Eater reported this today, and Jonathan Kauffman followed up on SF Gate.
It’s a mystery, since TCW was David Deng’s long-time dream, and it was always busy (and served great food). SF Gate couldn’t reach anyone for comment, and as of the moment there has been no application for liquor license transfer
Any clues?
Major bummer. They have had a poor food safety score listed on yelp, But I don’t recall them being on the list of the worst offenders that SF gate recently published
Damn this is sad news
See also my reply to the Chongqing Xiao Mian thread. It may hold a clue as to what David Deng is up to.
A friend of mine said he had a stellar meal there recently, even better than his visits before they closed down. He spoke to a server and learned that the original owner, presumably Mr. Deng, spent several months in China and returned with a new page worth of items for the menu. Anyone been there recently?
Some menu pics from Yelp:
https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/terra-cotta-warrior-san-francisco?select=3bLcuWP4Z85nBLD6_SqWDA (upside down, but clear)
Here’s a readable and OCR-able pic I took today of the current menu. (Details of my meal in my blog). They’ve added a dozen new items to the Restaurant Specials section, including four new “burgers” and six new hot noodle options including three with biang biang noodles.
I went there last week for lunch to get the Xifu biangbiang mian that @souperman recommended. I’ve eaten wide noodles at several places, including TCW before they closed, but this was my first time eating super-wide biang biang noodles, which were as wide as lasagna noodles. Starchy goodness that worked really well with the egg and tomato sauce in terms of texture and flavor. And damn, those were some tasty rectangular cuboids of pork belly. The noodles stuck together a lot and seemed overcooked-- do they typically have less structure than a standard wide hand ripped noodle?
Cumin lamb burgers are as good as any in the Bay Area, and a great way of trying cumin lamb without having to commit to a full entree.
The cold lotus appetizer used to be in a chile sauce, and is now in a light sour and sweet dressing. I suppose the new version would help calm down an intense group of other dishes, but it’s threadbare and I liked the mixture of flavors in the older version better.
Not sure what you mean by “structure” but the noodles seemed more irregular than I’ve had at other places like Xi’an Famous Foods. You expect some irregularity in hand-made noodles, but those seemed sloppily or hastily made.
That looks like a huge amount of filling in the roujiamo!
By lack of “structure,” I mean that they noodles were soft and didn’t have tuggability, hardness, and tore under their own weight (they are super long). They were translucent. Still tasty!
Ha, there was a ton of meat in the lamb burger, but, looking at the picture, my camera must have been in exaggeration mode!
Sounds like the noodles were overcooked, or needed a little kansui in the making.
AS fro the roujiamo, maybe the chef learned bun-stuffing at Arby’s.
