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This piece is written for those who’ve recently arrived at the San Francisco bay area from China, the Midwest, etc. and desperately want to know where to go for an honest Chinese meal that would transport you back to home across the Pacific. It’s a feeling we transplants all know too well—we need something familiar in the belly. True, San Francisco bay area is the best place in America for Chinese dining. Literally thousands of restaurants abound, and the authentic ones are scattered from SF’s Chinatown, Richmond, and Sunset districts to Cupertino to booming Milpitas, following the high tech industry money rail. But you have to look a little harder for something truly authentic, something regional (which back in the days meant dishes that came directly out of the soil and history of a province). A restaurant calling itself Shanghai House could have Cantonese proprietors as Shanghai owners, and no cooks trained in Shanghai cuisine. And the largest, hottest restaurants with the biggest bang for the buck don’t necessarily mean authentic or regional, either. You want something to feed the world-weary, homesick soul. After all, we are not the formulaic Kung-Pao-chicken crowd of non-Chinese speakers, are we? By no means I claim to be a Chinese food connoisseur (I wouldn’t dare in a Chinese-speaking forum. ). But I try my best to compile the following list (arranged by category) as the result of my experience and the combined wisdom of my Chinese-speaking friends. 1) SICHUAN CUISINE (a) Szechwan Home: 渝榕人家 7271 Bark Lane (at De Anza Boulevard), Cupertino. Lunch and dinner daily, (408)252-6144 It’s a dedicated regional restaurant that serves excellent authentic fare. If I remember correctly, Yu and Rong denote the two major cities, Chongqing and Chengdu, of Sichuan province. The Chinese-language menu is a 60-item list divided into Chengdu Little Plates and Provincial Plates. Classic Sichuan cuisine employs the dual effects of cracked, brick-colored peppercorns (huajiao) and dried red chili peppers, as described by the term Ma La, which loosely translates to “tingle and sing.” Ma means numb or tingling; la means spicy and stinging. Szechwan Home’s Chinese-language menu indicates whether a dish is just la or mala. A classic Ma La dish is boiled beef with beef slices dressed with chili oil, mashed garlic and peppercorns. Boiled beef sounds plain, but it’s full of flavors in actuality. You might also want to try a small plate of the five-spice pig’s ears that are sliced into slender and crunchy julienne strips. Another small plate, garlic-paste pork, is awash in pureed garlic and is very ethnic. My favorite is its bean-sauce whole fish: 14-inch fresh carp is stewed in the traditional garlic-chili bean sauce with pecks of chopped garlic, ginger, green onions. The main attraction of the dish is the natural sweetness of the fish complimented by the fiery-red bean sauce. But be warned: it costs $31, four to five times more than the other plates.
蒜泥白肉 Pork with Garlic Paste
五香猪耳 Julienne of Pig’s Ear in Five Spices
水煮牛肉 Boiled Beef
豆瓣石斑 Whole Fish (Rock Cod) in Chili Bean Paste
(b) Dragon 2000: 金龙阁
1651 Botelho Drive (Plum Court Shopping Center), Walnut Creek. Lunch and dinner daily, (925)287-1688. My favorite at Dragon 2000 is the kidney slices in Ma La flavor. The kidney slices are so tender and creamy they remind you of foie gras. Dragon also offers an extended list of small plates. I tried beef tendon in chili oil, a classic cold dish where the texture of tendon is smooth and silky with a meaty crunch. Their Dungeness crab (its Chinese name is named after a wharf in Hong Kong) is great, presented with a mountain of oil-browned, fine-minced garlic “sand”. Dragon has an 80-item Chinese-language menu that offers the specialties of Sichuan and Shanghai. We went primarily for Sichuan fare, but found on the Shanghai part of the menu a braised fresh ham (tipang). In tipang, a whole ham is slow-cooked in a soy, wine and rock-sugar concoction. Over long hours of braising, the fat slowly melts and bastes the lean meat. Dragon’s tipang just falls away under the touch of chopsticks; the fat becomes a custard. The skin of the ham is crisped to a glossy mahogany glaze. Yum! 麻辣腰片 Mala Kidney
避风塘蟹 Dungeness Crab with Garlic Sand
走油圆蹄 Crispy Skin Braised Ham 2) SHANGHAI CUISINE (a) Old Shanghai: 老上海 5145 Geary Blvd., San Francisco. Lunch and dinner, closed Tuesdays, (415)752-0120. Old Shanghai lives up to its namesake. Even its bilingual menu stays pretty pure, with a minimum of the chow mein and potsticker-type entries. But the provincial treasures are buried in its Chinese-only, house-specials menu, which is handwritten, photocopied and printed on pink paper. Also, ask about the handwritten daily specials. Order the classic fresh carp tail stewed in red sauce, in which the lower half of the fish (called the “water-swisher”) is butterflied and split into four arching pieces. “If I had this dish when I was a foreign student 30 years ago, I wouldn’t have felt so lonely,” my friend said. Try the stir-fried eel, an uncluttered plate of perfectly even julienne strips of eel meat. The pea-sprout greens are my personal favorite, a simple stir-fry of pure spring flavor. Also try the stir-fry of bean curd strips (gansi), a subtly flavored, light touch of interesting texture. IMHO, this is about as ethnic Shanghai as you can get. 清炒鳝丝 Julienne of Eel Stir-fried
红烧划水 Braised Carp Oars
杨州煮干丝 Yangzhou Beancurd Slivers (Gansi) (b) China First: 中国第一 1741 N. Milpitas Blvd., Milpitas. Lunch and dinner daily, (408)262-6226 The English sign of this restaurant reads “Szechwan and Mandarin,” but the Chinese-language menu makes it apparent that the kitchen is Shanghai. They offer a dish that typifies classical Shanghai cuisine, which is lamely translated as “stir-fried shrimp.” It sounds boring in English. But in Chinese, the dish is Qingchao Xiaren. Xiaren translates into shrimp essence, or kernel of shrimp—in other words, pure shrimp. Although it looks plain on the plate, it has had much attention, skill and time put into its preparation, so that it tastes like purity itself. The shrimp flesh is taken through many steps to arrive as a lively, bouncy product. Try also its smoked fish (there are bones) and fava bean puree with pickled mustard. I heard they are classics in Shanghai cuisine. 清炒虾仁 Pure Stir-fry of Shrimp
熏鱼 Smoked Fish
雪菜豆瓣酥 Puree of Fava Bean with Pickled Mustard
菜饭 Vegetable Rice (C ) Joy: 名厨小馆 1495 Beach Park Blvd. (at Marlin Ave., Beach Park Plaza), Foster City. Lunch and dinner daily, (650)345-1762 This restaurant specializes in both Sichuan and Shanghai cuisine. My friend liked its kaofu, or wheat gluten (“seitan” to American vegetarians) specialty of eastern regional cooking. The meaty kaofu is stewed with mushrooms, young bamboo shoots and green soybeans (edamame). Also good is its stir-fried New Year’s cake (a chewy rice-based pasta). I heard that the 70-year-old chef of Taipei’s Dragon restaurant is the pastry specialist here. So try his Snatched Bread (zhuabing), a multilayered puff pastry close to Indian roti. 烤麸 Braised Kaofu (Seitan)
手抓饼 Snatched Bread
炒年糕 Stir-fried New Year’s Pasta
3) CANTONESE CUISINE Hardly a decade ago, before the blooming of the computer industry started to boom and the cropping up of various Chinese regional cuisine restaurants, the Chinese restaurants in the Bay Area were almost strictly Cantonese. Many Cantonese will tell you that theirs is the greatest, and maybe the only, cuisine of China. This may be dismissed as partisan pride. However, Cantonese dinning _is_ the largest-scale and certainly most exported restaurant tradition. Their trademark is banks of live fish tanks. No self-respecting practitioner of Cantonese cuisine would open his doors without tanks filled with schools of exotic fish and shellfish imported from around the world. Indeed, the seafood in this cuisine is supreme. A multitude of choices confront diners facing the banks of fish tanks at a Cantonese restaurant. But they’ll rarely go wrong ordering from them, because the fish couldn’t be fresher. Point to the seafood and ask what ways it can be prepared. When in doubt, choose the simplest preparation. Steaming may sound colorless, but it’s one of the great techniques in classic Chinese cooking. Steamed whole fish is a classic anywhere in China, and the Cantonese are the acknowledged specialists.
(a) Koi Palace: 鲤鱼门
365 Gellert Blvd., Daly City. Lunch and dinner daily, (650) 992-9000. Koi Palace is a high end and pricey establishment, but being grand has not spoiled the kitchen. We opted not to order the live Australian lobster and Australian white crab, instead ordering Geoduck in Two Tastes (one live clam is weighed and then prepared as sashimi as well as soup) out of the tanks. Geoduck sashimi is an example of the best contemporary classics. The clam is sliced paper thin and laid on a bed of ice to present a pure, clean flavor. You can choose to have the “head” of the geoduck (the part between the valves) in soup or cut into strips and deep fried, as calamari is. We chose the soup, a sweet, intense seafood broth with hints of cilantro and ginger. The roast squab is another great dish to order. “Roast” is used loosely here since the whole squabs are deep-fried instead of roasted to produce crisp skin without any use of batter. Also recommended is the smoked Alaskan sea bass, a slab of creamy fish with Chinese barbecued pork. I liked the fish texture immensely. I didn’t bother with the ultra-sweet mayonnaise accompaniment.
Another contemporary classic served by many Cantonese restaurants and done well at Koi is the steamed young coconut with hashima, a warm dessert. Cooked very slowly (it must be ordered at the beginning of the meal) in a water bath, the coconut is sweetened with rock sugar and contains little grains of hashima, glands from the snow frog. This ingredient, like many Chinese ingredients, is part delicacy and part Chinese medicine. You might call it magical health food. As I was told, snow frog’s glands are “good for us men [in hormonal matters] and good for you women’s complexions.” Unfortunately I wasn’t gutsy enough to try it. 蜜味烟(火局)鳕鱼 Smoked Alaskan Bass
象拔蚌两食 Geoduck Cooked Two Ways
琵琶乳鸽 Roasted Squab
椰青雪蛤膏 Young Coconut with Hashima
(b) Chef Lau’s: 佛笑楼
301 Eighth St. (at Harrison), Oakland. Lunch and dinner daily, (510)835-3288. Chef Lau’s in Oakland’s Chinatown steams fish just as beautifully as any high-end Cantonese restaurant and at one-third the price. There are tanks here, but without the exotic imports. It’s a relatively little known place. On weekends, those who come late wait for a table by standing behind those seated and eating. That’s the sum total of ambience at this very practical, very value-minded family restaurant. The steamed rock cod (especially what’s called China cod, the kind with yellow markings) is done to perfection. Don’t pass up the clams in XO sauce, and also the live Shrimp Cooked Two Ways. In Chinese, XO connotes something very special, as in Cognac; in this instance it means expensive, dried scallops. As at many Cantonese restaurants, a house soup is served, compliments of the house. Shrimp Cooked Two Ways is superlative here. We opted for the poached shrimp body and the heads in a salt and spice rub. Crisp and perfectly fried, they burst in the mouth with a combination of shrimp meat, juices and shells so crisp they crumble like wafers. 珊瑚虾两食 Shrimp Cooked Two Ways
清蒸石斑 Steamed Whole Cod
例汤 House Soup (c ) Riverside Seafood: 畔溪 Sunset District in San Francisco, on Noriega. Serves typical and great Cantonese seafood. Because it’s in my neighborhood, I tend go there with a large party and we order one of the family meals (no no, not the cheesy stuff for non-Chinese customers). I don’t have a single dish to write about and can only say “it’s all good”. The weekend waiting lines are long, if that’s any indication of popularity.
4) CHIUCHOW (also Chaozhou, ChinJiew) Cuisine Chaozhou is a subregion of Guangdong province (Canton), and its cuisine is a subculture of Cantonese cuisine. Don’t’ say that to Chaozhou natives because they will fiercely proclaim that theirs is the pinnacle of al cuisines, including Cantonese. When it comes to grand ingredients such as shark’s fin, abalone, bird’s nest and sea cucumber—anything seafood, in fact—the Chaozhou descendants claim that they do it better, richer, more tender than the Cantonese. Golden Island: 金岛潮州酒家 282-286 Barber Court, Milpitas. Lunch and dinner daily, (408)383-9898 The restaurant looks conservative, with dark wood, not much kitsch and a wait staff in black tie. The ????ution at Golden Island is solid—we hear that the chef is Chinjiew brought from Hong Kong. They offer dishes intended to impress a visiting Pacific Rim ????utive: abalone chicken soup; braised sea cucumber stuffed with a seafood medley; steamed live rock cod, Chinjiew style; and chicken in Chinjiew sauce. The fish and chicken are excellent, although the best is the Chinjiew-style fried rice, tender rice laced with strips of scallop and egg white, a stylized, high-end version of street food, but flavorful and extremely tender. 鲍鱼鸡汤 Abalone Chicken Soup
半煎煮石斑 Half-seared Whole Fish (Rock Cod)
普宁炒饭 House Special Fried Rice
川椒鸡球 Chicken with ChinJiew Peppercorn 5) TAIWAN CUISINE Taiwan cuisine signifies street food, or “small eats”. I’ve never been to Taiwan and don’t know what real Taiwan cuisine is supposed to be like. But “Taiwan cuisine” here in the US includes rice, noodle and dumpling main dishes, all sorts of innards, and handheld pastries. I have heard of the oyster omelet that is a standard of small eats in Taiwan and haven’t found it. a) Tainan Restaurant: 台南风味小吃 218 Barber Court, Milpitas, Lunch and dinner daily, (408)434-6888. Tainan Restaurant is more of a casual noodle house/café than restaurant with sister restaurants in Cupertino (South Taste) and Richmond (Tainan taste). It makes a surprisingly good little-rack of dumplings. Chinese restaurants of every denomination now make these circular dumplings—it’s very in. Tainan’s xiaolong bao aren’t particularly pretty, but they do explode with a burst of intense broth, which is what they are supposed to do. Make sure you eat them whole so you experience this burst of flavor. For $2.75, there is also what is translated as “Taiwanese Hamburger.” It is a wrap of yeasted bread (as thick as pita, but more tender) around chopped meat, a sprinkle of peanuts, and the best Chinese pickles made of crisp mustard-green stems. 小笼包 Little Rack Dumplings
台南(刘)包 Taiwan Hamburger b) Good Time Café: 好年冬 690 Barber Lane, No. 110, Milpitas. Lunch and dinner daily, (408)321-8838. At the other end of the mall from Tainan is Good Time Café, one of a chain of five restaurants in California. Its sliced goose meat is tender and inexpensive ($7.96). Otherwise the restaurant has a penchant for covering its dishes in a watery, ketchupy sauce that is best to avoid. 白切鹅肉 Sliced Goose Meat
6) MANDARIN CUISINE
From what I heard, lamb, beef, the liberal use of chili paste and a wide-ranging affinity for the onion family, as well as cilantro, signal this region’s food. Old Mandarin Islamic Restaurant: 老北京 3132 Vicente St. (between 42nd and 43rd avenues), San Francisco. Lunch Wednesday through Monday, dinner daily, (415) 564-3481. The pure, musical Beijing dialect resounds throughout this restaurant. And the food is equally authentic. Order Peking beef pie and Peking vegetable pie in Peking style. A stir-fry of lamb (or beef) with green onion will restore your faith in a fairly clean version of the home-style stir-fry, i.e. without any thickening. Northerners take their wheat seriously, so try the noodles. Dough is made into a block, then cut into dice, a rustic, chewy, dense affair. In Chinese, it’s translated on the menu as stirred flour ball. An urn of chili sauce sits at every table, good for the stirred flour ball dishes. You have to order the lamb and cilantro dumplings ahead, but they are worth the call. Must not leave without tasting fried sweet cake. That’s a limp translation for a pocket of the lightest sweet-rice dough—which is normally heavy and gooey and leaves a peanut butter-like cling on the palate—filled with a hint of sweet bean paste. If you’re a doughnut freak, any kind of dough cognoscenti, or a lover of the Japanese mochi, you must have this. Easily the best sweet I’ve tasted. 羊肉香菜饺 Lamb and Cilantro Dumplings (order ahead)
北京牛肉饼 Peking Meat Pie
北京素合子 Peking Vegetable Pie
奶油炸糕 Fried Sweet Cake 7) MUSLIM CUISINE a) Fatima Seafood Restaurant: 清真马家海鲜馆 Two locations:
(a) 1132 S. De Anza Blvd. (at Highway 85), San Jose. Dinner Daily, lunch daily, (408)257-3893;
(b) 1208 S. El Camino Real, San Mateo. Dinner daily, lunch Monday through Friday, (650)554-1818. The hallmark dishes here are yeasted sesame breads. They come thick or thinner, plain or around a green onion filling—great big, yeasty, hearty slices of round bread. Also traditional are the knife-shaved noodles: blocks of dough are shaped, then almost planed off in thick, uneven slices, which are then stir-fried with various meats and vegetables. The best combination to order is the lamb and pickles warm pot or the braised oxtail along with one of the yeasted breads. This is a hearty meal great in chilly damp weather. The pickles are northern style, made on site from the winter Napa cabbage. The traditional way to dine is to hold a piece of bread in one hand and sip soup with the other. 红烩牛尾 Braised Oxtail
酸菜羊肉砂锅 Lamb and Pickled Napa Pot
芝麻薄饼 Sesame Pancake with Green Onion
大饼加葱 Sesame Bread with Green Onion
羊炒刀削面 Lamb and Knife-Shaven Noodles b) Darda Seafood 清真一条龙
Milpitas Square, 190 Barber Lane, Milpitas, CA at 880 and 237, (408) 433-5199 子然羊肉
芝麻薄饼
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