The Restaurant That Started Panda Express

This orange chicken has not been waiting for you on the steam table.It has not been bouncing and sweating in the darkness of a clamshell container while you wheel your luggage to the gate.At Panda Inn, the Pasadena restaurant that started Panda Express, the orange chicken is made to order, strewed with whole dried chiles, scallions and a few threads of orange zest.

It arrives craggy and glistening on a blue stoneware plate.Is it good? Trick question! It is sticky, and it is familiar.It is relentlessly crunchy, with a flatly precise and habit-forming ratio of sweetness to acidity to heat.

It is better, though not dramatically different from the one that waits on the steam table — always there, always waiting — but sometimes presentation can be everything.Orange chicken, all dressed up, reminds me of when my parents set out cloth napkins and silverware while unpacking boxes of takeout, transferring everything to serving plates (yes, even pizza).I used to find this absolutely unhinged, but now I see it as a tender gesture that underscored the luxury of their taking the night off from cooking — they did it so rarely.When the Cherng family opened Panda Inn in 1973, it was a popular Chinese restaurant that catered to the neighborhood.

Early menus from the 1970s and ’80s included a bone-in tangerine-peel chicken, sizzling beef hot plates and a “Chinese Pasta” section of noodle dishes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe....