Chinese Comfort Food

There are something like 18,000 restaurants in the greater Los Angeles area, and a person serious about finding something good to eat can’t afford to overlook a single one of them. That eight-seat greasy spoon next to the body shop will sometimes serve pan-fried chicken on Wednesday evenings so good it might have prompted the Colonel to change careers. Or the chef at a dingy Van Nuys pancake chalet might turn out to also make a Hanoi-style beef soup that any sane person would prefer to strawberry waffles. My favorite Thai food for a while used to come from a mid-Wilshire doughnut shop (they were afraid Thai food wouldn’t catch on); the most accomplished Isaan restaurant around masquerades as a takeout mee krob joint.

So it’s not surprising that the Monterey Park restaurant Peng Yuan, which during the week turns out dull but respectable versions of such familiar Sichuan favorites as kung pao chicken and dry-fried long beans, also happens to serve the best Chinese breakfast in town.

A screaming curve down Atlantic Boulevard from one of the most remarkable concentrations of Hong Kong and new-wave Cantonese restaurants in America, Peng Yuan is a reliable Northern-style place. The food is good; the waiters and waitresses helpful; the large, red dining room air-conditioned and almost luxurious in a Chinese restaurant sort of way. Unless you find yourself at an elaborate banquet here, you probably won’t taste anything you couldn’t find in Beverly Hills or Encino.

But on a weekend morning around noon, you can scan the suddenly crowded restaurant, all the way back to the mirrored walls in the back, and everybody’s eating dumplings, digging into big bowls of hot tofu, chewing thoughtfully on Chinese crullers, which are long and unsweetened and look a little like churros that have been surgically joined at the waist. (Crullers and tofu are the croissant and coffee of this other Continental breakfast.) Dim sum--Cantonese breakfast--is well known; this northern equivalent is much harder to find . . . and sometimes more delicious.

Peng Yuan serves as many kinds of tofu at breakfast as an Italian caffe does coffee: tofu fried, tofu crumbled, tofu in syrup. Salted bean milk, a suspension of crumbled tofu flavored strongly with vinegar, is almost too powerful to eat straight, though perfect with a bite of cruller; sweet soy milk is bland and comforting. A soft, tart-size piece of tofu might float in syrup, topped with peanuts that have been boiled until they have the grainy texture of some marvelous bean: sweet soy bean flower soup. Or, as salted soy bean flower soup, it might float in a delicious broth, sprinkled with chopped pickles and tiny dry shrimp--quite filling, and possibly the tastiest $1.25 bowl of food in the Southland. Or you can have it chopped into cubes, deep-fried, and put into a bowl of good noodle soup.

Order something called sweet steamed rice glue, not exactly the most appetizing-sounding thing in the world, and the waiter will bring over a heavily sugared cruller that has been wrapped in sticky rice, an otherworldly Chinese doughnut sushi roll that suggests there are still vast chasms between East and West. (You may find it slightly too weird to eat.) Order salted steamed rice glue, and you get the same thing, but with minced pork and pounded dried shrimp in place of the sugar.

“Flapjacks” are more like it, griddle-baked wheat cakes that have been split and stuffed with cilantro, hoisin and juicy roast pork, a swell Chinese take on the pita-bread sandwich. Scallion pancakes are pretty good too, though much doughier than the ones at Dumpling Master up the street. Chewy rice cakes are sliced into pieces the size of sea scallops and fried with pork shreds and Chinese pickles, a delicious northern version of chow fun .

No Chinese breakfast would be complete without dumplings, and the floppy-skinned Sichuan pork dumplings here are subtler, finer versions of the kind that are so popular at Chin Chin, bathed in sweet, vinegar-scented hot oil. Pan-fried dumplings are clumsy and overcooked, bound to be disappointing to anybody who’s gorged on the far better ones at any Mandarin Deli.

Vegetable dumplings seem as clumsy at first, more the home-style sort of thing slapped together by Chinese housewives than the creation of a gifted chef. But one bite reveals a tiny, crisp dice containing so many different shades of green that a cross-section looks like a tree painted by Seurat, a thousand bits of color combining into one. The rustic thickness of the dumpling skin adds a soft texture that helps meld the flavors into one, too, and the dumplings’ intense vegetable taste--made smoky by black mushroom and tart by Sichuan pickle--makes superfluous every condiment on the table but a raw shred or two of ginger.

Sichuan beef noodle soup is the best dish of all, chile-red broth and the clean, strong flavor of star anise, meltingly soft bits of red-cooked beef and tendon, dots of vegetables, slippery noodles that have absorbed all the flavor of the broth, the most spectacular bowl of noodles you can imagine. And where dim sum is inexpensive, Peng Yuan’s breakfast is almost free . . . four people can eat like hogs for about $15.

Peng Yuan, 700 S. Atlantic Blvd., Monterey Park, (818) 576-2661. Open daily, 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.; weekend brunch, Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Take-out. Beer and wine. American Express, MasterCard and Visa accepted. Brunch for two, food only, $4.50-$12.