Le Yen hangs on to tradition

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

Though it’s been years since my first trip to Le Yen, I still spend most of my time there the same way: pressed up against a window, eyes trailing the cars streaking down Atlantic Avenue. It’s a habit I can’t quite explain, but it’s also telling of the restaurant’s pull—a nearly 40-year-old fixture that cars now speed past and ignore.

But that’s understandable. Alongside its renovated Bixby Knolls neighbors, Le Yen doesn’t stand out like it used to: an old corner storefront lit up by a fading orange sign that does little against the rest of the area’s newer restaurants and shops. Inside, however, the place is as crisp as ever: huge geometric lanterns, tables framed in smooth, dark woods. Le Yen’s lines were always clean and sleek, and they’ve stayed that way, reflecting the restaurant’s establishment at the end of mid-century style.

The lack of change is for good reason. For one, Le Yen has a particular identity: a restaurant, like Ming’s in Bellflower, from a time when Chinese food was still exotic and unassimilated. But more importantly, Le Yen hasn’t changed because it’s a family-owned restaurant that hews close to its past, resting now in a second generation of cooks.

And like its décor, Le Yen’s food sticks to what it has always done best: Cantonese-inspired dishes that, over the years, have taken as much from American cuisine as Chinese. What’s remarkable about Le Yen, however, is that its food is almost never burdened by the thick, heavy sauces that plague so many other Chinese restaurants.

There’s nothing unfamiliar on the menu, so start with what you know. First, there’s egg foo young, the once omnipresent dish cut from most menus in favor of things like Szechwan lettuce wraps. Though it has roots in Shanghai, egg foo young is an American-born dish: egg and bean sprouts pressed into a patty and fried, then blanketed in a light gravy and topped with scallions. Forty years ago, egg foo young probably seemed foreign—today, it fondly recalls things like veggie burgers and other foods now commonplace among American eaters.

There’s also Le Yen’s excellent moo shu pork, a dish that has suffered a fading fate similar to that of egg foo young. It begins as a jumble of pork, cabbage, wood-ear mushrooms, carrots and onions. Then it’s packed hot into Le Yen’s nearly translucent wraps and paired with hoisin sauce. Some lesser Chinese places substitute tortillas for the wraps, but Le Yen keeps with tradition—and it’s good.

Next, instead of ordering orange this or sweet-and-sour that, try simpler things like ginger beef. Tossed with onions, peppers and water chestnuts, the dish is punctuated by crisp shards of ginger that shoot straight through your sinuses, making a spicy and aromatic plate that tops any number of kung pao chicken-type offerings.

But Le Yen’s lightest dish is the chow mein. At most Americanized Chinese restaurants, chow mein is a staple of thick sauce, weighed down and masked by huge globs of the stuff. At Le Yen, the chow mein is served in a glassy heap, with only a thin layer of sauce tying everything together: the vegetables are still crisp, the noodles are tender but not soggy. At any other place, a chow mein like this would be bland. But at Le Yen, it’s unsurprisingly great.

Once you get your fill, you’ll be met at the register and cashed out, sent on your way down Atlantic. There, traffic zips by faster and faster until it disappears altogether. But Le Yen, of course, is still there. And as you drive away, you’re hit with the undeniable feeling that no matter how much things change, Le Yen will inevitably stay the same, doing what it does best, year in and year out.

LE YEN 4140 ATLANTIC AVE | LONG BEACH 90807 | 562.424.2817 | FOOD FOR TWO, $20-30 | BEER, WINE

Tags: bixby knolls, chinese, le yen