The Best Places to Eat in San Francisco’s Chinatown, According to a Michelin-Starred Chef
In many ways, Brandon Jew has become synonymous with San Francisco’s Chinatown. The chef behind Mister Jiu’s has maintained that restaurant’s Michelin-star credentials for an impressive seven years in a row. And while Jew is fluent in the language of fine dining, he’s also an advocate for Chinatown’s history, and for helping to bring the neighborhood back to its glory days.
“The mix of mom-and-pops and then these kind of restaurants like ours, the dive bars, all of that—we kind of need all those things for this to work,” Jew told Robb Report recently, following a dinner at Mister Jiu’s.
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One of the ways Jew is trying to bring both his cooking and Chinatown’s legacy to a wider audience is through a new partnership with Alaska Airlines, in which the chef has created a new first-class menu for flights between San Francisco’s SFO airport and New York’s JFK. Available starting August 28, the offerings include one breakfast option and two lunch/dinner plates: In the morning, Alaska’s most elite travelers can dine on brown-rice congee with soy-cured eggs and delicate braised pork belly. In the afternoon or evening, they can choose between a fall-off-the-bone braised duck leg with sesame egg noodles (using the same Liberty Farms poultry found in Mister Jiu’s Peking-style whole roast duck) or flaky roasted black cod with silken tofu.
As part of a trip hosted by Alaska Airlines, we got a sneak peek of Jew’s new menu items, and it’s safe to say that they’re better than your standard airplane fare—first-class or otherwise. We also had the chance to embark on a food tour of Chinatown hosted by the chef and San Francisco native. Jew took us to his favorite spots, from tea shops to takeout dim sum to grocery stores and more. These are the places he frequents, and why he loves them.
Red Blossom Tea Company
Red Blossom has been around for close to 40 years, and the high-end shop treats tea similarly to how sommeliers treat wine. The shelves are lined with all sorts of varieties, and the store’s teas have been served everywhere from private jets to yachts. “Everyone’s drinking tea in China, and it’s like how we drink coffee here in America,” Jew says. He starts his day with a pot of tea, but “I also feel like there’s so much to learn about tea still for myself. That’s why I come here, so I can learn more about these special things.”
Fong Seng Company
Fong Seng isn’t your everyday grocery store. Rather, the aisles are lined with all sorts of dried seafood, like scallops that Jew uses in sauces and stocks, or shrimp that he puts in noodles. Behind the counter, you can shell out $1,200 for a large tin of dried worms that eat cordyceps mushrooms. “This is a place that I come to learn also about Chinese traditional medicine ingredients,” Jew told us. “Some of what I’ve really come here for is trying to become a bridge of knowing what these ingredients—why they’re considered so special. And then be able to translate them into a dish that is delicious. That’s been a focal point for me this year, really trying to integrate some more Chinese traditional medicine ingredients into our food, because I think there’s so much there.”
Stockton Street
“This is the busiest street in Chinatown,” Jew says. “This is where all of the shopping happens.” Lined with stores for produce, meat, fish, traditional Chinese medicine, and more, Stockton Street is the bustling heart of Chinatown. We show up early enough in the day that it isn’t yet overcrowded, but that could change in an instant, as locals and those from farther afield descend on Stockton to buy ingredients for later that night. Jew grew up coming here with his grandma; she would use their Sunday excursions for shopping, sure, but also to check in with her friends and assess the social scene. It’s also home to Good Mong Kok Bakery, one of Jew’s favorite spots for takeout dim sum. He proclaims that the bakery has the best shrimp dumplings, and they make 1,000 pork buns a day for the customers who line up down the block.
Capital Restaurant
You may not immediately associate chicken wings with Chinese food, but that’ll surely change after a visit to Capital. The restaurant is best known for its simple salt-and-pepper wings (they really don’t skimp on the salt), with perhaps the crispiest skin in existence. Jew loves it too because “beyond just the food they serve, but it being a hub for community and to share food at the table with people,” he says. “This is a staple in the neighborhood, where people from the neighborhood frequent three, four times a week, meet up with friends.” That’s evident as we run into locals we had met earlier in the day, and as they reconnect themselves, with an older man and woman discovering that they went to middle school together decades ago. For those who don’t think that community exists in a big city, just bring them here.
Egg Tarts
Unfortunately, Jew’s favorite spot for egg tarts—Golden Gate Bakery—is “90 percent of the time closed,” so we’re not able to stop by on this trip. Instead, we get boxes of the traditional Chinese pastry from the nearby Yummy Bakery & Café, a place that’s new to Jew but one he was excited to check out. The egg tarts fresh out of the oven, we dig in to both yellow and white versions of the treats—“them being warm like that, it’s kind of next level,” Jew says. While he admits that Golden Gate is still the winner when it comes to egg tarts, Yummy’s a good backup option when you can’t get into the former spot.
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