Harvest time
Spring Garden offers a bumper crop of fine food and special events
By Dan O'Heron 12/24/2009
At an age when my thoughts turn more often to pension than passion, I’m still tormented by cravings for great Chinese food served in a place where the shrimp goes pao!; a place providing such a huge, mind-boggling variety of dishes that the chefs risk suffering attention deficit disorder — a place like Pasadena’s Spring Garden.
While in recent years I’ve developed an appetite for Japanese, Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Indian and Malaysian foods — and even such Asian fusion fare as “Linglinguini” — I believe it is a Chinese chef like Yat Yi at Spring Garden who, more than any other kitchen slave, brought me meals of the most memorable flair.
Most attentive to special off-menu requests if I asked a few days in advance, Yi would dispatch someone to climb a cliff and fetch a bird’s nest for my soup, or dive in the ocean for a shark’s fin for my stew.
But you won’t need heroics like that; the regular menu is bountiful enough. With a vast array of generously portioned dishes, predicated on enough delicious fat and calories to put a comma in our cholesterol counts, my dining advisory: share.
We’d start with an appetizer like crusty-bottomed dumplings, stuffed with shredded chicken and mixed veggies in a steamed wrapper (eight for $7.95). Pan-fried or steamed, they are a welcome departure from the deep-fried variety so prevalent elsewhere.
For a second starter, we shouldn’t miss the three-flavor sizzling rice soup ($6.95). The other day at Spring Garden, when it was colder outside than the dark between the stars, layers of clothing restricted my movements like a mummy bandage. But not enough to stop me from chipping chunks off popcorn rice cakes into a stirring broth of mixed veggies. With bold flavor and contrasting textures and temperaments, it was just the medicine to make the cold go away.
After this we can relish beautiful platters of fin, feather, farm and flank as they decorate our table. How about a whole crispy catfish ($11.95 to $20.95, depending on size)? Here two people can pick away for a long time before discovering vertebrae that looks like a museum exhibit.
We might follow with tea-smoked half duck ($13.50) or orange chicken ($10.95). On top of that — to the special delight of vegetarians — a Buddha’s Feast ($9.50) of stir-fried baby corn, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, mushroom, asparagus and bean curd is in order. On finishing, a partner once exclaimed to me, “Imagine that. Partaking a full meal and not even suspecting the absence of meat.”
We’d end the royal procession with wisely marinated, steaming tatters of Szechwan beef ($10.95) or barbecued pork with green pepper ($9.95).
In synch with another special procession, Spring Garden offers its annual Rose Bowl Game window-view of the Rose Parade.
For $90 per person, we’ll get a continental breakfast or special brunch — watching the floats pass by —and perhaps get to salute Grand Marshal Capt. Chesley B. Sullenburger III, the US Airlines pilot who brought what appeared to be a doomed aircraft to a picture-perfect landing in the Hudson River, saving the lives of all 155 aboard. Anyone who has ever clutched an armrest or grabbed the hand of a stranger when a plane suddenly convulses in turbulence at 20,000 feet should raise their glass to “Sully.”
New Year’s Day doors open at 8:15 a.m.
Shortly after the original opening of Spring Garden in 1976, Owner Hoh King Hoh didn’t know about the parade route. And, as related to me by Hoh’s daughter, Mei, the current owner, on the morning of the New Year’s 1977, Hoh wondered why everyone was knocking at his door; some of the well-traveled asking “Cesuo zai nali?” or “Where
is the bathroom?”
A few weeks after the upcoming Ohio State vs. Oregon game, we’ll have another chance to usher in a New Year and delight in a double pleasure: It’s Feb. 14, the beginning of the Year of the Tiger and Valentine’s Day, the spiritual coupling of two souls — and sometimes more if you consider the woes of one Tiger in the news lately.
Fittingly, for the five days following, Spring Garden will become the perfumed garden of Eros, with aromas of $19.95-per-person multi-course banquet meals (complimentary glass of wine included).
In the 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac, each year is named after a different animal, and — followers believe — the beast ruling the year of a person’s birth is the main factor determining their personality traits and mental attributes.
Tiger people are cut out to be aggressive, courageous, sensitive and candid. The Tiger, it is said, should look to the Dog or the Horse for happiness. The Horse should marry a Tiger, but never a Rat. Maybe the beleaguered Mr. Woods should take note of some of these suggestions during 2010, his namesake year.
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