Yes! Have you come across something cool recently?
There’s a Boiling Point location in North San Jose (same mall as the original Gen BBQ) that’s not listed.
There’s also a new Sichuan hot pot only restaurant in Sunnyvale, NW corner of Homestead/Hollenback, called Jin Li Yuan. Actually there’s a couple of places in the same strip mall I didn’t find listed: The Bento Express (Taiwanese) and Noodle+ Mongolian BBQ.
Is Noodles+ really Mongolian? Even if so, Mongolia is not part of China.
Under Northern with noodle specialties:
Xiang Xiang -> Shanxi
Soong Soong -> closest to Shandong
Some entries from the Other Northern category:
Din DIng Dumpling House -> Actually Shanghai. They actually have one of the best XLB in the area now, with the closing of Hung’s Kitchen of San Ramon. (Another top contender is Chef Zhao’s in PA)
Fuji Huoshao -> Shandong
Tai Chi Jian Bing -> TIanjin
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No, it’s not really Mongolian, but rather the big round Mongolian grill type of place, and owned by Chinese.
Not sure the actual origin of mongolian grill, but I’ve read it’s a Taiwanese invention, so go figure.
So ends 2016. We netted the same number of Regional Chinese restaurants as 2015— 35 in total.
Added
- Bento Express (Sunnyvale) Taiwanese
- Boiling Point Taiwanese hot pot
- Boiling Szechuan Hotpot (Millbrae)
- Jin Li Yuan (Sunnyvale) Sichuan hot pot
Revisions
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@tanspace, thanks for the suggestions! I followed your advice for Fuji Huoshao, Soong Soong, and Xiang Xiang, and added Jin Li Yuan and Boiling Point SJ see above. I moved Tai Chi Jianbing to Beijing because that is where the owner trained and the style he (said he) reflects. I haven’t eaten at Din Ding and found its menu, noteworthy XLB aside, hard to classify. I put it under Shanghai with a note about the XLB, but put a copy of it under “other northern noodles.” If there other Shanghainese dishes that distinguish it, could you please let us know on the Din Ding thread? BTW, Hung’s (RIP) will be replaced with an Indian restaurant.
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Melanie Wong has been a fountain of Sichuan chef tips recently. She found out that Royal Feast is helmed by Chef Liu, formerly of China Village and Beijing’s Grand Hotel, and features Sichuan and Tanjia Cai (Tan Family Cuisine).
Closed
- Shanghai Tapas (Fremont)
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You’re right about Din Ding. There doesn’t seem to be too much Shanghai besides the XLBs. The wide selection of noodle dishes do look similar to Shaanxi/Xian province (Like QQ Noodle and OK Noodle) Will update if I visit and try those noodles again.
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Tastee Steam Kitchen in downtown Oakland is a bit of a new breed around here. Everything is cooked in a steamer at the table. A ‘relative’ to the steamed seafood towers in Asia. Though I don’t think the steamers here stack. If anyone tried please share your experience.
329 11th St, Oakland
How the original ‘towers’ look like. Safety inspectors would have a heart attack seeing these around here:
Redwood Bistro in Redwood City opened in the space that Panda Dumpling RWC used to be. Owners and chefs are from Five A’s cafe in Burlingame. Chef’s from Le Shan, Sichuan, 45 minutes south of Chengdu. Five A used to have a Chinese only menu where the good stuff were. So far, only pretty generic Chinese American menu on Redwood Bistro though time will tell whether one can get the good stuff again here.
711 El Camino Real, Redwood City
Nice detective work! I’ll keep an eye on their y*lp comments to see if anything beyond the regular Sichuan stuff gets served. I know of no other Leshan chefs in the Bay Area. There are some Leshan dishes at Sichuan Impression in LA and I had some spectacular Sichuan dishes at their Tustin/Irvine location.
Re: Tastee Steam Kitchen, I’m curious how good that genre is. Another steam pot place opened a year or so ago called Fresh Elements in Daly City.
I can’t say I can take the credit. Someone on Ylp mentioned the 5A connection. I just asked the owners on FB and they confirmed the same ownership and chef origin. (Is mentioning Ylp not cool around here?)
Ah- I missed that one in Daly City. Yeah, I am curious too- steaming seems somewhat, eh, bland? Maybe they do all their seasoning and manipulation already before letting people steam at the table. Perhaps the bigger risk is rubbery seafood from oversteaming.
We’re not Ch*wh**nd elitists here, so I don’t see any problem spelling out “Yelp.” It’s a great resource if used wisely. I’ve said it before: Yelpers may not always get it right, but they almost always get it first.
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Ah. I didn’t know that background. Thanks.
What’s up with the proliferation of hotpot restaurant these days? There must be 10 of them opening every week? Is it trendy now in China? Wife offered a theory that, with labor being scarce, they don’t need many cooks in the kitchen with this type of restaurants.
That might explain the supply side, but not the demand side, especially they since aren’t offering unbeatable bargains. I think the “foodier” people get, the more they want to be involved in the analysis and creation of the meals they eat, and that works out well for the restaurateurs. Charge the same, but get the customer to do half the work.
I’d call it the Huck Finn effect.
Or maybe the Cosmo Kramer effect.
Wow, I just read an article stating that there are 50,000 hot pot places in Chongqing and of course people make hot pot at home too. Apparently they use beef tallow— I don’t know if local places do that for their Chongqing hot pot.
Jonathan Kauffman recently wrote a piece on our local hot pot scene (full disclosure, I was a guest at one restaurant during his research). He discusses some of the reasons this model is advantageous to restauranteurs, and says that the recession boom has shifted from Japanese style hot pot to Chinese and Taiwanese style hot pots.
From the customer standpoint, individual hot pot has merits. The proliferation of diets, allergies, food preferences, and different sensitivities to spiciness make it difficult to share a communal hot pot that consists of more than boiled cabbage. I also see a parallel between the rise of individual hot pot places and many fast casual places both in terms of affordability and healthiness. You can have a balanced meal with lots of vegetables if you don’t make it a meat fest, and it can be challenging at a Chinese restaurant to do that if you’re eating dinner solo on a budget. On that note, I discovered over the weekend that Little Hot Pot in Fremont has conveyer belt hot pot— your hot pot is on an induction burner and you grab plates of veggies as they fly by. My days of being a buffet slayer are behind me, but it’s good to know there are some green options out there.
Oh i missed that one. Thanks for the article. Good to read up about the differences among all the hot pot players since they have blurred into this blurb of hot pot places.
I generally enjoy hot pot, especially the social aspects of it. Though a la carte ordering can get pricey quickly, when, like you said, one can have a good fully cooked meal for around the same price elsewhere. AYCE helps. Some cheaper specials, like at Little Sheep, just provide a very little amount of food.
I mentioned in the Berkeley News topic that L&L Seafood in El Cerrito, classic Cantonese, is closed now.
Were you known as “Vampire, the buffet slayer?”
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