Nice.
This reminds me to ask about any recent Gu Yi (Brentwood) experiences?
I got turned off a few months ago but remain cautiously curious…
there are probably other factors yet to be identified, but it seems to me that the market is merely adapting to a change in demographics - an insufficient ethnic base with disposable income would result in certain ethnic establishments either cratering or disappearing without a whimper regardless of the location. with a lot of the mainland new money settling in the ESGV, it makes complete economic sense (to me anyway) that that would create a demand there as well as result in the observed limited growth of new places in the WSGV.
intrigued about the expansion into little osaka; is this also part of the backlash of LA losing the headquarters of three major japanese automakers in the last decade or so (resulting in a significant decrease in ethnic japanese population)? in the past decade many japanese restaurants have begun to curry (no pun intended) ethnic chinese patronage. IIRC there’s a publication based in LA with a circulation of about 30000 written entirely in chinese touting various japanese restaurants.
I believe a major clue is that only one of the newcomers is Cantonese and the one big failure was Newport Seafood. What Meizhou Dongpo initially, and then Qin West and Northern Cafe subsequently tapped into was an ambient non-Cantonese population, comprised of both students and non-students, that had been previously underserved.
It’s like I said, Cantonese food sucks.
Dim sum has ruined it.
that’s a point that escaped me. thanks for pointing that out.