The Brief

With the Lunar New Year starting Tuesday, a certain type of cuisine may be on your radar.

Most of us probably chow down on "Chinese food" without really thinking about what style it’s in or from which region it comes. Given that China is similar in size to America, it would be like eating "American food" without realizing that maybe you’re eating Maryland crab, Louisiana gumbo or New York-style pastrami sandwiches.

If you want to explore further, there's a wide variety of regional cuisines in L.A., from Cantonese dim sum to fiery and numbing Sichuanese food, as well as other lesser-known, delicious styles.

There are eight “great traditions” of Chinese cuisine, plus variations within them. Certain cities like Shanghai are also well known for their own style of food and dishes.

Here’s a guide to 12 restaurants you should check out.

Colette (Pasadena)

Region: Guangdong / Hong Kong (Cantonese)

An array of colorful dishes at Colette in Pasadena

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Fiona Chandra

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LAist

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Cantonese food is one of most common Chinese cuisines in L.A., with Hong Kong cafes and dim sum restaurants all over the San Gabriel Valley. Colette in Pasadena, however, serves some Cantonese dishes that are harder to come by, like Cantonese-style lamb stew. A must-order is the hundred flower chicken (labeled “crispy stuffed chicken” on the menu).

XIBEI (Arcadia)

Region: Shanxi and Inner Mongolia

XIBEI serves oat noodles, characteristic of this Northwest region of China.

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Fiona Chandra

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LAist

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The term “xi bei” means “Northwest” in Mandarin, so naturally XIBEI serves food from the Northwestern part of China, which includes Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. Dry and mountainous, oats grow more easily in this area compared to wheat and rice. That’s why you’ll find oat noodles on the menu at XIBEI, including honeycomb-shaped noodles topped with a tomato-based sauce. XIBEI also serves various lamb dishes that are typical in Inner Mongolia, from grilled lamb to lamb soup with turnips.

Hengry (Alhambra)

Region: Guizhou

Guizhou food is known for its sour and spicy flavors

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Fiona Chandra

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Guizhou is an inland province in Southwestern China with mountainous terrain. One of the unique characteristics of its food is its sour and spicy flavor, as the area historically relies on fermentation to preserve food. Guizhou is also known as a home to the Miao and Dong ethnic groups, both of whom have their own food traditions. Hengry in Alhambra serves a traditional Miao sour soup, made using fermented tomatoes. (The proprietor’s father visited a Miao tribe in order to learn its recipe). Another Guizhou staple at the restaurant is the spicy chicken, stir fried using Ciba chili paste.

Chef Tian's (City of Industry)

Region: Hunan

Chef Tian’s originally opened in Vancouver, B.C., but recently brought its Hunan-style cooking to City of Industry. Instead of the numbing spice of peppercorns used in Sichuan cuisine, Hunan food tends to use fresh chopped chilies. Some of the signature Hunan dishes here include baby abalone and pork, stir fried with chopped chilies, of course. Being from Vancouver, Chef Tian’s menu also showcases the fresh seafood that the Pacific Northwest is known for. One of the special dishes at Chef Tian’s is the geoduck, a large clam, wok-fired with a heaping pile of chili peppers.

Dolan's Uyghur Cuisine (Alhambra)

Region: Xinjiang

Uyghur food is a combination of Chinese and Middle Eastern influences.

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Xinjiang is an autonomous region in Northwestern China that is home to a Turkic ethnic minority group called Uyghurs (pronounced WEE-gers), who've been in the news because of their persecution by the Chinese government. The food at Dolan’s Uyghur Cuisine is a combination of Chinese and Middle Eastern influences. The Uyghur dish called polo is reminiscent of pilaf: a plate or rice with carrots, onion, raisins and lamb. Lamb is the protein of choice in Uyghur cooking, used in everything from kebab to laghman, the traditional hand-pulled noodles stir-fried with meat and vegetables.

Mien Nghia (Rosemead)

Region: Chaozhou (Chiu Chow)

Chaozhou (or Chiu Chow in the Cantonese pronunciation) is a city in the Chaoshan region of the Guangdong province. While Mien Nghia is a Vietnamese-Chinese restaurant, it actually serves Chiu Chow (also called Teochew)-style noodle dishes, as Chiu Chow people have had a history of migration to Southeast Asia since the 18th century, including to Vietnam. Chiu Chow food tends to be more delicate in flavor compared to some of the other regions, so the noodles, like the ones found at Mien Nghia, are served in a light, clear broth and usually topped with fish or meatballs, shrimp, fish cakes and quail eggs.

Chengdu Taste (Alhambra)

Region: Sichuan

Chengdu Taste in Alhambra is recognized as one of the best Chinese restaurants in the city

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Fiona Chandra

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LAist

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Today, one of the most popular regional Chinese cuisines you’ll find around Los Angeles is Sichuan food. Numerous Sichuan restaurants have opened here, but this recent popularity can be attributed to Chengdu Taste in Alhambra, which opened in 2013 and was quickly recognized as one of the best Chinese restaurants in the city. Sichuan food is known for its spicy and mouth-numbing flavors, thanks to the combination of chili peppers and peppercorns used liberally in dishes like toothpick lamb or boiled fish with green peppers.

Ten Seconds Yunnan Rice Noodle (Monterey Park)

Region: Yunnan

One of the most famous dishes from Yunnan, an inland province in Southwestern China, is called Crossing the Bridge noodles, the name of which comes from a story. Once upon a time, the wife of a scholar would bring him lunch while he was studying on an island in the middle of a lake. The wife would bring a noodle soup with all the ingredients in separate bowls in order to keep the chicken broth warm. She would combine all the ingredients once she crossed the bridge and reached her husband. Today, at Yunnan rice noodle shops like Ten Seconds Yunnan Rice Noodle, all the ingredients are still served in separate bowls, and the guest combines them at the table. The restaurant’s name refers to the hot soup cooking the other ingredients in ten seconds. Typical toppings for this noodle soup include thinly sliced meat, corn, pickled vegetables and more.

Liu’s Cafe (Koreatown)

Region: Taiwan

While not part of the People’s Republic of China, the island of Taiwan’s culture and cuisine are certainly deeply rooted in Chinese culture and cooking. Taiwanese cuisine is a blend of the various groups of people who inhabit the island, both in the past and present. It draws from Hakka and Hokkien (Fujian) cuisines, indigenous Taiwanese and influences from Japan, among others. Take for example the iconic dish of Taiwan, the beef noodle soup (niu rou mian). The dish was created by migrants from China’s Sichuan province who adapted the Sichuan beef noodle soup to the local palate. Taiwanese restaurants around L.A. like Liu’s Cafe serve classic comfort dishes such as cold sesame noodles, braised pork belly over rice and Chiayi chicken rice.

Bang Bang Noodles (Downtown)

Region: (Shaanxi)

Biang biang noodles are hand-pulled, chewy noodles that are unique to the region of Shaanxi

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Hiu Chung So

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LAist

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Not to be confused with Shanxi mentioned in the entry for XIBEI, Shaanxi is a province in northern China that actually borders Shanxi to the east. Shaanxi is known for its rich history as its capital, Xi’An, was the eastern end of the Silk Road. It is this history that brings about one of Shaanxi’s iconic dishes: biang biang noodles (the restaurant, Bang Bang Noodles, uses an Anglicized version). Biang biang noodles are hand-pulled, chewy noodles, unique to Shaanxi, that are typically tossed in a spicy oil made with chili flakes, Sichuan peppercorns, garlic and more. They’re also topped with lamb, which is commonly used in Shaanxi cooking.

Auntie Qiu Kitchen (Alhambra)

Region: Shanghai

Shanghai is one of the four cities in China that is not part of any province, and Shanghai has evolved its own style of cuisine, which is generally characterized by its use of soy sauce and its sweeter flavor compared to other regional cuisines. Auntie Qiu Kitchen is a locals’ favorite that serves up Shanghainese street food, including what is perhaps the most famous Shanghainese dish, soup dumplings or xiao long bao. Equally good, though, are the pan-fried pork buns, or sheng jian bao. Auntie Qiu also serves Shanghai-style shumai, filled with sticky rice instead of the more commonly found version of pork and shrimp.

Traditional Guilin Noodles (Monterey Park)

Region: Guilin

Guilin is a city in Southern China that is most famous for its limestone mountains and rice noodles. Guilin rice noodles have been a local specialty since the Qin Dynasty over 2,000 years ago. These rice noodles at Traditional Guilin Noodles are silky and bouncy, typically served with a savory and spicy sauce made of chili and fermented soy beans. It’s usually topped with slices of meat, roasted peanuts, scallions and pickled vegetables, which should all be mixed together with the noodles and sauce. Traditionally, the noodles are served without soup, although these days, places like Traditional Guilin Noodles also offer a soup version.

Before they ever picked up a paintbrush, youth artists behind a new mural in MacArthur Park started by listening.

“We interviewed people in MacArthur Park about their experiences living in the community,” said Tania Castro, a recent high school graduate and one of 20 young artists who worked on the project. “Some stories were a little bit sad because they said they lost their jobs and they need more opportunities.”

Those conversations shaped “Roots of Our Labor,” a new mural unveiled this week by LA Commons across the street from MacArthur Park. The project, led by artists Luis Mateo and Shakir Manners, draws from stories collected in a yearlong process from more than 75 residents in and around MacArthur Park.

Castro says those stories were about more than struggle.

“They also said they loved the community. In the park, you can see a lot of vendors selling things like fruit and ice cream,” she said. “And the kids love it.”

Youth artists and members of LA Commons pose for a photo in front of the "Roots of our labor" mural during its unveiling event on Thursday, April 23, in MacArthur Park.

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Hanna Kang

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The LA Local

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The mural shows a tree bearing avocados and oranges, with a trunk made of intertwined hands and a farmer harvesting the fruit. On one side, a tamale vendor is depicted selling food, and on the other, an ice cream vendor pushes a cart as children gather around him. In the background, scenes from MacArthur Park play out. 

In a neighborhood where ongoing immigration raids have fueled fear and instability, and where MacArthur Park is often defined by visible homelessness and crime, organizers said the mural is intended to highlight the diverse communities who live there and to frame the park as a shared space of connection, culture and daily life.

“I enjoyed making it because it really teaches us about the importance of community and being more inclusive and kind to each other,” said high school artist Leslie Gonzalez. “Most of the people we talked to told us about their backgrounds and they weren’t that pleasant but they still pushed through and got together for each other.”

Painted in March at the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), the mural is installed on the southeastern side of the UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center.

“Immigrants are critical to the community, especially here in MacArthur Park,” said Beth Peterson, community arts program director at LA Commons. “And I think the mural does a beautiful job of really sharing that story. It really shows how the hands of immigrants have really hung together to form this very beautiful community that we live in today.” 

Detail of "Roots of Our Labor" mural at UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center. The mural celebrates workers in the Westlake community.

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For the lead artists, working alongside youth was central to how the art took shape.

“This artwork honors both the neighborhood and the people who shape it,” Mateo said. “Working with youth was essential to the process, allowing the mural to emerge from shared reflection rather than a single perspective.”

The new mural builds on LA Commons’ ongoing work in the area, following another mural unveiled last September at MacArthur Park Elementary School. “Roots of Our Labor” is the organization’s second mural supported by Stop the Hate, a statewide initiative led by the Asian American and Pacific Islander community aimed at addressing hate incidents and promoting cross-cultural understanding.

LA Commons, a nonprofit arts organization that creates community-based public art projects through partnerships and a mix of public and private funding, has been in the MacArthur Park area for more than 20 years. Its first public art project in the neighborhood was in 2003. “Roots of Our Labor” is its 22nd public art project in MacArthur Park.

Detail of "Roots of Our Labor" mural at UCLA James Lawson Jr. Worker Justice Center. The mural celebrates workers in the Westlake community.

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Courtesy LA Commons)

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Manners, the artist, described the mural as a reflection of what he sees as the underlying spirit of MacArthur Park.

It represents “the unseen hands that sustain communities, emphasizing that true progress is built collectively through persistence, sacrifice and shared purpose,” he said.

For Gonzalez, the mural is personal as well as something tied closely to her community.

“I feel like a light has shone on me and I’m proud of it because I’ve never done anything this big before,” she said. 

The post New mural celebrates labor, multicultural community around MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.

The phone lines at the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station are back up after more than two months of outages caused by copper wire theft.  

The update comes just one week after Boyle Heights Beat reported on the issue, and residents raised concerns at a Maravilla Community Advisory Committee (MCAC) meeting on April 7 about difficulty reaching the station by phone for non-emergencies.

According to the East L.A. Sheriff’s Station, service was restored on Thursday, April 23. By Friday, all dispatchers were back working in the station after temporarily operating out of an off-site communications trailer connected via satellite. 

“This was made possible due to the concerted efforts of the East Los Angeles Sheriff Station Captains Hinchman and Kusayanagi, AT&T, and our Communications & Fleet Management Bureau,” the station said in a statement to the Beat. 

The station also thanked Assemblymember Jessica Caloza’s office and community stakeholders who contacted AT&T to express urgency.

Sheriff’s officials previously said they had called Caloza’s office to help speed up repairs by communicating with AT&T.

What went wrong

According to Sgt. Michael Mileski, the outage was caused by an incident on Feb. 13, where several thousand dollars’ worth of copper wiring was stolen from an electrical vault near the station. Fiber optic cables were damaged in the process, which affected a significant portion of the Eastern Avenue corridor in Boyle Heights and East L.A., disrupting phone lines for 100,000 residents for five days, Mileski said. 

AT&T said in a statement that copper cable outages generally take five times longer to repair on average than fiber outages. 

Copper wire theft has plagued the Eastside in recent years, leaving communities in the dark and disabling public facilities.  

LA Documenter Alex Medina contributed reporting for this story. LA Documenters trains and pays LA residents to take notes at local government meetings around Los Angeles. You can find meeting notes and audio at losangeles.documenters.org

The story Phone lines restored at East LA Sheriff’s Station after 2-month outage due to copper wire theft appeared first on LA Local.

Californians this fall will decide whether to require voters to show proof of citizenship before casting ballots.

A GOP-backed voter ID ballot initiative on Friday qualified for the Nov. 3 ballot, marking a significant win for San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, who led the signature-gathering campaign. DeMaio and other Republican operatives have pushed for tighter voter restrictions in deep-blue California for years.

If voters approve it, they would be required to show a government-issued ID each time they go to the polls, while mail-in ballots would need the last-four digits of an ID, such as a driver’s license. The secretary of state and county election offices would also be required to verify voters’ registration each time they vote.

Currently, voters only need to provide an ID and Social Security number when they register to vote. Thirty-six states require or recommend voters show some form of identification at the polls, according to a 2025 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“This is an initiative that’s incredibly popular amongst Democrats and Republicans,” GOP state Sen. Tony Strickland of Huntington Beach told CalMatters. “I think the only way we don’t get this passed is if we get [outspent]. So we’re working very hard with an on-the-ground campaign apparatus.”

Strickland and others who have helped lead the campaign attribute the initiative’s rapid certification to Julie Luckey, mother of tech billionaire Palmer Luckey who helped seed the majority of the $10 million the campaign committee has raised in the past year.

Voting rights groups say the initiative will suppress turnout among eligible voters who don’t have the documents on hand, many of whom are disproportionately poor and people of color.

Opponents, including the state’s most powerful labor unions, plan to campaign heavily against it.

Voter fraud is rare in California. However, claims of fraud and concerns about election integrity have risen since President Donald Trump touted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Californians broadly support voter identification at the polls but are split along ideological lines when given specific details about the ballot measure, according to a 2026 poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies. When told the measure is meant to combat voter fraud and that it could suppress eligible votes, support dipped to 37%.

A hundred million years ago during the late Cretaceous period, the oceans were filled with giant predators, prowling for their next meal. There was the mosasaur — a giant toothy marine reptile (and a surprise hero in Jurassic World). There were large sharks.

And now, in the journal Science, researchers present evidence for ancient colossal octopuses — what they believe are the largest invertebrates ever described. Using innovative fossil reconstruction techniques, the researchers revealed remnants of two extinct species locked inside large rocks. They appear to have been up to 60 feet long — longer than a school bus — rivaling other apex predators of the time, and calling to mind the Kraken of legend.

"I wasn't expecting any octopus of this magnitude at all," says Fernando Ángel Fernández-Álvarez, a zoologist at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography who wasn't involved in the study. "And we now have the proof that they were living in the past."

The findings also reveal that these squishy leviathans likely feasted on crunchy prey items (think shrimp and lobster) and favored one side of their jaw over the other.

"I already thought octopuses were extraordinary animals," says Yasuhiro Iba, a paleontologist at Hokkaido University and lead author on the new publication. "But this study made me feel even more strongly that their uniqueness has deep evolutionary roots."

Jaws encased in ancient rocks

The findings are all the more remarkable because octopuses don't tend to preserve well.

Fossils usually form from bones and other hard materials. So a creature like an octopus — which is made up of almost entirely soft tissue — has been harder to come by in the fossil record.

"There are very few, very rare records about the octopus and their evolution," says Jörg Mutterlose, a paleontologist at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany and one of the researchers. This has limited our understanding of the development of these creatures and their habitats across time.

But more than a decade ago, Iba approached Mutterlose with an idea. He wanted to examine the fossilized contents of big rocks called concretions that had formed on the seafloor some 100 million years ago in what's now northern Japan.

"We thought there was a real possibility that octopus remains might also be hidden inside them," says Iba, "even if nothing was visible from the outside."

So he approached Mutterlose and they worked together, using a new technique that they call digital fossil-mining. They cut the concretions into thin slices, took pictures of any preserved fossils, and then created 3D reconstructions, a process facilitated by an AI model.

And there, locked inside, were octopus jaws, "which is very similar to the beak of a bird," says Mutterlose. They consist of a lower jaw, "which is like a shovel" and an upper jaw. Octopus jaws are hard, so they can fossilize.

And the animals use them like we do — to chomp down on food. The jaws aren't big enough to swallow a large animal, says Mutterlose, so the ancient octopuses would have used their long, strong arms to catch prey and "tear it apart into pieces."

A majestic view

The lower jaws were the biggest ones ever found for an octopus, and they offered a window into the lives of these animals. Considering work done in other species, Mutterlose says, "archaeologists reconstruct quite a lot about evolutionary history simply based on the size and form of teeth."

To that end, he and his colleagues used the jaws to estimate the body size of the octopuses. And that's when their calculations revealed that these animals were probably gargantuan — well larger than the giant Pacific octopus, today's biggest member of the family whose arm span often exceeds 13 feet.

Closer inspection of the specimens revealed numerous chips and scratches. "Obviously, something happened to the jaws," observes Mutterlose.

That something was likely the consumption of prey with hard exoskeletons, including shrimp, bivalves, lobsters and nautilus-like animals that would have worn away the jaw as they were crushed and eaten, leaving the marks behind.

These were active carnivores — and the researchers say they may have even hunted other large predators, but this remains speculative.

In addition, the right side of the jaws tended to be more worn down than the left side. "Single-sided usage might indicate that the brain was already fairly well developed," suggests Mutterlose. This means that these early octopuses may have already been displaying the advanced intelligence that they are known for today.

"Modern octopuses are intelligent, flexible and very unusual predators," says Iba. "Our results suggest that some of those remarkable traits may already have been emerging in early octopuses during the Cretaceous."

One can discern quite a lot from a few key specimens, says Mutterlose. "Just [a] few fossil findings may shed very new light on the evolution of the biosphere," he says.

Fernández-Álvarez says the results paint a vivid picture of the ocean ecosystem of the late Cretaceous — one that would have been filled with myriad large and hungry predators.

It must have been, he says, "a very majestic view."