Thanks! I was confusing Lulu’s with defunct Lily’s. Fixed.
Hot pot is huge, and I would expect that there are more restaurants specializing in Chinese hot pot then there are any category above except maybe Sichuan. The lack of a clear regionality is one of the few reasons why I haven’t tracked them. Can someone who knows something about hot pot businesses start a thread and tell us how these businesses work? I’d be interested to know how much food is prepared as opposed to supplied, for example see the article centered on the Shandong beef roll by @chandavkl
Yes, the hot pot explosion is fascinating. I’m used to the traditional “cook your own food” hot pots, but the newer ones–which are more like soups or stews where all the ingredients are pre-cooked and just piled into a pot with broth–appear to be Taiwanese in origin.
Definitely a craze going on there… The newest would seem to be Lollipot, which replaced that big Vietnamese place at 19th and Taraval that I never got around to trying.
Pisco Trail has a Chinese Peruvian New Years dinner @18Reasons in SF on Jan. 27th
More info
Chef Z’s (San Jose) h/t Melanie Wong on CH, who says chef and wife are from Kunming in Yunnan provice, and chef was raised in Chongqing. A few Kunming dishes, stylistic influences in preparations, and a few Mixian noodles 米线 dishes. Note that Kunming is closer to Sichuan province, and we still lack Yunnan restaurants with dishes representative of the area of Yunnan provide with more Southeast Asian influences.
Consistent with the spicy duck items listed on the menu, Spicy Station (Cupertino) has owners from Wuhan (confirmed by phone)
Reorganization
I moved a bunch of the uncategorized restaurants into “Northern with noodle specialities, unknown or non-specific region (might actually be Shandong or Dongbei)”
I moved Teochew and Hakka from underneath Guangdong, and respectively linked the Cleaver Quarterly’s article on Teoswa (Teochew/Swatow) cuisine and the Hakka Cookbook.
There were a few Cantonese-owned places with Yunnan “mixian” noodles that I’ve listed under their own category under Yunnan.
I followed up on earlier advice from @ThomasNash and deleted the “Sichuan Taiwanese” category and put Spices and Spices III under Sichuan, and mentioned that they have stinky tofu options.
I am curious if there are good arroz chaufa around here. I tried it for the one and only time in Cusco years ago after months of travelling, out of curiosity and craving for Chinese at the time. It was so bad that I never brought myself to order it anywhere again. Did I just have bad luck?
For the Yunnan dish, are you referring to the Cross the Bridge noodle? There may be a place in Millbrae (HD Chinese Yunnan Rice Noodle) that serves that, though I don’t know how good of a rendition it is.
Thanks! I’ve added them to the list. If someone could start a new thread, I’d love to hear a recent review — the pics online of their Shanghainese dishes look great, and their big sesame bread (zhima da bing) looks excellent too.
SG was good 15~20 years ago when choices were VERY limited, especially in EB. I wouldn’t go out of my way to SG today. Cooking is too sweet for my taste.
Great and very helpful list. Thank you. My recent accidental discovery of Shanghai Tapas in Fremont is worth some ink. Genuine Shanghainese cooking, not overly sweet. We tried a new-to-me fish gluten dish. Delicate and very good. Made with fish, no wheat. (i.e. gluten free?)
InsideScoopSF’ Jonathan Kauffman has a nod to this topic (h/t Melanie at Chowhound):
It includes a dig at CH: “It took 18 months for version 3.0 to come out, after many of Chowhound’s prolific, opinionated contributors stormed off the site en masse last year after a round of major changes”
Everything is integrated into the original post, but for record keeping, here are restaurants that opened in 2016. Please start a report if you’ve been to any! In 2015, 5 restaurants opened and subsequently closed, and 40 opened and are still open.
Thanks! I can start adding subsections for Sichuan hot pot and Taiwanese hot pot for places that self-identify, and don’t have a big enough menu to fit in the general categories.
Hotpot First is a Sunnyvale location of a Chongqing restaurant. I’ve kept track of a bunch of others, and will sort through them before integrating.
Guidance would be helpful in general categorization for this, especially if folks have been at particular restaurants.
Yes, Cross the Bridge noodles is the Yunnan dish I was referring to.
There are a few places with Yunnan Mixian, and other places that tout Yunnan noodles. However, the lack of other Yunnan dishes on their menus makes me skeptical, for example Sweet Cafe.
Minor quibble. Spices Fremont is labeled as Taiwanese Sichuan. But I believe that they call themselves Hunan. Same general ownership as Spices I, II, III … but chefs and cuisine are definitely different. Had 3~4 dishes at Spices Fremont, spicy hot as hell! I wondered where they source their variety of spicy hot peppers from.
I had it in the canonical place in Kunming and didn’t really get the fuss. I think it’s dish kind of like the burrito or NY Slice that’s a great comforting every day dish that can be stellar due to fundamental balance, but doesn’t elevate particularly well.
Please ignore my poor searching, maybe you’ve got it and I can’t see it, but
Peking Duck Palo Alto is still chugging along. I honestly can’t figure out their region, because the non-duck dishes are closer to shanghai, but I had the same experience in Beijing a few years ago… a duck place I went to seemed to have a regional chef from somewhere closer to ChengDu so there were some very good dishes that had nothing to do with the main thrust of the restaurant. In particular I remember a duck preparation where the thing was reduce to all skin and jerky with blazingly hot spice. My chinese friend wouldn’t touch it, too spicy. Mmmm.
On a related note, I keep wondering about Hangen in Mountain View. It seems like there are often people in there. Given the sky-high rents, they must own their own building, but … is the place actually good? Would appreciate a report ( although when I’m feeling the Szechuan I’m down to Chef Zhao more often than not ).
