I can give some insight but I’d like to hear from others about experiences eating at the the US or China locations! Happy House (Dublin) and Happy House (San Jose) are part of LiLian Gui XunRou DaBing chain), so it appears you identified a new one! The first Bay Area location, in Milpitas, is now called Dingguagua Tasty Legend (Milpitas) (the sign had said Perfect Food for a long time). I don’t know whether it’s still part of the chair on not.
While I’m writing, some closures:
Guo in Fremont
Taste of Formosa, on Clement in the Outer Richmond, is closed, phone disconnected according to Yelp. They’d been there a long time, at least 15 years. Anyone know what happened?
Chan’s Kitchen in Newark, and according to yelp, the Oakland one too.
Beijing-based chain Simmer Huang, which opened its first US location in 2017, is opening in Newark and Livermore according to an article in News For Chinese. Table-side transition from dry-pot to hot pot with hand-pulled noodles.
Thanks for the link-- the trademark section has my eyes spinning.
It’s difficult to tell what they do well-- I hope someone has insights. The Milpitas location (at one point) had a 300-400 item menu, with everything from the speciality Dongbei pies, to Sichuan dishes (even toothpick lamb). For years they kept the sign up from the previous restaurant at that location, Perfect Chinese Food. Yelpers wound up tagging on new reviews to the previous restaurant’s yelp page.
Yiyi’s Mandarin Kitchen (SF Outer Richmond) owner’s profile on Yelp says he is from Hubei, and that it’s a Sichuan restaurant. General Tso Kitchen, and the now closed Gourmet Noodle House and Hot Duck have/had chefs from Hubei, and the former had a chef trained in Sichuan cuisine. Is there a connection between all these Richmond District restaurants?
I certainly don’t. But hopefully they do this well since that’s what the restaurant-founding gentleman was known for. But their Yelp reviews sure are terrible.
Whoah! A big congrats to @hyperbowler and @JonKauffman for the wonderful work they and the team have done to bring the Chronicle Chinese regional guide to fruition. But I should add that @hyperbowler’s original Regional Chinese guide in this very topic inspired the whole effort!
I’ve tried the LiLianGui house special smoked pork. And it was very underwhelming. A very un-memorable version of pork to say the least. Not sure how the original one tastes in China, but the rendition here leaves a lot of be desired. It was not tender, not juicy, not very smoky, basically a bad version of Japanese ramen charsui could have bettered it.
As far as the relationships between the 3 stores, it is also a mystery. As recently I’ve been told that the Dublin and the West San Jose stores are no longer related. The SJ store actually went back and forth on using the LiLianGui chain name once. It was a regular Chinese restaurant to begin with, then became LiLianGui. Then they removed all references to it. But recently has started using it again.
So the bottomline is that perhaps they’re just using the “brand” as a marketing tool. As far as other cooking at the restaurants, they’re not that bad.
Kudos again to all the Hungry Onion and Chowhound members who helped inspire, and make practical, the what/where to eat section of the guide, and give an opportunity for restaurateur voices to be heard in the long-form articles by the journalist dream-team!
While I’m writing:
Chili Boy (San Jose) has closed
A Sack of Potatoes opened their first US location in Fremont. They describe themselves (I ain’t touching this) as “a specialty restaurant inspired by the Andes region in South America. The first store was founded in Canton, China. It is now one of the most popular fruit tea and snacks places. With over 17 stores located in various parts of Canton, China, we are proud to introduce our first store in Fremont, CA, USA.” Teriyaki Chicken Jian Bing, potato tornado, New Orleans chicken wing, eggetes, etc.
Chan’s Kitchen has now reopened as R’Noodles with a minor interior upgrade and a new, short menu. I peeked in at about 2 pm today, Saturday, and saw about 7 4-tops with customers at almost all of them.
Highlight of the menu, under the Noodles section is “No 1, LiuZhou river snails style rice noodle soup …10.89”
There are also pigs feet rice noodle and Guilin rice noodle soups on the menu.
There are no reviews or Yelp posts online yet. I didn’t see any change of ownership signs on the windows and was not able to tell if R’ has the same staff as Chan’s had.
R’ Noodles
930 Webster St (between 9th and 10th Streets in Oakland Chinatown)
Oakland
510-250-9707
As these things go, I wonder if Sack of Potatoes had a discount/special for leaving a yelp review.
@zippo1, thanks for the announcement about R’Noodles! @chandavkl has tried the Liuzhou places in SGV, so should take note (btw, what’s the R’Noodles name mean? I think the upper right character on the marquis is “snail”).
Some closures:
Tahe Foods has closed
100% Sweet Cafes on Clement in SF and in San Mateo have closed. They were Cantonese places selling mixian noodles of some sort.
Wow, 930 Webster used to be one of my favorite hangouts when it was Shanghai Restaurant, and now it has another inducement with one of my favorite foods, Liuzhou luosifen. I’ve made several transbay trips to Classic Guilin Rice Noodles on 10th Street which has featured this dish for mere than 5 years. I even joined the Facebook group “我爱螺蛳粉 / I love Luosifen (snail noodles)” and have made the DIY packaged version a couple of times. It’s amazing that Oakland has two places featuring this hyper-regional dish.
Notably, luosifen typically doesn’t contain any actual river snail meat. That’s the case at R’ Noodles, too. Instead, Huang said, the snails are used to flavor the broth, which is also made with pork bones and pickled bamboo. The broth, as far as I’m concerned, is what makes the soup so special: It was simultaneously spicy, pungent, earthy, sour, and funky, while allowing the flavor of all the toppings to shine through. The silky, slippery round rice noodles, just a little thicker than spaghetti, were a welcome reprieve from the robust flavors while adding another dimension of texture. Huang said her aunt makes the fresh noodles in the shop using a machine once or twice a day, depending on customer demand.
