What's in a name change?
Wider patronage for Asian comfort food from Teri & Yaki (aka Himeko)
By Dan O'Heron 05/18/2006
In talking about his business plan, restaurant owner Ryan Choi had the confident look of a master baker who has a cake in the oven.
I figured he might be carrying a load of proxies to a takeover bid. But it was more physical: He'd taken down one big sign above his Pasadena restaurant and put up another, changing the name Himeko Chicken to Teri & Yaki.
It wasn't just window dressing. In the exertion, he widened the perception of the food he's dishing out and sweetened its attraction. It didn't surprise me. After Choi picked up a bachelor's degree in psychology at UCLA, and his partner and wife, Dona, a master's in education, they've spent 10 years in a tough business. Expansion is the pay-off. Smart decisions and earnest execution — mixing gray matter with elbow grease — is how you succeed in the crowded restaurant marketplace of Pasadena.
And elsewhere. “Beyond Pasadena, and now Monrovia, we are planning 10 new units. We'll continue to serve chicken and beef teriyaki, steamed rice, chow mein, Chinese chicken salads, chicken noodle soups and fried dumplings. We're the meat and potatoes of Asian comfort food — not just chicken — so the former name Himeko Chicken would do little to get that across to prospective customers.”
The original restaurant was named after Ryan's mother, Himeko, and the mint of her style in the kitchen — and her recipes — still serve aces for Teri & Yaki. I recall a chicken combo in which Himeko had deboned, skinned and cut up six ounces of fresh chicken, then marinated the pieces in soy-sesame-garlic-ginger sauce for 24 hours, before baking for 30 minutes and charbroiling when ordered.
The just-so spiced chicken, though skinless, had an audibly crisp exterior. It was made cushy on a pillow of rice, filigreed on sweet noodles that she had stir-fried and lavished with oyster sauce and veggies.
I paid $4.50, and it included a side dish. That was 10 years ago. Two weeks ago I had the same meal; it was as good as ever for $4.99 — that's comfort.
And Himeko is still around to pull back the quilted bedcover and smooth the blankets for all the new guests expected to show at future Teri & Yaki outlets.
With expansion, said Choi, the menu and the prices will remain essentially the same as they are today. That means you'll get beef combinations — boneless short ribs, prepared with the same effort as chicken — ranging from $6.25, with rice and stir-fried noodles plus one side, to $8.75 with three sides.
Sides become main events with dishes like sweetened potatoes — russets, I think — that are made to taste like sweet potatoes, only better. A spicy Asian slaw, a kind of diffused version of garlicky kimchee, is a good choice to detonate appetites.
For quality control, short rib meat is cut at a precise thickness to best absorb the marinade and moist-cooked for optimum tenderness. To assure consistency of texture and flavor in rice preparations, pre-rinsed rice is used. This helps maintain fixed proportions of water, essential in tricky rice cooking.
In the middle of lunch the other day, I was checking out which comes first in popularity, the chicken or the beef. Counting was difficult. Ordering by the numbers, scurrying back to their seats to be served (the room seats 60), guests ignored my plea to stand and be counted. However, I noticed a huge number of Chinese chicken salads passing by. Taking one home, it crunched with romaine and crackled with wontons. Generously shredded with white chicken meat, and pebbled with almonds and sesame seeds, it was spiced with green onions and a dandy light dressing. For extra comfort, I'm told, extra dressing sells big (50 cents or $1.25 a half-pint to-go).
To get another idea of what's in a name, think noodle soup. With spicy red currents splashing golden ribbons, it's a pot boiler. “But before, when we called it ramen, it barely trickled,” said Choi. Most people think of ramen as something dried in a cellophane pack, flecked with dehydrated, suspect vegetables.
Serving comfort food doesn't leave much time for sitting, said Choi. The staff comes in at 8 a.m. to take care of regular and special catering events and large advance to-go orders, “to free us to handle the lunch crowd.”
Choi said the biggest regular to-go customers are pharmaceutical sales people who stop on their way to doctor's offices to pick up loads of food to feed the medical staff. (As a sales tool, nothing beats the benevolence of self-interest).
At least once a week, alternatively, said Choi, “We're called on to serve complete hot lunches — drumsticks, chow mein, noodle soup and all — to kids at Pasadena schools like Chandler, High Point Academy, Mayfield Junior School and Polytechnic.”
Life is unfair. I remember at Eagle Rock, we got fruit cups on Thursday.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT