6 dishes to order at L.A. restaurants if you love XO sauce
If making your own XO sauce isn’t quite your speed, you would do well to order it at one of the restaurants around L.A. that has it on the menu. The gloriously pungent sauce, a mash-up of dried seafood, ham (ham!) and chilies invented in a Hong Kong hotel in the ‘80s, isn’t as easy to find as, well, ketchup or Sriracha, but it’s making its way onto more and more menus. Maybe this is because it’s easier to find the ingredients that go into it, or maybe because our collective palate now appreciates things that are funkier than they were just a few years ago. Regardless, it’s a fantastic thing to find on a menu, and thus on your plate.
Crustacean’s ramen with XO — At Helene An’s Beverly Hills restaurant, most things run fancy. There are a thousand red paper cranes in place of a chandelier. There’s a koi pond under your feet as you walk in. And though the XO sauce may come with ramen noodles, the presentation is beautiful, the bowl will be installed on the requisite white tablecloth, next to your wine glass and immaculate silverware — and the XO itself will contain actual cognac. This XO sauce is lighter than most, less chile-forward, oily and pungent, with minced fresh shrimp and bits of chicken, all of which suits the serene Beverly Hills environment just fine. The dish is a new addition to the menu, so you might consider getting it instead of the famous garlic noodles. If that’s too much to bear, just order both while you wait for your enormous plate of roasted crab to arrive. 9646 S. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, (310) 205-8990, www.houseofan.com/crustaceanbh.
Redbird’s duck with rice, pears and XO — It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Neal Fraser’s version of XO sauce at Redbird, in the former St. Vibiana’s cathedral, is not the standard version of the Hong Kong sauce, or really anything close to it. Instead, the sauce that Fraser pairs with slices of roasted duck, wild rice and a dice of pears seems more like a demiglace — as rich and glossy as the veal demiglace from a great French saucier’s station — than actual XO. Absent are the bits of ham, as Fraser forgoes pork entirely and uses duck prosciutto instead. “The more traditional you are, the more open for ridicule you are,” said the chef the other night, noting that he doesn’t use scallops either, only shrimp. The sauce is thus intensely rich and as funky as traditional XO, but utterly smooth and velvety — a perfect match for the duck. 114 E. 2nd St., Los Angeles, (213) 788-1191, redbird.la.
Lukshon’s Chinese broccoli with white miso, sesame and XO — Sang Yoon’s XO dish is a kind of Proustian thing, a reference to how the chef first came to tolerate vegetables as a kid, i.e. by putting XO on them. XO is an “umami bomb,” says Yoon, which may be why he pairs it with a relatively simple dish of greens rather than any of the more elaborate dishes on his menu. Yoon has spent years perfecting his version of XO, which he makes in his stand-alone test kitchen in the Helms Bakery complex, wok-frying the sauce before blending it into a smoother sauce than is (mostly) customary. Thus it slides easily onto his wok-charred greens, ramping up the flavor to levels that would make most of us eat our vegetables too. 3239 Helms Ave., Culver City, (310) 202-6808, lukshon.com.
Little Sister DTLA’s pea tendrils with XO — At Tin Vuong’s downtown version of Little Sister (the original restaurant is in Manhattan Beach), the XO sauce comes loaded onto vegetables, in this case, a bowl of sautéed pea tendrils. Vuong’s menu is a spice route of flavors that are pathed, as the chef is himself, from Shanghai to Saigon to Monterey Park. Thus his dish combines the greens with not only a pungent iteration of the Hong Kong sauce, but also almonds and fried shallots. Vuong’s XO is focused more on the scallops than the ham, and it’s higher on the acid end of the spectrum than many versions. Which means that you can order the crispy sweetbreads and the Balinese fried meatballs without compunction. 523 W. 7th St., Los Angeles, (213) 628-3146, www.littlesisterla.com.
Newport Seafood’s Chinese broccoli with XO — At Newport Seafood in San Gabriel, you can order the house lobster (you need to order the house lobster) with a side of XO sauce, or an enormous dish of Chinese greens with a side of the sauce — or pretty much anything else on the menu. Newport makes a classic version of the sauce, which is so popular (and good) that jars of it are for sale at the front desk. It is hardly cheap: the side dish will run you $6, and the jars go for $19.99 or $38.99, depending on the size. But it’s worth it, as you’re presented with a lot of it, the stuff is pretty amazing, and it does go with pretty much anything — which includes that hubcap-sized platter of spicy lobster. 518 W. Las Tunas Drive, San Gabriel, (626) 289-5998, www.newportseafood.com.
Sea Harbour’s radish cake with XO — The venerable San Gabriel dim sum house Sea Harbour has two dishes with XO sauce on its lunch menu, both of which non-Chinese speakers can ID on the menu by the letters “XO” before the Chinese characters, which helps some of us out some. (No worries, there’s an English menu too.) There’s a plate piled high with vermicelli threaded through with XO, which is very fun for the noodle-lovers among us. Better still is a daintier dish of pan-fried radish cakes, also loaded with the sauce, crisp cubes that pair beautifully with the deeply flavorful sauce. The XO here is wonderful, rich and funky, which isn’t a surprise, given the quality of the ingredients that go through the kitchen. You can also order XO as a side, if you want something to add to all the steamed dumplings and buns you’ll be ordering for lunch. 3939 Rosemead Blvd., Rosemead, (626) 288-3939.
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