Mr. Jiu’s in Chinatown SF

I was recently taken to Mr. Jiu‘s for my birthday dinner. Mr. Jiu’s is sort of an upscale Hong Kong take on modern Chinese cuisine. Located in Chinatown. It was a very good experience. Here is what we ate:

Brined Celtuce with Chinese almond and lemon verbena- this was very crunchy, flavorful and refreshing. A great starter.

Chicken feet terrine with lime chili Sorrel. Great texture and chicken flavor.

Local halibut with hot mustard and fiddlehead ferns shoots. This was maybe our favorite course of the evening. The halibut was very fresh and enhanced by the spicy mustard flavor.

See urchin Cheong fun. This was a very interesting dish. The creamy urgent contrasted with the texture of the noodles.

Early girl tomato hot and sour soup with Maine lobster nasturtium and lily bulb. I am a big fan of early girl tomatoes, hot and sour soup and lobster so it was a given that we will try this. This was probably our second favorite dish of the evening. It was excellent. Husband says it kept morphing between hot and sour and tomato soup. I just found it a very satisfying dish and wish I had a bigger bowl. My only complaint is that I was unable to perceive any lobster. Husband says he could taste it in the broth.

Shui-Jiao with scallops shrimp card and dill. Excellent seafood flavor enhanced by the dill.

Matsutaki fried rice - excellent. A blend of textures with deep umami flavors.

Caramelized pluot dessert. Black sesame soft meringue encased black sesame frangipane enhanced by pluot goodness. Excellent

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I’m soooo envious…sounds like a great dinner! I want to go to Mr. Jiu’s just for Melissa Chou’s desserts, LOL. She was amazing with her desserts for Aziza/SF when she worked there.

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Excellent. Thanks for the report. I’d love to try Mr. Jiu’s. But every time I try to look for a Saturday reservation, they don’t have anything unless its like 10pm, even if its two months out. Is this one of those restaurants that you have to wait for the reservations to open up and click like mad to snatch one?

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It is definitely one of those places that you have to make a reservation when they open, at least for the weekends. You can always chance walking in early too!

If you’re willing to sit at the bar, I just walked in some weekday night a month or so ago and had no wait. There definitely would have been room for 2-3 people without much wait either.

That said, I had the “Mr. Jiu’s Classics” menu, which only has the cheong fun in common with what’s posted here, and wasn’t particularly impressed. These pictures do look quite a bit better and more interesting than what I had, though.

My unedited messages to friends of mine at the time:
"Mr jius - uni cheong fun, black sesame sponge cake, the scotch/rye/cardamaro/apple brandy drink, and the nantou dark oolong tea…and nothing else

probably not worth it overall

okay, bathroom’s pretty nice"

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Chef Jew has been running a store that sells prepared food and also grocery items during the pandemic called Jiu’s Ho Ho. One can also get some of the prepared food items from Mamahuhu (Mr. Jiu’s Chinese-American restaurant). I got a frozen zongzi as part of a Mamahuhu order a little while back and had it as part of lunch today and it was quite good. Nicely flavored sticky glutinous rice with chunks of lapcheong and dried shrimp and shiitake mushrooms. A bit smaller than the softball sized zongzi I’m used to but enough for a large snack or a small meal.

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Had a client event there last night. First, I love the ambience of the space upstairs. Classy, not over the top, good energy but not so loud that you can’t talk. I unfortunately had to leave early, so missed a significant portion of the meal, but I would say that it is unevenly executed but the the things that were well executed were really well executed.

I had the mule for my cocktail. Probably should have tried something more exotic but this hit the spot. Nice balance of ginger, honey and lime. Not too spicy, sweet or tart and probably could have had a couple more!

Mouthwatering Cabbage Salad - I was ok on this. I sort of get the idea, but honestly, I’d probably prefer the American style Chinese chicken salad over this. Hard to say what was wrong. The chicken was nicely poached, the vinaigrette was probably a bit overpowering and just too much for the cabbage.

Hot and Sour Soup - Again, I didn’t love it, but I get the idea. A lightened up version of H&S soup without the cornstarch gumminess. On further reflection, I think if I just forget that this is supposed to think about this as H&S soup and more as a H&S consomme, it was quite good. Light, refreshing and hell, i finished the bowl.

Beef Fried Rice - Perfect grains of stir fried rice and nice, wonderfully cooked and seasoned cubes of beef that were tender. My only quibble is the rice was probably a bit overly soy-sauced and I tend to prefer my fried rice to have less soy sauce as it overshadows the quality of the rice. But, I had a ton of it and it was delicious.

Steamed Red Snapper - I love canto style steamed fish. This was excellent. Each table got two massive, fat red snapper. Perfectly steamed and the sauce was light but flavorful. I was at a table with a bunch of folks who didn’t quite undestand what to do, so I filleted and served it up… making sure to save the best parts (cheek, belly areas) for myself, lol. Again, I had more than my fair share but man, these snapper were so fresh!

Sadly, at this point, I was getting full and yet had two more courses to come that I was very excited about. But the real kicker is I had to catch a flight and thus missed out on the Peking Style roasted duck and Barbeque Pork. I could have taken a later flight home but i wanted to see my kids - of course, when I told my son I left early and passed up on duck and pork to say good night, he looked me dead in the eyes and said “I would have stayed.”

I’m not sure I would be happy paying for this meal myself, but on someone else’s dime, it was a good meal that may have been great had I been able to stick around for the two big entrees.

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