Regional Chinese roundup 3.0 (SF Bay Area)- May 2021 - Jan 2023 archive

Closures according to Yelp

  • Simmer (SF Parkside) hot pot
  • Eurasia (Richmond) which had [Edit: I neglected to delete this unfinished thought on a restaurant outside the scope of the Regional Chinese roundup, but serendipity struck when @junesix announced that Eurasia (Richmond) is now Dumpling House Mongolian Cuisine!]
  • Dumpling Station (Sunnyvale)

Openings

  • Ubest Dumpling (Fremont)
  • The Mandarin (Menlo Park) Sichuan possibly Chongqing. Has the same owner (current, former?) as China Wok in Vallejo.
1 Like

Openings

Closures per yelp

  • Suzhe Eatery (Palo Alto), Shanghainese, which was a replacement of long-time Su Hong
  • Mandarin Garden (Concord), which had Korean-Chinese dishes
  • Du Xiao Yue (Fremont), which had Taiwanese dishes
  • Classic Guilin Rice Noodles closes its San Jose, but the Oakland location, the Bay Area’s first Guilin specialist, remains.
  • Yummy Crab, the Fremont offshoot of Spicy Station, a Wuhan specialist , in Cupertino
  • I’ve not seen reported elsewhere the closures of Hong Kong cafe Hang Out Spot or of dim sum spot Golden Saba. Can anyone confirm the latter? Their liquor license expired in May. Tangential factoids— Melanie Wong reported that Golden Saba shared ownership with Basa Seafood Express on 24th St. Basa is to my knowledge is the only place in the Mission District where you can get Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory Fortune Cookies ($2.50/bag, always tastes fresh).
2 Likes
2 Likes

Jessica Yadegaran reports in the Mercury News that the owners of Dumpling Home in SF’s Hayes Valley have soft-opened Dumpling Hours in Walnut Creek. Relatively uncommon (for the SFBA) XLB fillings include numbing spicy pork, beef, chicken, and shrimp and loofah. To my knowledge, they’re the only place on the northern section of the 680-corridor to offer pleat-down low-leavened sheng jian bao aside from San Ramon’s I-Shanghai Delight.

It’s located at 1389 N. Main Street. Anyone know what parking is like there on a typical weekday around lunchtime?

1 Like

Drove by a new place on Geneva Ave in SF, B&W Kitchen. From the menu looks like a jack of all trades Chinese, but maybe @hyperbowler can discern a focus.

1 Like

Xian Kitchen now has a branch in San Jose, on De Anza in the same mall as Hmart.

2 Likes

It looks like a standard Cantonese restaurant. Some interesting specials worth a try.

2 Likes

Closures

  • Imperial Tea Court closed its Berkeley location on August 28th according to their Instagram feed. Their Ferry Building location will continue to have hand stretched noodles.
  • Fusion Pot (San Leandro) has closed per yelp
  • Fire Pot (South SF) has closed per yelp
  • Old Shanghai (Outer Richmond SF) has closed per yelp. There had been an ownership change in 2020, but Yelp is the first I’m hearing it’s permanently closed. Any more info out there?
  • Fortune Kitchen (Fremont), which had northeastern and other fare, has closed and been replaced by One Piece Lamian.

Openings

  • One Piece Lamian (Fremont), a northwestern Chinese noodle specialist with hand-pulled noodles, roujianmo, dapanji, etc. Noodles can be ordered as angel hair, regular thin, thicker round, small flat, or general wide.
  • (for record keeping), as noted above, Xian Kitchen opened in San Jose.
  • (Taiwanese) fantuan specialist Xiaoman Riceburritos 小滿飯糰 now has a San Jose and Santa Clara location.
  • Yilan bento Taiwanese Bento in SF Chinatown
  • Oooh, Lion Dance Cafe has a pending liquor license.
2 Likes

Din Ding Dumpling’s Fremont location will reopen across the street from its original Walnut Ave location: https://whatnowsf.com/din-ding-dumpling-house-to-reopen-in-new-building/

2 Likes

Openings

  • Old Pier Hong Kong BBQ and Hot Pot (SF Parkside) malatang & hotpot in addition to the Hong Kong bbq & noodles/soups
  • Hunan Mifen (Sunnyvale) Hunan noodles
  • Apt Li Xiang (Milpitas) Taiwanese chain in the former Kung Fu Noodles space (was also a Chaozhou restaurant for a while. Menu includes beef noodle soup, dumplings, Shanghainese dishes such as XLB, pleat-down Sheng Jian Bao.
  • Shihlin Taiwan Street Snacks (Santa Clara) new location of Taiwanese chain
  • A Yelper reports that Tianjin-specialist Golden Garlic (San Jose) has been replaced by a place called The Skewer Bar. Any more info out there?
2 Likes

Closed

  • A Heart Szechuan Fish (Hayward)
  • Little Sichuan (San Mateo)
  • Root Chinese Restaurant (South SF), the Bay Area’s only restaurant with non-noodle based Jiangxi style dishes, has closed. The East Bay’s Noodles Fresh is from Jiangxi and has a few dishes made with Jiangxi rice noodles.

Open

  • Tasty Pot adds a Concord location, which had previously been reported in the Mercury News
  • As noted in my last post, The Skewer Bar (San Jose) opened in the old Golden Garlic space.

Future

  • Myeongdong Ja Jang is opening in the Pacific Pearl shopping center in Pleasanton according to ABC records and a story in Whatnowsf
1 Like

Openings

  • Hunan Mifen adds a San Jose location to their recently opened Sunnyvale location.
  • An owner of neighboring Beijing Duck House has opened Zest Food in Cupertino and featured shaokao/skewers. This has been a long time in the making-- I first noticed this in ABC records in December 2019.
  • 88 Bao Bao expands beyond their Dublin location to a location in Castro Valley
  • Elena Kadvany at the SF Chronicle reported about recently opened Bǎo Bèi, a Taiwanese and Korean project from former Maum chefs Meichih and Michael Kim
  • In the former Little Hot Pot location, Hot Pot Bros (Fremont) opens with hot pot, malatang, shaokao/skewers … and a robot server.
  • Fen is the name of the San Mateo location of Classic Guilin Rice Noodles (which has locations in Oakland/Milpitas)

Closures

  • Pan Fried Dumplings San Jose is reported as per Yelp, leaving a Newark location and sister restaurant Yummy Yummy Bao.
  • Pop Pot, a Taiwanese style hot pot restaurant in San Jose, has closed per yelp.
5 Likes

Some interesting notes on Zest Food’s menu:

Grilled Chicken Skeleton, sometimes listed on menus as “chicken racks”, isn’t too common in the SFBA. The seasoned bones with some meat to chew would be a smaller investment that the fried bones that accompany the roast duck a few doors doors down. Any ideas how this differs from the pan-fried chicken carcass?

What’s the seasoning for the 9 varieties of 锡纸系列 Foil Pot? One of the variations is corn cheese, which maybe is the same as the Korean dish.

It looks like a good chunk of the menu is identical to Boston’s Friendship BBQ.

1 Like

Openings

  • Hunan Mifen has added a third location in Newark, the Sunnyvale and San Jose locations both opened in 2nd half of 2021.

Closures

  • Flaming Kitchen (Millbrae), which had hot pot & Taiwanese food
1 Like

A Guilin place with branches in Milpitas, Oakland and San Mateo- Fen.

2 Likes

Closures

  • Yelp indicates Oakland Eden Silk Road has closed and I’ve confirmed that their phone number is unactive. It was the last remaining SFBA location of the Herembag chain, notable for their Uyghur dishes. They had first opened in Fremont, and former employees went onto open businesses such as now-closed Sama Uyghur and, what’s now the only SFBA Uyghur restaurant, Küsan Uyghur Cuisine, which has a main San Jose location and a San Francisco virtual kitchen HO. For more background, see Momo Chang’s 2020 article.
  • Happy House (San Jose) which was part of the Northeastern Chinese LiLian Gui XunRou DaBing chain.
  • Mountain View’s Chang’an Artisan Noodle has closed.
5 Likes

Ahh. I noticed they weren’t open last time I stopped by that mall a month ago. Didn’t realize they are gone for good.

Looks like they’re closed for good, at least at that location and/or format—- they transferred the liquor license to a sushi restaurant (different people) at the same address: https://www.abc.ca.gov/licensing/license-lookup/single-license/?RPTTYPE=12&LICENSE=632478

2 Likes

Closures

  • I’m saddened to report that a Yelper saw a sign at San Carlos’s Panda Dumpling announcing their closure. HO members were fond of their XLB and other dishes.
  • Gangnam House, whose name was a play on the Jiangnan region, has closed.

Openings

2 Likes

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

That’s so sad. But then again, I haven’t been there for a couple of years because of the pandemic…

1 Like