The Hidden Chinatown of San Francisco

 As far as dimsum goes, New Moon offers nothing really special. It is a dimsum joint, similar to Yummy (reviewed earlier) that has a sorta buffet display up front, order what you want, pay first, and you can sit down inside. And they do have a more extensive menu. They are known for their fast service, with stuff often offered in pre-packed to-go boxes so you can grab one quickly for pretty reasonable prices (typically dimsum is about $1.00-2.00 per piece, depending on how specific items, no matter where you go in Chinatown). I needed some food to go, so I went inside and ordered a box that contained 3 daikon cakes 蘿蔔糕 and 3 shumai (they look pretty dark, so they're probably beef shumai) for $6.50. These shumai are regular sized, so price is about normal in Chinatown, maybe a LITTLE discounted, as they are a little colder than normal.  They of course have a lot of other stuff available and some Chinese-only items (sorta secret menu).  Worth trying? Sure, but as I said, nothing real

 Yummy BBQ Kitchen is one of the dozen (or so) BBQ Meat restaurants that sells the meat to go, or offer simple entrees to eat in. This particular one is on Broadway across Yuet Lee. If you just walk by, you may not even notice the sit-in spots.  I walked in, sat down, and ordered the beef stew with wonton noodle soup 牛腩餛飩湯麵 and you can also choose rice vermicelli instead of egg noodles. There are a lot of different items on the menu on the wall. However, this is technically a "pay-first" kinda spot. Order, pay first, tell them you will eat-in,  then sit down and they'll find you.  The portions are generous, but IMHO, the meat isn't quite as good as the Vietnamese 牛腩麵 beef stew pho over at Golden Star Vietnamese. So if you want a lot of meat with some tendons, so chewy, I'd recommend go Vietnamese. But if you prefer HK style then this place ain't bad. And of course, they have a lot of selection as well.  So give it a try, call it 4/5. 

Yee's Restaurant, or 文仔記 in Chinese, is a BBQ meat vendor in addition to being a "tea restaurant" with a pretty extensive menu of most Hong Kong style entrees. The portions are pretty generous, and of decent quality. I haven't compared it against Kim Po (which is at corner of Powell and Broadway, another restaurant I'll post a review later).  Went in for lunch today, and ordered a pretty simple dish: cha-siu pork and loose eggs over rice 叉燒滑蛋飯 (Number 73 on the menu). It's not bad. You get PLENTY of rice. The eggs are a bit too loose to my liking, and the cha-siu is quite salty instead of flavorful, but there is a lot of the meat. So maybe 3.5 out of 5.  Their menu is online, but the version on their website is old , and prices have risen quite a bit. It was $7.00, it's now $12.00.  In the terms and conditions, it's clear the website was NOT affiliated with the restaurant itself... Huh?  Still, not a bad place to eat, in a "greasy spoon cafe"

Cafe Broadway is at a location that used to house a restaurant called Hing Lung, which was famous for its jook (Chinese rice porridge). However, Cafe Broadway is not that.  I had an hour to kill between appointments and decided to go to Cafe Broadway, and inside is much larger than you'd expect from the outside. Lighting hadn't improved much, as it was a bit dark during day-time, probably looks a little better at night.  It was noon-ish on Friday, and I was quickly pointed to a table near the back. I'd say the place is about 80-90% full, decent business. I was slightly surprised when the waitress asked me what sort of tea I wanted, or do I want water. Generally, only higher-class restaurants have tea options. The cheaper ones just feed you cheap tea bags. I asked for chrysanthemum tea, and it was quickly served. However, it is... way too hot, and I don't see any sugar, the way it's usually served. Glancing at the menu shows they charge $1.50 per person for tea. The

Dol Ho Restaurant is at 808 Pacific, slightly out of the hustle and bustle of Stockton. It is a dimsum place, with a few tables, and you can also order the dimsum to go. Keep in mind this place is only open from 0930 to 1530, and they are not open on Wednesdays, so visiting it can be a bit hard.  Dol Ho, with minimal decorations, can be considered a local "hole in the wall", as most tourists wouldn't wander up to it. However, Dol Ho is well known to locals for good dimsum. Sorry, no carts, too small for that. I and my friend ordered beef meatballs 牛肉丸 and "tied chicken" 雞扎 (chicken, mushroom, pork, with a some vermicelli wrapped around it as if tied together, steamed), which turned out to be $4.50 each. I ordered a set for him and a set for myself. It was brought over and packed within a minute.  The meatballs are excellent. While beef, this is not the meatball you're used to. The meat doesn't want to come apart, and you have to actively use your utensil

Cafe New Honolulu, at 888 Stockton, is practically at the "other" entrance of Chinatown, Stockton Tunnel, and is right at the bus stop.  The interior is bright a sunny, and reasonable cool due to them leaving the door open all the time, but it also means it is noisy all the time, and you can hear the Muni bus announcements from the inside. "30 Stockton, Sacramento street".  I returned from work one day and decided to give it a try. There were only a few seniors inside. The menu is nice and thick, and surprisingly, not laminated, but made of thick plastic matte material. There were many items on the menu, making it a tea restaurant.  Typically at a place like this I order something classic, either beef chow fun 乾炒牛河 or the version similar 滑蛋炒牛河 runny stir-fried egg and beef chow fun. The food was served relatively promptly (within a few minutes) and the Diet Coke I ordered came VERY promptly. The flavor is above average. I find it a bit heavy in spring onions, but it

Look Tin Eli is not a popular name unless you study Chinese-American history. Yet arguably, his greatest contribution was how he became the chief negotiator for the rebuilding of Chinatown after the 1906 Earthquake and fire, and can be considered the father of all modern Chinatowns.  Early Life Look Tin Eli (aka Look Tin Sing) was born in Mendocino, California, in 1870 to Luk Bing-Tai (known locally as Eli Tia Key) and Su Wong. Luk the elder originally worked as a cook for the local magnate upon arrival, but was able to raise enough money to open a general store in town. Luk the elder's bride is actually Native American, but raised by a Chinese American family. The couple had four children: 3 sons and 1 daughter including Look Tin Eli. The elder Luk decided that all of his sons needed a proper Chinese education, so he sent each of his sons back to China at the age of 9. Look Tin Eli left in 1879. The decision was likely based on the fact that back then Chinese Americans are not all

Chongqing Xiao Mian San Francisco, at 915 Kearny, is know for spicy noodles. So that should be your warning, order only noodles there. I didn't realize that, and ordered something that's not noodle: the Braised Beef with Rice.  It came as 1 large beef rib with meat in a soup bowl (and soup), with a lot of cabbage as filler, and one bowl of rice. It's NOT beef over rice. The rice is in a separate bowl.  I did ask for medium heat (available as full heat, medium heat, no heat), and while the beef and soup did not taste very spicy, I promptly sweated. So it's a very different type of spicy heat than you would normally experience.  The meat is tender, and almost falling off the bone, but "not quite", and they don't give you extra utensils to deal with that, Apparently I'm supposed to pick up the bone and gnaw on it? I had to use the ladle and chopstick to get the meat off, and they are quite delicious... just not enough of it!  The soup is very flavorful, w

Rather than spoiling anything, you may just want to listen to her tales of when she grew up... LOTS of interesting stories. However, the video is potentially NSFW, with some very leggy outfits and some drag performers. 

 There are plenty of merch out there about Chinatown, and artists can simply upload a picture, and setup a "print-on-demand" (POD) place for t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and whatever you can print a picture on, setup a listing, and sell those items without spending money up front.  But are you buying the RIGHT item? Let's just say some artists (and I use the term loosely) clearly didn't verify the pictures fit the description. Which implies they didn't create the pictures they uploaded.  Just for fun, I did a search for "San Francisco Chinatown Merchandise" on Google, and while most of the items are correctly depicting San Francisco Chinatown, there are a few that clearly are NOT San Francisco Chinatown, even though they are labelled as San Francisco Chinatown.  Here is one such example on Amazon. Do you see the problem?  A sweatshirt for sale on Amazon labeled as San Francisco China Town That's right, they are driving on the "wrong side".

You can't come to SF Chinatown and leave out Dragon Gate, aka the Chinatown Gate, at the corner of Bush and Grant. But do you know its history?  Chinatown Gate, aka Dragon Gate, San Francisco Dragon Gate (aka Chinatown Gate, aka Dragon's Gate) was designed by Clayton Lee and others in 1967 in response to a mayoral competition, and his was the winning entry. Originally two gates were proposed, but the other gate leading to Barbary Coast was dropped due to lack of funds, and cost overrun.  The gate itself was designed after a Chinese "pailou 牌樓" or "paifang 牌坊", which were the "gates" that marked separate fang 坊, or "ward" within a city. However, later it evolved into a purely decorative element. As with tradition, the gate faces South, and is composed of a large gate with two smaller side gates.  The gate has a lot of its materials donated by Taiwan (Republic of China) including artisanal tiles, roofing, and the two guardian lions. Despite

Delicious Dim Sum, at 752 Jackson, is just up hill from Wong Lee Bakery and across the street from House of Dimsum. Competition is fierce on this block indeed. I don't know about their other items, but they have excellent beef siumai.  Their beef siumai are positively huge, quite a bit bigger than the normal suimai size, and two orders of these (six pieces in total) makes up a whole meal. Yes, there's a little bit of wrapping around the siumai, and while the meat looks very "pink" it is cooked. And there are no fillers like water chestnut or peas or such. It's just a meatball. Two orders are just over 6 bucks.  SIDEBAR: There are several version of beef siumai 牛肉燒賣 or beef balls 牛肉丸. Generally speaking, the former is like a traditional siumai, with a thin layer of wrapping around it, almost like a wonton wrapper, while the latter generally has some tofu skin at the bottom to stop it from sticking to the steaming vessel (generally a small saucer), and generally a b

Wong Lee Bakery, on 738 Jackson, is just opposite the must busier and more famous House of Dimsum, and while they do serve some dimsum, WL should really be better known for its big baos and eggtarts.  The place is rather dark and there's often a line going in, and you have some time to look over the steam table / shelf of egg tarts (decently priced) and other items on the menu behind them.  They are probably more famous for frozen wontons and dumplings for sale by the dozens.  If you want to eat cheap, I recommend ordering a pound of chow fun (rice noodles) or chow mein (egg noodles). There's no meat in these, just scallions and soy sauce. As of March 2023, it's $3.70 a pound. And you should be more than half way full once you eat a pound of that.  The other item I recommend is the "dai-bao" (lit: big bao) which is mostly chicken, but also has chinese sausage (which is pork) plus portions of an boiled egg, for a mere $2.20. So One pound of starch, 2 die-bao, and i

Yummy Dimsum , which is right next to the Bank of American ATM on Stockton (930 Stockton), is not a fancy place. But from the kitchen they serve a lot of different dimsum, and has steam table of about a dozen different entress for your lunchbox needs. They even have porridge and wonton noodles, but you have to know how to order, as it's very rarely visited by tourists.  While the quality of the items isn't the greatest, nor the freshest, locals keep coming back, just not in large numbers.  Their lunch boxes (3 entrees and rice) is $7, and most dimsum are $3 for one order (usually 3 pieces) with occasional exceptions (like beef balls are $4). They also have rice porridge in the rice cooker behind them, and their kitchen can also make you beef stew noodles, wonton noodles, and such by ordering off the menu on the wall. They do have a few small tables but they are VERY tight.  Personally, the portions of those entrees are on the smaller side, but that is probably just my feeling,

Most people know Imperial Palace  (818 Washington St) by its former name, Golden Dragon, mainly by the tragedy that happened there back in the 1970s . It does offer dimsum, but what most people fail to notice is just uphill from the main door, it actually has a "to go" door where you can buy steamed buns, and even lunch boxes. Unfortunately, neither turned out to be a good deal.  When you go in, there are the buns in the window on the left, and a steam table on the right. I was there at 1:30PM, and there are only 4-5 items to choose from on the steam table. For comparison, Yummy Dim Sum (profiled elsewhere) has at least 10, plus chow mein and chow fun (stir-fried rice noodles) to choose from in addition to rice. AND the rice box here costs $8.  For funsies, I also ordered a large bao (steamed). While still soft, the bao clearly has been sitting a while, as the outside has dried slightly. And there really wasn't much flavor. It doesn't feel it had as much filling as th

As a tour guide for Chinatown, I sometimes have to answer some unconventional questions about Chinatown, and everything adjacent to it. And for those into nostalgic movies, one of the topics that kept coming up was the Kurt Russell movie " Big Trouble in Little China (1986) ".  In case you don't remember the movie, Jack Burton, a big rig driver, goes with his Chinese buddy Wang Chi to pick up Wang's green-eyed fiancee Miao Yin arriving from China, only to have bad guys kidnap her! Jack and Wang chase the kidnappers, and learned that evil sorcerer Lo Pan needs to marry a green-eyed girl to return to land of the living, and he has a bunch of evil minions. So Jack, Wang, lawyer Gracie Law, plus bus driver and sorcerer apprentice Egg Shen unite to smite evil as they are transported into the literal underworld of Chinatown... So, do the tunnels exist?  Unfortunately, no. There are no such giant tunnels and elaborate labyrinths. Those are all filmed in the Hollywood soundst

As an amateur historian and tour guide, I gathered a lot of interesting bits of information about San Francisco Chinatown that most people are not generally aware of. I use them occasionally on my tour guide job. Here they are, in no particular order: San Francisco Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in the US (but not the Largest) San Francisco Chinatown was dubbed Chinatown by the local press in 1853 . Before then, it was known as little Canton. However, its growth is limited due to its size: only 24 square blocks, less than 1/8th of a square mile. Officially, the population is 35000 as per 2000 census, but the actual number is believed to be 100000.  By population and area, the Chinatown in Manhattan, New York, is larger : 40 square blocks, with about 150000 residents.  The Chinatown You See Today is a Rebranding Effort in 1906  After 1906 Earthquake and fire, the city asked Chinatown to undergo what we today would consider a "rebranding", to a more family-friendly version t

When it comes to San Francisco history, William Richardson is not exactly a popular name. Today, it is time to shed some light on this individual mostly forgotten by history.  William Anthony Richardson via Wikicommons William Anthony Richardson, as I had previously covered in this blog , is an officer on a British whaling ship Orion . His exact position is either first officer or fourth mate, it doesn't really matter, only that he's not the captain. In 1822, his ship arrived in today's San Francisco Bay, just as Mexico had won its independence, and reversed the long-standing Spanish policy of isolation. Instead, the Mexican ports will be open to trade... as long as it gets its fair share in taxes and transactions are properly recorded.  Richardson met Maria Antonia, as imagined by Bluewillow Mr. Richardson was sent ashore as he has a knowledge of Spanish, and he was promptly escorted by soldiers to see their Comandante, Ignacio Martinez, who invited him to the fiesta he wa

I am sure you have seen this font before, on Chinese takeout boxes, in Chinatowns, on Chinese restaurant signs or menus, or something that was supposed to be "Asian". It goes by a variety of names, such as Wonton, Chop Suey, Kung-fu, and so on.   But did you ever wonder HOW this font came to be? And how did it become the face of Chinatown?  The first appearance of this font family was registered in 1883 by Henry H Thorp of the Cleveland Type Foundry as "Chinese", though later it was changed to " Mandarin ". However, it is unknown if he personally designed it, as there are many design patents filed in his name even when he was unlikely to be directly involved.  This type of font was known in typography as an "ethnic font", trying to evoke a particular culture or ethnic group, and there are hundreds of them. Some are actually based somewhat on the language's original writing, like those pseudo-Greek or pseudo-Cyrillic fonts, then there are thes