Young Chow Fried Rice From Nice China Cafe

We are often told that Chinese food are better the next day. Sorry, we can't agree with that.  We think that fresh Chinese food is so much better than the leftover that had spent one night in the fridge.  But if we have no choice but to live on leftover Chinese food due to certain logistical reasons, like when we have to pack our lunch to work; then Young Chow Fried Rice is the kind of Chinese food that we don't mind so much as leftovers.  We actually often stock up on Young Chow fried rice during our dinner runs just so we can have extra to bring to work for lunch the next day. Young Chow fried rice stores very well in the fridge and it can be heated up easily in the microwave.  For those of you who are talented cooks, we believe that you can easily make it yourself. After all, it's just rice stir-fried with green peas, tiny diced carrots, shrimps, leftover Cantonese style BBQ pork, diced green onions and scrambled eggs.  It's very much like the combination fried rice but it's called Young Chow Fried Rice because it's named after the Chinese city where the inventor of this dish was a magistrate back in the 18th century. The name of the dish is spelled differently in different parts of the world, but it is simply the name of the city in China, which is Yangzhou in the Jiangsu Province.

Since we aren't quite there yet in terms of cooking skills, and we are having this sucky jobs that have long commute and long working hours, we always just go get the fried rice from the Chinese restaurants.  We feel that different Chinese restaurants cook different tasting Young Chow Fried Rice.  Essentially, we only like the ones in which the rice isn't  soggy, or sticky, and that isn't too salty with too much soy sauce.  In fact, there shouldn't be soy sauce in Young Chow Fried Rice.  We also prefer the kind that is well balanced with the BBQ pork, shrimps and the veggies. We don't like our Young Chow Fried rice to have too much of any of the ingredients. We can't say we have already found the restaurant that makes the best Young Chow Fried Rice, but we think Nice China Cafe (2543 Pacific Hwy Ste B., Torrance, CA 90505) makes decent Young Chow Fried Rice for $8.25.  We only go there for take-out because this is a tiny restaurant that is under staff. It is just  too crowded during peak meal hours for dine-in.   We usually split one order of the Fried Rice into two servings to save money.  But the half portion is still very filling to us.  We often order multiple orders and store them in single serving glass containers in the freezer for our last minute lunch packing.  We've been trying to keep our lunch at under $5.00 per person....