Everything I Ate In San Francisco After A More Than 2 Year Absence

It's been an extremely rough period, so it was nice to get away last month for a 3+ day visit to San Francisco to catch up on some of the new Chinese restaurants that have opened up since the Spring of 2023.  Flying up on a Tuesday morning, my logical starting point would be Millbrae.  But I was surprised to discover than a goodly portion of the Chinese restaurants, particularly the dim sum houses, were closed on Tuesdays.   Interestingly, Google Maps did not send me down US 101 for the short drive from SFO to the main restaurant areas, but rather through the residential areas of San Bruno, which I found very interesting.  

 

Fortunately, one of the three new dim sum restaurants in Millbrae, Yan Peninsula, was open.  Looking for menu items not found in the Los Angeles area, I ended up with carrot buns, reminiscent of a jelly roll.

 

As well as ginger paste, which I expected to be the reddish glutinous rice cake you see during Chinese New Year, but these certainly weren't red.   The big surprise was that even here at a second tier Bay Area dim sum restaurant I found a more interesting menu than anything back in Los Angeles.

 

While typically for me Chinese food in San Francisco Chinatown is secondary to me since this is not the home of really outstanding restaurants, there were so many new restaurants open here since my last visit that I was looking forward to eating at several restaurants.  First up was Rice Roll Express on Stockton St.  At first it seemed disappointing since for a restaurant specializing in cheung fun they didn't have that many varieities.

 

But as things turned out Rice Roll Express had an interesting concept in many respects. Beef cheung fun comes with your choice of embedded greens. Meanwhile, when your plate of whatever cheung fun you ordered comes out, you go to a condiments table (like at a hotpot or Guilin noodle place) with soy sauce (sweet or jalapeño), chili oil, Sriracha, and yes, peanut butter, as you choose. Except for the soy sauce, I never dreamed of such toppings on cheung fun. And true to the “express” in the restaurant name, your number is called quickly after you order.

At this point I was ready for a nice drink so it was over to the Bruce Lee themed Enter The Cafe over on Broadway.  

  The hawthorne yogurt smoothie hit the spot!

 

However for dinner I was bedeviled by the same problem as in Millbrae--many of my target restaurants were closed on Tuesday.  I actually returned to my room after my first unsuccessful foray, and was planning to wait a while when I checked the internet to find out that Today Food on Kearny Street would be closing within the hour.  So I made a mad dash and got these organic chicken dumplings, the first dumplings I ever ate so labeled.

 

And on the opposite corner a bonus.  V Cafe was also open and their chicken steak was best in class!

 

Skipping breakfast Wednesday morning, I started off the day with a bitter melon smoothie at Imperial Fruit on Grant Ave.  Was as good as it sounds.

 

Then I headed over to the new 606 SF replacing the venerable New Sun Hong Kong (but sort of related) for their salt and pepper fish.

 

Meanwhile two more Taishan restaurants opened up since my last visit.  I went to Taishan Specialty on Stockton St. for purple potato sesame balls.

 

And after eating and resting for a while it was over to Sacramento Street for a sparkling lichee drink at Ti Bear, the new Chinatown branch of a tea parlor adjacent to the UC Berkeley campus. 

 

For dinner it was over to the Richmond District and Bao Bao Dumpling, a newly opened Shanghai style restaurant on Geary St.

Can't go to a Shanghai dumpling place with xiaolongbao.

 Honey glazed vegetarian chicken.

 Shanghai soup

 Tofu eggplant.

 

Taking the scenic way back to Chinatown, I decided to drive down Clement St., being quite surprised that a lot of the eateries were closed by 7pm.  However I had to stop when I saw Mamahuhu, Brandon Jew's ode to Chinese American takeout food.   The fried chicken sandwich with hawthorn sauce on a pineapple bun was excellent.

 

Thursday it was both breakfast and lunch in Millbrae.  Breakfast was at Laka Spicy on Broadway, which served an odd mix of Sichuan, Cantonese and miscellaneous food.  Like this spam musubi.

 

Or this bean thread salad

 Or Chinese breakfast crullers.

 

I went straight from Laka Spicy and made the two block trek for lunch at Hong Kong Palace on El Camino Real.  What a meal.  Hong Kong Palace is definitely second tier in the Bay Area, but it's clearly better than anything in the San Gabriel Valley.  Not sure where to start--maybe the mugwort peanut coconut buns.

 Crispy pork cookies

 Black sticky rice mochi lava balls

 Deep fried egg puffs

 Crispy baked bbq pork buns

 Bunny shrimp

 Fried green tea balls

Piggy custard balls

 

Eggplant

 Crispy pork

This visit was a real revelation.  I knew there were a dozen or more dim sum restaurants in the Bay Area better than whatever might be the best in the San Gabriel Valley.  But to find another one which is clearly not considered a topflight dim sum restaurant up here, and clearly better than anything in Los Angeles was shocking.  And how many more like these might there be in the Bay Area?

 

Of course after back to back meals in Millbrae, I didn't think about dinner.  But dinner time did come and I did think about dinner.  And actually I went out early for dinner in hopes of finding space at one of my target restaurants for which reservations are not generally available.  Sure enough, Empress by Boon had space in the lounge area, which had the advantage of being able to order individual items off the tasting menu,  so I went there. 

This is the $18 jasmine infused rib sandwich.

 And the ginger noodles were also $18.

 I jokingly mentioned to the bartender/server that I was the world's oldest influencer, and darn if he didn't comp me this lantern luau cocktail.  I presume an Instagram posting was the implied quid pro quo, so I did my part.

 

 On my way back to my room I had to stop by the oddly named Spicy & Cloudy on Clay St. which had been closed the previous two days.  I ordered something called crab puffs, but alas they were merely fancy versions of crab rangoon.  Not bad though.

 

 Friday was getaway day and originally I was planning to take it slow.  However on Thursday I realized that the Louie Dim Sum on Stockton near Broadway was now a House of Dim Sum branch.  Furthermore, the House of Dim Sum was full to the gills the times I walked by.  I also noticed that they apparently opened at 6:45am.  So I decided that if I happened to wake up early I'd go down there to beat the crowd.  In fact I woke up a little after 7 am and headed straight there, indeed beating the crowds.  Of course they didn't have much food either, but they did have baked bbq pork buns, which is what I probably would have ordered anyway.

 

Also at this point I was starting to sour on San Francisco.  Not the food, of course, but driving back to the Royal Pacific in Chinatown was such a hassle, both with traffic once you got back into the city, and then trying to find a parking space at the Royal Pacific, even though you were guaranteed free parking.  Likewise maneuvering around SFO both on foot and by car was also not fun.   So quickly before checking out of the Royal Pacific, I made stops at my last two Chinatown targets.

The final Taishan restaurant branch, Taishan Taste Dim Sum on Powell Street for a full cilantro cheung fun.

And then to Sum Dim Sum at the historic corner of Grant Ave. and California St., home of the historic Chinatown McDonald's restaurant for chicken dumplings.

 
 

 

Now with the mindset that I might not be back to San Francisco again for quite a while, I searched my memory for places which I never got around to trying, and I came up with one--Night Market in South San Francisco.  I remember when it opened pre-COVID that this was an exciting sounding restaurant which was written up in the San Francisco newspapers as uniquely replicating the atmosphere of an Asian night market.  I hadn't heard anything about it lately, but I decided to look it up, and it was still in business.  So I made it my last stop before the short hop over to SFO.  But when I got there was I disappointed.  I assumed it was located in a busy shopping district, maybe a large shopping center with other eateries.  But no, it was all by itself in an industrial area!

 Oh well.  At least they were open and I could scratch it off my list.  I ended up with this interesting fried tofu sandwich.

 

But then I looked across the street and I saw Hung To Seafood restaurant, which I actually recognized as being a third tier dim sum restaurant in South San Francisco.  And even they had dim sum that you don't see in Los Angeles, like this lotus and shrimp meatball.

 And how about this deep fried har gow?

 

 I mean if a local neighborhood dim sum restaurant has stuff like this, what am I missing in the dim sum restaurants that I haven't visited throughout the Bay Area from Redwood City to Union City to Fremont to San Leandro to Alameda to Emeryville to Belmont to Castro Valley and points in between?  So quickly my thinking changed on the spot.  I have to see what other dim sum there is throughout the Bay Area.  I'll just skip the city of San Francisco altogether.

 

Is The Best Chinese Food In the San Gabriel Valley in the City of Walnut?

One San Gabriel Valley city which I really haven't mentioned much in writing is Walnut.  If you've read about my description of the decades long eastward march of Chinese residents and Chinese food starting from Monterey Park in the 1960s, I jump from Rowland Heights to Diamond Bar, without particular mention of Walnut.  That's because Walnut, a relatively small city, is immediately adjacent to Rowland Heights and indeed its history is related to the Rowland family.  As such, I've always treated it as an extension of Rowland Heights.   But in many ways, Walnut is distinct from Rowland Heights, a few miles removed from the main thoroughfares of Rowland Heights and Industry, and I would suspect that its restaurants draw more locally than those in Rowland Heights or even Diamond Bar.  And I know that traveling to Walnut is an unusual occurrence for me.  In fact I hadn't been to Walnut since before COVID when I was invited to lunch at Sunny Dumpling House in Walnut.  I was well acquainted with their locations in Rowland Heights and Lake Forest, and was intrigued by their first sit down location with a wider menu.  

 

The strip mall exterior of Sunny Dumpling belied a nicely decorated restaurant.

 

But the food was the attraction.  Starting out with baskets of regular pork and pork with shrimp xiaolongbao, all I could say was wow.

 

Best flavor ever in an XLB, particularly the rich broth.  Skin was on the thick side while I prefer it thinner, but certainly no complaints.

The beef rolls were also best in class with an extra crisp to them.

 

And then something that we had never seen before, a dish described on the menu as crispy crunchy beef with tofu, containing small toasty soybeans.  Later discovered it was a Sichuan dish called zha zha beef.  A great new dish for me!

 

 As I was leaving the shopping center, I noticed a banner on a restaurant which contained the word "shocking" which you never hear when talking about restaurants.

 

Well, I wouldn't call $11.99 per pound for hotpot shocking, but that was a good enough deal.  Of course I was full from my meal at Sunny Dumpling, but I made a note to return to try this hotpot as soon as possible.  When I did, I saw their selection, and they had all of my favorite items, so I loaded up with over 2 pounds worth!

 

It took several minutes for them to cook my hotpot selection, but in the end it was worth it.

As good as any hotpot broth I've eaten.  And with all my favorite ingredients.  What more could I ask for?  Well, it'd be nice if it were 25 miles closer to me.

But wait, there's more!  Most of the Walnut Chinese restaurants that I had eaten at pre-COVID had turned over.  So I needed to check out some more of them.  At Picnic Time Cafe, I encountered a most interesting combination of breaded chicken cutlet and Shanghai fried noodles.  I'm presuming this is a Taiwanese restaurant and the chicken was the best I've tasted.

 

Meanwhile in the same shopping center at Fu Restaurant, the absolute best fish dumplings ever, with an unbeatable combination of wrapper and filling.

 

And yet another restaurant in the same center on Amar Road, Hong Kong Cafe, a wonderfully crisp curry beef tarts.

 

And around the corner, a great fresh fruit boba parlor, Goomo Tea House.  This is their peach smoothie.  And this shopping center might be the boba capital of the San Gabriel Valley as there are three different boba spots in the span of 10 storefronts!

 

And worth noting from prior visits, the unique Liu and Sun Enterprises is still in business with a rotating daily menu for dishes costing $10.50 each.

Since the offerings rotate daily, the menu looks like this.  Possibly the best bargain in the San Gabriel Valley.

 

So does Walnut have the best Chinese food in the San Gabriel Valley (putting aside the fact that going back a few decades I remember Walnut as being described in the Walnut Valley, though now it is counted today as an SGV community)?  Probably not, because there aren't enough Chinese restaurants in town to make a broad statement.  But on an average per restaurant rating, quite possibly.