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People Magazine "Royal Palates"
"Helene An recreates the elegant cuisine of her Vietnamese youth at Beverly Hills's Crustacean. Warren Beatty comes often with his wife, Annette Bening, and their daughter Kathleen, drawn by those garlic noodles. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett have enjoyed the tiger prawns. Mel Gibson and James Coburn crave the Chilean sea bass. And brothers Jeff and Beau Bridges rave about the grilled calamari and crispy rice paper rolls..." Read More
  Food Arts -- "Asian Matchmakers"
"Wary customers can be shown the way to ordering wine with Asian food. Just ask the can-do An family of Crustacean in Beverly Hills...The result is a menu that's almost surreal in the complexity of its pairings..." Read More
 

Town & Country "On the Town"
"Elizabeth An is the petite woman dressed in Chanel greeting Oliver Stone, Winona Ryder and you at the door. And there is her mother, Helene, ready to suggest her "secret kitchen" dishes, like ginger lobster in a ginger-basil sauce or whole roasted Dungeness crabs and garlic noodles..." Read More
  Wine Spectator "Upper Crust"
"Attracting a celebrity clientele to a new Beverly Hills restaurant is probably no harder than getting the stars to show up for a movie premiere, but keeping them as customers is a lot more difficult. This has decidedly not been the case with Crustacean, whose opening was, in Hollywood parlance, boffo! Its success has been guaranteed by the continued presence of usually fickle celebs like Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Oliver Stone, Will Smith, Sharon Stone and Mel Gibson..." Read More
 

USA Today "Hollywood Elite Dine Out"
"Some like it hot: Tony Curtis snuggles with his wife, Jill Vanden Berg, at Crustacean, a hot spot in Beverly Hills..." Read More
  Bon Appétit "To Live and Dine in L.A."
"Los Angeles also has a yen for Asian food...The most gee-whiz of the bunch is Beverly Hills's Crustacean, a high-end French-Vietnamese restaurant that cost millions to create..." Read More
 

Esquire "The Best New Restaurants of 1997"
"The Ans open one of the most dazzling new restaurants in California. Everything here echoes Saigon circa 1960--an Indochina now found only in art-house movies or French-colonial novels. The An daughters, impeccable in Chanel, welcome you warmly while their mother, Helene, prepares her specialties, in a in a 'secret kitchen,' in accordance with traditional ideas about the healthfulness of certain combinations of food..." Read More
  The Wall Street Journal "Don
"Culinary espionage is one of the least tasteful practices in the restaurant business. And Helene An, owner of Crustacean restaurant, may have found a solution to it. Ms. An has constructed a second kitchen within her restaurant to keep the staff--or anyone else, for that matter--from stealing her prized recipes..." Read More
 

The Wall Street Journal "Here You Can Dine on Wednesday or Thursday"
"Crustacean owner Elizabeth An says that she began seeing two distinct types of diners flocking to her restaurant: the more staid society crowd of Beverly Hills, and the young and hip who also like to frequent the Sky Bar at the Mondrian Hotel and the newly opened Bar Fly on Sunset Boulevard. On a recent Wednesday night, the jazz quartet is barely audible over the din of clinking martini glasses and chatter from entertainment industry executives, models and actors - the 'pretty people,' as Ms. An likes to call them..." Read More
  San Franciso Chronicle "Thanh Long Is King"
"For the best crab in the city, there's one place to go: Thanh Long. Since 1971 this Vietnamese restaurant has served thousands of crabs to happy hordes that willingly wait for their turn to dig into roast, drunken or tamarind crab..." Read More
 

Robb Report "To Live and Dine in L.A."
"In true Hollywood fashion, Crustacean comes with a subtitle: 'Euro-Asian Cuisine.' While the owners--three generations of women--are Vietnamese, the subtitle makes an important distinction: This is not traditional Vietnamese cooking or even standard Asian fusion. It is Helene An's unique vision..." Read More
  Los Angeles Times "Women of Enduring Strength"
"When war destroyed their privileged way of life in Vietnam, the An women remade their lives and their fortunes in California..." Read More
 

Beverly Hills [213] "The An Family"
"It is this devotion to the integrity of her food that sets Helene and Crustacean apart from the myriad other cookie-cutter restaurants that dot the landscape..." Read More
  Gourmet "Profiles in Innovation"
"From menu to management, Crustacean's Helene An makes business a family affair..." Read More
 

Southwest Airlines "America's Master Chefs"
"Helene creates her dishes according to traditional ideas on the healthfulness of certain combinations of food, a sensible and savory kind of holistic cooking that never strays into the eccentric..." Read More
  San Francisco Chronicle "Creating A Culinary Dynasty"
"A dozen Ans from three generations and their AnTran Business Corp. now annually generate about $18 million in revenues from their three Vietnamese-French restaurants..." Read More
 

San Francisco Magazine "Harmonious Christmas"
"A holiday dinner with French-Vietnamese roots brings four generations to the table. Although some dishes, such as the escargots, are An creations, the majority are traditional, layered with symbolic meaning. A mildly sweet sticky rice dyed brilliant red is for luck. Earthy brown pressed ham touuched with cinnamon reperesents stability and depth..." Read More
  Playboy "Dish of the Month"
"The An fmaily allows only relatives in their secret ktichen when they're preparing the roast Dungenes crab with garlic noodles at their Crustacean restaurants in Beverly Hills and San Francisco. Whatever the formula is, it works..." Read More
 

Buzz "1998 Buzz Restaurant Awards"
"Someday, when every quarter of L.A. life is in full bloom, Buzz will lay laurels at the feet of city planners, composers, philanthropists, impresarios, socialites, and acrobats. But in the meantime, we reserve our highest kudos for restaurateurs..." Read More
  First Impressions of International Dining
"The Ans' classic taste, majesty and sophistication are vividly illustrated on entering this magnificent, Atlantis showpiece..." Read More
 

Design Journal "Braving the Elements of Fung Shui"
"At Crustacean, the first thing guests see is an astonishing, 80 foot long, sunken floor aquarium which meanders, like a dragon Read More