Lynn Liu’s 19 Town Flips The Script For Chinese Restaurants In Los Angeles

Pull into the parking lot of the Plaza at Puente Hills in the City of Industry, and you’ll immediately see it. The exterior of 19 Town, sleek and shiny, is gleaming. Walk around the corner and you’ll see a covered patio with a gorgeous bar, also gleaming.

Everything about this restaurant, created by the prolific Lynn Liu (co-founder of Sichuan Impression), makes a statement: 19 Town has been painstakingly art-directed, with a stunning minimalist design from Jialun Xiong, who describes her interior concept here as The Lavishness of Restraint. With clean lines, striking curves and black, white, various green and metallic hues, 19 Town is a visual delight. (Another recently unveiled visual delight is the new Sichuan Impression in Alhambra, also designed by Xiong.)

The food at 19 Town is no less compelling than the space. Liu is here to show guests what Chinese cuisine can be and also what it doesn’t have to be. This is a Chinese restaurant, sure, but it’s really a Los Angeles restaurant that’s big on global influences, relatively light on rice and with gnocchi instead of Chinese noodles or Chinese dumplings on its menu. There’s beautiful in-the-shell scallop ceviche, a colossal slow-cooked short rib with roasted pineapple and fresno pepper, and slices of flaming pork jowl with potent 151-proof rum that’s set ablaze at the table. The talented Liu is from Chengdu, but she’s expanded her range well beyond Sichuan flavors.

The food at 19 Town is delicious and dramatic. It’s also elegant and ultra-comforting at the same time. An oxtail soup, thick and stew-like with tomatoes, pops with tabasco peppers and cilantro. An assorted baskets combo, featuring standout items like dried bean curd with pickled peppers and a spinach ball with black sesame paste, is a palate-opening appetizer that also works perfectly as bar food.

Another terrific appetizer that doubles nicely as drinking food is 19 Town’s version of orange chicken. This is spicy without being overwhelming, like a hybrid of orange chicken and Sichuan popcorn chicken, and the texture of the meat is almost like jerky. It’s a dish that will probably make you want to drink more, so it’s nice that the cocktails at 19 Town are made with care. You might be inclined to order a Negroni or an old fashioned or a riff on a piña colada with your dinner.

And/or head to the patio for a late-night lounge experience, with wine, cocktails and some snacks (maybe a cheese plate or steak tartare or rice-coated beef with flatbread). Liu wants 19 Town to transition from a restaurant into a lively bar as the night progresses, so she’s keeping it open until midnight on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday and until 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. (19 Town is closed on Tuesday.)

Like Humberto Leon’s Monarch, which coincidentally debuted on the same week last month, 19 Town is about the future of Chinese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley and also everywhere else. It’s about world-class design and new-school food. It’s about understanding traditions but serving up a 21st century point of view. It’s about having a strong beverage program in an area where most restaurants don’t take mixology seriously. It’s about knowing that your city and your industry is ready for a change.

Liu is an ambitious and formidable restaurant operator, with Sichuan Impression locations in West LA and Tustin beyond the recently relocated Alhambra flagship. At 19 Town, she’s already created one of the most significant and surprising openings that the San Gabriel Valley has seen in years. She’s busy in the kitchen right now and has a lot of the work to do in the front-of-the-house, too, but she knows that 19 Town is a place, an idea, a belief, a vision that could lead to multiple outposts. It’s a fresh spin on the kind of upscale Chinese food that areas like the Westside of Los Angeles (more than 30 miles away from The City of Industry) crave.

Give her some time. Liu seems poised to run this town.