Its Facebook page says it’s Taiwanese comfort food and it’s apparently a spinoff of Broth in Walnut CA (well covered by Yelpers).
Its Facebook page says it’s Taiwanese comfort food and it’s apparently a spinoff of Broth in Walnut CA (well covered by Yelpers).
An update from the James Beard award -winning team of Hyperbowler and friends -
Oooh, I’ve been waiting all day to read the updates!
Janelle Bitker lead this year’s efforts, and has reviews from original team members Momo Chang and Carolyn Jung. Chronicle staff Soleil Ho and Janelle also have reviews, a mix of surprises and tips from previous write-ups (I’m fan-boying it this year since I didn’t have time to participate)
For long for pieces, there’s:
there are 13 new restaurants in the update and I need to dig deeper into the articles to figure out which ones they are. Any noticeable trends?
The new ones are indicated by red stars on a map.
To respect their hard work, which is behind a paywall, I won’t reveal specific places they wrote up-- but I’ve noticed there are at least two new entries in the dumplings (3 non-Cantonese + 1 dim sum), Taiwanese, and Uyghur categories. Their picks are a good representation of openings in the past year or so, and the fact they added 13 places (and suffered a few rejects no doubt), confirms the Chronicle’s commitment to the project and coverage of Chinese cuisine in general.
What’s Mercury News doing in Berkeley? They can make a bigger effort in covering the food in their backyard.
I think that the Merc shares a lot of the stories with the East Bay Times since they are both part of the Bay Area News Group. The same story on Berkeley’s new Boiler Room Hotpot was in the East Bay Times. My digital subscription to the EB Times just expired and the lowest rate they could quote me for a renewal was $40 per year, which I declined.
You have to dig a lot but sometimes they have decent articles.
According to ABC records, one of the owners, not the one mentioned in the article, also owns Little Hot Pot on Boscell Rd. in Fremont. In general, I’ve noticed a good chunk of hot pot places are either local or international chains or have investors/owners with other properties, everything from full service regional Chinese to sushi. Tangentially, a recent LA Times article discussed Sichuan hot pot International chains.
Some businesses with pending liquor licenses:
That must mean that Mercury News don’t have many resources covering south bay food then. I rarely read their food section since I rarely find anything useful for this area.
Did you ever find out any more about United Dumplings? I can’t find any info online.
Welcome to hungry onion! Always good to see a fellow Bernal Heights resident on here!
I wasn’t able to find anything else of interest. The liquor license is still pending and my scripts did not find other previous businesses by the owners in other ABC records.
Have you been by the location recently? As of around two weeks ago nothing was posted outside and a peek inside the window showed that the front of the house had been gutted.
Clarissa Wei of Goldthread: Why Is Shanghai Food So Sweet? - Eat China
The food of Shanghai and neighboring Jiangsu Province tends to be sweet. Dishes include sweet and sour fish, sweet soup dumplings, and red-braised duck made with rock sugar. How did sugar become such a big part of this region’s food?
Openings
Closed
To my knowledge, the eight restaurant closures on this list for 2020 have been in the works for a while and are unrelated to the loss of business Chinese restaurants are suffering in the context of COVID-19.
But things are escalating for most restaurants right now, and the outlook for Chinese restaurants is especially bleak given the additional racism/xenophobia they face and additional weeks of reduced foot traffic and business loss they experienced starting last month.
@ekadvany reported on Tuesday that Taste in Palo Alto is on the brink of closure. Yesterday, Janelle Bitker reported that two staples of Oakland Chinatown, Peony and Fortuna, are on hiatus. I hadn’t seen confirmation of this anywhere, but a server at a restaurant in San Jose told me two weeks ago that they’d cut staff, and they knew of other Chinese restaurants that were already cutting days and were planning on hiatuses.