Colette Pasadena 人生如戏
Asian restaurant · North East
975 N Michillinda Ave, Pasadena, CA 91107
Highlights
Innovative Cantonese dishes including crispy chicken & lobster rice
Innovative Cantonese dishes including crispy chicken & lobster rice
"Colette is helmed by former Embassy Kitchen chef Peter Lai, who showcases his innovative and complex Cantonese-inspired cuisine. One of his most sought-after off-menu items is the Crispy Flower Chicken, a traditional Cantonese dish that takes at least six hours to prepare and features a deboned, air-dried chicken pressed with shrimp paste. Colette offers a variety of rare and unadvertised dishes, including stir-fried lobster sticky rice, lamb stew, and winter melon soup. The off-menu Dungeness crab curry is served with pan-fried vermicelli that soaks up the curry’s flavor, while Lai’s spin on geoduck two ways includes a classic sashimi preparation and a less traditional porridge (pao fan). Beloved dishes like beef chow fun, cola-glazed chicken wings, and salmon carpaccio are also on the menu." - Kristie Hang
"Gather ’round the lazy susan for a Cantonese feast by chef Peter Lai at Colette in Hastings Ranch, where the new-school spot made waves in LA’s Chinese food scene in 2023 with spectacular riffs on classic Cantonese dishes and wholly innovative creations. The menu—completely new despite the name and Instagram-friendly decor remaining from the previous tenant—features the chef’s signature crispy chicken stuffed with shrimp paste at every table, plus heaping platters of beef chow fun, salted egg yolk shrimp, and sweet and sour pork; dinner reservations and advance orders for labor-intensive dishes like winter melon soup, Singaporean chili crab, and stir-fried lobster with sticky rice are imperative." - Cathy Chaplin
"The upscale Cantonese dishes at Colette, a strip mall dinner destination right on the Pasadena/Arcadia border, somehow manage to be familiar and novel at once. There’s crackly chicken skin stuffed with spongy shrimp paste, saucy beef bits under a crispy vermicelli noodle pancake, and stir-fried chayote tossed in a medley of minced pork and pickled olives. After serving American brunch classics for years, the restaurant brought on a new chef to run dinner service in 2022. Colette 2.0 is a huge upgrade—there’s solid dim sum on the daytime menu, but dinner is the real highlight. That’s when you can cover a big round table in creative Cantonese dishes as tasty as any you’ll find in the SGV. Bring friends so you try as much as possible. " - brant cox, sylvio martins, nikko duren
"Reserve a table at Colette in Hastings Ranch for a taste of expert Cantonese cooking from chef Peter Lai. The crispy chicken stuffed with shrimp paste is a must-order for every table, along with the stir-fried lobster with sticky rice if appetites and wallets allow. Be sure to pre-order these labor-intensive dishes beforehand to avoid disappointment. — Cathy Chaplin, senior editor" - Cathy Chaplin, Mona Holmes
"I noticed Colette was recommended in the same New York Times travel piece as a modern Cantonese restaurant to check out in Pasadena." - Matthew Kang
