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

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

AMAZON GOES KACHING!!!!

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

Not just the book, but the fact that you live somewhere that invites such a book, makes me rather insanely jealous. *_* Wow.

[oyceter]

Bwahaha! Awesome!

It's a pretty small book, and some of it is clearly aimed for a non-Chinese audience, but still. He really knows what he's talking about! The only really big problem I have with it is that it does not come out yearly!

[oyceter]

^_____^

The funny thing is, I am intensely jealous of people who live in LA, because the Asian food there is SO MUCH BETTER.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

...now you're making me hungry for squab and sesame mwaji and that sweet sliced rice cake thing with bits of chestnut (?) we had in Taiwan that I think is traditional for New Year.

Wasn't it Hakka food that I failed to find in Taiwan? I keep reading about it but I've never had any.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

O RLY? Ha ha! That is the first time anyone living in the Bay Area has ever said LA does anything better, so I will forever cherish that remark.

This week I will eat Chinese food and think of you.

[oyceter]

That is the first time anyone living in the Bay Area has ever said LA does anything better

Really?! I think every single Chinese person I have talked to ever has agreed that LA has the best Chinese food in the US.

Btw, when are you flying out? I am pretty much done with the kimono and mean to ship it soon!

PS. Carl Chu mentions black sesame jelly rolls; I read that bit and thought of you.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Oh, man. I love Cantonese food. He really disses it? Ok, it doesn't have a bazillion chilis, but it's some serious good eats.

I can't get good and fresh Chinese food in Baltimore, and this has me jonesing. Is there a similar guide for other areas of the country you think?

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

Why must California sound so tempting? ;_; It's on the other side of the continent! *mournful*

[oyceter]

Yes! We did not get Hakka food =(. There isn't even much of it in Taiwan. Also, we did not get traditional Taiwanese non-street food; there is a place with awesome mwaji, but I think we were a little overbooked on the food end of things!

ZOMG I went to the squab/fish/mwaji place last week with my mom and friends and had more squab and fish and they ran out of mwaji! I was devastated. Except the waitress suggested another dessert which sounded gross: a baozi type thing, only with sweet runny egg yolk in the middle. We ended up getting it, partly out of curiosity, and it was delicious -- the egg yolk wasn't raw, I don't think, but it was slightly grainy and mixed with sugar and other stuff so it tasted a little like melted custard.

OH! And the cheap congee place I took you too? We went there too with a lot of friends and they have this manga-grapefruit-tapioca soup that is the BEST THING EVER. Next time you are up here, I am dragging you there, because I am already craving it and I just had it last week.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I'm flying out on the 22nd, but I just checked the forecast and Japan is in the high eighties and rainy while I'm there, so I won't bring it; it might be best to hang on to it till I return.

I'm not sure I've ever had a Bay Area vs. LA conversation that touched on Chinese food; actually, I'm probably thinking more about insufferable magazine articles by Bay Area folks, which I used to read a lot of back when I lived in Santa Cruz.

Talk about comfort food: I was literally eating those jelly roll things (in the Bay Area, heh) when I was a toddler.

[oyceter]

He says it is plain and simple and not complex =(. I mean, it is partly true, but I prefer to think of it as "subtle" and "bringing out the natural flavors of the ingredients." Though he and I agree that it is the best way to cook seafood ever (um, no, I'm not biased at all, really...).

I have no idea if the new book will have country-wide recs. The way I usually find new places is to just ask my Chinese friends, particularly the ones from Taiwan, though I suspect that would be awkward with complete strangers. I also usually look for neighborhoods with a lot of Chinese people and see what's around. But, um, I have also had really poor luck finding Chinese food in non-NY/LA/Bay Area places, even in NJ, with its large Chinese population.

[oyceter]

Cooommmeee heeere....

I adore California, though, so I'm completely biased.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Oooh, yes! Is the soup hot or cold? (Germans do cold sweet cherry soup, which I've always wanted to try.)

The egg yolk thing sounds good, actually. I definitely would have tried it.

And woe! no trad Taiwanese non-street food! Clearly I must return to remedy such tragedy!

[oyceter]

Oh, ugh, I hate the Bay Area/LA comparisons. I mean, I do think LA's traffic is bad and am confused by the large sprawl from what I saw. But it's not like Bay Area doesn't have bad traffic and large sprawl (ours is just divided into cities). I am very much jonesing to visit LA again, if only for Furaibo.

[oyceter]

It's cold, and it's so good! Clearly you must visit Bay Area and Taiwan again!

I am waiting for one of my friends to post her pictures; she photographed nearly every meal (we all laughed, as there always seems to be one person at the table who will photograph all the food).

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

*flails* Continent...so big...

Actually, I was hoping to get a stopover in California if we went to Hawai'i this year. *sighs* I've never been, other than stopping in the LA and San Diego airports for connecting flights. (Or maybe it was San Francisco? I was jet-lagged and just grateful to NOT be in the LA airport again.) But maybe next year the in-laws will be housesitting again, and then maybe I will be harassing you for advice on what to do. ^^

By a chain of thought, that reminds me that a Toronto friend of mine met you in passing at Wiscon, and I was jealous. And we discovered that we pronounce your username differently. I use two syllables, she used three. Help?

[oyceter]

By a chain of thought, that reminds me that a Toronto friend of mine met you in passing at Wiscon, and I was jealous. And we discovered that we pronounce your username differently. I use two syllables, she used three. Help?

Oh, awesome! Um, do you have her name (email is ok too)? I am embarrassed that I do not remember! Usually I pronounce my username as "oyster," but I've had the three-syllable problem ever since I started using it back in high school. So... technically "oyster,' but I am not insulted either way, and "Oyce" is always good too.

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

Oh, good--I've retrained myself on pronouncing people's online names before, but it always takes a bit of doing.

*laughs* I'd be amazed if you could ID her from that description. It was cristalia (Leah Bobet), and there's a picture of her on the front page of her site (http://www.leahbobet.com/). ^^

[chisotahn]

You don't really know me - I comment on telophase's LJ, which is where I idly wandered over here, but dude!

I live in the SF Bay Area and I love Chinese food, so this post got me all excited. :D Have you any recommendations based either on the above your own own experience? I'd love to hear some, as I think I've gotten in a bit of a food rut lately. Mmmmm.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Web-only, and he hasn't really hit Baltimore, just DC and the Maryland/Virginia suburbs, but for that NoVa region Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide (http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/tyler_cowen.htm) has seemed pretty reliable in my experience, and he's been doing that list for so long that he gets lots of reader recommendations.

(And oh, now I'm craving congee thanks to all this talk, after spending all weekend just blocks away from two places in DC that do it well! But getting out each evening it was too late and I was too tired (and already bloated from powwow food), so I didn't think of stopping for a snack when it was RIGHT THERE. *facepalm*)

[(Anonymous)]

Note that Chinese restaurants sometimes do odd things in translating into English. Like the Minneapolis one whose menu included "Funny Tasting Duck."

And I remember a Korean restaurant in LA whose menu included approximately:
#33 Beef with Vegetables
# 34 Like #33, but different kind of beef

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Oops -- this was me, not logged in.

[jennifergearing.livejournal.com]

OMG that sounds completely awesome. One thing that's bugging me about moving to a new city is that I have no idea where the good Chinese food is. It took me long enough to find (some of) the good Chinese food in Brisbane, and I had my mother & grandmother to find the good food in Sydney. Dammit, I want a book like that for here. It does indeed sound awesome, though. If/when I travel to the states, and I'm in the areas he's written for, I believe I may have to check it out. :)

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I used to have one place I'd go in Chinatown in Philly. The owners are kind of like an aunt and uncle to me. I went there for over 20 years. But, the owners recently retired, and now the woman has Parkinson's :(. They had been planning to get a house in Hong Kong they could go to for part of the year, but now they aren't going to. It sucks to work your whole life running a restaurant then when you retire you can't enjoy it.

But other than that restaurant, I've eaten good Chinese food in NYC, SF, and Vancouver.