Tastes of China and Malaysia Via London

Just off the crowded sidewalks of Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena’s Old Town is another block-long restaurant row on North Raymond Avenue. The oldest residents are the formerly French, now nuevo Cubano Xiomara and the modern Chinese bistro Yujean Kang’s, with Cafe Bizou carrying the banner for budget French on the far corner. Nonya has just joined the lineup.

Designed by Dodd Mitchell, who gave the lounge at Balboa on Sunset Strip its louche look, the corner space is light and airy, decorated in a chic Asian theme. At one end is a huge bar with aged brick walls and row after row of back-lit bottles. In the dining room, Chinese chairs’ brocade seats glow like pearls. Huge wooden vases large enough to hide in sprout corkscrewing twigs, and a wall of bamboo is oddly soothing.

Nonya is the first U.S. venture from London restaurateur Simon Tong. And, at least on paper, it’s nothing like any other kitchen to emigrate to Southern California. A cross between Malaysian and Chinese, it’s the cuisine of Singapore’s Peranakan culture. But at Nonya almost every dish is dressed up with swatches of green salad, presumably to make it California-friendly. The menu sensibly includes a glossary of ingredients for guests unfamiliar with terms such as tamarind, sambal or galangal.

It’s a great place to go with a crowd. Order up a slew of appetizers and pass them around, or order a mixed appetizer platter.

The chicken satay has a complexly spiced peanut sauce. Prawn spring rolls are thin, crisp cylinders enclosing a single shrimp. Slices of chilled raw beef in a ginger-lime vinaigrette are dabbed with a rip-snorting wasabi. Bean curd is delicious stuffed with Asian vegetables and mushrooms.

Waiters try hard to please, steering customers toward less “intensely flavored” dishes, which would have been helpful, I guess, if we were the sort who preferred the mild-mannered “drunken shrimp” to the vibrant wok-fried shrimp in a sambal-laced tamarind sauce.

Curry chicken tastes as if it’s made from freshly ground spices. The sauce is so enticing, I couldn’t have cared less about the chicken itself. Another dish I’d happily order again is the whole cracked crab sauteed with curry leaves and pungent black peppercorns. It’s messy to eat, but crab crackers are provided; it’s well worth the trouble to dig out the morsels of sweet crab meat.

Exotic, but not too exotic, Nonya should be a welcome addition to Old Town Pasadena.

Nonya, 61 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena; (626) 583-8398. Appetizers, $5 to $9; main courses, $14 to $42. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Valet parking.