LOS ANGELES
Only in LA can you get your egg rolls and tacos at the same Chi-Mex food stand. A sign on Grand Avenue downtown LA, photo taken about six years ago. As downtown LA gets its multibillion dollar facelift, these hole in the wall places are doomed.
The Formosa Cafe in West Hollywood is known for its bar not its food. Some of the famous celebrities that used to patron Formosa Cafe include Marlin Brando and Humphrey Bogart. This is a Hollywood trendies hangout for the bar nightclub scene.
Formosa Cafe decor is faux Asian style that uses 1930’s design elements, but the building can be noted for its tacky loud red color.
Another view of the Formosa cafe sign using Asian style fonts. Asian style fonts were commonly used for Chinese restaurants in the old days.
From Downtown LA’s Grand Central Market is this great classic CHINA CAFE neon sign.
Also in Grand Central Market is this ONGPIN EXPRESS neon catering to the Spanish speaking clientele
Another tiki-tacky trend of the sixties was South Seas or Hawaiian theme motels. Here is the Kona Motel in Orange County, CA.
This is a great example of Asian “pagoda style” mid-century modern from Orange County, CA. Wong’s is on Westminster Avenue in Garden Grove. Apparently the food is pretty good here too. Note the googie style steel beam with holes in it. The pagoda motif is what brings this vintage 1950’s sign to life. In the 1970’s, plastic replaced neon and many of these old signs were removed by city ordinances that deemed them urban blight.
Here is another less elegant example of 1970’s tacky merged with 1950’s Googie architecture. Here it is apparent the neon was removed from this Googie vintage sign and replaced with plastic with flourescent lighting. This restaurant is located in Lomita, CA.
This photo is of a restaurant called Happy Teriyaki in central Los Angeles. This looks like on of the former locations of the chain called Chili Bowl. Chili Bowl was a prime example of vernacular architecture. To the right is an old drawing of the original Chili Bowl. Vernacular architecture is a design style where the building itself was the billboard for the product being sold by the business.
While this photo has nothing to do with Chinese food or Asian design, Randy’s donuts in Inglewood, CA is the most famous living example of vernacular architecture. This building has been used in dozens of movies and television shows.
Here is another classic example of vernacular architecture, Tail of The Pup,depicted here CLOSED, the center flap opens as the grill and register. Located near Beverly Center, this is a legendary piece of vernacular architecture.
What were they thinking??!! While you can see Happy Teriyaki has cleverly repurposed the chili bowl into a teriyaki bowl, can you spell urban blight? Here a former Pioneer Chicken location has its covered wagon sign converted to a China King fast food sign. The owners were too lazy to change the covered wagon This China King restaurant is located in central Los Angeles. Pioneer Chicken is a defunct Los Angeles based fast food chain that thrived during the 1960’s
SAN FRANCISCO, CA
Here is a great looking neon sign from Li-Po Cocktails, a bar located on Grant Street in San Francisco’s Chinatown. This photo was taken before the bar was restored a few years ago. The sign has been updated with a new coat of paint and looks great.
A couple doors down and across the street is another cool lounge called Buddha. This sign looks great next to the Paper Lantern sytle street lamp.
And just down the street on Jackson is this great vintage Chop Suey sign.
VISALIA, CA
Visalia is a small town outside Sequoia National Park. This Chinese restaurant is very plain looking but with vintage TEA GARDEN asian font logo.
What’s so great about Visalia Tea Garden is its very cool restored Chop Suey neon sign.
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
Not Chinese & Filipino Food but Filipino & Chinese Food. While you are there you can do a little gambling and sing karaoke, drink cocktails, and they are open till 5AM. Now that’s more like it and my kind of place, Fong’s Garden! Fong’s Garden is just outside Las Vegas. You can see another example of the classic pagoda style architecture in the background. We’ll provide a close up of that too.
The facade of this building is done in Pagoda style and it resembles a mini-me version of Grumman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
But the most fun part of Fong’s Garden has got to be this massive towering pagoda style sign that can be seen blocks away. You can see here they emphasize cocktails over their food. Now where are they making their money again?