For many people who don't celebrate Christmas, eating at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Eve has become an annual Christmas tradition. For Jews living on the edge of the Fairfax District, Genghis Cohen is often their destination. Hospitality veterans Marc Rose and Med Abrous are behind the restaurant. They join us for this edition of "In the Weeds."
Marc Rose: My name is Marc Rose, and I am one of the co-owners of Genghis Cohen. I grew up in New York City — Brooklyn, to be exact. My memories of Chinese food go as far back as I can remember. Oftentimes, most likely a Sunday night, it's what my family and I ate. It was an exciting thing to go out for Chinese food. We'd either find a place locally in Brooklyn, but more than likely we take ourselves over the bridge and into Chinatown and lower Manhattan. My dad would look for lines where he saw less American people waiting to get in to eat. He thought that was the more authentic way of eating. But at the end of the day, this was New York-style Chinese food, Chinese American food, to be exact.
Med Abrous: My name is Med Abrous, and I'm the co-owner of Genghis Cohen. I grew up in New York City, in Manhattan, and Chinese food has always been part of our household. Similarly to Marc, it was a family tradition. It was something that was a special occasion we would look forward to. I recall getting dressed up and having to wear a clip-on tie to go to the Chinese restaurant because it was a fancy, exciting occasion. Our whole family would go and sit around a Lazy Susan. I was enamored, from the chopsticks to the delicious flavors that were able to indulge in.
Genghis Cohen will serve up to 700 guests on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, with walk-ins waiting up to 2.5 hours. Photo courtesy of Genghis Cohen.
Genghis Cohen was opened in 1983 by Allan Rinde, who was a music producer. He was a New Yorker, a lot like us. He would frequently record at a very famous studio across the street called Cherokee Studios. People that knew Alan recount the story, saying that he was really dismayed with the offerings of Chinese food in the Fairfax district and in Hollywood. He said, "I just can't get good egg rolls here. I can't get good Chinese food." He took a Chinese food cooking class in hopes that he would actually open a restaurant and fulfill this void. After taking a few classes, he quickly realized that it was a very difficult thing to become a Chinese food chef. But he met a chef and shortly thereafter, made a deal for a space on Fairfax, and opened Genghis Cohen. Because of his love and connection to music, a few years later, he opened what was then called the Genghis Cohen Cantina, which was the live music venue. It became, in the late '80s, a really important cultural place in LA where local bands would play. Some big name bands would play. It's a very intimate venue. The combination of dining and music became something really special for LA.
Marc Rose: When I first came to Los Angeles, Chinese food and specifically this style of Chinese food, was difficult to find. Someone one day brought up to me Genghis Cohen. My response was, that's the place I drive by often on Fairfax but I'm not really looking for kosher Chinese. I'm looking for real New York-style Chinese food. I was quickly educated that it was not kosher and came in for dining myself with a friend one night, and was absolutely blown away. Until then, I had my mother sending me packets of duck sauce that she would go and buy in Chinatown and ship out to me because I couldn't even get that. A lot of this style restaurant in LA called them apricot sauce or sweet sauce. This was as authentic New York-style of Chinese food as I could find. And the dining room has such a cinematic feel to it.
There's some large tables in the back of the restaurant that have Lazy Susans and show people sharing. This instantly brought me back to everything I remembered from growing up. One day, Med and I were in the midst of construction on a new project called Winsome, which was in Echo Park, and I got a phone call from a friend I grew up with back in Brooklyn. He let me know that one of his neighbors who's a real estate broker has this amazing space/restaurant opportunity and he would love to connect us. I quickly said, no, we're too busy. We just don't have time. We own another cocktail bar in town called the Spare Room. Unbeknownst to me, the next evening, I was at the bar during service, and he showed up, my friend, with this real estate broker. He just really wanted to keep pitching me on the idea of this space that he thought was a great opportunity. So I listened. Finally, I found out it was Genghis Cohen.
I quickly let them know that I actually had no interest in the space but we had full interest in Genghis Cohen because the instant reaction in my head at the time and then, of course, with Med collectively, was "this can't go away." If Genghis Cohen closes, we don't want this to be a new coffee shop or a cupcake factory. This needs to be Genghis Cohen, this is an important piece of Los Angeles history. This is an important piece for us, for our histories.
We then had to set a meeting with the former owners, which was a great Chinese family that bought it from Alan Rindy. The patriarch of that family, who had since passed, started out as the manager of this restaurant. He had been around since day zero. Then the family took over. They were operating and running it for a good number of years. When it was time to retire and move on, we needed to convince them that Genghis Cohen was as important to us as it was to them who had been involved since the very beginning.
Marc Rose (left) and Med Abrous recall their childhoods in New York, where going out to eat Chinese food was a special occasion. Photo by Shelby Moore.
Med Abrous: It was a really, really fun exercise and a delicate one. We were very vigilant to, at first, really not change anything. We took some time with the Kiu family, even before the sale had gone through, just to be there every day and ask lots of questions about the operation and see how they were doing things. It was really fun at the beginning to greet people as we were customers and provide an experience that was equal but different.
Marc Rose: You read about the history of Jewish culture and Chinese food and there's a lot of different things written. There's a pretty famous saying, I think it sounds kind of cool, it's called "safe traif." Traif is a word that basically means unkosher. There is no milk used in Chinese food. So right away, mixing of dairy and meat gets eliminated. If you think about the history of especially New York-style Chinese food, and the history of the Lower East Side and Chinatown and all these amalgamations of cultures coming together, it's sort of a natural progression that on a holiday for Christmas, when Jewish people are not celebrating that holiday but still want to go and eat somewhere where they feel welcomed and feel like they can be amongst groups of people still celebrating, still enjoying a night out, it seemed like Chinese restaurants that were open on that day were a place just for that.
Med Abrous: Christmas evening and Christmas Day are by far our busiest days of the year, in terms of sheer volume. We could do anywhere between 600 to 700 covers on those days, respectively, and that's not counting delivery. So much focus goes into our operation on those days. The expectations are so high. And with that kind of volume, we take a lot of care and a lot of planning.
Marc Rose: We do take walk-ins. It might be a two-and-a-half-hour wait but we do our best to accommodate every single person that wants to come in and eat that day. It really does feel like a party in here. If there is a wait, they can have a cocktail while they wait. They can leave and come back.
For the most part, all of the Genghis Cohen hits are there. The Genghis Cohen Queen Chicken, the Cracker Jack Shrimp. I think there's no better day to celebrate with the duck. It's called the No Name Duck. It's crispy. You have your bao bun, not a pancake, in which to make it and I feel like that's a really good family style dish to have that day.
With cocktails like a Szechuan Margarita, Genghis Cohen's bar program and happy hour have become as popular as its food. Photo courtesy of Genghis Cohen.