The main avenues in Los Angeles and Hollywood are jam-packed with trendy restaurants, hip venues and chic lounges. Usually those places located in such busy and popular streets are known for being on the pricey side and for hosting attention-seeking celebrities. Good looks seem to be the requirement. If you’re Latino, you grew up with older people telling you not to judge a book by its cover; the same thing goes for people and in this case, for restaurants as well. Just a few feet away from The Pantages, between Hollywood and Vine, you’ll find “The Forbidden City”, an enticing restaurant with an appealing and inviting Asian-inspired façade.
Mucha hambre, poca variedad
There’s no denying in the fact that “The Forbidden City” is a remarkable restaurant. Every detail was carefully thought, and the Asian-inspired décor is subtle yet omnipresent without being cheesy nor overpowering. The restaurant’s size is pretty decent, but it looks smaller than what it appears to be on the outside.
Surprisingly enough, the menu is rather limited. You would expect a larger selection of dishes, but alas, there were some “traditional” dishes and only a couple of signature dishes.
The restaurant was rather busy when my friends and I dropped by to eat, so our server took a while to get to us; however, once he got to us, we got his full attention.
Asian-fusion cuisine
We decided to start off with a couple of appetizers, so we ordered the “Emperor Chicken Rolls” and the “Oriental Fried Calamari”. One thing that I particularly liked about this place is that our appetizers came out almost immediately. While both the rolls and the calamari were good, they were nothing out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, the sauces they came with saved them and gave them that unique “Forbidden City” flavor. The rolls came with a spicy apricot sauce and the calamari came with a spicy lemon sauce… you might want to order some extra spicy apricot sauce- apricot and spicy sauce usually don’t go together or sound like a tasty mix but they managed to make it work and the results are mouthwatering.
As for our main course, we ordered “Shanghai Chicken” and “Coconut Chicken”. It was surprising to see the lack of choices when it came to main dishes. On the menu you will find the usual: sweet and sour chicken, teriyaki chicken/ beef, kung pao shrimp, beef & broccoli, and other “typical” Asian food dishes. Since their shrimp, beef and vegetables food options where also limited, we chose from the chicken menu, which had the most variety and included the most “house dishes”.
The “Shanghai Chicken” came with stir-fried bell peppers and a black bean sauce- which just like the appetizers rescued this dish from mediocrity. The “Coconut Chicken” on the other hand was a rather pleasant surprise; it was seasoned chicken with a coconut curry sauce which turned out to be one of the best curries around this area.
Overall, the food was good, but not great. Our expectations were high thanks to the restaurant’s look and location. It’s marketed as Asian-fusion cuisine, but it’s more of a sit-in Asian fast food joint that happens to also serve alcohol.
Eat, drink, and sin?
While eating at “The Forbidden City” is not a fine-dining experience, the food is good and affordable, good service, excellent sauces, perfect ambiance and location.
There was only one thing missing, at it came after taking a second look at the menu where “The Forbidden City” claims and self-advertises itself as the place to be and eat, drink and sin. We decided to do a checklist: Eat, check. Drink, check. Sin?
We asked our server when did the “sin” part of the “Forbidden City” experience came to play. We where thinking about sinful and extremely decadent desserts… but unfortunately for us dessert-lovers that was not the case.
Turns out, the “sin” part of “The Forbidden City” comes at night when they open up the rest of the venue and turn it transforms into a nightclub.
Apparently “The Forbidden City” is becoming quite popular among the 18-20-something crowd, especially on Thursdays, when it is known as “Imperial Thursdays”. Our server invited us to stay, but we were not planning on going out, thus we were not wearing club attire, but we promised on coming back to “The Forbidden City” on “Imperial Thursdays” to get our “sinful” part of the deal.
The Forbidden City1718 Vine St
Los Angeles, CA 90028
(323)461-2300
