San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Lunar New Year
Top Chinese Restaurants where you can grab a celebratory meal
The first Chinese restaurants in the United States opened in San Francisco to cater to Chinese gold miners and workers in the mid1800s. Mostly simple, Cantoneseinflected eateries at first, the restaurants evolved to fit the growing needs of the region’s Chinese population as it became more affluent and more diverse. Now, in the Bay Area’s Chinese neighborhoods, oldschool chop suey houses exist sidebyside with farmtotable restaurants, which take advantage of the growing market for Asian heirloom vegetables and crowdpleasing hot pot hot spots. Regionalism has broken into the scene as well: Z&Y Restaurant was a pioneer of fiery and numbing Sichuan cuisine, while the more recent Wojia Hunan Cuisine showcases its region’s smoked meat and hot pickled chile flavors. In a time when xenophobia and pandemicera stereotypes have heightened the coronavirus’ economic impact on Chinese communities, it’s important to remember that the Bay Area’s Chinese restaurants are an essential aspect of what makes the local food scene so great. Here are some of the places you shouldn’t miss.
Bund Shanghai
Named after Shanghai’s iconic waterfront on the Huangpu River, Bund Shanghai is all about the cuisine of China’s biggest city. Centerpiece dishes, like enormous and juicy lion’s head meatballs and fatty braised pork shank, appear with a red tint from being cooked in a mixture of rice wine, sugar and soy sauce. The technique grants meats a distinct, heavily caramelized flavor. Chewy oval rice cakes, stirfried in a wok with vegetables and pork, have a slight crispiness to them to go along with their gooey interiors. Try the exquisite pairing of rice cakes with Dungeness crab while it’s in season. 640 Jackson St., S.F. 4159820618.
Capital
Sure, Capital’s crisp saltandpepper chicken wings, fried with thin slices of jalapeño, should be on every San Franciscan’s bucket list. (A note for when we can have parties again: They make for a very welcome potluck item.) But the menu’s broad selection of Cantonese specialties, overlooked by many, is worth highlighting. One of the most memorable is the egg tofu with spicy ground pork. In this dish, thick rounds of smooth and soft egg tofu are deepfried and topped with saucy pork and chopped bell peppers. 839 Clay St., San Francisco. 4153976269. www.ordercapitalca.com
China Live
China Live is a multistory culinary wonderland with a fine dining restaurant, “Bladerunner”esque cocktail bar, a retail section and a 120seat, highceilinged casual eatery featuring different styles of cooking. Of course, you can’t just go in and gawk anymore. But in the pandemic age, China Live has maintained its multifaceted spirit, with a robust online retail store stocked with titanium woks and jars of XO sauce as well as its more popular dishes. Definitely try the crunchy and indulgent fried scallion breads, which are rolled up like cinnamon buns, as well as the jiggly, tingly mapo tofu. 644 Broadway, S.F. 4157888188. www.chinalivesf.com
Chong Qing Xiao Mian
Opened by Z&Y alums Jenny Wu and Truman Du, this is a noodle restaurant through and through, with a variety of strands to fit any situation. Its namesake, written on the menu as “Chongqing hot numbing spicy noodles,” is a great place to start. Its broth gets a kick from Sichuan pepper powder and bright red chile oil, and a splash of sesame oil gives it an earthy aroma. Another worthy option is the tan tan noodle soup: Ground pork and sesame paste give it a heartier and richer taste. 915
Kearny St., S.F. 4159830888. www.chongqingxiaomiansf.com
Dumpling Home
The Shanghainese steamed dumplings ($14.95 to $23.95 for eight) at this colorful restaurant are soft and silky, yet surprisingly resilient. They’re handmade by dumpling specialist Lily Wong and come in six delectable varieties: malaflavored pork, beef, regular pork, chicken, crab and pork, and shrimp with loofah squash. The rest of the menu is also smaller plates meant to be shared among a quarantine bubble. Try the spicy slices of boiled beef tongue ($9.95), dressed in a deeply savory and piquant “thousandyear sauce,” or the invigorating and bright wood ear mushroom salad ($7.95) as your sides. 298 Gough St., S.F. 4155031666. www.dumplinghome.com
Easterly
As far as Hunanese cuisine goes, Easterly is as hardcore as it gets. Its dishes, where pickled peppers and sliced chiles proliferate, will have your eyes watering in no time. The massive portions are built for familystyle eating, so two dishes plus rice would be enough for three to four people. The poached fish fillets ($18.99), wherein Sichuanese flower peppers tingle the mouth before pickled peppers wallop you with their hot and sour flavor, prove that spiciness can be as layered as the aromas in a glass of wine. If you’re looking for something gentler but no less exciting, try the showstopping sticky rice with pork ribs and corn ($17.99). The pork ribs, steamed underneath the glutinous rice, perfume the entire dish; “ribs” of corn, arranged on top, are sweet and amazingly juicy. 2142 Center St., Berkeley. 5106478008. www.easterly hunancuisineca.com
Good to Eat Dumplings
Good to Eat, which pops up at Original Pattern Brewing Company in Oakland, specializes in the street foods of Taiwan, a nationstate whose foods aren’t as common in the Bay Area but are considered to be part of the larger canon of Chinese cuisines. Rather than the more common crescentshape dumplings, owners Tony Tung and Angie Lin make chicken and basilstuffed potstickers ($9) that are folded long, looking almost cigarlike, so that there’s more crispy bottom for your buck. Their menu is full of snacks that would go great with Original Pattern’s draft beers: dishes like the spicy pork (or tofu) wontons ($8), and the uncommon but no less craveable wokfried peanuts seasoned with green tea and seaweed ($5). 292 Fourth St., Oakland. 5106982244. www.good toeatdumplings.com
Great China
Since midJune, Great China has offered its full menu for takeout and delivery, from its showstopping Pekingstyle duck with shards of skin arrayed like flower petals to its falloffthebone salt and pepper spareribs. Pro tip: If you get the duck, ask for the carcass, which you can use to make stock or rice porridge at home. Bottles from the restaurant’s magnificently geeky, Burgundyheavy wine list are also available at a substantial discount. 2190 Bancroft Way, Berkeley. 5108437996. www.greatchinaberkeley.com
Gum Kuo
Pipinghot bowlfuls of rice porridge ($6.95 and up) are the height of Asian comfort food; many Oaklanders rely on Gum Kuo’s amply portioned porridge, garnished with gelatinous century eggs, abalone and more, to get through hard times and hangovers alike. Pair with a baton of crisp fried dough, which provides a happy crunch to contrast with the silken stew. The rest of the menu stays in the comfort food lane: steamed rice rolls ($3.95 and up) stuffed with barbecued meats, hearty bowls of wonton noodle soup ($6.50) and rubycolored ducks, sheets of crackly pork skin, spiced cuttlefish and more Cantonese barbecue standards hang in the window, tantalizing with their aromas. Though there’s no official outdoor seating, there are plenty of spots to sit and snack around the Asian Cultural Center plaza, where the restaurant is located. 388 Ninth St., Suite 182, Oakland. 5102681288. www.gumkuo restaurant.com
Old Mandarin Islamic
This neighborhood restaurant has been offering the staples of northern Chinese cuisine for decades, and through the pandemic Old Mandarin Islamic’s momandpop team, Feng Wang and husband Xuqun Yang, has continued to sell tender handmade dumplings and standout, cuminscented lamb ribs. The phenomenal Beijingstyle hot pot, which used to fill the dining room with its piquant aroma, is now available on the patio, which has been outfitted with vinyl screens to shield diners (and soup) from the formidable Outer Sunset breezes. 3132 Vicente St., S.F. 4155643481. www.oldmandarin.com
Palette Tea House
The ambitious dim sum restaurant has been offering takeout and delivery, including frozen dumplings and noodle and bao kits. On the fancier end of the dim sum spectrum, Palette, with its amiable service and highend ingredient highlights, is ideal for brunch blowouts. Try the umamipacked abalone sticky rice wrapped in lotus leaves, its acornfed Iberico pork char siu, and pork belly lacquered in an aromatic shaoxing wine glaze. Despite losing a lot of business as tourism to Fisherman’s Wharf dried up, the restaurant has stayed open in part due to rent deferment, according to general manager Dennis Leung. He hopes Palette’s spacious patio, now open with stunning views of Fisherman’s Wharf and the San Francisco Bay beyond, will help it regain its footing. 900 North Point St., Suite B201, S.F. 4153478888. www.paletteteahouse.com
R&G Lounge
You go to R&G Lounge for special occasions: to celebrate important events and show beloved visitors a true slice of San Francisco food. So, naturally, one must order the seafood showstoppers at this restaurant, which is filled with enough tanks to make you think you’d stepped into an aquarium. They’re a guarantee of freshness, so you can’t go wrong with the seafood. That might mean a towering pile of battered and fried Dungeness crab, its delicately sweet flesh seasoned with salt and pepper, or black cod marinated and baked until its flesh becomes as tender as roomtemperature butter. It’s available for takeout and delivery. 631 Kearny St., S.F. 4159827877. www.rnglounge.com
Sam Wo Restaurant
At more than a century old, Sam Wo is one of the oldest restaurants in the city, having opened just two years after the great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. In 2015, the Cantonese noodle house relocated just a few blocks away from its original site. What remains consistent is that it’s an institution popular with both locals and tourists, the latter of whom often come hungry for a taste of chow mein. I would say pass on the chow mein, but do get the tender and toothsome steamed rice rolls with char siu, which the kitchen will kindly cut into bitesize pieces for you, and the generously portioned and comforting rice porridge with a fried doughnut on the side. 713 Clay St., S.F. 4159898898. www.samworestaurant.com