COOK’S WALK : Far Eastern Frontier

Chinatown was once the only place in Los Angeles to go for Chinese food. On your exciting night out you chose from a set of combination dinners, winding up with something like eggflower soup, cashew chicken, almond duck, sweet-and-sour pork, fried rice, canned lychees, jasmine tea and almond cookies. You marveled at the colorful Chinese lanterns that illuminated the street, the gilt carvings, the smell of incense wafting from the shops. And you felt deliciously foreign when a pretty girl in cheongsam brought you a cocktail shaded with a paper parasol. Afterward, you probably bought sticky butterfly pastries or candied coconut strips from the Phoenix Bakery, which in those days was located on the main square.

Today, Chinese food is everywhere. It’s a lot more sophisticated, and very authentic--especially if you head about 20 miles east of the Civic Center to Rowland Heights. Here, just off the Pomona Freeway, is one of the fastest-growing

Asian settlements in Southern California. The area is packed with bright new shops and restaurants and two of the most thoroughly stocked Asian markets in the West, all designed to satisfy a demanding Asian clientele rather than casual browsers.

Our “walk,” which is really a three-mile drive, starts just over the border of Rowland Heights in Hacienda Heights and the City of Industry. That’s to make sure you don’t miss an excellent Taiwanese deli and a terrific bakery. Then we move along Colima Road from Azusa Avenue to Nogales Street.

A major stop on this stretch of road is the Hong Kong Plaza, a collection of shops and restaurants surrounding the Hong Kong Supermarket. Five restaurants in a row offer a dazzling assortment of foods--you’ll think you’re in Hong Kong or Taipei.

From Colima, we turn left on Nogales and pass over the freeway to the large shopping plaza anchored by the 99 Ranch Market.

Eat along this route and you will advance from eggflower soup, cashew chicken and almond duck to clam soup with shredded ginger, chicken fragrant with strong-tasting Asian basil and goose that isn’t goose at all but a vegetarian concoction of bean-curd skin stuffed with vegetables.

Rather than a mai tai or a Singapore sling, you might have a durian shake or chilled, pandanus-flavored barley water. The “tea” might be an amber, smoky-tasting brew of dried plums, Chinese licorice and dried flowers from Taiwan. And for dessert, you could have black rice porridge that tastes richly of coconut milk, or taro dumplings filled with red bean paste or a little dome of sticky rice topped with a mosaic of fruits and lotus nuts.

Afterward, you could pick up some Taiwanese “wife” cakes, red bean bread or a green-hued, pandanus-flavored cake for a treat later on. Your last drink before heading home might be superb, mellow coffee, brewed in the sort of upscale coffeehouse that is popular in Taipei.

An unincorporated area of Los Angeles County, Rowland Heights is now almost 30% Chinese and still absorbing new immigrants, drawn by affordable housing and easy access to shopping. The Chinese may dominate, but you’ll also find Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese, Malaysian and Filipino businesses.

About 80% of Rowland Heights’ Chinese are Taiwanese, estimates Norman Hsu, past president of the Chinese-American Assn., East Chapter, which covers this region. That’s why many of the cookbooks in the Chinese bookshops were produced in Taipei and why you’ll find an unusually large number of Taiwanese delis, bakeries and restaurants. Chinatown, by contrast, has traditionally drawn the Cantonese and, more recently, ethnic Chinese from Vietnam.

Hsu has noticed an increase in immigration from Hong Kong as that city’s reversion to mainland China draws near. Other new settlers are Koreans, some of them moving out from Koreatown.

Recent Chinese arrivals here in Rowland Heights have formed a Chinese Assn., they send their children to one of two Saturday Chinese schools and they crowd the restaurants, where it’s sometimes difficult to order intelligently if you don’t speak the language.

The area can be reached from the Pomona Freeway (60). Take the Azusa Avenue turnoff and head south toward Colima Road. Cross Colima to the Bixby Hacienda Plaza on the southwest corner and pull into the Taiwan Deli, next to Albertson’s Market. The following shops and restaurants are listed in order of their location, heading east toward Nogales Street.

Taiwan Deli Restaurant. At this small, cheerful eating place, open just a few months, you can try Taiwanese specialties, including pork potage and check-a noodle soup, so called because the American word check approximates the Mandarin name of the dish. Pork potage is a meat-and-vegetable soup flavored with a seafood-based barbecue sauce from Taiwan and finished off with cilantro. At first you think you’re eating won-ton soup, but the pale dumplings turn out to be pieces of pork coated with pale fish paste.

Notice the extensive and colorful “menu” in Chinese characters fanned out on one wall. Owner/chef Michael Chen says he’ll have these noodle-and-rice dishes, soups and snacks translated into English. Meanwhile, the takeout counter with its fresh and appetizing display of cooked dishes and a small English menu provides plenty of options. Chen also serves Taiwanese-style dim sum. And he’ll serenade you with taped music from Taiwan.

17110-C E. Colima Road, Hacienda Heights, (818) 965-3868. Open seven days 11 a.m. to 1 a.m.

MyStore Cafe. This upscale Taiwanese coffeehouse brews freshly ground beans one cup at a time in glass siphon pots from Japan. Each brand is assigned its own cup and saucer: The house blend comes in a ribbed white cup atop a blue, leaf-shaped plate, the Sumatran in floral-patterned “New Feeling” china from Japan. Prices rise to $3.50 for Blue Mountain coffee, but that includes a slice of cake.

If you’re not a coffee drinker, try the unusual mixed-fruit tea. Diced fresh fruits--the assortment might include kumquats, apple, lemon, pineapple and starfruit, when in season--are steeped in hot water with a teabag and passion fruit syrup from Taiwan.

The cafe serves light breakfast and simple lunch dishes--Chinese meatballs, chicken curry and club sandwiches. Breads and pastries come from the bakery next door. After dinner, people drop in for dessert and coffee or cappuccino, brewed in a massive, Italian-made machine.

“In downtown Taipei,” says owner Cynthia Lai, “people have a habit of coming to these places to talk with friends. We brought this custom with us when we came to America.”

17519 Colima Road, City of Industry (in Puente Hills East shopping center), (818) 810-5181. Open Monday through Thursday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday to 11 p.m., Sunday to 9 p.m.

MyStore Bakery. This Taiwanese bakery is run by Paul Ho and his wife, Glenda. Ho’s family operates bakeries in Taichung, Taiwan, and you’ll find the address of the Taichung headquarters (94, Chung Cheng Road) on the wrappers for French bread baguettes. MyStore’s loaf breads and rolls are fluffy, faintly sweet and so tempting you will probably bite into your purchases at once.

Try the feathery rolls filled with whipped cream and sprinkled with coconut, the bear claws oozing sweetened peanut butter, the “pineapple” buns topped with a sugary mixture scored to resemble pineapple peel, or the dinner rolls sprinkled with black sesame seeds and filled with red bean paste. A split roll stuffed with potato salad and topped with hard-cooked egg slices makes a quick 80-cent lunch. Or try the curry turnovers or soft rolls topped with pork and green onion.

High-topped loaf breads include one colored pink with strawberry juice and a deep-yellow carrot loaf. In this bakery, you’ll find “wife” cakes--flat, flaky pastry circles with a sweet rice filling. “Husband” cakes embellish the sweet filling with a macho touch: garlic. More European in style are thin, crisp almond cookies that resemble Florentines without the fruit and chocolate. However, butter cookies veer far from the Western concept. They’re like ladyfingers in texture, sandwiched with a sheer wisp of creamy filling.

17521 Colima Road, City of Industry, (818) 912-9729. Open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

HK Super Market. This is a branch of the large HK market on Western Avenue at 1st Street in Los Angeles. (The initials stand for Han Kook, the Korean name for Korea.) The market opened last year to serve the growing number of Koreans moving East from Los Angeles and draws customers from as far as San Bernardino.

The catering kitchen produces a variety of highly seasoned concoctions that Koreans eat along with soup and rice. You’ll see panfuls of these lined up along the deli counter. Components include fish, fish cakes, cabbage, cucumbers, seaweed, daikon, fresh chiles and enough chili powder to add a fiery hue. We recommend the sushi set out in sealed packages on the counter.

A rack of health foods includes brown rice combined with grains, also sacks of ground brown rice mixed with sugar, which you dilute with water for a beverage. The general manager, Sung H. Chang, dubs this rice powder a “combat meal” because it nourished soldiers during the Korean war.

Before you leave, check the housewares section, well stocked with beautiful dishware from Korea, as well as imported gift items, utensils, clay pots, cutlery and other kitchen accessories.

18317 E. Colima Road, Rowland Heights, (818) 913-7796. Open Sunday through Thursday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 11 p.m.

New York Bakery. So it’s called New York Bakery--but instead of Danish and rugelach, you’ll munch on pastries stuffed with sweetened bean paste. Located near the entrance to the HK Super Market, this is a bakery where what looks like a sugary doughnut turns out to be a meat-and-vegetable croquette. A chestnut cake, named for its shape, is daubed with dark glaze on one side and sprinkled with sesame seeds on the other. The filling, though, is bean paste, not chestnuts. The bakery produces Western-style cakes too. Mocha rolls and mocha cake are popular, but our favorite purchase was a tall loaf of fluffy, slightly sweet white bread dotted with carrots and onion.

18325 E. Colima Road, Rowland Heights, (818) 810-0411. Open Sunday through Thursday 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Supreme Dragon. The first of a row of restaurants in the Hong Kong Plaza, this is a busy, noisy place where you can get northern Chinese snacks, soups, pastries, noodles and rice dishes. The atmosphere is bright and airy, a far cry from old-school Chinese eating places done up in gaudy red and gold. Here, broad windows are draped with sheer soft white curtains, and a skylight is covered with what looks like rice paper.

For lunch we chose “neutralize goose,” not a castrated bird but a vegetarian cold dish of stuffed bean curd skin; crisp, green onion pancakes; noodle soup accompanied by a pork hock in a bowl of dark sauce; and fried pork dumplings with a crisp edging of lacy dough. The sole dessert is “sweet rice,” a mound of glutinous rice filled with red bean paste and topped with candied cherries, raisins, kumquats, lotus nuts and other good stuff.

18406 E. Colima Road, Hong Kong Plaza, Rowland Heights, (818) 810-0396. Open seven days 11 a.m. to midnight.

The Chicken Garden. This Taiwanese restaurant is operated by Lim Hsu, who had a similar restaurant in Taiwan, and her husband, Alex. We were fascinated by a house specialty called three-cup chicken, so named because the bird is simmered in equal parts soy sauce, Chinese wine and sesame oil. One cup sounds like a lot of oil until you learn the measure in question is a Chinese wine cup. An amazing amount of garlic goes into the pot along with ginger, dried chiles and a big bunch of red-stemmed basil. A sweet tea brewed from smoky dried plums, dried licorice and jamaica flowers imported from Taiwan offsets the rich flavor.

Chicken oil rice is flavored with oil that has been rendered from the skin and cooked with onion and garlic. Chicken with black dates is a wonderfully smoky soup. For dessert, try deep-fried balls of taro paste and red beans.

18406 E. Colima Road, Hong Kong Plaza, Rowland Heights, (818) 913-0548. Open Thursday through Tuesday 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Hainan Chicken Restaurant. Because it’s run by Malaysian Chinese, not Muslim Malays, some of the dishes here include pork, which strict Muslims do not eat. Of course, chicken rice is the dish to order. The chicken is either boiled (the way you get it at food stalls in Malaysia and Singapore) or fried, sliced and served over rice cooked in chicken broth and accompanied by red chile and ginger dips.

Beef satay is very good here; we also liked beef rendang-- chewy chunks of beef thoroughly infused with coconut milk, made from scratch, and spices (the cooks grind their seasoning pastes, called rempahs , from fresh ingredients). Hard-to-get fresh pandanus leaves (which taste like a cross between butterscotch and the smell of hay) flavor sweetened barley water, which is a refreshing companion to this spicy food. Pandanus leaves are also cooked with black glutinous rice for a sweet porridge enriched with coconut milk.

18406 E. Colima Road, Hong Kong Plaza, Rowland Heights, (818) 854-0385. Open Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday through Sunday to 9:30 p.m.

Good Time Cafe. Every table in this small cafe is likely to be occupied at mealtime. The menu concentrates on Taiwanese snacks, rice and noodles, and we saw good-looking plates of food at surrounding tables. Our efforts at communication--we wanted the fried rice noodles with pork and vegetables being eaten at the next table--were futile. What we wound up with was an uninteresting wad of dry rice noodles topped with a bit of stiff sauce. A bowl of minced meat rice was a better choice. The rice was topped with finely chopped pork, chunkier pieces of meat, fried tofu and cabbage. Prices are low--$2.50 for the rice bowl--which must be one reason that this cafe is so crowded.

18406 E. Colima Road, Hong Kong Plaza, Rowland Heights, (818) 854-0777. Open Wednesday through Monday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Luk Yue Restaurant. Aside from low prices and generous servings, Luk Yue, one of an excellent restaurant chain, stands out because it is the only Cantonese restaurant in the plaza. There’s a deli in front, and the restaurant stretches back like a long, narrow boxcar. The room is bare except for a stretch of beautiful stained glass on one wall that is repeated on the ceiling.

If you want an outstanding meal, order what we did: satay chicken hot pot, pan-fried tri-shredded yee-fu noodles and hot braised Ha-Ga (Hakka) bean curd. The chicken is mixed with a salty Chinese sauce, not the unctuous sweet peanut sauce that you get with Southeast Asian satays. The three “shreds” tossed with the noodles are duck, chicken and barbecued pork. Pale-yellow Chinese chives are mixed in too. (Be warned that if you order the “house special” yee-fu noodles, you may well get more variety meats than you want to eat.)

If you’re not wild about bean curd, you might change your mind after tasting the Hakka dish. Golden brown, deep-fried triangles of bean curd embedded with fish paste are placed on end around stir-fried slivered pork. We also tried a Chinese cruller wrapped in fragile rice dough and splashed with hoisin and soy sauces. Three of us shared this meal, took home leftovers, and spent less than $20.

18406 E. Colima Road, Hong Kong Plaza, Rowland Heights, (818) 964-2233, (818) 964-8815. Open Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Hong Kong Supermarket. Beyond the five restaurants is the entrance to the super-neat, well-organized Hong Kong Supermarket as well as an enclosed shopping area that contains a cluster of stores and a colorful children’s play area. In these stores you can find anything from a mah-jongg table to a $785 bottle of Cognac. There’s an outlet of the Diamond Bakery, a snack and coffee shop selling the sort of foods you find on Vietnamese catering trucks, and Champion Gourmet Products, stocked with a variety of dried fruit, meat and seafood products as well as roasted chestnuts.

The market itself is impressive in scope--it stocks Indonesian, Filipino, Japanese and Thai ingredients along with Chinese products, temple supplies and feathery brooms from Thailand. In the produce section you can occasionally find fresh pandanus leaves. Other fresh specialties include a thick green stalk that Vietnamese add to soups; red-stemmed Asian basil; fresh galangal; Thai chiles; small, round Thai eggplant; fresh water chestnuts; the Vietnamese herb rau ram; slim Taiwan bok choy; peeled sugar cane; tiny sweet bananas and much more.

There’s also an astonishing variety of fresh whole fish bedded on ice, and the store will fry it, on the spot, for free. You’ll also find black and white sea cucumbers, soft-shell and live blue crabs, octopus and squid. Notice the wide selection of ready-made fish balls to pop into soups and porridges.

The meat department expands on the usual cuts with duck legs, goat meat, chicken feet, black chicken, tendons and frozen pork blood. You will also find packaged kits for dishes such as hot-sour soup and noodles with spicy sauce. The hot-sour soup makings include strips of congealed blood, which is always used in hot-sour soup in Taipei . . . but not in Chinese-American restaurants here.

Choosing a wine for dinner? Try the charmingly named Spring Moon Imperial Cuvee, a medium-dry white wine from China, or Dynasty extra-dry white wine made from muscat grapes grown in Tianjin. They’re in the liquor shop on your right as you enter the market.

18406 E. Colima Road, Hong Kong Plaza, Rowland Heights, (818) 964-1688. Open seven days 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Yi Mei Deli. In the plaza’s shopping area, to the left of the supermarket entrance, is the Yi Mei Deli, which displays a large assortment of Taiwanese pastries and snacks. Fat red cakes of gelatinous rice dough, shaped in a hand-carved wooden mold, look like small turtles hunkered down on strips of bamboo leaf. You get a choice of fillings: sweet red beans or a mixture of dried shrimp, dried radish and ground pork that tastes of mysterious herbs. For lunch on the run, there’s a bamboo leaf packet filled with glutinous rice, mushrooms, pork and dried shrimp. Other good snacks include sesame balls, curry buns, swirled date cookies, platter-sized wintermelon cakes and sun cakes, vaguely sweet circles of pale flaky pastry.

18406 E. Colima Road, Hong Kong Plaza, Rowland Heights, (818) 854-9246. Monday through Friday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.; weekends 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Kim Hua Bookstore. Another store in the plaza, Kim Hua has several Chinese cookbooks in English, including a microwave book that contains a quick version of three-cup chicken, and books on vegetarian, low-cholesterol and healthful cooking. We also leafed through “Chinese Cuisine Taiwanese Style,” which reflects the island republic’s taste for seafood.

18406 E. Colima Road, Hong Kong Plaza, Rowland Heights, (818) 810-1108. Open seven days 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Sharon Gift Shop. A short distance east of Hong Kong Plaza is the small Colima Plaza, where this shop is located. Owner Sharon Yoo has crammed every available space with a fine collection of Korean tableware, chests, antiques and everyday household products. Among the older pieces are wooden molds and stamps for rice cakes. Contemporary objects include striking (and expensive) handmade cups and saucers. A set of two in a dappled blue pattern that we admired was $150.

Yoo also carries wooden bowls for chestnuts and kujul pan boxes, which are divided into nine sections to hold the components of this traditional Korean party dish. Thin pancakes go in the center, and the fillings--shredded meats, thin omelet and vegetables--are arranged spoke-fashion around them. The Korean custom is to eat seated on the floor around a graceful low table; Yoo carries the tables in several sizes (try the two-person size for your next Valentine dinner). Other small stands are designed for tea and fruit. Along with tablecloths Yoo carries potholders, aprons and frilly covers for virtually every appliance in the house, from rice cookers to washing machines and refrigerators.

18732 E. Colima Road, Rowland Heights, (818) 902-0057. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

99 Ranch Market. Continue east on Colima Road to Nogales Street, turn left, cross over the freeway and you will come to a large shopping center on the left. Turn left onto Gale Avenue, which splits this shopping area in two. On the right is a large structure that houses a variety of shops and restaurants and the 99 Ranch Market.

Whatever you need is likely to be in this bustling market, whether it’s Cajun seasoning, a Jamaican marinade, Thai curry pastes, palm sugar from Indonesia or spicy Guerrero tortilla chips. If you can’t locate an ingredient, find the manager, Peter Tsai, who can usually help. Tsai pointed out sacks of black glutinous rice, located Taiwanese flora flowers ( jamaica ) in the dried foods section and plucked the pandanus leaves we needed from the freezer.

The well-stocked fish counter, with its tanks of live catfish, tilapia and crab, is very busy and, like Hong Kong Supermarket, offers a free frying service. At a deli counter you can get hot Chinese dishes to go. Try the excellent sesame chicken or pork and tofu strips combined with chive flowers. The deli will put together a meal of any three dishes plus a vegetable and rice for $3.50.

The full-scale bakery posts the hours when fresh breads come from the oven. Interesting baked goods include a “cheese” cake that contains no cheese--it’s a pound cake wrapped in golden brown puff pastry. Then there’s red-bean-paste bread, a soft, sweet loaf rolled like cinnamon bread with a thin layer of the sweetened beans. The same style of bread comes with coconut, cheese, butter or raisin filling.

Other tempting sweets include green pandanus cake rolls; sesame balls stuffed with a choice of taro, red bean or mung bean paste; custard tarts; glazed butterflies, and almond-sprinkled date paste buns. The kids will like tiger-skin cake roll, named for the mottled coloring of its golden crust.

As we strolled along the aisles, we spotted bargains in canned chicken broth, condensed milk and coconut milk. Chinese-style cooking wines produced in Thailand were priced much lower than Chinese brands.

Near the produce section, a large refrigerator case displayed packaged components for dishes such as mushroom shred pork, fried tofu with bean threads, taro spareribs and meatball soup. A hefty package of quail eggs with broccoli, baby corn, straw mushrooms, black fungus, green onions and carrot slices carved like birds in flight was only $1.99 and would easily feed four people. With convenience foods like these, you can have a genuine Chinese meal ready in minutes.

1015 S. Nogales St., Rowland Heights, (818) 964-5888. Open seven days 9 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Evergreen Book Store. Down the hall from 99 Ranch, this bookstore carries cookbooks by Fu Pei Mei, Taiwan’s leading culinary authority, along with some of the same books we saw at Hong Kong Plaza.

1015 S. Nogales St., Rowland Heights (818) 913-2481. Open seven days 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Diamond Bakery. Farther down the same hall is a large branch of this bakery chain, where you’ll see intricately decorated cakes as well as Cantonese pastries. The fresh mango cake with whipped cream and mango filling is exceptionally good. An oval chocolate cake basket frosted in a basket-weave pattern and topped with fresh fruit is a pretty eye-catcher. If you have a taste for the exotic, you’ll like the taro cake. It’s a gorgeous structure of yellow sponge cake filled with purple taro paste and decorated with fruit and intricate strokes of frosting that remind you of a lotus flower.

1015 S. Nogales St., No. 105, Rowland Heights. (818) 912-3708. Open seven days 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

99 Ranch Plaza Restaurants. Noodle houses and Taiwanese snack shops provide quick, low-cost meals in simple settings. Or move upscale to the Great Chiu Chow Seafood Restaurant for scallops with macadamia nuts, lobster with minced garlic sauce or Kim-Lin special crispy duck (this one costs $35).

The Banana Boat Cafe, a Taiwanese deli, offers interesting hot, sweet soups made with peanuts and red or mung beans or rice balls.

Barbecued ducks hang in the window of Kim Tar BBQ restaurant, and we saw stacks of the long Chinese crullers that are wrapped with soft rice noodle dough for a light snack or served with hot soy milk for breakfast.

At the Little Shanghai Chinese Restaurant there are Shanghai-style fried shrimp, assorted Shanghai-style fried noodles and braised giant meatballs.

Nomoto, a Japanese restaurant, has a long menu that includes a photograph of each dish so there’ll be no surprises in ordering. Notice the booths enclosed with small tile roofs to make intimate, charming little rooms.

1015 S. Nogales St., Rowland Heights.

The places we chose to eat were:

The Yummy Bowl. This spotless Taiwanese deli (the name is Liu Ho in Chinese) is located at one corner of the 99 Ranch Market building. Here, Lily Yu and her husband, Tien Chung Hu, serve Taiwanese snacks, noodles and rice dishes. The steam table displays a changing parade of foods to eat on the premises or take home. You might, for example, see chicken curry, Chinese sausage in broth with leeks, pork in soy sauce, preserved eggs in soy sauce, meatballs with cabbage and carrots and a simple but interesting concoction of potatoes fried with sugar and hot Malaysian curry powder.

If you’re tired of toast and granola for breakfast, try Yummy Bowl’s bitter melon with black bean sauce, simmered egg, fried bamboo shoots, simmered chitterlings and eggplant in brown sauce. The Yummy Bowl also functions as a Taiwanese soda fountain, dispensing assorted sweet tidbits topped with crushed ice and milk.

1015 S. Nogales St., No. 125, Rowland Heights, (818) 854-0623. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Pho So 1 Vietnamese Restaurant. This large cafe, decorated with pictures of lush Asian landscapes on white and aqua walls, is the first restaurant venture for Saigon-born Danny Long Luong. The menu, designed by his wife Diane, offers more than 150 dishes. Beef tops the list, appearing in 21 versions of the noodle soup pho, and in a seven-course, all-beef dinner. There’s beef jerky too, on top of a shredded green papaya salad. If you’re not a beef eater, try squid fondue, goat curry or a char-broiled venison chop with lemon grass and chile on rice.

For $1.50 you can have a big sandwich of beef, chicken, ham or pork in a French roll--the same sort of sandwich you’ll find on the streets of Saigon. Then treat yourself to a tall, creamy shake made with that notorious, odorous Asian fruit, durian, or with jackfruit, custard apple or even fresh tomatoes.

1015 Nogales St., No. 127A, Rowland Heights, (818) 964-5552. Open seven days 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Sam Woo. Sam Woo’s Rowland Heights branch is located in the shopping center across the street from the 99 Ranch Market building on Gale Ave. The menu is huge--it lists 370 dishes, but that’s only part of what you can have. There’s a series of additional dishes that include chicken-abalone soup, mango shrimp (shrimp and mango wrapped in edible wafer paper, batter-coated and fried) and two desserts: mango pudding and soft bean curd in hot, ginger-flavored syrup.

From the menu we tried rock cod with a luscious, sticky-sweet orange sauce based on orange marmalade (it’s also served with shrimp), but you’ll absorb fewer calories if you opt for rock cod with spicy salt and fresh chiles. There’s a deli in front where you can buy barbecued meats and other dishes, and a tank of live seafood at the back.

18908 E. Gale Ave., Rowland Heights, (818) 913-0213. Open Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m., Saturday and Sunday to midnight.

Sam Woo Dim Sum and Seafood Restaurant. A few doors down from Sam Woo is Sam Woo’s brand-new dim sum and seafood restaurant. Carts with the usual array of hot and cold nibbles go around tables from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., but dim sum can be ordered from the kitchen until 5 p.m.

18922 E. Gale Ave., Rowland Heights, (818) 913-9933. Open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

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