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Pei Wei, for example, is a cost-conscious spinoff founded in 2000 by Scottsdale, Ariz.-based P.F. Chang's. Pick Up Stix was snagged in 2001 by Carlson Restaurants Worldwide Inc., which also operates TGI Friday's, from Southern California businessman Charles Zhang. "There are regional players, but there's no chain out there with 1,000 restaurants," said Tim Pulido, president of Pick Up Stix Inc. "It's a dogfight." Pick Up Stix plans to expand its chain of 91 restaurants -- 60 of the eateries are in Southern California and the rest in Arizona and Nevada -- by opening 20 outlets this year and 40 in 2005. Pei Wei hopes to augment its 47 restaurants, spread across California and six other states, by opening 20 outlets this year and as many as 28 in 2005. In California, where there are already diners in Pasadena, Newport Beach, Irvine, Torrance and Encinitas, the company wants to add as many as 12 locations a year. The rash of fresh-obsessed rivals hasn't escaped the attention of Rosemead-based Panda Restaurant Group Inc., operator of Panda Express. At Panda Express, batches of food are prepared by wok in advance rather than made to order. In a nod to its competitors, however, the company's new and remodeled restaurants feature exhibition-style kitchens, and have refrigerators with clear doors to showcase fresh produce. "It's not cooked to order, but it is freshly cooked," said Peggy Cherng, chief executive of Panda. The fast-casual Asian food crowd is facing mounting competition from a vast, new generation of family-owned restaurants. "If you look at Chinese restaurants in Los Angeles, they are right below doughnut shops as the most prevalent type of restaurant," said Randall Hiatt, president of Costa Mesa-based Fessel International, a restaurant consulting company. "Making matters more competitive is the proliferation of all types of Asian food over the past 15 years. It used to be just Cantonese -- but now there's Mandarin, Szechwan, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian and Vietnamese." Competitors have taken note of the public's expanded palate for Asian flavors. For example, Pick Up Stix, which first opened in 1990 in Rancho Santa Margarita, recently switched to a new prototype, changing its motto from "Chinese Wok'd Fresh" to "Fresh Asian Kitchen." Another complication: finding wok-proficient workers. It's not as easy to learn to cook by wok as it is to flip a burger or assemble a sandwich, industry experts say. "A wok is not something a lot of American cooks are used to," said Dennis Lombardi, executive vice president of Technomic. "There needs to be a premium on keeping the turnover in that category low so that your training costs don't get out of line." In addition, the chains are battling for high-profile locations in Southern California where real estate rivals include coffee houses, vitamin stores, mattress shops and the like. "It's a very challenging market out there," said Roger Glickman, chief executive of A.O. One, a franchise company that has inked a deal to develop 56 Noodles & Co. outlets over the next seven years throughout Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. "Everybody wants great parking." Pei Wei officials don't expect to pierce the metropolitan Los Angeles area until late next year or in early 2006.