Shanghai Surprise

In the greenest reaches of San Marino, somewhere beyond the steakhouses of Alhambra and the fern bars of South Pasadena, Shanghai Palace lies on a genteel-looking block of pricey boutiques and art studios, adjoining a courtyard shaded by leafy trees. Expensive foreign cars are parked out front; the dining room is airy, sleek and mirrored like a chic Pasadena lunch cafe; new-age saxophone burblings hum from the ceiling. Well-dressed Anglo customers chat about Republican politics and the possibility of getting Tiffany to commit to their new mall. And the restaurant is all but deserted after 8 p.m. It seems about as far from clackety Chinatown noodle shops as you can get.

At a restaurant like this, you might expect to see ladies who lunch nibbling on chicken salad on their way to a meeting of the Junior League. You also might expect to find something close to Beverly Hills Chinese food, the super-sweet hot-sour soup, kung-pao chicken and moo shoo pork that became “Shanghai” cooking in Los Angeles about the same time it became “Sichuan” in New York. Suburban Chinese--except in Chinese suburbs--is a predictable thing.

But in fact, Shanghai Palace is owned by the same people that own the superb Lake Spring Restaurant in Monterey Park, and amid the Northern Chinese cliches (which are no better here than they are anywhere else), is some of the most interesting Chinese cooking-- Cantonese -style cooking--in Southern California. Apparently, Shanghai Palace used to be a popular red-booth ‘n’ dragon joint, and the new owners never bothered to change the name.

So when you order a combination appetizer plate, you get a platter the size of a truck tire, piled high with slices of chashu , and pieces of astounding roast duck and chicken, still moist, with skin as brittle and translucent as spun sugar. In the center is a heap of tender, delicately spiced jellyfish salad, whose slight crunchiness dissolves into something sweet and marine when you chew. Around the rim are slices of good home-cured Chinese ham in aspic. Not only is it a far cry from pupu platters, it’s better than any appetizer plate at the huge Chinese banquet restaurants that more or less specialize in the stuff. Don’t ask me how a small, uncrowded cafe can afford to keep an assortment like this on the menu.

The repertoire of the Cantonese seafood restaurant is almost as well-known as that of the suburban Shanghai thing, steamed fish, salt-baked shrimp and clams in black-bean sauce, but somehow the Cantonese flavors at Shanghai Palace seem lighter and cleaner than they do at places like Harbor Village, more focused, often underpinned with the subtle tang of smoke.

Whole “baked” scallops, the size of straight-sided whiskey jiggers, are deep-fried to a delicate crispness, still very rare inside, and speckled with tiny bits of smoky Chinese ham. Mah-jongg -tile slabs of chicken, steamed with cabbage and thin slices of ham, vibrate with smoke. In a hot pot, big blocks of tofu stuffed with shrimp come in a puddle of thin, smoky mushroom broth that accentuates the sweet milkiness of really fresh bean curd.

Of course, not everything is smoky. In season, there are fresh, delicious pea leaves, stir-fried with lots of garlic, which you can get straight or tossed with a handful of sauteed shrimp; and duck web fried with julienne red and green peppers in a good, murky black-bean sauce; and an extraordinary whole chicken steamed with scallions, which flavor the bird to the bone; and great Singapore noodles, thin, pan-fried vermicelli tinted yellow with a biting curry. There’s terrific whole catfish, steamed until just firm and served in a delicate soy-scallion oil, that’s about the best steamed catfish around. Whole catfish is also split and deep-fried until it’s about 95% crunch, then glazed with a dark, sticky sauce. And if you remember to ask for it, there’s even a version of the famous “pork pump” served at Lake Spring, two pounds of pure, delicious pig blubber braised with soy and rock sugar (it’s not on the menu).

I’m happy to report that the kung-pao chicken at Shanghai Palace is truly crummy, a soggy, sugary mess. It gives the discriminating eater just one more thing to act smug about.

Shanghai Palace, 932 Huntington Drive, (at Oak Knoll) San Marino, (818) 282-8815. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. MasterCard and Visa accepted. No alcohol. Take-out. Dinner for two, food only, $18-$35.