What I Ate In The Bay Area On This Month's Trip, While Trying To Solve The Bay Area/San Gabriel Valley Cantonese Food Conundrum

So there are comparable numbers of Chinese residing in the San Francisco Bay area and the Los Angeles area.  Chinese migration to the United States can be divided into two major time periods.  First was the period of free immigration, followed by Chinese exclusion, running approximately from 1850 to 1965.  This wave of migration was almost entirely Cantonese, and within that group, largely from rural Toisan and environs.  It was also centered in Northern California, with some, but relatively little migration to Southern California.  The second period dates from the effective repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1965, and runs until the present.  Initially these migrants came from Hong Kong and Taiwan, but in the past two to three decades has been primarily from Mainland China.   Based on these patterns, the San Francisco Bay area has a greater Cantonese influence, while in the Los Angeles area, the population trends towards the non-Cantonese.

While Cantonese food was obviously the dominant, indeed once the only regional cuisine in the United States for many years, migration from the Chinese Mainland has now turned Cantonese food into just one of many regional cuisines found in the United States.    And while San Francisco was historically the undisputed king of Chinese food, Los Angeles surpassed it sometime during the 1990s, even as to Cantonese cuisine.  As far as dim sum goes, cartless dim sum came to Los Angeles first, and even as late as a dozen years ago, Los Angeles had the best dim sum in the United States.  But then something happened.   Los Angeles dim sum stagnated while Bay Area dim sum thrived, as a series of superior Bay Area dim sum restaurants opened up.  And in the past year Los Angeles dim sum has actually regressed with some dim sum restaurants turning to third party, mass produced, economical dim sum.  It's gotten such that I don't want to eat dim sum in Los Angeles, and each Bay Area trip I try to see how many more of their dim sum restaurants are better than there is anything here.  Before this trip started, my inexact count was that there were almost 20 Bay Area dim sum restaurants that I would rather eat than any of the San Gabriel Valley's dim sum restaurants.   While this trip was not confined to dim sum, the dim sum restaurants were of most interest to me, as you can tell from the following pictures of everything I ate on this trip, in chronological order.

First stop was Nom Nom Bistro in Millbrae, chosen because it was a very popular newly opened restaurant just two miles from San Francisco Airport.  Nom Nom is a Hong Kong style cafe with some dim sum items on the menu.

The item which immediately caught my eye was the Hakka style stuffed bitter melon.  Best bitter melon dish I've ever eaten

  

Equally enticing the Hakka style mugwort cake.

 

Swiss chicken wings were great.

 

As was the vegetarian goose.

 

Double boiled egg white milk.

 

Hot tofu pudding.

 

Next stop was HK Lounge Bistro, the successor to Hong Kong Lounge 2, which burned down several years ago.  Surprisingly they chose to reopen in the SoMa area, which led to the perception that they may had become less authentic and more hipster, and indeed that's what I had expected.  Actually, my beloved crispy baked BBQ pork bun was no surprise, as the Hong Kong Lounge 2 version of this item was probably my favorite.  However this fish cheung fun was fabulous.  Not only was it the best fish cheung fun I had ever eaten, but the rice noodle by itself was the best of any.  Most of the diners were Chinese.  This is clearly a high quality Chinese restaurant. The total tab for these two was about $38.50, but well worth it.

 

Exploring the streets of Chinatown, I found this tanghulu at Sweet Pop on Grant Avenue.

 

Next stop on Geary Blvd. in the Richmond District Chinatown was Taisan Huakee, one of the growing number of Taishan style restaurants opening up in San Francisco.  The beef and egg steamed rice was awesome.

 

As was the yellow eel claypot rice.

 

Salt and pepper tofu.

 

And snow pea leaves.

 

Day 2 started with a trip to the remodeled Pearl Bay Tea House in San Leandro, which is the first dim sum palace menu to include (on the cover no less) a separate section of Taishanese items.  We did skip the poached pork kidney and pork liver, but the "Country Style Meat Dumplings" were good.  Note that "country style" and "traditional" are often code words for dishes from Taishan and neighboring Kaiping

 

And the giant "Authentic Toishan Style Steamed Bun".  Note fork for scale.  Historically the Toishan steamed bun was much smaller, and is filled with chicken, Chinese sausage and hard boiled egg.  I never saw one of these until I visited San Francisco, as they were rare in Los Angeles.

 

Then the Kaiping style sesame roll which are fun to unroll.

 

Something totally new was the Shunde fried fish cake.

 

We also had a couple of straight Cantonese items, like this baked yam bun.

 

And finally the traditional steamed bean curd roll.

 

I then headed straight over to the new Pearl Bay Manor in Dublin for a couple of items not on the Pearl Bay Tea House menu.  What a spread!  Lichee shaped shrimp balls, pan fried durian buns with cheese, purple sweet potato pancakes and coconut buns.

 

 

Another stroll through Chinatown takes me to Ha Tea (not Hey Tea) for this pineapple smoothie.

 

Dinner at the recently opened LetsSweet Cafe in SoMa with a lot of good selections, starting off with fish shu mai.

 

How about fish skins? 

 

Moving on to the entrees, here's the silky shrimp egg and rice.

 

Stir fried spaghetti and meat sauce.

 

Hainan chicken rice.

It was back to Millbrae and the newly opened Won Kok Millbrae, replacing the longtime Asian Pearl.  Usually when an old line dim sum restaurant is replaced, the successor marks a significant upgrade, and this certainly was the case here.  This baked sesame mochi bread was the best thing I ate on the trip.  Indescribably delicious, as they used to say.

 

Not to mention the purple crispy shrimp rice noodle roll.

 

But the most revelatory stop on my trip was not a dim sum parlor, but rather Blue Sky Cafe in Belmont, a Hong Kong style cafe so popular that I passed on going there on my most recent trips to the Bay Area not wanting to fight the crowds there.  This time I lucked out and got there with one open table, happy to finally try the highest regarded Hong Kong style cafe in the Bay Area and get some clues as to why despite having such a big gap over Los Angeles as far as dim sum was concerned, there were more and better Hong Kong style cafes in the San Gabriel Valley than the Bay Area.   This Fujian style egg tofu was great and the portion was huge.  But my biggest discovery came before this dish was served.  Rather the discovery was in the menu.  Blue Sky Cafe was not a cha chang teng with a mix of Cantonese comfort food and western dishes.  Its menu was primarily Cantonese entrees with a small number of western dishes.  So no wonder why Bay Area Chinese flock to the San Gabriel Valley to places like Cafe Baccali, Alice's Kitchen, HK Macau Kitchen, Delicious Food Corner, and more.  These places hardly exist in the Bay Area!

 

Last night in San Francisco saw a light dinner at J & X Bistro, a newly opened Jiangxi style restaurant on Jackson St. in Chinatown.  I passed on the Jiangxi and Sichuan dishes which would be overly spicy, and rather pricey, in favor of this salt and pepper tofu.

 

Plus an avocado oat milk at Great Tea, which took over the spot on Washington St. on the edge of Portsmouth Square which was the longtime home of preserved plum and fruit shops, and before that a burger and noodle place called Mee Mee Burger.

 

The biggest surprise of the trip turned out to be right across the street from the Royal Pacific Motor Inn where Zhen's Kitchen took over the historic space long occupied by Hing Lung.  Stopping by before checking out in the morning, I was stunned to find that the space had been converted into a mini dim sum and seafood palace, complete with full color check off dim sum menu, with items like my beloved crispy baked BBQ pork buns.

 

Delicious fish cheung fun

And the oddly named deep fried chicken shaped meat dumpling.  I kind of guessed this might be a hom sui guk, and indeed this was a delicate version of that dish.

 

At this point, I probably wouldn't add Zhen's Kitchen to my list of Bay Area dim sum restaurants better than anything in the San Gabriel Valley.  But if it was in Los Angeles, I'd go there all the time.

 

And one last stop before leaving Chinatown was Fruitful Dreams on Jackson St. for their short tanghulu stick.

  

Even though I want to try as many new dim sum restaurants as I can to have a comprehensive list of Bay Area restaurants preferable to anything in the San Gabriel Valley, for my last meal I went back to Treasure in Belmont, to see if it was as overwhelming as it when it opened last year.  Here's the black sesame bun, black exterior with black sesame filling.

 

Also the traditional bbq pork pastry has been given an updated look here.

 

Here's the tri-colored velvet swans.

 

While these were fine, Treasure didn’t have quite the same pop as it did a year ago, with some of my favorite items no longer on the menu. Still clearly better than anything in the San Gabriel Valley.

 

 

With still time to spare before my flight, I headed down to Daly City to check on the new flagship location of Koi Palace.  It was supposed to open last December, and at that time I decided I would time my next Bay Area trip after their opening, and after the hoopla ended, but obviously that didn't work as opening dates in December, spring, and summer, have all passed.  I kind of assumed there were other Chinese eateries in Serramonte Center, but there was only a branch of 85°C Bakery and Café, where I got this something I've never seen before, an apple muffin.

 

 

All in all a very successful trip, with three more dim sum restaurants added to the last of Bay Area restaurants dim sum which I prefer to any dim sum restaurant in the San Gabriel, putting that count past 20 restaurants.  Thanks to Anthony and Juliana, Greg, Kelly and Aleesha and Art Z for joining me and enabling me to sample many more dishes than I could by myself. 

 

My Kansas Chinese Food Crawl

Just completed my Chinese food crawl of Kansas and it was a great success.  Now many of you probably are puzzled by the topic, if not downright questioning my present state of mind.  But while 15 or more years ago the thought of finding anything close to decent Chinese food in Kansas was unthinkable, things have changed.  The major development, as I first reported on a dozen years ago, was the beginning of the tide of Mainland Chinese students enrolling at American colleges and universities, essentially at any educational institution in the country with a large campus.  Now, sizable numbers of Chinese students at American universities is nothing new, dating back to the late 1960s and the drastic rewrite of American immigration laws which previously restricted Asian immigration to the United States to a small annual trickle.  At that time, large numbers of students from Hong Kong and Taiwan began to enroll in American universities.  The one difference between those Chinese students and today's Mainlanders is that many of the Hong Kong and Taiwan students chose to remain in the United States after finishing their studies, and as such were amenable to incorporating Western food in their diets.  On the other hand, most of today's Mainland Chinese students are obligated to return to China after finishing their studies, and have less incentive to Westernize their diets.  As such, this creates a demand for authentic Chinese food in the vicinity of most large universities throughout the United States, and which led me to this culinary visit to Kansas.

Now Kansas was not a random choice for me, as I could travel to any part of the country to find university based Chinese restaurants appealing to Mainland Chinese students.  Rather, having visited all 50 states by 2002, I started working on metropolitan areas, and one of the three that I have yet to visit was Kansas City.  And I saw that a trip to Kansas City would enable me to visit four large college campuses--Missouri-Kansas City, University of Kansas,  Kansas State University, and Wichita State University.  I then started digging to determine where the Chinese students at these universities ate, looking for commentary as well as restaurant menus, to determine sources of authentic Chinese food.  Along the way I also discovered that there seemed to be a Chinese community in the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City, and reviewed restaurants in that area, too.  For the most part I selected the restaurants to be visited and the dishes to be ordered well before my trip.   As it turned out, I couldn't not find a Chinese restaurant in Wichita with authentic dishes, so I scratched that city, which would have been an extended drive, off my list.

Having resolved not to fly out of Los Angeles International Airport after last doing so in early 2025 and hating it, I booked my trip to Kansas City via Las Vegas.  Consequently though I flew out of Burbank at 9am, I did not arrive in Kansas City until 5pm.  Not having eaten all day I drove to straight to Kin Lin, near the Missouri-Kansas City campus, and one which was actually described as a hangout for Chinese students at that school.   Indeed, when I got there, I saw that the campus was literally across the street. While I had noted a number of Mainlander dishes on the menu, I saw no Chinese students in the restaurant while I was there, even though classes had already started.  I don't know whether I got there too early, or perhaps this school was more greatly affected by the recent decline in Chinese student enrollment in American universities as caused by Trump administration policies than other better known schools.  

The dish that I had pre-selected for this restaurant was cumin fish, which turned out quite differently from what I had expected.  Rather being a stir fry dish, it came out looking like a salt and pepper type of dish.  A little too salty, but OK.

 

View of the campus from the restaurant parking lot

 

After checking into my hotel a mile away, it was a very short walk to my next stop, Heritage By Bo Lings, one of the locations of the Bo Lings Chinese restaurant empire in Kansas City, which includes the Chinese restaurant concession at Kansas City Airport.  I had actually heard of Bo Lings, because when I worked at Ernst & Young there was another guy named David Chan there who worked in the Kansas City office, and we often got each other's email.  So at some point in time I asked him about Chinese food in Kansas City and he mentioned Bo Lings.  As far as I could tell, while the clientele at the branches of Bo Lings were largely non-Chinese, there were some authentic dishes on their menu.  But what attracted my attention was the entry noted Honey Walnut (shrimp or chicken).  Now while I have had honey walnut shrimp likely hundreds of times over the years, mostly at Chinese banquets, never had I seen or even imagined honey walnut chicken.  Granted it would seem simple enough to substitute the shrimp out for chicken, but was I surprised with what came out of the kitchen which looked like orange chicken with no hint of mayonnaise, though I didn't think there was a mistake since the young Chinese American waiter and I had discussed the rarity of the dish.   However, one bite in and it was clear there was a strong taste of mayonnaise.  The waiter came back to explain that the sauce was one-third mayonnaise.

 

 

Day 2 was spent in the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City, about 20 miles away from my hotel near downtown Kansas City.   Kansas City had no pre-immigration act Toisanese population, so it was a big surprise that the three restaurants I ate at here were Cantonese.  In the case of cities that had no such Toisanese population pre-immigration reform but developed Chinese communities in the 1970s and later, such as Dallas and Atlanta, these communities were non-Cantonese.   And while yes, these cities Chinese communities did host Cantonese restaurants, they were usually operated by non-Cantonese, particularly the Fujianese who started to arrive in the 1980s.   

My first stop was 888 Cafe inside the humongous 888 Market in Overland Park.  I'll match it up against any Chinese supermarket in the San Gabriel Valley, and indeed 888 Cafe was much larger than any in-supermarket Chinese fast food operation that I had ever seen.  

888 Cafe Ordering Counter

 

 Coconut Bolo Bao

 

Dedicated rack for crispy baked goods--a first as far as I'm concerned

Before my trip, the one destination which I was looking forward to the most was Monkey King Cafe & BBQ in Lenaxa, and not because it was a Hong Kong style cafe, a fact which I didn't even focus on.  No, it was because while perusing menus of Chinese restaurants in the area, I noticed their menu offered "Undo" noodles.  And they didn't misspell udon just once--the menu was full of Undo noodle references.  I was so taken by this that I posted immediately posted a picture of their menu on Instagram.  As it turned out, it was a full menu Hong Kong style cafe and the stir fried chicken udon was quite good.

 

Next stop was Hong Kong Star in Olathe.  This was a fortuitous visit as it gave me an insight I didn't have about the Kansas City Chinese community.  When I saw the white board Chinese language specials, that was a clue that there was actually a Cantonese community in the Kansas City area, so I asked the owner about it.  She said her great-grandfather came to Los Angeles, likely over 100 years ago, and that much of the family is still there.  She said she herself arrived in Kansas City in the 1990s, when there were few Cantonese, but there are quite a few in the area now.  I had not heard of new Cantonese-American communities developing in the United States in the past three decades, so I wonder if this is just a one off, or if there are others.  In the case of Hong Kong Star, I ended up deviating from my pre-trip menu choice, as I decided to lighten up to some salt and pepper tofu, as I could see I might be biting off more than I could chew by the end of the day.

  

 

My final stop of the day was still on the Kansas side of the border, but 20 miles to the north in Kansas City, Kansas, aka KCK, which turned out to be the biggest highlight of the trip.  While most of the restaurants I chose for the trip were based on the best food available, I also wanted to eat once in KCK.  However, most of the menus were disappointing, because as I ultimately learned when I got there, Kansas City, Kansas is a working class, mostly minority community.  But in looking at the menu for Tao Tao Restaurant, I hit the jackpot, for they offered Springfield Cashew Chicken, a unique dish which I chronicled after my trip almost fifteen years ago to Springfield, Missouri.    

Now Springfield Cashew Chicken is a very localized dish, found mostly in southern Missouri and eastern Tennessee.  But I thought that since Kansas City was less than 200 miles away from Springfield, that maybe the Springfield version might be available somewhere in Kansas City for the benefit of residents who knew of the dish.  So when perusing Kansas City area menus, anytime I saw cashew chicken on the menu I'd look deeper to see if there was a picture, and in every case it was the typical Americanized cashew chicken, pan fried instead of deep fried, in a rich brown gravy.  Except for Tao Tao Restaurant, whose menu specified Springfield Cashew Chicken.  When I walked in the restaurant I assumed this was just the random restaurant I was hoping for.  However as it turns out, Tao Tao served Springfield Cashew Chicken because Chef Annie worked with the Leong family in Springfield, and uses the original Leong Springfield Cashew Chicken recipe.  Also, walking into the restaurant I realized this restaurant was predominantly patronized by locals, because the neighborhood was, to put it nicely, kind of gritty.  The front door was glass reinforced by metal.  And when you opened that door there was a similar reinforced door that was locked, and you had to ring the bell for them to unlock it.  Anyway the Springfield Cashew Chicken was great, as good as the best of the five versions I ate in Springfield in 2012, and I got to speak with Chef Annie, who happy to meet someone who was specifically looking for Springfield Cashew Chicken and had eaten the original Leong family version.  Even though the local press annointed them the best Chinese restaurant in KCK, I doubt if many foodies or people from outside the neighborhood come here.

 

 

A separate article on Springfield Cashew Chicken and my visit to Tao Tao is on Chandavkl's Menuism Blog

 

Day three was on the road from Kansas City to Lawrence, Kansas.  First stop was Red Pepper in Lawrence, adjacent to the University of Kansas campus, for this Sichuan fish with pickled vegetable soup.  Haven't had this simple dish in quite a while, as it seems to have been superceded by the more modernly embellished sauerkraut fish soup chains.  This was excellent.

 

 

Next was Yolotea in the historic downtown business district of Lawrence.  It was the only boba drink I had on the entire trip as there appear to be very few "bubble tea" shops anywhere in Kansas.  This strawberry dragonfruit slush was very good.

 

Last stop in Lawrence was Zoe's Noodles, a bit further from the University of Kansas campus.  Their house made bacon with cabbage was very good.  Zoe's also carried a freezer full of items for customers to take home and cook at home, including big bags of beef buns and pickled fish head.  With an operation like Zoe's, along with a bubble tea store, and Red Pepper, you can tell there's a sizable Chinese contingent in Lawrence that is not wanting for their own kind of food, and the waiter at Bo Lings was certainly correct in saying that the Chinese food in Lawrence was good.   But also there has been a diminution in the Chinese student community as noted above, as the local hotpot restaurant has recently closed down.

 

 

Topeka, Kansas was not on my original dining menu, but when I saw that it was just a half hour drive away from Lawrence, I decided I would stop to take a gander at the State Capitol building.  And since there was Chinese restaurant just two blocks away, Golden Dragon Chinese & Japanese restaurant, why not pay a visit?  And as it turns out, it was a rare discovery, because they had a drive-thru window.  A Chinese restaurant with a drive-thru window?  How does that even work at a cook to order Chinese restaurant?   But yes, there's the sign pointing to the drive-thru, a giant handwritten menu board, and the drive-thru window.  

 

 

While I didn't utilize the drive-thru, I did get an order of chicken skewers for a snack.  The price was only a fraction of what I would pay back home.

 

Finally reaching my ultimate destination for the day of Manhattan, Kansas, and home to Kansas State University, it was clear this wasn't the same as the University of Kansas as far as Chinese influence was concerned.   Only one restaurant, Chen's Chinese Restaurant, had Mainlander food items on the menu, and there were no bubble tea shops in town.  My water boiled fish was just so-so, a little overcooked and overly salty.

 

As originally planned, Chen's Chinese Restaurant in Manhattan was to be the last stop of my Kansas food crawl, with the last day scheduled for local sightseeing.  However while at Chen's restaurant I received a message from one of my Instagram followers, @ericj8, asking if I was going to Wichita and eat at Lee's Chinese Restaurant.  I was hoping that Lee's was the authentic Chinese restaurant I was looking for, but it turned out to be like a 1980's Hong Kong style restaurant, not wholly Americanized, but not worth a long drive.  But with the possibility of going to Wichita being revived, I decided to take a another look at Wichita for possible Mainlander student food.  Originally, I had examined the menus of restaurants posted on Yelp and found nothing but Americanized food.  This time I dug a little deeper, going beyond those menus and into the menus associated with online ordering.  And bingo, Oh Yeah! China Bistro's online order menu showed a number of Mainlander, and surprisingly, Taiwanese dishes.  

So bright and early the next day I headed out on my two hour trek south to Wichita.  On the way to Oh Yeah! I noticed something unexpected.  I was driving by the Wichita State campus and Oh Yeh! was still miles away.  Was this not a Wichita State student hangout?   And then when I pulled up to Oh Yeh! there were a bunch of business card holders in the foyer, including three from different Chinese real estate brokers and one from a Chinese church.  You mean there's a Chinese community here?   When I walked in, I asked the waitress if there were a lot of Chinese students at Wichita State.  Her response was that while she was a Wichita State student, there weren't many Chinese students there.  I decided to order the Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and I asked the waitress if there were many Taiwanese in Wichita.  She said no.  OK.  So there's Taiwanese and Sichuan dishes on the menu, but there are few Mainlander students at Wichita State and no Taiwanese in town.  So I left the restaurant having eaten my salty, but properly spiced Taiwanese beef noodle soup, confused as to why Oh Yeah! had the menu it had.

Since I only went to Wichita and found Taiwanese food because of the message from the previous evening, I figured I also needed to check out Lee's Chinese Restaurant.  It had a really old time Cantonese menu, but one item stood out--crispy fried duck.  I thought it might have been like old time almond duck, which I really like, or if not it would be something different.  While waiting for my dish, I asked the owner about the Chinese population in Wichita.  He says there was none, just Vietnamese.  Well, at least he was consistent with the waitress at Oh Yeah! but I was still puzzled.  When my crispy duck came out I was overwhelmed.  It wasn't boneless almond duck, but truly a cut up deep fried duck.  Absolutely wonderful!  I wondered if this was something he came up with, or if it was an old time Cantonese dish.  He said it was an old time dish, one which I never knew existed.  And after asking around, I couldn't find anybody in California who was familiar with the dish and only found a couple of people who had ever had it in the distant past.

  

And that was the end of my Kansas food crawl, except for the long drive back to Kansas City.  But I still was bothered by Oh Yeah! Bistro in Wichita.  In desperation I had taken the business card of one of the real estate brokers and sent her a text message.  Surprisingly she replied and explained everything to me.  There indeed was a Chinese community in Wichita dating back to the 1990s, started by Taiwanese professionals and academics.  And most recently, there has been an influx of Chinese Mainlanders who run massage parlors throughout Wichita.  Indeed, after hearing that, I did a Google search for Chinese massage in Wichita, and stopped counting when I got to 50.  And she said that Oh Yeah! was her favorite restaurant and wished there were other local options to going to Kansas City.  So I guess unless you were Taiwanese or a recent Mainlander, you wouldn't know about the Wichita Chinese community.  And that's why you can get both Taiwanese beef soup and deep fried pork intestine on the menu.  

Oh, and the elected mayor of 400,000 population Wichita is a Chinese woman named Lily Wu, who came to Wichita to anchor the local television news.