Chu, Carl - Chinese Food Finder: The Bay Area and San Francisco

[oyceter]

rachelmanija gave this to me for my birthday, and it is awesome!

I am generally leery of English-language write-ups of Chinese food; in my experience, they tend to portray Chinese food as something exotic and foreign at worst and as something non-normative at best. More importantly, the Chinese food that they talk about is not my Chinese food, which is normal, everyday and comfortingly familiar. Also, either I can't figure out what the books are talking about because the names are funny transliterated English (ex. "Dragon Phoenix Soup") that make sense in Chinese but not really in English or because they're talking about stuff that I don't eat very often (ex. banquet food from the seventies).

I don't think I'm an expert on Chinese food; if pressed, I'd find it hard to talk about what makes Shanghainese Shanghainese or Cantonese Cantonese. But given that I lived eight years in Taiwan and that my parents and their social circle are all foodies and enjoy all kinds of Chinese food, I figure I know what I like.

Anyway. The best part about this book is that it didn't need the massive introduction up top, because as far as I can tell, it is written by someone who knows a ton about all sorts of Chinese food and by someone who knows a ton about the Bay Area. I just said all the stuff up there so you will all understand why I am so excited about a Chinese food guide!

Seriously! I have been looking and looking for something like this! I love restaurant reviews and talk of food, and I especially love knowing where to eat locally, but a lot of the Chinese food I eat here (even here! Bay Area!) pales in comparison to Taiwan. Also, the high-rating restaurants on things like Yelp often end up having excellent sweet and sour, which is usually not what I'm looking for.

So. This book is awesome! It confirms my suspicions that most good Chinese food is not actually in SF Chinatown, but in suburban strip malls in Milpitas, Cupertino and Millbrae, and that I am not making things up when I say my eyes glaze over looking at most Chinese restaurant menus ("Same old, same old...").

And! Chu introduces various regional Chinese cuisines, from Szechuan to Cantonese to Hong Kong cafes! Alas and alack, he only mentions Taiwanese food briefly (not that I eat much of it here or at home, aside from street food-y things). But! He really seems to know what he's talking about! He gives a brief introduction to each region's cuisine and describes it, and then he gives a list of fairly typical dishes that the region is known for (with Chinese characters as well as the English! So I know what he's talking about!).

I disagree with him on quite a few points; he's rather snobby and thinks Szechuan is the epitome of Chinese cuisine because of its complexity and looks down on the simplicity of Cantonese and Hakka food. Also, he insults my beloved you tiao/oil sticks and other such "peasant" food. On the other hand -- he talks about Hong Kong cafes and "Western" Chinese food (curry, spaghetti with an egg on top, steak with an egg on top, pretty much anything with dairy in it) and Asian bakeries and the wheat/rice split and Islamic Chinese food and almost everything he says sounds familiar, even though I didn't know I knew them! And I forgive him because he recognizes the superiority of the Cantonese way of preparing seafood. And he has a section on noodles and dumplings, beloved cornerstones of my fooding experiences.

And! Best yet! Almost all of my favorite restaurants are in there! This means I can trust his recommendations! And he tells you exactly what to get at each restaurant, so you are not accidentally stuck with the English menu with generic stuff like General Tso's chicken and chow mein. And he doesn't just rec fancy places, he recs hole-in-wall places as well. He doesn't have all my favorite restaurants in there (he misses some of my favorite street-food-esque places), but he's got a good 90%, which is pretty damn impressive.

And! I was telling my mom about some of it, and she seemed to think it sounded fairly accurate as well! I feel the book cannot get a higher rec than that.

Even though I am grumpy with his snobbery, I am still overjoyed to find a book on my food, on the food I eat, in a language I can easily read. My food! I cannot emphasize this enough! I rarely eat Chinese any more because I hate bad Chinese so much, and it's gotten to the point when I don't realize I miss it, but once I have it... oh. It is like going home.

Chu's written a similar food finder for LA (Asian food heaven) and NY, and it looks like he has a general-purpose guide to regional Chinese cuisine coming out later this year. I am planning on flipping through it; if it's even a little more detailed than this book, I am buying it.

Just... OMG! I FOUND A BOOK ABOUT CHINESE FOOD THAT DOESN'T SUCK!

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

OH NOES. I am pretty sure they had red bean and other buns...but hunting around to see if I could find a menu online, it looks like Kam Fong just closed its doors a few months ago, another victim of the ongoing chain-store gentrification of DC's Chinatown. :(

At least Full Kee and Eat First still seem to be around. It's a shame, really, DC's Chinatown was pretty tiny to begin with when I first moved here, and in the last ten years it's just been steadily shrinking. Nowadays you can barely find the actual Chinese businesses amidst all the Fuddruckers and Payless and Hooters and Starbucks...but hey, they have hanzi on their signs so they maintain the character of the neighborhood! *sigh*

And Annandale really is heaven for great Korean food, I have never yet found a bad restaurant. From his list I can vouch for both Sorak Garden and Yechon, depending on what sort of atmosphere you want and when you're dining. Sorak is bigger, fancier decor, quieter atmosphere; Yechon is more relaxed and casual, especially if you're going there late at night; they're open 24 hours and so they can often get pretty busy when it's late enough that the only other game in town is diner food. Great food, and they are INSANELY generous with the panchan.

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

I second that about Yechon - always have a good experience there, although I recently had a VERY weird little panchan which was, I swear, cut up raw white sweet potato and grapes in a whipped mayonnaise sauce. It was...memorable.

Full Kee is great. I don't really dig congee, as I am a philistine, but they do vegetables really well.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Korean potato salad! :D

(I usually pass on that one too, as I just don't like ANY sort of potato salad. Mayonnaise and I do not get along.)

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm totally down with the weird Korean obsession with potato salad (with the occasional cubed carrot or pea in it), but this was potato salad as imagined by some kind of conceptual artist who had never actually eaten it.

You can have congee - I'll take mayonnaise.

[oyceter]

I will take congee too! ;) I have a mortal fear of mayo, thanks to Taiwan's version being strangely sweet. Also, there was this dish of cooked shrimp covered in mayo with rainbow sprinkles on top that horrified and continues to horrify me, even though I will eat deep-fried shrimp head.

You know, I'm totally down with the weird Korean obsession with potato salad (with the occasional cubed carrot or pea in it),

Yes! You must have the trio of frozen veggies! ;) That's how my mom used to make it -- with frozen peas, corn and carrot and cubes of ham and slices of egg. I loooove Asian potato salad. And a lot of Asian takes on Western food.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

And a lot of Asian takes on Western food.

Japanese French bakeries! Oh, I would give my left arm to have more of those ham croissants from Shirokiya's Saint-Germain bakery... *drools quietly*

[oyceter]

YES! I just read Antique Bakery and was droooling the whole way through.

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

My sister really loves congee, but I still have yet to find a place in my heart for it.

That dish you described (I can't even go into more detail) made me shriek "Noooooo!" at the computer screen - for real.

I think some of my favorite Asian takes on Western food are Chinese. I love those ham and cheese buns, and also the hot dog ones! And it's funny - fried eggs that my grandmother fried always tasted Korean to me, even though I couldn't see that she did anything particularly different...

[oyceter]

Hee! My favorite Chinese/Taiwanese takes on Western food freak people out (see above potato salad ^_~). My other weird ones have been tuna and corn crepes, tuna and corn on waffles with ketchup, mayo and cucumbers, and anything green tea. Also, pretty much all Chinese bakery items. And, um, I had a Japanese crepe with tuna, pizza sauce and cream cheese, and it sounded disgusting, but it was awesome.

It's so weird to see what's acceptable and what's not for food; I took a friend to a Chinese restaurant once and she asked for sugar for her tea. All I could do was stare, horrified.

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

Table manners play into that too! Like how it's pretty much totally ok (for Koreans, anyway) to lift a bowl and drink that broth in the bottom of it - which would give any Western ettiquette guru a fit - but it makes me wince when I watch people misusing chopsticks! The worst for me is when I see people stabbing things on to them like they're shish kabob skewers...

[oyceter]

The worst for me is when I see people stabbing things on to them like they're shish kabob skewers...

Wow, I totally winced at that! That, and sticking chopsticks straight up into a bowl of rice ngaaaaah.

I used to annoy my mom to death by slurping soup and noodles really loudly -- then I'd tell her it was polite in Japan! (It is! Also, it is practical... slurping the noodles cools them down!)

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

But then again, I've totally contravened Korean manners codes a million times...like taking things straight from the communal dish and putting them into my mouth rather than in my bowl first, which always gets me a scolding from my mom (although that could be a "my mom" thing rather than a Korean thing)...or putting my chopsticks down horizontally at the top of my bowl, which is bad too for some reason.

Wow - I want noodles now really badly.

[oyceter]

like taking things straight from the communal dish and putting them into my mouth rather than in my bowl first, which always gets me a scolding from my mom

Oh, I totally do that. I don't know if it's a Korean thing or not, but it's definitely a Chinese thing. Also, I always forget to use the communal chopsticks in restaurants. I am not sure about the chopsticks horizontally over the bowl! We usually use that as a signal of "I'm done eating," but I don't know about the politeness level.

It's really interesting looking at the definite NOs vs. the sometimes at home vs. the it's a rule but I do it all the time anyway.

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

Yeah - I'm planning on moving to Korea for a while at the end of the year, and I'm sort of sitting around being nervous about the mistakes I'll make ahead of time...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

this was potato salad as imagined by some kind of conceptual artist who had never actually eaten it.

*DYING*

Potato salad as avant-garde art is, I think, the only way I could get behind the dish. XD

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

And it's just getting sadder and sadder to go to Chinatown in DC. Gentrification is uber-depressing, especially when there's this strange veneer of pseudo-Chineseness on all of the chain stores, like you're saying.

A freaking CVS with hanzi and epigrams about prosperity on the outside? Way to keep it real.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Don't forget the Hooter's, with a sign reading "OWL RESTAURANT"!

But oh lord yeah, sooooo depressing. I used to live downtown, just a couple metro stops away, walking distance really. And now when I go back downtown and look for old favorites and the list of places that's still open gets shorter and shorter each time... *sigh*

The GROCERY STORE is gone. If that's not a sign that the neighborhood is dying, I don't know what is. There's no shortage of HUGE pan-Asian supermarkets in the 'burbs, but there were some things you could find in Chinatown that I haven't yet managed to find in any of the megamarts. *clutches stash of loose lychee tea possessively, etc.*

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

Right, and now there's only that one little shop that sells dried herbs and some candy, right by the Indian restaurant. I know - when that grocery store left I felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. And now there's going to be some kind of three-story Italian restaurant there, or something. Oh vomit.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, Mehak is going away too? It's not like DC is oversupplied with good Indian food either!

Having new Italian restaurants, now, on the one hand GOOD non-chain places are kind of scarce in that town, or at least it always seems that way to me after living in Philadelphia for several years. But geeze, why THERE? And given the way the neighborhood is going, why do I get the sinking feeling it's just going to be something like an Olive Garden or Macaroni Grill? Clearly, the only way to get people to venture out of the suburbs and back into downtown is to make it feel JUST LIKE THE SUBURBS... *sigh*

[seitzk.livejournal.com]

No no no!!! Mehak is not going away! And the Italian place is going up where the big supermarket was.

All the other stuff you said better than me...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank goodness. Whew! It's getting to where I almost feel like I have my heart in my throat every time I make it downtown these days, just waiting to see what else has gotten nuked.