Inside Pasadena’s New Panda Inn, The place Sushi and Orange Rooster Reign

After quietly closing in 2023 to refresh its inside and menu for the primary time in 20 years, Pasadena’s legendary Panda Inn is lastly gearing as much as reopen on November 14, 2024. Husband and spouse duo Andrew and Peggy Cherng, and Andrew’s father, chef Ming-Tsai Cherng, opened the unique Panda Inn in Pasadena in 1973. A couple of decade later in 1982, the household expanded Panda Inn to Glendale earlier than opening the primary fast-casual Chinese language restaurant Panda Categorical contained in the Glendale Galleria mall in 1983. Right this moment, there are 4 standalone Panda Inn eating places in Southern California and over 2,300 Panda Categorical places worldwide.

The Cherngs’ journey to opening in Pasadena started in Yangzhou, China, the place Andrew and his dad and mom had been born. In 1953, the household relocated to Taipei, Taiwan, the place Ming-Tsai labored on the Grand Lodge, earlier than transferring to Yokohama, Japan, in 1961 and cooking within the metropolis’s Chinatown. Then, in 1972, Andrew moved to Los Angeles to assist his cousin run a restaurant referred to as Ting Ho earlier than opening the first-ever Panda Inn a 12 months later.

This model of Panda Inn will honor the journey the Cherngs took to Pasadena with a very reimagined inside and revamped dishes. The area now incorporates a sushi bar, a renovated out of doors patio, and a personal eating space for big events. The menu additionally options dishes from Yangzhou cooks, paying tribute to town that began all of it for the Cherng household. Andrew and Peggy’s daughter Andrea Cherng, the corporate’s chief model officer, contributed to bringing this new imaginative and prescient of Panda Inn to life.

The eating room is nearly unrecognizable from the one friends final noticed in 2023. Gone are the brown-hued partitions and red-painted arch, changed by smooth wooden paneling and cubicles tucked away in alcoves. Mild from floor-to-ceiling home windows displays off the darkish flooring, and the ultra-long sushi bar with placing layered granite instantly captures consideration from a number of vantage factors. A round engraved classical Chinese language panorama scene and wood lattice paneling remembers a regal banquet corridor. Over the doorway, a towering black portico welcomes diners with a gilded “Panda Inn” signal, as if to mark a golden new period for the restaurant.

The brand new menu begins with a photograph of the late chef Ming-Tsai standing over a fireplace carrying a white jacket. From there, its pages transfer into chef specials like shrimp and lobster wontons, Panda Beef in an orange peel sauce, chargrilled beef quick ribs, honey walnut shrimp, and lobster crispy noodles. Soup and salad choices encompass sizzling and bitter soup, hen corn egg drop soup, mango tea smoked duck salad, and spicy beef salad, whereas appetizers embody favorites like crab wontons with cream cheese, a mu shu wrap, salt and pepper calamari, hen lettuce cups, and Taiwanese popcorn hen.

Bigger essential programs embody acquainted Chinese language American classics like kung pao shrimp, orange hen, beef and broccoli, and tea-smoked duck. The reinvention of the restaurant brings up to date seafood, sushi, and uncooked bar dishes, like hamachi tacos, spicy tuna on crispy rice, and a miso butter lobster roll — takes on the high-end Japanese lounge meals that eating places like Nobu made well-known. Meals might be rounded out with sides of bok choy and mushrooms, spicy tofu eggplant, lo mein, chow enjoyable, or fried rice. If they’ve room, diners can order chocolate lava cake and heat rice pudding for dessert, or end with a cup of jasmine, sencha, or oolong tea.

For Andrea, the shift is technique to keep in mind the arduous work of her grandfather and oldsters: “Panda Inn, our household’s dwelling for fifty-one years, is a tribute to the giants who got here earlier than us and to the numerous immigrant households who’ve sacrificed for future generations.”

Panda Inn reopens at 3488 E. Foothill Boulevard, Pasadena, CA, 91107 on November 15 and can serve from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday to Friday, and 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday.