Sad but the guide is so biased against Chinese restaurants. They did give Bistro Nas a star back in the day as a token toward Chinese food (and quickly took it away) but it’s almost comical that Kato is viewed in that tier. Maybe the flavor profile doesn’t meet their European pallette. It’s disappointing.
I have a feeling there a bit of “Chinese food is not American food” type biases against the contributions of the diaspora. Maybe it doesn’t fit the cliche of what they see as the identity of the city. Michelin hasn’t yet convinced me that they’ve evolved past that sort of culinary imperialist thinking
The real issue is that chinese food in Los Angeles is merely good at best and mostly homey food. There really isn’t anything that transcends the types to become Michelin star worthy
Per Warrior’s request, I’ll share some experiences from restaurants in the small city where I grew up—an ordinary place in a modest agricultural province in South China, far from the wealthy parts of China like Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou.
We have two types of restaurants: the “home style”, with great flavors, and the “elevated style”, with more refined preparations and presentations. For the latter, we would talk for days about how special and eye-opening the dishes were, as they were something we never experienced in home cooking.
In my experience, you can usually tell a “elevated” restaurant by the way the chef shows off their knife skills, which are a big deal in Chinese cooking. It’s very common for talented chefs to carve dishes into intricate shapes like phoenixes or dragons or slice tofu to hair-thin
Warrior: Top ten restaurant in LA for me. No, it’s not as good as Hayato, but it’s not far off the mark either. This reminded me very much of good kaiseki restaurants in Tokyo, and even more so Kyoto. Don’t let the talk of Western influence fool you: this is 100% Japanese palate with a few Western ingredients.
take a look at a lot of the chinese restaurants award stars in China/Hong Kong/Singapore/Taiwan - it’s just a different level of knife work and sauce work like @PeonyWarrior .
You can plate things prettier like Array/Na but food wise it’s just not at the same level presentation wise (or flavor wise). I’m not saying Array or Na aren’t good, i think the food is good and for the dishes served often the best version in LA but it just doesn’t hit that next level.
If Yu Bao ever decides to open a restaurant (doubtful now), it’d be * star worthy.
I know Na wants that star back and they are coming up with some really creative dishes, but when you have so many things on the menu, the really exemplary chef work dishes kinda get lost.
I’ve long argued that the issue in LA is that our general chinese eating clientele is too cheap to eat higher elevated chinese food. So we kinda get stuck in this zone of tasty but more homey style chinese food. And it’s not for lack of money. People are just so used to paying very little for X/Y/Z.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts, @Clayfu! I’ve been thinking about this as well. I wonder if another reason could also be that more skilled chefs are unable to come to the U.S. due to visa challenges😑. I looked into visas for chefs, and it seems they need to be sponsored by large corporations, but most restaurants don’t have the means to do so. As a result, the chefs we have in the U.S. are limited to those who can work here🤔.
Another factor I want to point out is sourcing. The same reason we cant get really great quality Japanese food at reasonable prices is that the supply chain network is not setup efficiently for Asian foods. Most suppliers are setup to cook for a certain type of restaurant whereas in Asia the supply networks will sustain more niche restaurants so therefore most restaurants have to buy the same ingredients. Then there’s the issue of sourcing quality ingredients, I’ve seen Chinese restaurants that were suppose to be high quality buy the same frozen duck many others use because I see the same delivery trucks from the run of the mill purveyors. Then there’s the fact we don’t have the talentpool. Yu Bo, is probably a contender but he’s only doing private dinners so that’s not an option for the public.
I think the question of whether California should have a michelin starred Chinese restaurant is the wrong question. We have the best Chinese food scene in the country so let’s not get greedy, what we have is probably better than anywhere else in the Western countries (with only Vancouver beating us in Cantonese but not overall variety). Be thankful you aren’t stuck with a lackluster Chinese scene of say something like Phoenix.
I don’t want to put words into Warrior’s mouth, but I believe he’s referring to China vs Taiwan and making a distinction between the two.
It is worth noting that just saying “native Chinese” doesn’t necessarily mean much, because of the vast differences from region to region, but both Peony and Warrior are entitled to their opinions…sometimes it’s nice to have a difference in opinion around here (and people with the confidence to share their contrary opinions).
I meant – I’m not touching the subject of the relationship between China and Taiwan, whether Taiwanese food should be considered Chinese food, etc. My trolling days are over.
On one hand, Uka seemed slow. On the other hand, they had more customers than Hayato last night by the time we left around 7:30 (i.e., 8 customers). There was no conversation with the chef (Yoshitaka Mitsue; we did not see Shingo Kato), who focused on the job at hand. UKA Restaurant | JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles (japanhousela.com)
I was thinking about this last night and pondered on the same thing you brought up. No one is using top quality ingredients at chinese restaurants. We have some of the best produce in the world being grown in our backyard but most chinese restaurants are having crappy produce trucked in.
But that’s also a function of most chinese diners not wanting to spend the money. Perpetual loop of self destruction.
or slice tofu to hair-thin 
