Title: Lin Jia Asian Kitchen
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Lin Jia in Oakland, CA  – update, lunch
Review date: November 2012 

The refrigerator is empty since we're leaving tomorrow afternoon for a quick trip to Monterey with our friends Mel and Christie. So we're dining out all of today and tomorrow, giving us the chance to revisit some places we liked on previous visits.

Lin Jia gave us a very nice lunch on July 2012. We're cautious about Asian fusion but there were enough good dishes that we enjoyed our meal, although we felt the KFC (Korean Fried Chicken, as it's known to local foodies who argue passionately about Who Makes The Best KFC) was the weakest link on that occasion – one dimensional and not as interesting as it could be. But the crisp delicate shrimp rolls, the hot and sour soup, and the Changsha Beef in the "Hunan Hottie" sandwich were all quite good, and worth revisiting.

Once again, Carlos and I split the shrimp rolls. The frying this time seemed a little greasier, not quite as perfect as before. The small bowls of hot-and-sour soup are gratis at lunch, but I thought there was more soy and vinegar in the soup this time. Carlos loved it, however. This is one of those dishes where he not only doesn't mind the vinegar, he likes a whole lot of it.

I ordered two sandwiches to try (each comes on a modest 4" brioche roll). This time the Changsha Beef was quite salty – fine eaten with the bread, but I wouldn't have wanted this served on a plate with a bowl of rice, which is one of the options. It still had the nice toasted cumin flavor, however, along with a generous amount of stir-fried green and red chiles pepping up the diced onions and garlic.

Unfortunately the waitress mixed up my order. I also asked for the "Kimkatsu Sliders", a pork-kimchi-mayo sandwich. I have no idea how she got "Canton Crawler" out of that, but it's what I ended up with. This is a bland, featureless dish of a pseudo-Egg Foo Yung on mayo-spread brioche with a slice of generic supermarket tomato. There is the merest sprinkle of a very good, finely chopped spicy garlic mixture, well-browned but not burnt, on top of the scrambled eggs with their beansprouts and too-large onion slices. If there had been more of it, or even just some salt in the eggs, the sandwich would have been better. Not great, but better.

Carlos got the "Angry Bird" lunch plate. This is spicy fried chicken nuggets, but Lin Jia did as poorly with this as with their KFC (fried chicken drenched in sweet chile sauce).c There was too little salt to perk up the really good level of chile heat...and worse, they had overfried the chicken nuggets. This little birdie was dry and boring, despite its spiciness.

Our first visit had gotten Carlos excited, and he ranked Lin Jia as even better than Chin Hua in Alameda. But this lunch was not as good as our first meal here. We have to drop Lin Jia down a half level. It definitely tasted like a different cook was working the line. Combined with the order error and an indifferent Bird, next time we'll be more careful about ordering.

Still, we like Lin Jia and will come back to explore the menu further. We've been meaning to get back to Chin Hua as well, but just haven't had time. It's on our short list, though, so expect an update fairly soon.

We both ordered hot tea. I was pleased to see that the individual cups had been changed. Now a plastic lid is included, which allows the removal of the sieve holding loose tea leaves without dripping all over the table. Lin Jia seems to be channeling Slanted Door; their tea is high quality and properly measured. We appreciated being able to decide our own brewing times, too. Carlos likes his tea brewed much longer than I do.

Two people, lunch: one starter, two sandwiches, one lunch plate, two beverages, with tip $51.

Lin Jia Asian Kitchen
3437 Lakeshore Ave @Mandana, Oakland, CA
https://order.zonicordering.com/MjcxMQ%3d%3d.zhtml?str=Lin-Jia-Asian-Kitchen
Review date: July 2012

This 'contemporary Asian' restaurant opened up in a former tea shoppe site, at the end of the popular neighborhood shopping district on Lakeshore Ave. Lakeshore and Grand Avenue run roughly parallel for a short distance after they pass beneath the 580 freeway. The two streets form an elongated triangle which extends three blocks out from the freeway, containing a tight mass of shops and eateries – past that, it's residential.

We always meant to try that tea-and-pastries shop, but never got around to it. Now it's a contemporary, if modestly-sized, bistro, with a noticeable noise level. This may be due to the open kitchen, the high ceiling and hard surfaces, or any combination thereof.  At any rate, even one-third full, Carlos and I had trouble hearing one another over the table.

Michael Bauer of the SF Chronicle reviewed Lin Jia on October 2011 and liked it. The restaurant opened in November 2010 and is owned by Marcia Lam. In March 2011, she brought her father, Hoa "Tom" Lam, into the fold as chef. He's a self-taught cook who started working in kitchens in 1981 when the family came to the United States. He couldn't speak English, and a kitchen job was all he could get. The family came from the Hakka region in China, but Marcia Lam's great-grandfather left China because of famine and settled in North Vietnam. 

The Yelp reviews are generally high, but there are some who vote negative on Lin Jia. What surprised me most once we were seated and perusing the menus was that none of the first-page reviewers mentioned that this is basically Vietnamese food, not Chinese. Yelpers being who they are, it is entirely possible they don't know the difference. 

Which is a shame, because as Chinese food it's a miss. As Vietnamese food, however, it's excellent. This works for us because we really like Vietnamese food. We remember when even the basic Vietnamese restaurants served food like Lin Jia's – not with the new buzzwords of organic/sustainable/locavore ingredients that LJ promotes, but which offered the same clean, crisp flavors, with the right balance of hot, sour, salty, and sweet. 

Sadly, Vietnamese, like Chinese and Indian foods, has been frozen in the "cheap greasy eats" category by many Americans. As a result a lot of the Vietnamese restaurants now serve food consisting of the cheapest ingredients and loaded down with way too much sugar. (Even worse, in our estimation, is that Japanese restaurants seem to be falling into this trend.)

We ordered a wide variety of dishes to try. We started off with shrimp rolls and Hakka shrimp rolls. The first are deep-fried, slender cigars of ricepaper skins, filled with chopped shrimp and cream cheese. There were no superfluous 'extenders' used in the filling, a definite plus. Cream cheese works very well as a binder for seafood fillings (my mother used it forty years ago to make wonderful eggrolls containing shrimp, scallops and crab).

Lin Jia's version is beautifully fried – crisp but not overbrowned, served with a housemade dip of rice vinegar, ginger, and sugar. Making the rolls into a slender shape made them as addictive as potato chips. Normally Carlos favors the fresh rolls (the Hakka style, below), but he really liked these deep-fried cigars, with their crispy ends and savory filling.

The Hakka shrimp rolls are what the Vietnamese often call 'summer rolls', fat rolls of dampened rice paper filled with shrimp, lettuce, rice vermicelli, and the unusual but tasty addition of good-quality ham. These came with a different sauce, a thinned-down peanut sauce which I liked but Carlos didn't (he's not a peanut fan). The sauce was smooth; it really needed some finely crushed peanuts to add a little texture.

The menu description of 'mango and papaya salad' doesn't do this Asian version of coleslaw justice. It's a generous serving of green papaya salad, with lots of fine shreds of ripe mango and a blizzard of chopped toasted peanuts on top. It is also dressed with rice vinegar, with a goodly kick of chile heat that only makes itself known on the second or third bite. I'm usually so-so with this dish, but I really enjoyed Lin Jia's version. 

The only problem with this salad is that it is large. It's really enough for three or four people to share, so if there's only two of you, expect to take leftovers home. We thought the size of the other dishes were just right for the price (although Yelpers say the portions are larger at dinner when the prices rise slightly), so we were a bit surprised by the large size of the salad.

Lunchtime brings a small bowl of hot and sour soup for free. This is one of Carlos' favorite soups, and most places make abysmal versions of it. Lin Jia did a superb job, keeping the acidic bite of the vinegar within reason, with just enough chile heat to make itself known without overdoing it. We could smell and taste the aromatic floweriness of the Sichuan peppers.

The additions of shiitake, bamboo shoot, plus a small amount of carrot that seemed more for color than anything else, were cut into very fine shreds. The tofu was in small dice and fresh. The broth itself was well flavored and properly thickened without being reduced to glueyness. Only the absence of egg threads could be criticized, but more because it's traditional than being needed here. Carlos said this was one of the better versions of hot and sour soup he's had.

I ordered the "Hunan Hottie" sandwich, Changsha Beef with lettuce and mayo on a baguette. This is stir-fried sliced beef with toasted cumin and hot pepper, served on a soft roll that was more like a good-quality hamburger bun than a crisp-crusted baguette. For sandwiches we prefer the former to the latter anyway. But this beef has enough flavor to stand up to any bread the kitchen might use. It is one of the best beef stir-fries I've had in a long time. I loved well-toasted cumin, and combined with chiles it can make red meat sing, whether lamb or beef. Carlos liked this as well, although he wasn't expecting to (he likes cumin, but he's not as much in love with this spice as I am).

Carlos ordered the KFC plate (Korean Fried Chicken with rice and veggies). Warned by Yelpers (and our experience at Chin Hua/Alameda, a similar restaurant), we told them up-front we wanted the KFC extra-spicy. The KFC plate, actually a platter, holds a small mound of rice (unfortunately Chinese style rice), about half a cup of bright stir-fried vegetables which are actually cooked tender instead of being annoyingly half-raw, and a modest portion of boneless dark meat chicken. 

The chicken has been lightly battered, fried crisp but not to the overdone/dead stage, then tossed with a zingy sauce of bottled red chile sauce, rice vinegar, garlic, and ginger. Sprinkled with fresh-roasted sesame seeds, this was an excellent lunch. I wouldn't call it the best version of KFC – the sauce lacks depth – but it's nicely executed and a perfect contrast to the Changsha beef.

The Hunan Noodles are listed as shrimp egg noodles on the menu, but they tasted more like a fine quality spaghetti. They were chewy yet tender, reminding us strongly of our favorite udon-style noodles used in Shanghai chow mein. Indeed, when ordered with beef as we did – the addition of any meat is an additional $3 – this modest bowlful had much of the same flavor. The stir-fry (these are not the Cantonese style crispy-pancake noodles) comes with cabbage (good), green onion (ditto) and carrot (also good), but unfortunately also the additions of bean sprouts (bad) and celery (very bad). The veggies are kept within bounds, though, not overwhelming the noodles. The beef was nicely stir-fried, with the proper "taste of the wok"; e.g., caramelization.

Balance is very much the name of the game here. This isn't the cheapest Asian meal in town and thankfully, doesn't want to be. They have gussied-up familiar-sounding dishes without losing the culinary roots, and wisely limited their menu to offer enough variety without becoming redundant. It's a nice blend that attracts the locals, which in the main are Caucasian. 

Don't count on getting a pot of tea here. Tea comes in individual glass coffeecups, brewed loose by using a drop-in plastic columnar sieve. This is high quality tea, but rather cumbersome (there's nowhere to put the sieve and used tea leaves when it's finished brewing). The jasmine tea was outstanding.

Lin Jia could be considered a halfway stop between those Grade C Vietnamese/Chinese restaurants and the famed Slanted Door in San Francisco. We've always considered it the height of irony that some of the people who complain if their neighborhood Asian take-out costs more than $20/person, will happily pay staggering sums to SD owner Charles Phan for fancy versions of street food and full bar cocktails. 

If it seems the owners of Lin Jia are following in the footsteps of Mr. Phan...well, that's not a bad business plan. Phan has proven that it is indeed possible to yank both Caucasians and Asians out of their self-imposed "all Asian food should be cheap" mentality and get them to open their wallets for better quality food with some creative twists. 

We liked Lin Jia a lot. Carlos rated them even higher than Chin Hua/Alameda. Chin Hua ranks even with Lin Jia to me, because the first is Chinese, whereas LJ is very definitely Vietnamese. We also liked the fact that unlike Japanese restaurants, LJ is open all day from 11:30a to 9p, merely switching to the dinner menu/prices after 3p. 

The menus of Chin Hua and Lin Jia are quite different, without a lot of overlap. But both restaurants show that spark we've been looking for – Asian restaurant food cleaned up, with the grease and MSG gone. Good quality ingredients, combined with those all-important properly balanced sauces (which Renee's/Berkeley lacked), are hopefully the harbinger of more to come in the future: Asian food done right, instead of Asian food done on the cheap. 

It's interesting to compare Lin Jia with Nong Thon/El Cerrito. On one hand, Lin Jia has a more modern creative take, along with the courage to do well-seasoned dishes with skill. Many times, restaurateurs take the timid way out as they upscale the food. Lin Jia doesn't do this, which we applaud. 

OTOH, Nong Thon has a much more extensive menu, because they're still offering dishes that ignorant Americans are too timid to order. Much as we enjoyed Lin Jia, they're not going to be offering raw marinated beef salad or grilled beef la lot any time soon, if ever.

The key difference that tells you which market each restaurant is aiming at? At Nong Thon you can get rice, but more importantly, the plain rice vermicelli that goes even better as a side. Lin Jia doesn't even offer rice vermicelli as an option. There's not a single noodle dish that isn't gussied up with seasonings, the equivalent of a Chinese restaurant only offering fried rice as a side, but no white rice.

There's certainly room in the world for both types of restaurants. But wouldn't it be nice if someone combined them? That's our secret wish. 

We had some leftovers: half the papaya salad, and half the order (three halves) of the Hakka shrimp rolls, because we figured they'd keep, whereas the deep-fried shrimp rolls wouldn't reheat very well. We were right, and the leftovers made a great light lunch the next day.

Two people, lunch: Three starters, one sandwich, two lunch entrees, one beverage, with tip was $76.