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Psst. You should really try this congee

Nightshade congee
The congee at Nightshade is served with XO sauce, pork floss and an onsen egg.
(Silvia Razgova / Los Angeles Times)
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The congee at Mei Lin’s downtown restaurant Nightshade is not the plain congee I ate growing up in the San Gabriel Valley. That congee often required more than a couple shakes of whatever vinegar, hot sauce or white pepper was on the table.

Lin’s congee is the superhero, an-Arya-kills-the-Night-King-with-the-Valyrian-dagger version of that SGV congee. She uses the short-grain koshihikari rice that sushi chef Mori Odonera once cultivated in Uruguay. It’s a thick, starchy porridge threaded with hot ginger and garlic. And Lin adds six toppings for a roller coaster of spice, funk, heat and texture that touches every point along the Chinese American flavor spectrum.

“It’s one of those dishes that I often crave,” Lin said. “I really want the country and L.A. to understand what it is and to enjoy it other than at Chinese dim sum, which is often bland.”

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She serves it with the toppings arranged into neat sections like a color wheel: A dollop of XO sauce, a mound of pork floss, curls of green onions, pale crispy wontons, an onsen egg with its yolk just about to burst and a pile of fried garlic and shallots.

One day, L.A. diners may only know the elevated versions of rice porridge at Nightshade and Minh Phan’s Porridge + Puffs, forgetting the great stuff I grew up on in the cafes along Valley Boulevard. With bowls of congee this good, there should be room in the world for both.

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