What We Ate In San Francisco (In Addition To Eight Tables)

While last month's posting gave a detailed look at our wonderful dinner at George Chen's Eight Tables in San Francisco Chinatown, there were a number of other dining highlights on the trip.  On our previous trip last October, we had planned to eat at Lai Hong Lounge in Chinatown, only to find that they had not reopened from their pandemic closure.  However right before leaving on the trip I saw a news items saying they had indeed reopened, so this was a logical first stop.  The restaurant used their hiatus to do a remodel, the most obvious changes being moving the main entrance to the other end of the building closest to Broadway, and the insertion of a banquet type backdrop on the back wall.  While I have noticed that some restaurants that have reopened after a long layoff have suffered a major drop in quality, Lai Hong Lounge has not.  This is their tofu vegetable trio.  The trio was three different items, a tofu eggplant, a tofu mushroom and an egg tofu variety.  

Meanwhile, the coffee ribs have migrated from the dim sum menu to the dinner menu.  A heavy dose of coffee, which actually affected my sleep.

While looking for new Chinese restaurants that may have recently opened up accessible to my meeting in downtown San Francisco, I ran across bao, in the Mission District, which had an extremely interesting modern dim sum menu.  It was not within walking distance, but before I left Los Angeles I was checking San Francisco transit information and found that they had changed to an app based system where cash fares were actually charged a premium over buying online tickets.  It took this dinosaur a while to figure out, but I did download the app.  And when I jumped on the Muni at Mission and First, I also placed an online order at bao.

The bus stopped on just about every block, so it took almost twenty minutes to get to 16th and Mission.  I then walked the two blocks to 17th and Valencia.  That actually was not much faster than if I had walked!   By the time I got to bao, my order was ready.  The baked Malaysia chicken curry bun was huge!

 

They also had my favorite crispy baked bbq pork buns.   Only some of the restaurants have this in Los Angeles, but they're all over the Bay Area.

My original plan was to stop by the newly opened G & Y Bakery & Cafe on Clay Street, which opens very early in the morning, on the first of my three daily morning walks from Chinatown to my downtown meeting site.  Imagine my surprise when I dropped by and saw that there were no baked goods for sale, and that G & Y was essentially a Hong Kong style cafe.  So I had to wait until dinnertime.  This is the corn in fish sauce, which is offered in either deep fried with batter or pan fried without.  Both this and the broccoli beef were excellent.

 

After dinner I went on an evening stroll through Chinatown to check out to see if there were any more new developments in Chinatown since last fall's trip.   It was great being back at the Royal Pacific Motor Inn, which had closed for two years because of the pandemic.   For last fall's San Francisco trip we ended up staying at the Sam Wong Hotel on the same block.  While similarly located to be in the middle of Chinatown, it can't match up with the Royal Pacific's free parking.  Indeed our bill for four nights at the Royal Pacific was less than the room rate for the Hilton on Kearny St. for just one night, without parking.

 

It was interesting to walk by the House of Nanking.  As usual, business was booming and the outdoor seating was full.  House of Nanking has been the most crowded Chinese restaurant in Chinatown for decades, with nary a Chinese patron for most of the time.  Well, I did eat there once back 20 years ago, and there is an occasional Asian face in the audience.  But generally when you go by the House of Nanking, you might as well be in Copenhagen based when looking at the faces of the diners.  Not to say that the food there is bad, even though it's probably in my bottom 10 for Chinese food in San Francisco Chinatown, but combined with their pricing, most Chinese diners have enough sense to avoid this place.

 

Looking for a snack during break time downtown, I found two nearby branches of the same boba chain, Happy Lemon, one of them apparently a block away at 425 Mission St.  However, when I got to the spot that Google Maps indicated was the location of Happy Lemon, it was 555 Mission St., and no signs of anything looking like boba.  So I went up the block to manually find 425 Mission St., which based on the numbering would be slightly north of First St.  But the first address with a “400" number was 415 Mission St., and the numbers went down from there.  So I turned on Google Maps and asked for directions.  I’ve always had trouble following Google Maps for walking directions, and I didn’t know if it was going crazy or I just didn’t understand.  But I ended up going east on First Street and being directed to something called Minna Street, a short block east of and parallel to Mission Street.  Dubiously I kept going, and magically there was Happy Lemon!  And I could see it was directly behind a building on Mission Street.  555 Mission Street, to be exact.  

Anyway, I ordered what they called a Bubble waffle, which is merely a fancy name for a regular Hong Kong Waffle.  The waffle itself was OK, but I ordered the salty cheese topping which made all the difference in the world.  It was delicious, though it was sweet, not salty.  Afterwards I discovered the mystery of the street address.  This branch of Happy Lemon was in a complex known as the Salesforce Transbay Transit center, which included not only office space, but a transit center, and a third story, blocks long park.  The main entrance to the complex is on Minna Street, but for some reason carries a 425 Mission Street address, and any part of that complex carries the 425 address.

The next dinner was at Grand Harbor in Burlingame, which I chose for the wonderful view of San Francisco Bay on top of the food.

Dinner started out with an exceedingly rich chicken broth.

This is the salty egg yolk deep fried shrimp and pumpkin.  The shrimp is separate from the pumpkin, so you had to pay attention to which one you were eating.

An interesting pairing was diced filet mignon and broccoli with fried egg tofu.

 

The best dish was an old favorite of mine, egg whites on a bed of fried glass noodles.

This was a simple looking vegetable dish, but the gingko nuts turned it into something outstanding.

I thought dinner was over when they cleared the table, but then these red bean buns showed up.

I would have been puzzled by this life sized photo of Guy Fieri in the lobby had I not seen the episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives that visited Grand Harbor.  I am puzzled, however, that Grand Harbor was featured on that program, since it is neither a diner, drive-in nor dive.

Looking to pick up breakfast on my way to my downtown seminar, I passed by Yummy Dim Sum on Stockton St. at 7:50am just as they were rolling open the gate.  I inquired if they were open for business and the lady said yes.  I saw that an order of three baked bbq pork buns was only $1.80, and I got two orders.  I actually had to wait a couple of minutes as they pulled the buns out of the oven, and then brushed on the glazing.  And I don’t think that these buns were better than those at other neighborhood bakeries.  But so hot and fresh out of the oven, they were fantastic.

Right on the edge of Chinatown, where Clay Street meets the financial district, I stumbled onto a new Taiwanese cafe called Yilan Bento.  I ordered the popcorn chicken, which was the biggest order of that item I had ever seen.  It was equal to a full sized entree at a regular Chinese restaurant and I struggled to finish it. 

Another find in the heart of Chinatown on Grant Avenue was the newly opened Jade Chocolates.  Never in my wildest dreams would I imagine a Chinese eatery with “Chocolate” in the name, as any kind of dessert had historically been a deep afterthought in a Chinese restaurant.  However, the 21st century has seen a proliferation of dessert shops, though Jade Chocolates is the first I know of to include an emphasis on chocolates.  I picked up a gigantic baked bbq pork bun for $6 or $7 which was absolutely horrible.  Mostly bread, little filling, and the bread wasn’t even sweet.  

On getaway day I picked up a couple of items in Chinatown before checking out of the Royal Pacific for the drive back to Los Angeles.  At Blue Sky Cafe on Powell Street, I had orders of har gow and pork with vegetable dumplings.

And a block further down on Powell Street I was at a grocery store called Wendy & Moon, which I had read also had prepared foods, such as this chicken banh mi.

It was then over the Bay Bridge to our final stop of the trip at the recently opened Pearl Bay in Fremont. The first thing that struck me about the restaurant was the wall of seafood.

  

Then came the giant video screen, not showing sporting events or music videos, but rather some of their top dishes, amazingly gigantic.

Of course we had to order my favorite crispy baked bbq pork buns.

Fried pork dumplings were excellent as well as visual.

Spinach and shrimp dumplings.

Guangzhou style pork dumplings.

And finally for dessert, mango pudding.

A great way to end the trip.  Pearl Bay has rocketed to the top of my list of favorite large Chinese restaurants for combining food and setting.

A Meal Of A Lifetime At Eight Tables in San Francisco Chinatown

Having eaten at nearly 8,000 Chinese restaurants I had reached a point where I actually wrote that every new Chinese restaurant I visited had a certain sameness.  Yes, there were wide variations in the restaurants I ate at, from giant Hong Kong style seafood palaces to buck-a-plate Americanized Chinese express food in the inner city to small town Chinese buffets to mom and pop regional Chinese cuisine restaurants where mom or pop had to ask a bilingual English speaking customer to find out what I wanted to order, to everything else in between.  But I had been to so many Chinese restaurants in whatever categories may come to mind that most new restaurant visits were a case of deja vu all over again.

So with this background, to find a Chinese restaurant where I would have a number of different Chinese first experiences means that restaurant is something special.  And that was certainly the case with Eight Tables on Broadway in San Francisco Chinatown.  

Eight Tables is located in the China Live complex conceived by chef and restauranteur George Chen.  My earliest recollection of the three story China Live space was back in the 1980's when the historic 644 Broadway location was rebuilt, and then occupied by Ocean City, one of the grand Hong Kong style seafood restaurants and banquet facilities of the day.  Ocean City's owners also became perhaps the most notorious Chinese restauranteurs in American history when they literally folded their tent in the middle of the night, moving out anything they could carry before daybreak, stiffing the restaurant's creditors and employees.  

The space subsequently became Gold Mountain Restaurant, a banquet facility so popular that even as a Los Angeles resident, I attended a number of banquets there.  The closing of Gold Mountain a decade ago was indeed ominous, perhaps portending tough times ahead for San Francisco Chinatown, and in hindsight marking the beginning of the decline of Cantonese banquet facilities as the venue of choice for Chinese American weddings.   Not surprisingly, George Chen's proposal to take the old Gold Mountain location and convert it into something like a Chinese version of Eataly was met with skepticism.  However, both China Live and Eight Tables have proven Chen to be prescient.

The clearly unique thing about Eight Tables is that it has taken the Chinese concept of private chateau dining, making the diner feel more like they are eating at somebody's residence, albeit a fancy one, than at a restaurant, and brought it to the Western Hemisphere.  (Yeah there have been restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley named Private Kitchen and Private Party, but they were regular Chinese restaurants operating in shopping centers.)  So obviously on these grounds, Eight Tables was a new experience for me.  But even beyond that, as I have written about in the past, there isn't a lot of high level fine Chinese dining in the United States, and I've certainly never had any.  And hand in hand with that, I've never experienced a tasting menu at a Chinese restaurant.

For now access to Eight Tables is made through the front entrance of China Live and up the stairs, rather than from the pre-pandemic entrance on Kenneth Rexroth Pl. off Vallejo St.  This takes you into a parlor with walls that are adorned with old photos of what turns out to be George Chen's family.  From there you enter the dining room that literally has eight tables, partitioned off into semi-private spaces, with a well appointed staff in designer suits.  The restaurant has been painstakingly decorated with such features as white Chinese wedding dress lace wallpaper.  No wonder Time magazine named Eight Tables as one of the best appointed dining rooms in the world.

 

The nine course tasting menu dinner is preceded by Da Hong Pao, a premium oolong tea.  Wine lovers can get an optional wine selection paired specifically with each dish.

Dinner begins with one bite selections representing the nine essential flavors of Chinese cuisine.

Starting at the top, the nine flavors are:  SWEET - Red jujube date with mochi; SALTY - taro root with shiitake mushroom; SOUR - tangerine with fingerlime; BITTER - bitter melon with seafood farce; NUMBING - puffed beef tendon with Sichuan chili oil; SPICY - boneless chicken wing with spicy eight treasure sauce; FRAGRANT - tempura congee with periogord truffle; SHARP - hiramasa yellowtail with Buddha's hand fruit and jalapeno; SMOKY - cherrywood trout.  

We thought the fingerlime in the sour dish was fish roe, but as you can see from the interior of the fingerlime, it was actually fruit based.

 

The first regular dish was the asparagus with Kaluga caviar, on a bed of tofu and with bracken fern, which like most of the dishes were locally sourced.  In this case, even the caviar.

 

An interesting element of the tasting menu at Eight Tables is some of the dishes are elevated versions of otherwise common Chinese dishes.  For example, here is their foie gras xiao long bao.

A nice combination of Monterey steamed squid, fried oyster on top of a squash blossom with sweet and sour sauce on the side.

Here's a better look at the fried oyster and squash blossom deconstructed.  The meat from the squid is incorporated in the squash as are fish eggs..

 

Another riff on a more traditional dish is this shrimp toast.   There are separate layers of shrimp and langostino paste, and the sauce is a uni based emulsion.

This steamed egg pudding may look like simple fare, but is a powerhouse dish.  Slices of porcini mushrooms, abalone and ginseng chicken top thin layers of silky smooth steamed eggs served with wonderfully rich chicken and abalone broth.  And the balls of medjool dates add a fantastic touch.

This is the partially deboned osmanthus smoked squab with glutinous rice, dried scallop and garlic chive.

Stir fried cumin lamb belly with pea shoots and snap peas.

Another elevated Chinese classic is the Iberico pork char siu with fish fragrant eggplant and fiddlehead fern.  The inclusion of fiddlehead fern is interesting since it is a vegetable that is foraged locally in the San Francisco Bay area.

 

Continuing with the theme of elevated Chinese classics, this fried rice (which was brought as a side dish to the char siu) is the best fried rice I've ever eaten.  And that's saying a lot because in my youth when I transitioned from eating only soy sauce and rice at Chinese restaurants to slightly more diverse dishes, my favorite was fried rice.  So what makes this fried rice so great?  For one thing, it's made with Carolina Gold rice, imported from South Carolina, which retails from between $5 to $10 per pound.  That price reflects the fact that many people consider Carolina Gold to be the best rice around. In addition, while the dish is made with only Carolina Gold rice, it is a mixture of rice that has been pan fried, deep fried, and puffed/popped.  What a combination!

 

Dinner came to an end with this wonderfully refreshing dessert, called jasmine tea rice pudding.  But again the simple description belies the beauty of this dish, with an ironic pairing of jasmine tea foam and jasmine rice, hibiscus sorbet, and diced dragon fruit.

 

We were honored during the dinner by the presence by Eight Tables Executive Chef George Chen, the man who took a white elephant structure in a neighborhood facing an uncertain future and had the vision to conceive and then sucessfully bring the entire China Live project to fruition.

Thanks also to Chef de Cuisine Floyd Nunn for the tour of the stunningly large kitchen.

For somebody who thought he had seen it all with respect to Chinese dining in America, dinner at Eight Tables was definitely the meal of a lifetime.

In New York With The Kardashians and Lots of Unremarkable Chinese Food

Well first the Kardashian part.  Once in a while we get a glimpse of a Kardashian, or really a glimpse of a crowd of people looking for a Kardashian.  Back in 2010 we were celebrating my birthday at Katsuya, on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.  We arrived for an early dinner to beat the crowd, but when we finished dinner there was an absolute mob scene outside.  As we waded our way through the crowd of paparazzi and fans we saw that one of the power couples of the day, Lamar Odom and Khloe Kardashian were coming into the house.  

 

Needless to say it was quite a while until the valet came with our car.  By that time the crowd had gotten significantly larger, and as we drove off a car arrived behind us.  As we drove off, we decided to drive around the block and in front of Katsu-ya again, where we saw that someone was getting out of that car amidst a frenzy of activity.  We actually didn't see the person, but it was clear that somebody was making their way into the restaurant.  We found out from the next day's TV tabloid shows that it was Kim Kardashian alighting from the vehicle that had been behind us.

All this is prefatory to my account of last week's visit to Manhattan and the food I ate there.  For more than 15 years I visited Manhattan two or three times a year, mostly on business.  But having retired in 2018, and with the intervening pandemic, it's been four years since I last visited Manhattan.   Consequently, I was eager to revisit the Chinese food scene in Manhattan to see what was new, and hoping against hope that something better may have opened up in Manhattan in the interim.  (Since this was only a four night trip, there would be no opportunity to visit Flushing, where the Chinese food is much better.)

Of course, most of the time spent in New York was playing tourist, attending Broadway shows and traveling around Manhattan.  I wanted to see the Steinway Building, the world's skinniest skyscraper at just 60 feet wide, but because of the cloudy weather we didn't come close to seeing the top of the building from any vantage point.  But bordering the south edge of Central Park, that took us to 59th Street.  Walking across the street from Central Park, we saw this massive crowd blocking the sidewalk, as well as a slightly smaller crowd directly across the street.  We asked somebody in the crowd what was going on and she said the people were waiting for someone famous to come out, but she didn't know who.  We then walked around the crowd in front of what turned out to be the Ritz Carlton and asked the doorman at an adjacent building what was going on.  "Kardashians."  Enough said.  Like us, the Kardashians had arrived in New York from Los Angeles, though their visit was more purposeful.  This was the family headquarters for that night's Met Gala.

As I have written many times in the past, Chinese food in New York has been clearly a major cut below that in California, going back probably to the 1990s.  A major factor is that Chinese food in America continues to improve due to a combination of new Chinese regional cuisines arriving on our shores, as well as the creation of new dishes, because Chinese love their food so much that everyone is looking for newer and better dishes.  However it takes forever for these dishes to reach New York.  For example, two of my favorite Chinese dishes, Shandong beef rolls and fish dumplings, came to Los Angeles around 2005.  I couldn't find either of these in New York until probably five years ago.  Likewise, new, creative types of dim sum, like crispy baked bbq pork buns came to California around 2015.  But the only reason you can find any at all in New York is that the inventor of the dish, the Tim Ho Wan chain out of Hong Kong, opened a Manhattan branch in 2018.  The crispy baked bbq pork bun is my very favorite Chinese dish,  and surprisingly I did find one other version of this dish in New York, at Awesum Dim Sum near Times Square.  This was the first version of the bun I didn't like; in fact it was terrible.

 

You can multiply the list of cutting edge Chinese dishes in California that you can't get in New York (not even Flushing) many times over.  Most dim sum items in New York date back to the 20th century.  And while a large number of Mainland Chinese based restaurant chains have opened up in California, just a few have opened up locations in New York, adding to the New York Chinese food deficit.

This is not to say you can't get a good Chinese meal in New York, particularly in Flushing.  Over the years there have been a number of outstanding Chinese restaurants in New York that I've liked.   But they have all seemed to have closed down, with the last three, Hakkasan, La Chine, and Joy Luck Palace not having survived  the pandemic.  So in comparing the complete body of work between California and New York, there is no comparison.

This trip to Manhattan was meant to catch up on restaurants that have newly opened since my last visit, so by design I wasn't looking for the best food available.  Consequently the description of the food on this trip as being mediocre needs to take this factor into account, as I was not looking for the best meal available, and was only in Manhattan.

First stop was Tonii's Fresh Rice Noodles on Bayard Street in Chinatown for chicken cheung fun.  I was surprised to see the new style soft stone ground, wrinkly rice noodle brought from Guangzhou and Hong Kong, rather than the old traditional Cantonese pig intestine type roll.  There's also a branch of Guangzhou's Yin Ji Cheng Fan on the block, so Manhattan is up to date on rice noodle rolls.

A couple of doors down from Tonii's is Kong Sihk Tong, a Hong Kong style cafe.  The rice noodle logs with peanut sauce was very interesting.  

The most heralded new restaurant in Chinatown is Uncle Lou, started by a Chinatown old timer who decided to go into the restaurant business and concentrate on old time favorite neighborhood dishes which may have faded from the food scene.  I took a quick peek at the menu before leaving Los Angeles and it seemed interesting.  The buzz around Uncle Lou has been deafening with the restaurant crowded most of the time.  So, arriving for dinner at 7:30pm, it was not surprising to see the restaurant at near capacity.  What was surprising, though, was that only half of the patrons were Chinese.  I later learned that Uncle Lou received rave reviews from Peter Wells in the New York Times and Eater New York.  It was also surprising that I had difficulty in finding a couple of dishes to order for a light dinner.  We ended up with the snow pea leaves, which tasted OK but was tough, and the pork belly with mantou buns which was also OK but on the soft side with nearly melted pork fat. (Insta-potted?)  

 

Still puzzled by the lack of selection when I went back to the hotel room, I checked the menu I had looked at in Los Angeles and it was much more extensive.  Sure didn't look like the menu being circulated in the dining room.  Maybe they cut down on the menu selection to manage the level of activity.  But even if I had other choices, I kind of wonder.  Given than the issue with New York food is that it's behind the times, would having other throwback dishes have led to a more enjoyable meal?  I don't know.

The other new heralded Chinatown dining destination was the Mott Street Eatery, New York Chinatown's first Flushing style food court, still in the process of being leased out.  Flushing's food courts are full of very good eateries and I could spend a week sampling Flushing's food court food.  Mott Street Eatery?  Not so much at this point, though we were too early in the morning to try a couple of the more interesting sounding stalls.  

 

The food court currently is dominated by 89 Eatery (the reverse of the 98 Mott Street address), serving Cantonese noodles, dim sum, and other Cantonese specialties.   We ordered the wonton noodles.  It was awful.  The broth was like dishwater and even pouring soy sauce in didn't make it palatable.  And the noodles were soggy.

Meanwhile, the bolo bao from Zhen Pin Cafe was equally tasteless.

 

Only the fish paste tofu from Yan Wo Dou Bun was any good.

 

Another one of our NY Chinatown favorites that closed after our last New York trip was Sing Kee Seafood on Bowery.  It's replacement, NB Wing Wong, is highly regarded, receiving mention in Resy's Guide To Manhattan Chinatown.  (Having authored a piece for the corresponding Resy guide for Los Angeles Chinese food, I take the Resy guide seriously.)  Stopping by for jook one morning, the pork with salted egg jook tasted like, well, salt water.

One real highlight was at Green Garden Village, where after ordering a beef cheung fun, they actually prepared it within sight!  Not an extraordinary tasting end product, but I was happy.

The problem with dim sum in Manhattan Chinatown is that most of the major purveyors, like Jing Fong, Golden Unicorn, Nom Wah and Ping's have been around forever and are short on innovation.  Even the most inventive dim sum restaurant, Dim Sum Go Go, has been around almost 20 years.  One newcomer which is not talked about, and draws a large neighborhood crowd is Seng Seafood on East Broadway.  Their fish balls compare favorably with what I'm used to in California.

And I did find a little dim sum innovation at E-Noodle Group, which serves mostly noodle soup but also has a few dim sum items.  This jade har gow looked great and tasted very good, too.

Another new restaurant was New Hong Wong on Bowery.  This was the interesting sounding eel with rice casserole.  Unfortunately the rice was not cooked enough and gave Mrs. Chandavkl extreme indigestion, though the flavor was good.

The beef chow fun was pretty good, but the noodle itself was reminiscent of the old style noodle which is a little less smooth, a little less chewy, and not translucent like the noodles we are used to.

Another new interesting restaurant was 95 Grand Master on Chrystie Street.  We were especially intrigued by the white board special outside listing carp in black bean sauce, so we ordered it for $48.  The owner said that the center section with the stomach was a favorite with all his customers, so we took his advice.  Maybe his client base liked the stomach, but we sure didn't, as it wasn't meaty.

So he offered to replace it with the tail section which was very meaty.  But while the tail was meaty, it wasn't flaky.  It was probably undercooked.  Also not terribly flavorful.

However the Chinese broccoli with lap yuk was pretty good, and 95 Grand Master might have possibilities.

One thing I had no problem with was the Chinatown bakeries.  Tao Hong on Christie St. had the best pineapple top bbq pork bun I had ever eaten, and their egg tarts are the best in New York Chinatown, too.  And incredibly it's probably the cheapest bakery in Chinatown with this bun going for $1.50.  Another amazing thing is that Tao Hong is located in the same building as Wah Fung #1, which probably makes the best mass produced char siu in the United States.  Two gems side by side on the little known Chrystie Street in Little Fuzhou, the non-touristy portion of Manhattan Chinatown east of Bowery.

Also all the sandwiches at all the Chinese bakeries, made with water roux, which makes the various pastries at the Chinese bakeries so smooth and creamy, were great.  Here's the fish sandwich from Bake Culture, the Taiwan based bakery chain on Bowery.

A chicken sandwich from New Kamboat Cafe on Bowery.    Really good baked bbq pork buns and Macao egg tarts, too.

And the best of all, the fish sandwich from Double Crispy, which also had a nice selection of pastries including raisin buns, apple turnovers and lemon buns.

All in all it was a successful trip which enabled me to get back in touch with the food scene in New York Chinatown.  While the food there isn't the greatest, having eaten at about 450 different Chinatown New York restaurants over the years, I've gained a level of comfort eating there which makes up at least in part for the lesser quality.