This favorite SGV breakfast spot — it’s where to go for dinner

When I was very young, I had a habit of yanking up wild onions that sprouted on my grandparents’ farm in the spring and relishing the bulbs on the spot. That memory hadn’t surfaced in years, but it came back as I slurped down a dinnertime special of cold noodles at Yang’s Kitchen in Alhambra.

Chef-owner Chris Yang and chef de cuisine Elaine Chang infuse oil with the fresh-crop alliums they find every week at the market: leeks, green garlic, the sharp little onions with their reedy tops that I once tugged from the earth. They make it as a warm-weather variation on cong you ban mian, a soy-stained hot noodle dish glossed in scallion oil that’s particularly popular around Shanghai, and they add a few more of their own grace notes: sugar snap peas, a mound of Dungeness crab meat and a dusting of bottarga.

Its balance of salty, minerally and earthy-sweet flavors hits like a tonic. It’s one of many good reasons right now to visit Yang’s Kitchen at night.

Rewind to a pandemic-era brunch reset

“A right-place-right-moment spirit animates Yang’s Kitchen,” began a review I wrote that was published in October 2019. In five short months, the world would be seeing far fewer “right moments.” But Yang’s first-flush energy grabbed me, specifically its smart confluence of cuisines and the way the local community kept the place filled. The initial signature was beef noodle soup with a collagen-rich broth and spices humming in restrained harmonies that disappeared during the 2020 shutdowns.

In the chaotic pandemic-era years, Yang and co-owner Maggie Ho (the pair met in high school and later worked together at Cassia in Santa Monica) stabilized the business by focusing on brunch hours. The menu organically covered both breakfast and lunch vibes. A platter of eggs, hash browns and market greens includes a range of choose-your-own centerpiece options, including choices of chicken thigh, braised tofu, mixed mushrooms or, my favorite, supple-textured dry-aged trout marinated in yuzu juice and miso. A similar standout set plate — anchored by rice, miso soup and pickles, with the same meat and non-meat choices — channels a traditional Japanese breakfast.

Dishes such as mellow chicken liver over toast, peppery grilled prawns, crackling fried chicken wings and a wonderfully flaky-chunky smoked fish dip move into midday tastes. Bringing all the different directions together is an irresistible hubcap-size pancake textured with cornmeal and mochi; it’s thin and lacy around the edges, with a center like an unusually plush crepe. I want it no matter what else I’ve ordered.

It’s dinner time

On the strength of its daytime menu alone, Yang’s is on this year’s 101 best restaurants list. Yang, Ho and their team began dinner service in November, and I finally came for an evening visit recently. If you only know Yang’s Kitchen for a midday meal, I recommend you stop by at night (Thursdays through Sundays) too.

The dinnertime cooking fulfills the restaurant’s early promise. It shows off a self-assurance that needs no labeling; just embrace the personal narrative set forth.

The dining room of Yang’s Kitchen in Alhambra.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

Seaweed vinaigrette adds invigorating umami to a simple salad and nicely frames a meal’s flavors. Knotty, meaty pork ribs tingle with cumin and Sichuan peppercorns. They were originally an entree but have been wisely reassigned as a starter. A few each to share is ideal. I’m happy the daytime chicken livers and smoked fish dip made it to the dinner appetizers too.

This is probably a good place to say: Yang and Ho have quietly put together one of the most compelling beverage programs in Los Angeles. Nonalcoholic drinks — smooth cold brew, several Taiwanese teas of various potencies, seasonal kombuchas and fun no-booze concoctions like an oolong “Fresca” with lemongrass and mint — have always been clutch. But now, hello, there’s a dynamic, individualistic wine list, fairly priced, that puts me in the mind of Justin Pichetrungsi’s initial passion-project forays when he took over wine for Anajak Thai. Yang compiles the list and will happily dole out advice. Between two bottles of Swiss pinot noir (which I don’t much see), he steered me to a round, fresh Weinbau Markus Ruch.

Also, the restaurant serves a dozen sakes in all styles. Maybe my love of sake is a food writerly thing, but, by God, one day this beverage will break all the way through to the mainstream. It’s so much more than the basic, blank-tasting stuff to which I was exposed early in my imbibing life. Sake can have so many expressions: bright with melon, citrusy, floral, savory, pleasantly dank. As at Ototo, the center of sake culture in Los Angeles, Yang’s Kitchen sells sake by the glass, carafe or bottle so you can wade in at your own pace. Maybe start with the Ine Mankai, by turns sweet and tart with ripples of umami, made by Mukai Kuniko, one of Japan’s first female head brewers.

“Hainan rice fish,” an entree of dry-aged barramundi over chicken fat rice, at Yang’s Kitchen.

(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)

Drink it alongside the restaurant’s reimagined version of Hainan chicken rice, made instead with fish. A handsomely seared hunk of dry-aged barramundi drapes over rice glossed with chicken fat, served with a side of ginger-scallion sauce that brightens everything in its path.

My only complaint from dinner at Yang’s? The cornmeal-mochi pancake isn’t on the dessert menu, and it should be.

More from L.A. Times Food

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May 18, 2020