Regional Chinese roundup 3.0 (SF Bay Area)- April 2016 - December 2017 archive

San Dong Best on Geary has closed. It’s been sold according to Chowhound. (Yelp incorrectly lists Alice Taste of Shandong as closed)

Openings:

Chef Li’s Cafe hot pot in Portotla, SF

Hu Bei restaurant opens in Millbrae.

  • Cloudland Rice Noodles First full fledged Yunnan restaurant in the Bay Area? Ten dishes on the menu according to an Updated Chihuo review. Including a cheese dish, crossing bridge noodles of course, and yunnan steampot chicken (汽锅鸡 see Carolyn Phillips recipe)

  • Chowhound discusses the mystery of SF Bayview’s Ye Cheng Du AKA Golden City Inn, which is Sichuan and Malatang, and available via Ubereats and Yelp’s Eat24.

  • Xian kitchen in Milpitas is reported closed on Yelp.

  • Happiness Noodle and Dumplings is reported closed on Yelp

My Pot features Sichuan style hotpot with a pretty authentic spicy broth.

Per Yelpers, General Tso Kitchen [sic] in the jinxed San Dong Best/Xi’an Gourmet/Sandong House/Lanzhou Noodle House location is a Hubei Restaurant.

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3741 Geary seems to be a bellwether for regional Chinese cuisine. It was part of the Shandong boom with Shandong House, and the Xi’an boomlet with Xi An Gourmet.

Now the location is contributing to a Hubei cuisine boomlet with the oddly-named General Tso Kitchen. The Hubei mini-boom includes the Hot Duck and the recently added Wuhan component at Gourmet Noodle House in San Francisco and some out-of-town action as well. The Spicy King empire also offers Hubei specialty regan mian as an option at each of its new outlets.

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Footnote: can you say “General Tso Kitchen” three times fast without making it “General Tso Chicken”?

Golden Mountain (Hayward) and Izzo Restaurant (San Jose) are closed

Openings:

Dumpling City (Palo Alto) is related to Sunnyvale’s Dumpling Depot’s according to Yelp.

April 8 Cafe (San Ramon) Seven types of jian bing (savory and sweet), gua bao

Full House Dumpling (Fremont) Taiwanese

Recently opened Wok This Way on Balboa St. is Sichuan cum bubble tea

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You might want to rephrase that.

Flunked your Latin, didja?

Not at all, actually. But it’s a pretty glaring double entendre, dontcha think?

Once the word is in italics, I don’t even think of an alternate pronunciation.

WHen the “cheese tea” phenomenon hits SF, I suppose I’ll be more circumspect.

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We called them up during lunch time and they were out of everything except dumpling (which I guess is not a bad thing for Dumpling City). The things they were out of, sounded like pre-prepared. My guess is that it may not be a full kitchen/ cooking staff for this small space.

And there was a wait.

  • Wild Ginger (Alameda) “spicy street food from the western regions of China” roujiamo, malatang, duck neck etc., noodles

  • Bai xing jia hunan fusion (San Jose) They have bobo chicken, a specialty of Szechuan Impression in LA and a dish I can’t recall seeing locally.

There’s a new shaved noodle place that just opened on Appian Way in El Sobrante. It’s called Xiang
Xiang Noodle and I don’t know if it’s related to the other place with the same name down in Cupertino.

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Beijing Duck House’s Milpitas location has closed.

@Robin_MacLean thanks for the report and for including the menu!

That’s a big selection of hand shaved noodles. What did you think of the food?

Speaking of El Sobrante, Gou Bu Li Chinese Restaurant just closed after 10+ years.

ordered a lunch special which includes a side dish, egg, and ?, didn’t get the extras.
beef chow fun was bland, no “wok hay”, charring of noodles.
$2.50 special price for milk tea ok for people who like sugared taro milk tea.
-sugared, powdered taro taste, nice mix.
mandarin speakers here, so avoid the cantonese offerings.

I used to eat at their El Cerrito location in the late '80’s and early '90’s, and always enjoyed going there. I didn’t know they had relocated!

Xi’an taste (Newark)

Also, Mom’s Dumplings, a Taiwanese restaurant in Milpitas has Hand-pulled noodles, and some yelp videos confirm it’s the style where the chef twirls them mid-air