Dinner at Park's BBQ begins with a small flame.
Your server will turn a nob on your table grill even before you order your drink. There's a faint smell of gas. The fire starts to dance under the grill.
It's a ritual that starts the meal at many Korean BBQ restaurants around town, readying the table for the procession of meats, vegetables and seafood
Ryan Park, general manager of Park's BBQ, said that the gas grill is an important part of the Korean culture. The taste of the food and the way we grill it are connected.
New buildings in Los Angeles may change that. The L.A. City Council voted last week to ban most gas appliances in new residential and commercial construction in order to combat climate change.
L.A. County wants to be carbon neutral by 2045
An implementation plan must be prepared by the end of the year.
In a statement to The Times, the lead author of the policy said that the legislation kicked-starts a process with several stages before full implementation.
It's too early to say what the impact on commercial kitchens will be
Los Angeles is the latest city to phase out gas in new buildings, following in the footsteps of more than 50 other cities and counties in the state. There are people in the restaurant world.
Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurant Assn., said that the number of restaurants in L.A. will have a huge impact on the future of the restaurant industry.
Chefs and restaurants in Los Angeles that rely on gas to cook their food are worried. The move could increase the cost of doing business and force many styles of cooking out of the city.
The owners of RiceBox, a Cantonese BBQ restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, use gas to cook their entire menu. Gas powers the stove used to cook dishes in a wok and the custom barbecue oven used to prepare the restaurant's signature char siu Duroc pork.
The wok is an important part of Asian cuisine. You are telling us we cannot use woks anymore by taking gas away. We are forced to adapt to American culture.
Lee won't consider opening a second location of RiceBox in Los Angeles if there's no gas.
The California Restaurant Assn., which lobbies for California restaurant owners, tried to stop the phase out of gas hookups in Berkeley. In a lawsuit filed against the city, the CRA argued that restaurants should only use gas to cook certain types of food, such as flame-seared meats, charred vegetables, or the use of intense heat from a flame under a wok.
According to the suit, the members of the CRA will not be able to prepare many of their specialties without natural gas and will lose control over the way and flavor of food preparation.
The association members said that flame is important for creating masterpieces. It is like asking an artist to give up their paintbrushes and use a roller to paint.
Sean Xie, the managing partner of the restaurant, said that they use high heat on gas-powered equipment to cook everything from the fried rice to the kung pao chicken.
If gas equipment is banned, there is no substitute. The temperature is important for Chinese cuisine.
Xie said that it takes a certain amount of heat to sear the surface of meat, vegetables and seafood.
He said that electricity doesn't get to that high temperature in a short period of time.
The distinctive flavor of food when cooked in a wok is known as Wok hei. A bowl of noodles, clams in black bean sauce, string beans and anything else cooked this way is that coveted kissed by fire smoky element.
In her book "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen," Grace Young describes wok hei as "when a wok breathes energy into a stir-fry, giving foods a unique concentrated flavor and aroma."
20% of the dishes are cooked using a wok or a tandoor oven, both powered by gas, at Bryant Ng'sCassia in Santa Monica.
It's not just the high heat that makes it unique and gives the food that "wok hei," it's also the natural flaming of the oils and moisture as the food in the wok is tossed and cooked. It can't be done with something electric that doesn't have a flame. Most dishes in the wok lose some of the wok hei character, wish is fundamental to many dishes cooked in the wok.
It would be difficult to make the switch to electric or insturment.
Condie would like to see an exemption for L.A. restaurants, similar to the infeasibility waivers considered for restaurants in Sacramento.
It would require a lot of re-training to get there, which isn't necessarily a bad thing and better for the environment. You will have to have the funds to do so.
Xie says he pays about $1,200 a month for gas and electricity.
Lee said that he would have to double his monthly expenses if he ran an electric kitchen. Purchasing new, electric equipment and getting stuck with your existing stove and ovens, with little chance of reselling them on a secondary market full of other business owners making the transition to electric, is one of the issues of buying new, electric equipment.
It might be difficult for many restaurants. The restaurants would be discriminated against.
The city seems to be moving forward. The question isn't if we will require decarbonized construction for new buildings but when.
The story was originally published in the LA Times.
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