up by the 99 Ranch Market, I decided to take a long lunch and drive from my downtown Los Angeles office to Rancho Cucamonga to check out the 99 Ranch shopping center.  I was not disappointed, and only wished I had time to check out the other new Chinese restaurants that I passed that were not in that center.

In particular my interest was piqued by the fact that a dim sum restaurant, China Republic, had opened up in Rancho Cucamonga.  While there is always a lag time between the first establishment of a Chinese residential community and the time that local Chinese restaurants first appear, the appearance of a dim sum restaurant represents a next stage event.  In looking at the China Republic menu of dim sum items, it was as extensive and diverse as any my favorite San Gabriel Valley Chinese restaurants.  Alas, however, it was not until just a couple of years ago until I finally made it to China Republic, which was everything I thought it would be, and more.  The "more" part being an upscale, dimly lit, refined ambiance that was in contrast to every major dim sum restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley which bustled with activity, bright lights and noise.  And by this point in time, there were too many Chinese restaurants in Rancho Cucamonga for me to sample in a single visit.  Indeed Rancho Cucamonga these days is like the San Gabriel Valley in that the vast majority of Chinese restaurants are geared primarily to Chinese diners.

 

Quiet dim sum lighting at China Republic.

 

All this is in part prefatory to my seemingly shocking discovery of a Chinese restaurant called Phu Chen Kitchen in Fontana that serves dim sum, as well as other authentic Chinese dishes like Hainan chicken, along with gwai lo favorites like orange chicken. Of course the question is how can this be? As a native Angeleno of long standing, Fontana has always been synonymous for me with the Kaiser Steel foundry which was a major industrial operation from the 1940s to 1960s and closed in the early 1980s.  Certainly, not a location to ever be someplace one would find authentic Chinese food.  So when I saw population data that Fontana was one of the top 10 cities with the largest increase of Chinese residents in the past five years, I was stunned.

While Fontana fits conceptually into the eastward Chinese residential expansion model I described, it really didn't fit since it's a good 20 miles north of the furthest eastward destination of Eastvale.  Where it does fit is that Fontana is a hotbed of new residential housing communities, the driving factor which propelled the eastward expansion of Chinese communities out of Monterey Park and the west San Gabriel Valley.  So on the surface Fontana seemed to be an isolated independent situation showing the love of Chinese-Americans for new housing.  

It took a little while to figure out, but the answer instead turned out to be Rancho Cucamonga.  Rancho Cucamonga was indeed an island as it was clearly not on the geographic trajectory of the eastward march I wrote about.  But note that the pattern of the eastward march from the West San Gabriel to the East San Gabriel and then beyond was a leapfrog, not contiguous expansion, to wherever the next new home community has established itself.  So while Fontana may not seem to have any specific tie to Rancho Cucamonga, being 10 miles to the east, it fits in perfectly with the eastward expansion model as a satellite community of Rancho Cucamonga.

 

With this explanation in hand, I wondered if there might be another Chinese American satellite community in Rancho Cucamonga's orbit.  And I think I found one.  While it has not shown the same recent measured growth in Chinese resident population as Fontana, the city of Ontario, some 10 miles to the south of Rancho Cucamonga, is another locale of intensive new residential neighborhood development.  And sure enough, Ontario is home to recently opened authentic Chinese restaurants such as Get Some Dim Sum, Chili Bistro, Changan Kitchen, Boiling World Hotpot, and a branch of the Chinese based hotpot chain, Yin Tang Spicy Hotpot.  

 

And guess what?  Ontario is roughly 10 miles west of Eastvale, the easternmost outpost of the main route of the eastward march of the Chinese community that began six decades ago in Monterey Park.  So while Rancho Cucamonga back in the 1990s was a secondary offramp in the development of suburban Chinese American activities, the two lines are now meeting out in the Inland Empire.