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Man, there have been patches in my life wherein I ate out way too often, so I can probably do a few effortposts. To begin with, let's talk about Chinatown. I worked down the block from the place for a year or two, both my parents are great cooks (one is from Beijing, the other from Wuhan), and I kind of know my way around a wok or steamer myself. My recs are going to lean very heavily towards the fast lunch/casual dinner side of things, because I live halfway across the city and was pretty much only ever in the region during working hours. Some notes on the setting: the capital-c Chinatown has shrunk over the years, but it's basically a rectangular slot of land in between the Financial District and Nob Hill (and being squeezed out of existence by real estate pressures on both fronts). There are two major streets running along the "long" side of the rectangle. Grant is the tourist trap and Stockton is where the remaining locals tend to do their business. That doesn't mean that all the food on Grant is knockoff panda express crap and all the food on Stockton is divinely inspired street food nirvana, but it does give you a pretty good idea of the expected clientele at any given place. Chinatown was, and to an extent still is, run by the Benevolent Associations--an umbrella organization for the primarily Cantonese/Taiwanese first and second waves of Chinese immigration into the city. There are other places in the city with a heavily Mandarin-speaking population (notably the numbered Avenues over by Golden Gate Park) and plenty of good Chinese places that aren't primarily catering to tourists. Chinatown food itself has a rather deserved reputation for being overpriced tourist bait, not helped by all the outright scammy places on Grant, but there are some gems if you're careful. Sichuan Okay, I'm going to get this one out of the way. Z&Y, on Jackson in between Kearney and Grant, blew way the gently caress up a few years ago when every restaurant reviewer in the city discovered it, closely followed by literally the entire population of San Francisco's Yelp users. Did it go down the drain? I personally don't really think so, but it's definitely true that during normal meal hours, the line outside the place looks like the last helicopter out of Saigon. Not like you really have a choice, if you're looking for Sichuanese food--the only other notable joint in Chinatown is Spicy King on Clay Street. They're not bad, but they're definitely outclassed by Z&Y and not really any cheaper. Entrees in the $12-20 range. Get the explosive chicken (Chongqing-style chicken, basically, but made with chopped dark meat instead of the bony bits that annoy white people) and cumin lamb, they're solid. Various Sichuan hotpots are good, too. Mapo tofu is surprisingly bad. The non-Sichuan food is surprisingly good--the chef apparently has a pretty well-rounded background--so there'll be something you can order for the whiny baby in your party who hates spicy food. Dim Sum Basically the most touristy meal possible in Chinatown. Pretty much all your options here are going to be (overpriced, hours-long wait, culinary dumpster fire), pick two. Obama got to skip the line when he visited Great Eastern on Jackson, so if you're also a head of state you'd probably enjoy yourself there. My personal recommendation would be to instead visit one of several fantastic places on/around Geary Street near 101, a few miles away--I like Ton Kiang, myself. Failing that, go to City View on Commercial. The food's pretty decent, the prices pretty reasonable, and most importantly the hordes of tourists and out-of-town Chinese visitors will be at Great Eastern. In other words, you'll actually be able to flag down a cart every now and then, and the food on it might actually be fresh. Spend will vary dramatically on your tastes and hunger level, but sit-down dim sum in this city is never cheap. Take-out Dim Sum Want masses of actually pretty decent dim sum items, ordered out of gigantic wok steamer trays, and paid for in cash at unreasonably cheap prices? The dim sum bakeries on Stockton are your best bet, especially Good Mon Kok near the in-construction subway station. The lines there can be pretty long during peak lunch hours, maybe 15-20 minutes, but they're long because every little old Cantonese lady in California loves the place for good reason. Their English is just barely understandable, but pointing at things will get you far enough. You can get a pretty decent lunch for like $5, or stuff yourself silly on $10. Make sure you get some of the rice porridge in a to-go container, to cut all the meat buns and deep-fried crap you probably ordered--they keep a vat of it in the back and it's not immediately obvious it's for sale. Shanghai Also on Jackson: you want Bund Shanghai, which is always kind of half-full even when there are lines out the door at Z&Y and Great Eastern across the street. This is probably because the place hasn't really detonated on Yelp the same way those two have; the clientele is almost all Chinese. They do Extremely Legit renditions of a lot of classic Shanghaiese dishes, including a very good red-braised silver carp and solid lion's head meatballs (both red-braised and in soup). Plus the glutenous rice cakes come out of the kitchen with the rich smoky char that implies their wok guy knows what he's doing. But say "shanghaiese" in this city and all anyone every wants to know is: how good are the soup dumplings? They're drat good--and so are their pan-fried cousin shenjianbao--and certainly cheaper than all the other upscale xlb specialist joints that have opened recently. My bill tends to be in the $15-20 range when I eat here. Don't go to the Din Tai Fung in the South Bay unless someone else is paying. I don't care how good their Taipei branch is; the American locations never seem to have any degree of give-a-gently caress and the prices are obscene. I'd rather have soup dumpings from Bund anyday. Panda Express, but good Sam Wo, formerly on Pacific, now on Clay, has something of a legend built around it. The dive that got shut down for having a health score of, like, negative six! The place with the world's shittiest waiter! Those days are long past. Today's Sam Wo serves up pretty decent food, for pretty cheap, pretty fast. And though the americanized food is popular with students and the tourist crowd, you'll also see a bunch of Cantonese people slurping down rice porridge and wonton soup, which is a fantastic vote of confidence for a place that unironically still puts orange chicken in pride of place on the menu. Regardless of if you're eating Cantonese breakfast style or Panda Express style (get the house noodles), entrees are in the $8 range. where's the best peeking duck in chinatown??? hahahaha uh, try that french-vietnamese place on jackson, begoni. i hear good things about the duck and their roasted pidgeon was really good and it's probably similar skillsets so go wild, i guess. please post here and let me know if that was good advice or not. I hear there's this really famous place to get egg tarts and- Yes. Golden Gate Bakery on Grant street. If they're open, which they're not. AA Bakery and Cafe on Stockton and Washington is good, if you're looking for one of those Hong Kong style bakeries that does both European cakes and 58 different Hong Kong style buns. Places like that are a dime a dozen in Chinatown though, and they're distinguished mostly by selection rather than absolute quality. AA seems to stock everything, and it seems to be reasonably fresh reasonably often. If you're familiar with the bakeries that always set up near the entrance of a 99 Ranch you know what to expect. don't loving do this 
Reiterpallasch fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Sep 21, 2016 |
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Sep 21, 2016 21:30
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 13:36 |
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Hell, it's a slow day at work. San Francisco money-wasting, lightning round: sushi!  The San Francisco Bay Area is a pretty drat good sushi zone. Expensive, of course, but everything is around here. And in terms of quality and selection, the best bars around here match anything outside of Los Angeles. I'm not talking about the $200+ Michellin-starred omakase-only places which litter the City proper, though of course if you can afford to eat there I'm sure you'll enjoy the experience. I'm talking about ordinary sushi bars, where the chef keeps his stock visible in a refrigerated case right there on the bar, and there's room for him to tailor your experience to your own personal tastes. Sushi taste's a pretty personal sort of deal, so I'm going to put my biases right on the table. Like any self-respecting anime weeb, I am an arch-traditionalist when it comes to sushi. I tend to shy away from ordering fancy rolls, modern "fusion" ingredients like sriracha, or odd form factors (looking at you, Sushirito). I generally order omakase at a bar I trust, but I value variety because it means I can say things like "I'm not really feeling octopus today" or "no unagi, please" and have my wishes respected without compromising my meal. Sushi rice is important to me, but I prefer mine much sweeter and less acidic than most Japanese people do. From cheapest to most expensive: Hotaru, San Mateo, on 3rd Street. Not actually a sushi joint. It's a comfort food diner which cranks out endless and actually drat good bento boxes/lunch sets/udon bowls/etc. But there is a tiny sushi bar with a couple of real itamae behind it. Don't bother sitting there; it's super uncomfortable and the itamae are super overworked. Get a table seat and maybe a bowl of udon while you wait. The fish is solid, and the sushi rice is actually quite good. And it's cheap. Hotaru has pretty much stood fast on prices since the first 90's tech boom, which has changed it from being decent-ish to the best value-for-money north of Redwood City, if not further. Sure, there's cheaper out there. But not much cheaper, and far far worse. The one knock against them is variety--they carry basically nothing obscure, and are often out of the lesser-ordered cuts. The sake (salmon), ikura (soy-marinated roe), and saba (mackerel) are particularly good. So is the spicy tuna/yellowtail--they use the same grade fish to prepare the pastes as they do the cuts here. Uni (sea urchin guts, usually chilean there) and chu-toro (upper tuna belly) are often out of stock and frankly average, but waaaaay cheaper than what anyone else sells them at. I'd avoid the scallops. Sushi Sam's, also in San Mateo on 3rd. Yeah, San Mateo has a lot of good Japanese (and Asian in general) food. Sam's is a bit cheaper than Sakae, at $60 for the omakase, though the individual pieces are cut rather smaller and there's no sides. The fish selection here is probably better than anywhere I've come across in the Bay, though to actually get any of it you usually have to decipher some awful handwriting on a lecture-hall-sized whiteboard. The style here is very traditionally untraditional--Sam's presents unorthodox ingredients and cuts with the same attention to detail and quality that characterize the best traditional sushi bars. Everything comes to you pre-seasoned, and there are some deeply weird ingredients on display here. The mayo-topped lobster tail is basically the one appropriate use of mayo I've seen in sushi, ever. I've literally never seen kamasu (barracuda) or sayori (needlefish) anywhere else in the Bay. In general, if you order omakase here you're going to get a lot of hikarimono, which is a rather daring move in the US. I hope you like fishy things! Sakae, Burlingame, by the Caltrain. Fairly pricey, with sets going up to $110 but there's an off-menu $75 omakase + sides + rice + miso thing you can order. I almost always suggest sitting at the bar, but especially here--the itamae are especially careful to reserve the best cuts for the bar, here. Still, those people at the tables eating $22 Salmon Dynamite rolls are paying for your meal, which packs insane value into that $75--including cuts of toro whose only flaw is the incredible expense when ordered a la carte. The specials board contains quite a few fish which are dificult to find in the US, and usually one or two that would be kind of difficult to find in Japan. I've been served yagara (cornetfish) and ishigarei (japanese summer flounder). The stuff which is consistently a cut above here: the aforementioned toro, tai (snapper), ama-ebi (raw shrimp), hamachi (yellowtail, especially the richer belly cut), and engawa (fin muscle). They use a mix of wholesale and air-freighted fish, I believe, the latter of which comes on Thursdays. Maybe don't go on Tuesday evening. ICHI, on Mission, after it starts bending past Cesar Chavez Okay, it's the whitest place on this list, period. It's so white that there's a big mural on the back wall instructing you in basic etiquette like "maybe don't take the entire wad of wasabi and make a gross soy-wasabi slurry on your plate" and "it's polite to eat sushi pieces with your hands". I have only been to ICHI twice, so this recommendation is softer than the others, but I liked what I saw both times. The service style is quite western here--instead of interacting exclusively with an expert-but-overworked-and-probably-english-challenged itamae, the waitstaff are also trained to offer recommendations and talk you through your order. This may or may not be a good thing. The menu has little rare or exciting on it; you need a heavily Japanese clientele to be able to stock very obscure things. But what they do have is usually executed well. Masu (trout) and kanpachi (amberjack) were particularly memorable.
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Sep 22, 2016 03:27
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There are several Tony's in the city: there's one in Soma that I go to decently often, and I believe another one on mid-Market. It's not quite a true New York style slice--the crust is a bit too crisp to fold and uses cornmeal--but it's damned good regardless.
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Sep 26, 2016 19:06
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Old Mandarin Islamic is a western Chinese joint in that corner of the city I don't go to often enough, because I really like them. I don't know if you have a car or how good bus service is over there, but in general there's a lot of good ethnic food on the west side of the city north of, say, Noriega. That's not really walking distance in the same way that Old Mandarin is, though.
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Oct 4, 2016 21:42
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Got reminded of this tread recently, so I have another sushi suggestion I can make. Recently discovered these guys and I was really quite impressed.: Higuma, in downtown Redwood City on El Camino Real, is one of the only sane middle grounds between "$8.99 scariyaki + california roll combo" and "$22 for a single piece of toro" I've found in the Bay. Hotaru, in San Mateo, is the other one, but it's more of a diner that happens to serve up pretty solid sushi. Not much of a bar to speak of. Higuma has a 5-seat bar, worked by a senior and junior itamae (senior is on your right, their left, this review is assuming you get served by him) with the ability to sit down and eat an orthodox, traditional meal for a very reasonable price. You can also sit down at a table and order cooked food--honestly, most of their business appears to be chicken curry katsu plates and whatnot--but frankly it's not that good. If you want hot food with your sushi go to Hotaru. The omakase here is $42 and includes some standout items--delicious live scallops shipped from Hokkaido during the season were particularly good.. Also very good were the ama-ebi (uncooked shrimp) and uni. Most of the fin fish ran the gamut from pretty good (yellowtail) to very mediocre (salmon that somehow developed the taste and texture of snapper...), but in no case did the quality drop below what I'd consider a normal standard of acceptableness. The big knock against these guys is the sushi rice which I consistently found to be overly dry and bland, though at least it held together unlike most mediocre shari pads. Unusually for such an affordable sushi meal, real grated wasbi is provided instead of horseradish + food coloring. Despite a few missteps, I don't know if there's a better value for a full sit-down-in-front-of-itamae experience in the Bay Area. If you're at all value-conscious or just really like scallop, you should definitely give Higuma a shot.
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Dec 16, 2016 02:01
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Wasabi is spicy in the same way that horseradish is, but probably not quite as aggressively--it provides the same bite on your palate but doesn't really invade your nostrils and set your nose on fire the way a chunk of horseradish does. It also has a lot better flavor than horseradish. Freshly grated wasabi is wonderfully herbal and planty and even a little minerally. The texture is also a bit different; horseradish wasabi is a fairly homogeneous paste while hon-wasabi has the texture you'd expect out of roughly grated roots. I hated sushi when I was a kid, and not-so-coincidentally fell in love with it at the very first place that gave me freshly grated stuff.
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Dec 20, 2016 20:09
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Saigon Sandwich is right by there and has amazing (and cheap) bahn mi, but they close at 5:30 exactly. Maybe Zuni?
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Jan 31, 2017 09:15
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are we seriously talking about soma food and not mentioning garaje/garajito? for shame
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Apr 21, 2017 00:59
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Where in the city?
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Oct 24, 2017 22:51
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Helmand Palace is a truly excellent (at least to my extremely not-from-there palate) Afghani restaurant only a few blocks up 101 from there, and they're within your price range. They can definitely seat large parties, though you may want to call ahead anyway.
Reiterpallasch fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Oct 25, 2017 |
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Oct 24, 2017 23:29
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chicken tikka masala is incredibly authentic (british) food
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Jun 4, 2018 12:54
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don't knock japanese boat moats until you've tried them, they're an incredible place to grab a quick meal
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Aug 19, 2018 01:18
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 13:36 |
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i think that's a little unfair, the bay area's a big place. just off the top of my head, shan dong in oakland chinatown is best known in the diaspora for their handmade noodles and dumplings, but they have a pretty big side hustle in serving good american-chinese food to white people. i know for a fact that they do fried wontons. hunan village on grand lake also has a pretty good sweetened spare rib dish, though i don't know if you mean anything specific by "chinese spare ribs". anyways for the specific type of doughy fried midwestern stuff Nea was asking for, i can ten million percent tell you that Lai Lai in Milbrae sells it.
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Mar 28, 2023 19:55
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