At Pasadena’s 35-year-old Top Restaurant, magic happens when chef-owner Riko Yuriko drops chicken into a hot, low-sputtering fryer. A constellation of oil droplets erupts from the battered chicken as it penetrates the oil’s surface. The generous poultry pieces, marinated for 12 hours in a homemade brine of kecap manis (sweet soy sauce), garlic, and other secret ingredients, crackle and brown until they develop a thin, flaky coat. Top Restaurant has been takeout-only since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, so many diners enjoy the chicken immediately in the front seat of their cars.

Fried chicken is often the first dish to sell out daily; once all 45 orders are out the door, it is not available again until the next day.

Yuriko and his business partner Juk Ten have worked to evolve the food at Top Restaurant since they took over the business in 2016. Before their stewardship, the strip mall restaurant had been a reliable stop for Indonesian staples. With no official Little Jakarta or Indonesia Town in Southern California, the local Indonesian community has often relied on home catering and church networks to share family recipes and spread the word about their small businesses. Such was the case with Yuriko and Top Restaurant’s previous owner Eka Gumlia, who met him at an Indonesian church in the San Gabriel Valley and agreed to hand him the keys to her restaurant before she retired. Today, Yuriko commutes 90 minutes from Rowland Heights to Pasadena every morning to be the first to greet his customers.

Top Restaurant had already sold fried chicken under its previous ownership, but Yuriko and Ten saw an opportunity to develop it further. The chicken sold today offers tender, glistening meat with deep ridges in its crunchy, honeyed skin — all the better to catch rivulets of sweet dipping sauce.

“We fixed [the recipe] so that it’s completely perfect,” says Yuriko, an Indonesian immigrant with 25 years of kitchen experience cooking in Chinese and Hawaiian restaurants. His background explains his dexterity in both cuisines, a skillset that has made nearby Pasadena residents passionate about Top Restaurant’s unlikely menu pairing of nasi goreng and loco moco.

Top Restaurant is just one of a certain category of establishments in Los Angeles that have blended two seemingly disparate cuisines into a successful operation. Consider King’s Burger and Got Sushi? in the San Fernando Valley or Indi Mex Eats, which began at a Hollywood car wash. But Yuriko and Ten never had qualms about blending Indonesian and Hawaiian foods together on a menu. Though the cuisines are from different parts of the world, the inclusion of the respective islands’ flavors adds something compelling to the menu and to the restaurant landscape of Pasadena.

Some hits on Gumlia’s Indonesian menu seemed prime for a refresh; from these, Yuriko and Ten opted to keep the crispy fried chicken, oseng-oseng, and egg noodle dishes. Yuriko particularly enjoys making the nasi goreng, a fried rice dish with a sweet-savory profile, to which he adds chopped bits of noodles. He recommends that diners eat it with his bright and punchy chile sauce, made with Thai orange peppers to bring some lightness to typically rich and savory Indonesian fare.

To make Top Restaurant more inviting to younger generations of Angelenos, Yuriko and Ten added a section for Hawaiian plates featuring classics like snacky Spam musubis and hefty kalua pork plates served with bountiful scoops of creamy mac salad. They also introduced homier Indonesian plates such as pempek, beef rendang, and sop buntut, taste-tested and perfected, with some trial and error, within their small community. “First we test a new dish with friends and family,” Yuriko says. “We try until 10 people say it’s good, and then we use it. If it’s not 10 out of 10, we change it again.”

Yuriko kept the name Top Restaurant (the gastronomical version of “Who’s on First?”) because it felt representative of the quality of his family’s attentive service. His wife Lily and sister Fang Fang help with lunch and dinner rushes by splitting afternoon and evening shifts. Yuriko says that Lily recognizes customers by their second visit, calling them by name and remembering their orders. He also enjoys getting to know his regulars, who come for comforting food and familiar faces. Nearby hospital workers and car salesmen call in with their orders right as Top Restaurant opens at 11 a.m. to beat the rush. Other customers are long commuters still dedicated to showing up for their barbecue mix plates and fried rice.

“I used to work down the street from here and one day my nephew and I just saw it open. He loves this place,” says Dario Arriaga, a customer who now lives in Victorville. “My nephew is in the hospital right now and he craves this food, so I come all the way from Loma Linda just to get it.”

Yuriko’s appreciation for the service industry comes from his early experiences in the U.S. While waiting and bussing tables after moving to California, he would observe tired, overworked chefs and ask if they needed extra hands in the kitchen. He says he feels fortunate to have been in kitchens where he was welcomed as a rookie.

The kitchen staff at Top Restaurant work to have all meals ready 20 minutes after order. Following the 2020 lockdowns, the restaurant gained a reputation for its big portions, which can amply satisfy families who want to stretch their dollar. In the future, Yuriko hopes to open a similar restaurant in a bigger space in Rowland Heights; Ten would continue to preserve Top Restaurant’s legacy as a destination for soul-warming Indonesian and Hawaiian food.

“I love it here. I’m still learning — the good, the bad, everything,” Yuriko says. “But I want to create something that is different again.”