RESTAURANT REVIEW : A Taste of the Global Village

A Pacific Rim eclecticism pervades Old Town Pasadena: There’s Tommy Tang’s contemporary Thai-Chinese restaurant with sushi bar, and Yangtze, a different mix of regional Thai and Chinese dishes, plus a sushi bar. Ciao Yie offers a Chinese-Italian menu. And now, there’s a Hong Kong coffee shop serving Asian-Continental cuisine, and a Chinese stir-fry counter--with sushi bar. . . .

Ever wondered what an American-style pork chop dinner would taste like in a Hong Kong coffee shop? Well, now you can have that vaguely dislocating experience at Village, a restaurant modeled on the international-style coffee shops in Hong Kong.

Village has a chain restaurant’s corporate gleam, but no coffee shop I know is so colorful: The walls are green and blue and yellow, the booths violet and turquoise, the carpet red. A huge photograph of the Hong Kong waterfront at night spans one wall and is reflected in heavy mirrors on the opposite wall. A revolving pie case features thin wedges of cream cakes, cheesecake and green Jell-O.

The menu features an assortment of Chinese favorites (pot stickers, chow mein, cashew chicken), other Asian specialties (Malaysian satay, udon noodles, coconut curry) and the house version of Continental cuisine (filet mignon, whole Cornish game hen and pork chops). If you don’t know what to order, flip through the little book with color photos of each item.

The kitchen is erratic, at best. “Jade salad,” with wilted spinach, pine nuts and mandarin orange slices, is juicy and appealingly sweet. The pot stickers are under-cooked and doughy. A sizzling plate of chicken udon has a good peppery sauce, but the noodles are mushy. “Buddhist Delight,” vegetables spooned over thin, fried noodles, is bland and gluey. Better, I found, to order vegetables individually: a hank of perfectly steamed Chinese broccoli drizzled with oyster sauce, for example.

While plenty of Chinese restaurants serve pork chops, we’re assured that these, listed under Continental cuisine on the menu, are an all-American dish. The two chops are thin, fatty, not very high-grade, and are served with steamed mixed vegetables and an assortment of sauces, most of which--the African, onion, and black pepper sauces--are modeled after canned brown gravies: homogenized, thick, salty--and exactly, except for the spice-heat level, the kind of gravy you expect to find in any coffee shop. Even, it seems, in Hong Kong.

* Village, 87 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (818) 795-2917. Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. Beer and wine served. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $22-$42. *

Walk west from Village and soon you’ll come upon Wok ‘n’ Roll, an informal restaurant featuring Chinese stir-fries and sushi. Inside, Wok ‘n’ Roll has stylish wooden and iron tables and chairs, and white walls hung with a row of brightly painted woks: convex circles of red, yellow, blue and silver. The menu declares, “We can Wok . . . “ (over a page featuring stir-fried noodles, vegetables, meat and shrimp) “ . . . and we can roll!” (over an entire page of sushi rolls). Rock ‘n’ roll blares at a fairly tolerable level, although if it’s serious conversation you want, you may choose to sit outside.

The stir-fried dishes are close copies of the American Chinese food I grew up on as a child. Orange chicken is battered, deep-fried chicken chunks in a sticky, spicy sauce. Kung pao shrimp is too hastily prepared: The shrimp is tender, but the onions are still raw and peanuts are still starchy. There’s none of that great kung pao smokiness.

If there were ever a competition for extravagant sushi rolls, Wok ‘n’ Roll would be a contender: A Don Ho roll has broiled Spam, avocado and sprouts. A Bob Marley roll has “jerked” salmon and tempura-ed banana, etc. The Buddhaheads Roll, with chicken teriyaki, vegetable tempura, gobo and avocado, is so busy, it cancels itself out--was that a sushi roll I just ate? Or was I just cleaning up bits and pieces on my plate?

Come to happy hour, 5 to 7 p.m., and sushi is 25% off.

* Wok ‘n’ Roll, 55 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (818) 304-1000. Open seven days for lunch and dinner. Beer and wine served. Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Diners Club accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $17-$50.