From the beginning, Chris Yang and Maggie Ho’s Chinese-inspired California cuisine has been beloved by locals and critics alike. In 2019, when the couple first opened their Alhambra restaurant, Yang’s Kitchen, as an all-day fast-casual concept, diners raved about the beef noodle soup and scallion pancakes made with locally sourced, high-quality ingredients. These labor-intensive dishes went away during the pandemic, as the couple figured out what worked, financially speaking, and what didn’t. In 2021, Yang’s Kitchen reopened with a streamlined brunch service, including a noteworthy Japanese breakfast-like set meal and a cornmeal mochi pancake topped with seasonal fruit.
While delicious (I visited just once), Yang’s Kitchen didn’t hold much appeal for me, personally, whenever I found myself in the San Gabriel Valley. Instead, visions of Chinese lobster stir-fried with green onions and roving carts of dim sum tend to win out whenever I’m visiting from the Westside during brunch hours. Now, however, is an entirely different story. Last November, the restaurant introduced dinner service, which runs Thursday through Sunday nights. Highly inventive yet tinged with nostalgia, Yang’s Kitchen has turned into the new-school Chinese evening destination I’ve been searching high and low for.
In a similar vein to Santa Monica’s Cassia, where the couple worked before opening Yang’s, the restaurant (still) sources the majority of its ingredients locally, and organic whenever possible. The menu board above the counter lists the farmers and producers that have made your meal possible. Management also strives to pay living wages to employees and cut down on food waste; each check includes a 1% surcharge benefitting Zero Foodprint, a climate change nonprofit. Drawing on Ho’s Taiwanese roots, and Yang’s Cantonese and Vietnamese ones, the end result is distinctly Asian American cuisine.
By nightfall, dim lighting and indie music playlists add a tinge of hipness to the minimalist dining room full of white and bleached wood. An ethnically diverse crowd of locals and non-locals, mostly under 40, fill the space, drinking glasses of wine and sipping on cups of sake. And while the overall vibe is nice, striking the balance between casual and a little bit special, the food remains the main reason to come. No matter how you order, you’ll find a memorable dish, from a prawn ceviche topped with crispy pieces of chow mein to the ever-present Hainan fish rice, which features dry-aged barramundi atop a wonderfully silky chicken fat rice and a side of ginger-scallion sauce.
Another menu constant, the dan dan campanelle, is even better, and it just so happens to be vegan. The fluted, curly edges of each noodle wrap around the rich peanut-sesame sauce, which gains brightness from the scallion ribbons and housemade chili crisp that grace each bowl. “Are you sensitive to spice?” your server will ask if you order it. Unless you’re unable to tolerate even a smidge of heat, I’d recommend saying no to removing the latter; at best, the baseline dish is a solid medium in spice level.
Given the limited entrée options (there are usually no more than five, if you count the two steaks), diners who crave a little more variety will find plenty of room among the small bites, raw bar, bar snacks and daily specials. The fried chicken wings, which come naked-skinned and served with a side of salt and white pepper and a lemon wedge, get at the heart of what Yang’s Kitchen does best: flawlessly executed Asian-inflected comfort dishes that are far more complex than they look. Other more common items, like the chicken liver mousse and the hanger steak, are slightly less interesting. While you wouldn’t have a bad meal with them, they’re also more ubiquitous, so I’d recommend ordering a special—the Dungeness crab cold noodles, if it’s available—instead.
While I still don’t think Yang’s brunch would get me in the door during the day (there are many other amazing dining options nearby, and they tend to close early), Yang’s at Night, as the restaurant has coined dinner service, is definitely a meal worth going out of the way for. Factor in the wine and sake list, which gets an occasional boost from guest sommeliers, and the caramelized black sesame cake for dessert, and you’ve got a place that might even elicit a rare nod of approval and “not too sweet” from your Asian parents.
The vibe: Casual and slightly hip.
The food: Asian-inflected comfort food dishes with a farm-to-table sensibility. Highlights include the Hainan fish rice, dan dan campanelle and the prawn ceviche.
The drink: An interesting and varied wine and sake list, plus non-alcoholic options, including coffee and tea.
Time Out tip: If you’re arriving on the later side of dinner and want the widest selection of dessert, place your order ahead of time; items like the black sesame cake often sell out early.