JOSS—BOLD & UNUSUAL & CHINESE
By Max Jacobson,
Los Angeles Times
March 29, 1987 12 AM PT
Tampering with the classics is a dangerous business. Small changes are considered radical ones. Wrong moves can be ruinous. And yet, there is a strange double standard with regard to Chinese cuisine, which by any standard qualifies as the world’s classic cuisine. Let an enlightened Westerner like Barbara Tropp of San Francisco’s celebrated China Moon Cafe get fancy with it and she is hailed as a genius. Let an enfant terrible like Wolfgang Puck put his own stamp on it and serious eaters from everywhere come running.
But let a Chinese step out of the wings of obscurity with a new concept and watch what happens.
The overwhelming reaction is bewilderment. It’s like Bach played on a synthesizer; no one knows quite what to say about it.
And that’s just what’s happening with Joss, the bold, new restaurant belonging to Cecile Tan, longtime Hong Kong resident and one-time enfant terrible . (Tan was
a film director while still in her 20s.) Joss has a menu that reads like the table of contents in a Chinese cookbook. It shoots for greatness with every dish. Joss also has a post-modern dining room full of dramatic lines and sharp pastel geometry. Is that a design for a Chinese restaurant? You bet it is.
Everything about this
place is unusual. The wine list looks like an oversized Christmas card. It’s red with green Chinese calligraphy, colors symbolizing luck and prosperity. Inside, there are amazing selections,
like ’78 Latour, ’85 Pine Ridge Chardonnay and dessert wines ranging
from Ports to ’79 Chateau d’Yquem. Not exactly
Wan Fu, these wines.
Then there is the service. We’ve come to accept erratic service as part of the Chinese restaurant experience. There was even a restaurant in San Francisco, Sam Woo,
where customers lined up just to be abused by the waiter, the late, legendary Edsel Ford Fong. Not here. Joss has an appealing cast of serving people, starting
at the top with manager
Tony Lai, who built Alhambra’s Wonder Seafoods into Los Angeles’ best Chinese restaurant, and going down to a group of attractive, cheerful, young Chinese-Americans who take the orders and pour the wines. That alone is radical enough.
But the menu is the real surprise. Tan has eaten in every great restaurant in Hong Kong, restaurants that naturally comprise the breadth of Chinese cuisine, and she has tried to do the impossible: put all her favorite dishes on one menu. What makes this problematic is the different cooking styles involved. For a menu like this, you’d need 10 chefs. Surprisingly, she nearly brings it off.
Tampering with the classics is a dangerous business. Small changes are considered radical ones. Wrong moves can be ruinous. And yet, there is a strange double standard with regard to Chinese cuisine, which by any standard qualifies as the world’s classic cuisine. Let an enlightened Westerner like Barbara Tropp of San Francisco’s celebrated China Moon Cafe get fancy with it and she is hailed as a genius. Let an enfant terrible like Wolfgang Puck put his own stamp on it and serious eaters from everywhere come running. But let a Chinese step out of the wings of obscurity with a new concept and watch what happens. The overwhelming reaction is bewilderment. It’s like Bach played on a synthesizer; no one knows quite what
to say about it.
And that’s just what’s happening with Joss, the bold, new restaurant belonging to Cecile Tan, longtime Hong Kong resident and one-time enfant terrible . (Tan was a film director while still in her 20s.) Joss has a menu that reads like the table of contents in a Chinese cookbook. It shoots for greatness with every dish. Joss also has a post-modern dining room full of dramatic lines and sharp pastel geometry. Is that a design for a Chinese restaurant? You bet it is.
Everything about this place is unusual.
The wine list looks like an oversized Christmas card. It’s red with green Chinese calligraphy, colors symbolizing luck and prosperity. Inside, there are amazing selections, like ’78 Latour, ’85 Pine Ridge Chardonnay and dessert wines ranging from Ports to ’79 Chateau d’Yquem.
Not exactly Wan Fu, these wines.
Then there is the service. We’ve come
to accept erratic service as part of the Chinese restaurant experience. There was even a restaurant in San Francisco, Sam Woo, where customers lined up just to be abused by the waiter, the late, legendary Edsel Ford Fong. Not here. Joss has an appealing cast of serving people, starting at the top with manager Tony Lai, who built Alhambra’s Wonder Seafoods into Los Angeles’ best Chinese restaurant, and going down to a group of attractive, cheerful, young Chinese-Americans who take the orders and pour the wines. That alone is radical enough.
But the menu is the real surprise. Tan has eaten in every great restaurant in Hong Kong, restaurants that naturally comprise the breadth of Chinese cuisine, and she has tried to do the impossible: put all her favorite dishes on one menu. What makes this problematic is the different cooking styles involved. For a menu like this, you’d need 10 chefs. Surprisingly, she nearly brings it off.
JOSS—BOLD & UNUSUAL & CHINESE
By Max Jacobson, Los Angeles Times
March 29, 1987 12 AM PT
Outstanding — kevin b.
Outstanding — kevin b.
Joss—Exquisite Chinese
Food in Beverly Hills
By Jay Weston, Huffpost
Oct 31, 2012, 07:47 PM | Updated Dec 6, 2017
My passion for authentic Chinese food is well-known to my Huffington readers. Yes, I will go anywhere in the world for a great Chinese meal, and did fly to Hong Kong for dinner at a new restaurant on Victoria's Peak by an American chef, Jeremiah Tower, being audacious. (It was mediocre, and closed shortly.) I eat once or twice a week at my little storefront strip mall, Hop Woo, southwest corner of Olympic and Sepulveda, where the veteran chef knows my taste for spicy food from the various regions of China and obliges me. I occasionally go for dim sum upstairs at the Palace on Wilshire and Barrington 'cause they have the rolling carts and serve chicken feet, jook (porridge) and the like. (And it's more convenient than the massive Empress Pavilion downtown.)
WP 24 is Wolfgang Puck's stunning place atop the Ritz-Carleton Hotel when I am at Staples Center, where Klaus Puck serve me a great Austrian white wine as I consumer vast quantities of Peking duck and whole steamed fish with black beans and green onions. And I even frequent Vicky Mense's Xi'An in Beverly Hills for her healthy Chinese-American take on food, although the chef knows I like real Chinese seasoning and can oblige. Yes, I am mad about authentic, delicious Chinese food... and now have rediscovered one of the original gems in my culinary repertoire.
For 25 years I have been dining at Joss, first when Cecile T'ang opened it on Sunset Blvd. and I had a birthday party for Arnold Kopelson there the night before opening. Named for the Chinese word for 'luck' popularized in the novels of my friend, James Clavell, I ate their Hong Kong-style banquet food over the years, and the night before she closed (after a landlord dispute), I attended a Goose party because she had found a source for those birds. A few years ago she reopened JOSS at 9919 Little Santa Monica Blvd. (310) 277-3888, diagonally across and one block west of the Peninsula Hotel, with lots of street parking.
I attended the opening, realized that she still had the superb food cooked by her brilliant young chef, 'Golo' Kwokson Yu. This shy genius came here in '88 as a dim sum apprentice to legendary chef Lao Ying Chieh before the latter retired. She passed on to him special recipes and her unsurpassed methods, and he gradually demonstrated to Cecile that he could masterfully cook some of her favorite dishes from the greatest restaurants in Hong Kong.
The new Joss began serving food from the rich heritage of fine traditional Chinese. I wrote a rave review... and then it fell off the map for me. For some reason, I got busy and have not been there for two years... until last week. Cecile (Chinese name is She Shuen) had written I, CHING, a musical 'comedy' about the rise and fall of Madam Mao in China. An unlikely subject for a musical comedy, but somehow Cecile pulled it off, creating 16 musical numbers and a fascinating book about how a struggling Shanghai actress metamorphosed into a revolutionary and the most powerful woman in China. I recently saw it at the Broad Stage and thought it showed great promise. Ms. Tang had a dinner party at Joss for some of the participants, and thus I was back at this stunning restaurant within walking distance of my home.
Joss—Exquisite Chinese Food in Beverly Hills
By Jay Weston, Huffpost
Oct 31, 2012, 07:47 PM | Updated Dec 6, 2017
My passion for authentic Chinese food is well-known to my Huffington readers. Yes, I will go anywhere in the world for a great Chinese meal, and did fly to Hong Kong for dinner at a new restaurant on Victoria's Peak by an American chef, Jeremiah Tower, being audacious. (It was mediocre, and closed shortly.) I eat once or twice a week at my little storefront strip mall, Hop Woo, southwest corner of Olympic and Sepulveda, where the veteran chef knows my taste for spicy food from the various regions of China and obliges me. I occasionally go for dim sum upstairs at the Palace on Wilshire and Barrington 'cause they have the rolling carts and serve chicken feet, jook (porridge) and the like. (And it's more convenient than the massive Empress Pavilion downtown.)
WP 24 is Wolfgang Puck's stunning place atop the Ritz-Carleton Hotel when I am at Staples Center, where Klaus Puck serve me a great Austrian white wine as I consumer vast quantities of Peking duck and whole steamed fish with black beans and green onions. And I even frequent Vicky Mense's Xi'An in Beverly Hills for her healthy Chinese-American take on food, although the chef knows I like real Chinese seasoning and can oblige. Yes, I am mad about authentic, delicious Chinese food... and now have rediscovered one of the original gems in my culinary repertoire.
For 25 years I have been dining at Joss, first when Cecile T'ang opened it on Sunset Blvd. and I had a birthday party for Arnold Kopelson there the night before opening. Named for the Chinese word for 'luck' popularized in the novels of my friend, James Clavell, I ate their Hong Kong-style banquet food over the years, and the night before she closed (after a landlord dispute), I attended a Goose party because she had found a source for those birds. A few years ago she reopened JOSS at 9919 Little Santa Monica Blvd. (310) 277-3888, diagonally across and one block west of the Peninsula Hotel, with lots of street parking.
I attended the opening, realized that she still had the superb food cooked by her brilliant young chef, 'Golo' Kwokson Yu. This shy genius came here in '88 as a dim sum apprentice to legendary chef Lao Ying Chieh before the latter retired. She passed on to him special recipes and her unsurpassed methods, and he gradually demonstrated to Cecile that he could masterfully cook some of her favorite dishes from the greatest restaurants in Hong Kong. The new Joss began serving food from the rich heritage of fine traditional Chinese. I wrote a rave review... and then it fell off the map for me. For some reason, I got busy and have not been there for two years... until last week. Cecile (Chinese name is She Shuen) had written I, CHING, a musical 'comedy' about the rise and fall of Madam Mao in China. An unlikely subject for a musical comedy, but somehow Cecile pulled it off, creating 16 musical numbers and a fascinating book about how a struggling Shanghai actress metamorphosed into a revolutionary and the most powerful woman in China. I recently saw it at the Broad Stage and thought it showed great promise. Ms. Tang had a dinner party at Joss for some of the participants, and thus I was back at this stunning restaurant within walking distance of my home.