An actual food review of Spicy King

The Szechuan takeover of Chinatown – a Trifecta of Cultural Confusion.

                 Under the guidance of Chef Truman Du & co The Pot Sticker has been happily plying locals and tourists with Szechuan's spicy numbing flavor for years now, providing a Szechuan spot in a part of town dominated by mostly Cantonese and American style restaurants.

When Uncle's Cafe on Waverly and Sacramento was undergoing renovations, mostly to the tune of looking less like a high-school cafeteria, getting painted red, and putting up a massive picture of a chili pepper on the sign, I immediately assumed that some entrepreneurial spirit was simply ripping of their successful neighbor a block away. It wasn't until I found it open at 1:30am one Saturday that I wandered in and was greeted by the entire managing staff of The Pot Sticker enjoying a crab hot pot and cognac (a time tested combination).

The new Uncles Cafe, now called Spicy King,is owned and operated by the same people behind The Pot Sticker and when it first opened it seemed to be basically doing the same menu from before. So why then, have two places?

            However, now that they have been open a few months Spicy King finally makes sense. I've heard that The Pot Sticker is on a month to month lease, and worried about losing it's location should the landlord decide to increase rent, but it seems unlikely to close due to its neighborhood popularity. The menu and concept is working well, but doesn’t change that much. Most chefs will tell you that putting out the same dishes for years can be an exercise in tedium, the alleviation of this is where Spicy King comes in.

               Spicy King's menu takes what made Du's previous place interesting and increases it's potential, allowing freedom for creativity. The strength of Du's cooking is taking his Szechuan training and techniques and applying them to what is locally available.

         In other contexts this application of foreign techniques to local ingredients results in Northern California's own brand of French influenced vegetable dishes, and Boccalone's Italian style cured meats using local microbes and pork*.

However, this is not an ordinary context, this is Chinatown. Here local vegetables, while still grown in California, are Cantonese staples like bitter melon, pak choi, and winter melon. Here the butchers shops, fish mongers and stores full of dried seafood cater to a Cantonese population. It's this trifecta of American produce, Cantonese style ingredients and Szechuan techniques that make Spicy King interesting. Dishes like the egg yolk fried bitter melon and preserved egg with jalapeno are perfect examples of these 3 cuisines working together to make something that is distinctly new and exciting.

     

*I realize I just put Truman Du on the same level as Jean-Pierre Moullé and Chris Constantino, and I don't see a problem with that.

The Loving Hut 1365 Stockton Street

Warning: This article became a diatribe against monetizing the idea of health and spirituality. It contains broad generalizations about some of the citizens of San Francisco, as well as probably offends people from Taiwan. More than anything this article offends people who are not bitter health nihilists.

The Loving Hut is a vegan restaurant with prices slightly higher than average that has good miso soup, a clean atmosphere and friendly staff.

To continue to the original 'review' see below.


           The Loving Hut is weird. Posters with lots of writing, pictures of smiling people, pamphlets and some funding that allows it to be a chain offering vegan food. It's eerily quiet.
         It's creepy in that everyone who works there is always smiling and helpful, but formal. That the overreaching message of world peace, and healthy living - through us, seems, not in-genuine, but obvious.
    One can't disagree with world peace, nor can one really fundamentally disagree with eating healthily, but something remains unusual.

Some cursory research shows that the Loving Hut is owned by Ching Hai, head of the Supreme Master Ching Hai Association. She is a mystic, spiritual leader, business owner, fashion designer, etc. Just read her wiki page. I'm not saying that Ching Hai is a cult leader and marketing expert who can sell abstract ideas packaged as spirituality, but.

           San Francisco has a relationship and understanding of new-age yoga though; the bay area has monetized yoga into exercise and has countless stores selling Tibetan tchotchkes. This kind of world peace and be healthy lifestyle appeals to a large demographic in San Francisco.
         What the Loving Hut appeals to is a different demographic of people - mostly, it appears, in Taiwan. While the ethos seems mostly the same, these two demographics like different things.
         Rich white people in San Francisco, who for the purposes of this I shall refer to as "Yuppies", go for a different aesthetic than the demographic that Ching Hai profits off of.

So let's compare to something I understand.
      The best reference point for the same level of uncomfortable niceness, cost, and holier than thou atmosphere is Cafe Gratitude. Gratitude serves a customer base of yuppies, who I can comfortably pass judgement on due to the large amount of time spent in a city designed for them. The Loving Hut, however, does not make any sense to me. I have no reference  it's not that busy, and when it is the customer base is diverse. The prices are high, but not too high to scream "class warfare" as loudly as Gratitude. 

      It comes down to culture, it has to; The Loving Hut is an operation based out of Taiwan and I imagine every store in Asia looks the same as any store in the USA, but it's money is made in Taiwan.
      The answer lies in Capitalism. Capitalism uses status symbols to organize itself . So when people pull on their $100 yoga pants, that's a class signifier and a status symbol, the same way eating at Gratitude is, the same way the dog and the address are.

      I cannot claim any knowledge or even a theory of why the Loving Hut does not easily make sense in those terms; all I can say is that it confuses me, and creeps me out; it's something so far removed from my experience that it makes me uncomfortable.


      So then, why is The Loving Hut a cult, while Cafe Gratitude isn't? My answer is probably that:
1. I am being racist and assume people into The Loving Hut are less rich and less educated than those into yoga in the united states.
2. I assume the people buying into The Loving Hut and Supreme Leader Ching Hai in Taiwan have closer ties to spirituality and more sincere reasons for doing things. (This could easily be more racism)
3. I assume rich people are inherently selfish and never do anything for any genuine reason.
4. Yuppies never do anything culturally worthwhile.

Capitol. 839 Clay Street.

I've only been here once, but....


Capitol is that orange restaurant on Clay street, advertising famous chicken wings.

The interior is basic, florescent lighting, white tables and an orange theme.

To be fair, the chicken wings are really good. I ordered some fried rice, chicken wings and had no regrets.
However, this review will focus on their kitchen.

In order to go to the bathroom one must pass through the kitchen, dodging waiters and not making eye contact with the chefs.
An old man stands at a wok range casually squirting sauces into various woks (all going at full blast) from across the other side of the line, about 5 feet away. He never stops moving, and every wok is tended to; nothing burns. His assistant dutifully chops vegetables and hands him plates of stacked ingredients, indicating what dish to make; there is no speaking.
     About every 5 minutes he tosses everything, plates some, adds ingredients to others. After plating the wok is rinsed, any water evaporated on the flame, and the aromatics are smashed and swirled in (what i think is) peanut oil.

The whole thing is like a ballet, I reminisce about working a busy line and sigh - I'd trust this kitchen to produce whatever it is they do, exactly the same today as in 2 years.

Vietnam 620 Broadway

        While not technically in the borders of Chinatown (Broadway is the border, and Vietnam sits on the other side of the street), I would be remiss not to include this oft visited spot.

Due to it's location in North Beach, this tiny spot gets over it's fair share of drunken revelers after 11pm.

An aside about North Beach and Broadway.

       North Beach, for those not familiar, is essentially a tourist stroll during the day, and an Italian themed frat party by night. Broadway marks the end of the line for most of the clientele, stumbling out of the bars and spilling onto the streets shouting and yelling. Broadway has a red light district feel; with neon signs 3 stories high, strip clubs and awful bars; and alleyways inviting a whole manner of drug use. Despite this it is more of a red-light theme park than an actual seedy district, so diluted and costly has the message become. Top tip - for real sex workers and scary drug use visit The Tenderloin; specifically Leavenworth between Turk and O'Farrell. It's the constant threat of robbery that allows a red light district to thrive without too many drunken tourists.


But back to Vietnam.

       A small and cramped space, most of it taken up by the bar for counter service, and 2 tables in the back. Walking into to space one is greeted with the savory and delightful smell of grilling meats and steaming broth.
              The secret to this place is it's long hours of operation, I have actually yet to see it closed. They begin the day with chicken stock, beef stock and pork stock boiling away on the tiny stove. A grill next to it is constantly brushed but never soaped, seasoned with the meat from last night. The chicken is marinated after poaching (without fully cooking) in the stock. As the meat cools the outside becomes more permeable and the chicken sucks in the marinade of (I think) soy sauce, ginger, fish sauce et al; while releasing some cooked chicken jus. As the day progresses the chicken is sandbagged without being overcooked, and the exclusively thigh meat leak their juices all over each other into the marinade, adding to the flavor. When the time comes to finish the chicken it's reheated and grilled over high flame giving it a charred outside and soft inside, coated with the goop into a semi-sweet glaze as the flame evaporates the non essential elements.
Because the chicken is the most popular meat here; it has the most flavorful stock and leftovers, that go on to flavor the next chicken.
            However, any of the Banh mi are safe bets - cold cuts (pate, head cheese, salami) and hot (pork, beef, chicken) with a bunch of quick-pickled carrots, cucumber, mayonnaise and jalapenos. Also -$4, come on.

          The Pho broth is the same basic concept. Most Pho places, and indeed most restaurants who use long simmering liquids, will have the broths made at the beginning of the day (with some leftover from last night, but never older than 1 day), and as they cook their potency increases. However, as with stock there is a law of diminishing returns; most veggies give all their flavor after cooking for an hour, and most bones for 5 or 6, then it's just wasted space. But, if one is constantly poaching chicken, blanching veggies, steaming pork, cooking noodles in the broth then it will be continually flavored and thickened. Never order pho before 1/2 way through dinner service, your soup is just flavor for the next people. That's why, at 3am - as the drunks try to haggle for a beer well after last call and the pho broth happily simmers away with lunch and dinner flavors, that is the time for the finest broth, the thick, almost demi-glas mouth feel and the rich beef bone taste.

They also have a beverage selection of weird crisped rice, bright purple jelly things and condensed milk which is sort of great. They make Thai Iced Tea and Vietnamese Iced Coffee, and they sell beer.
All of these beverage choices became secondary when a friend and I invented the Vietnamese Michelada, using exactly one Vietnamese ingredient, a Mexican name and coming from the USA it should really be called the "Faux-pan-southeast asian-michelada". I realize the addition of fish sauce may seem unbecoming, but recall that Micheladas use Clamato juice, so seafood is not unheard of.

The Vietnam Michelada
1 bottle of tsing tao
1 slice of lime
3 shakes of salt
3 squirts of siracha
2 tsp fish sauce.

Mix well then drink over ice. Watch out for the nucleation of lime juice and salt with beer, don't make a mess.

You are welcome.




      

The Washington Cafe 826 washington street

       "I got you this because I know you like it", a smiling, slightly tipsy man said as he plonked down two coffee cups half full of Hennessy. He raised his own glass, we 'Yam sing''d and he walked off.

It was the opening day of the Washington cafe, huge floral arrangements decorated the florescent doorway and tangerine plants covered the floor.

      The Washington cafe took over the space that was previously operated by New King Tin, a place I frequented until it was shut down for health violations, and will write an obituary of at a later date. One day I was walking to New King Tin and saw the owners piling into a airport shuttle and asked; " Oh, are you going on vacation " the answer I got from the matron was a hurried and exasperated 'yes yes' as she loaded children and boxes into the van and took of never to be seen again. Four months later, Washington Cafe came onto the scene. 

      Part of a larger group of restaurants of a similar ilk, I have heard the Washington Cafe referred to as a 'cafeteria style' 'hong Kong style cafe''; by various people. It is a collection of about 12 tables, a menu of about 150 items and operating hours that last well into the night. 

     Having been to the cafe many times since it's opening I got to know the owner. We have shared bottles of wine and Hennessy while talking about what owning and operating a restaurant is like in Chinatown; in the business we call this talking shop, or bitching about work; either way, It's important to have other restaurant owners to talk to about this kind of thing; preferably over a glass of poor cognac. 

    

      During the first months of their operation they focused on cheap and simple Cantonese style food. The chef is a friend and 'student' of Truman Du of Pot Sticker/Spicy king - but goes in a different direction. The chef here has a crowd who don't like anything too unusual, so the food stays typically Cantonese, however, as we are in San Francisco, not China, typically Cantonese here means Cantonese food as you would get in China, not 'typical' or 'non unusual' for those of us not versed in Cantonese cuisine. This is an important distinction to make; lots of places play it safe, but Washington Cafe plays it safe in a whole different way; safe to a community who don't want to assimilate to the western palate - and that's what makes the food here interesting. Without going into too much detail, I like the spicy chicken feet, beef stew, and the Quails Pot.

      Then as they had been opened a few months, they installed hot pot plates in every table, and now offer some great and inexpensive hot pot, and if I had enough friends to go to these places en masse, I would eat it all the time.

     The crowd is great, and if you visit on a Saturday night after 10pm be prepared for older men playing cards, drinking cognac, eating hot pot (crab), and generally being raucous. As a veteran of the Chinatown bar scene, I can safely say that its' 90% non Chinese in the bars here, and that most locals tend to drink with friends at restaurants.  The best upside to this is that you can bring any booze you want into any restaurant in Chinatown and not have a problem.
     Aslo, plenty of Hong Kong Cinema is always on the TVs, and even if the servers don't understand, they will write the name of the movie down and you can go an get it pretty easily in any store around.

XO sauce -
      This place introduced me to XO sauce; a Hong Kong sauce made with various dried seafood and aromatics. Apparently it's all the rage in Hong Kong and is in fact named after the XO brandys (and marketed the same way, in fancy boxes and even uses the XO(extra old) distinction brandys use). The Washington Cafe will put it on everything and anything, and with good result. It offers a fermented seafood flavor, umami and salty, in a dark 'demi-glas esque' preparation, it might even have brandy in it.

There is something going on with Hong Kong and brandy; XO sauce clearly marks the trend, and friends in Shanghai or anywhere else in mainland china don't report a predilection for hennessy, so it has to be a Hong Kong or diaspora thing. 

Barometers

Barometers are dishes that exist in every cuisine that one can try to see if the cook knows what they are doing. San Francisco judges a taqueria (perhaps misguidedly), on the carne asada burrito.
I've found that Cantonese cooking has an important barometer: Beef Chow Fun.
     
          Every restaurant does beef chow fun, and every restaurant uses the same ingredients, probably from the same supplier - that's what makes it an important guideline, there is a wealth of controls to the test. The preparation, from what I can decern, is simple; cook beef, add noodles, toss and serve. Its a simple dish that anyone can do but few can do well; there is a technique which is acquired through practice. The beef is cooked first 80% of the time, so reheating before service requires knowing the time between tender and rubber, you can get that down in a day and there is no excuse for rubbery beef. It's when the noodles come in where the problems start.

           Chow-Fun noodles are flat and thin, a perfect beef chow fun has long, unbroken noodles that are evenly coated in the sauce (the difference between dry and wet chow fun is the amount of sauce, obviously) and not sticking together. It's all about timing and not touching the noodles, an inexperienced cook will throw the noodles in and toss them around, breaking them; or, terrified of breaking the noodles will let them sit unmolested creating a sticky mass, there is a balance of gentle tossing and cooking time that any good cantonese chef has down to a second nature.

Wing Sing Dim Sum 1125 Stockton Street

There is this old man who lives and works around here; he's short, probably around 70 or 80, smiles a lot, shakes his head and is always holding a plastic bag of food leftovers.
When I first moved here he would speak to me, ask me about eating, where I was eating, had I eaten, and my reply was always the same - I'm going to work and I eat there. His name is Jackie Chan, and he goes by the epiphyte Jackie Chan number two; lifting up two fingers.
       
           I would see him around, mostly he chatted to tourists, and when he and I spoke it would be a contest over who had the shittiest apartment, and who's paid the least rent. He assures me that not only is my apartment a hovel, and probably illegal, but that I'm also being robbed blind with the amount I'm paying. It's because I'm a foreigner, he explained. He's keen into the chinatown photographic society and we'd go there and look at the pictures stored in a brightly lit room with a couple computers and pictures of serious looking traditionally dressed people standing in various places around town.


       When I asked him what he did for a living he looked at me like I was an idiot; clearly, obviously, he said: he was retired. It wasn't until my mother came to visit that i figured out what he does for money. I was upstairs getting a shirt on and my mother waited downstairs by herself, and when I returned there Jackie was speaking to my mum. He was telling her about a restaurant he liked and wanted to take her to; and when he saw me approach decided we all had to go to this place. We walked and he talked to my mother about how her son was paying too much rent, but that he knew a great cheap place for food. We follow him up to Stockton and weave our way through the crowds to a busy, counter service lunch cafe that advertised Dim Sum under a layer of grime on the doorway. Whatever I ate that day I have forgotten about, so surreal was this experience,  but as we left my mother offered to pay and after some argument he begrudgingly accepted her money and she told him to keep the change.

          Now, I could be reading this entire thing wrong; Jackie could have genuinely wanted to take us to dinner, we were, after all, acquainted; and my mother is a very nice lady who would buy lunch anytime. So I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he just likes company and free lunch, which is fine.

          Wing Sing Dim Sum is like most of the other dim sum - lunch service counter places on stockton. They make large amounts of food, store it at temperatures not entirely food safe and sell it for cheap.
The lunch plate is 3 types of food over rice, it's $4 and that's fine.

                 There are two different experiences one can have here. In one senario you walk in, point frantically at dumplings or pork buns, and walk out with a plastic bag containing some doughy dim sum, which you then happily eat, pleased with your ability to grab street food and eat like the locals. Never-mind that no one ever eats on the street unless they are homeless, and you paid fifty cents more than normal; it's all part of the service.

The second experiance involves getting a tray with a plate of lunch food, which consists of typical cantonese stuff prepared using the least amount of effort - beef balls, pork balls, tofu with pork, eggplant with black beans, fried tofu skins stuffed with veggies, small bluefish fried in potato starch,  and so on. It all tastes vaguely the same and is pretty boring. How Wing Sing differentiates itself from the other 8 or so cafes of a similar ilk within a 8 block radius is with their incredible disregard for any kind of food safety regulations or even reasonable sense.
     
          As my friend and I sat eating, or rather picking at  our plates moving shapeless pork products onto the tray, we marveled at the rawness of the beef balls; the box of frozen fish fillets sitting on the floor, the shoes stored in a potato box, and the pervading yellowness of the walls.
     I'm not a stickler for decor, I don't care if a place has yellow walls and, fine, sometimes you can't throw the fish in the freezer right away; there are plenty of places in CT with just as flagrant a disregard for health code and I'd eat there any day, but this was a special kind of filth.
We left and vomited, then drank yakult to calm our gastrointestinal systems. It was a great experience and I would never do it again, but I reveled in the dirt, and have no permanent damage to my bowels as of yet, I'd even eat their ribs again if I had siracha.

The Pot Sticker 150 Waverly Place

      Easily my favorite place, run by the most talented chef in chinatown. It's the head of a circuit of restaurants around the waverly - washington - grant area. The chef was described as 'my master' by the chef/owner of a couple other places in this circuit.
       The place is run by the chef's wife/girlfriend and they live in the basement. On busy Saturdays  the chef cuts out early and goes downstairs to play his stereo so loud it vibrates the whole floor of the dining room.

     The decor was designed by someone who had an idea what they were doing; most places suffer from florescent lights and giant pictures of food, not so the pot sticker. The design is bamboo and red, with hot pot advertised on the wall and finally, good lighting.
The fried bitter melon here turned me into the fiend I am today - it's a Cantonese vegetable prepared in szechwan style, an egg yolk batter. The dan dan noodles are made using Szechwan peppers, and numb your mouth, and I could eat the twice cooked pork all day.
    The thing that makes this place special is that they make most everything in house, the chili sauce on the table, the black bean sauce in the dishes, all made in house. The pot stickers are also not purchased from one of the dim sum bakeries, or frozen, but prepared to order. They also have shanghai style soup dumplings, which are harder to find that one might think.
The kim chi, also made in house, is spicy, sour and sweet all at once; it's the best of their selection of cold dishes.

Cafe Utopia 139 Waverly Place

I'll start with Cafe Utopia, as I am stealing their wifi.

Decor:
The cafe is a small, brightly lit place with about 10 tables and window seating. The large family style tables dominate the center surrounded by smaller 2 tops. There is a Steven Chow poster ont he wall, and I loved Kung Fu hustle.
In the basement they have an open mic on thursdays, and some kind of theater. I've yet to venture down there, as most people coming out have been older couples, sort of the opposite of Li  Po's old punk venue downstairs.
It's located right under the Tong, so is a popular hangout for people either waiting to get in or waiting for someone to come out.

The food
      The steamed spareribs with black bean sauce are tender, and their tea is jasmine.
The speciality of the house seems to be clay pot, or clay pot over rice; in which the contents of a clay pot are cooked slowly, then reheated to order. The chicken wings have little hairs on them, and I've been told by a reliable source that they taste like crack. That's not to say they are so good it's like crack, but that the taste is similar to crack cocaine.
      The beef chow fun is prepared reasonably. We should talk about beef chow fun, Beef chow fun is what I call a barometer; I'll post about it later.
     Salt and pepper spare ribs are impossible to fuck up; and they don't, but their hot sauce is too oily.

The price is medium, about $7 per item.

A note on authenticity

Authenticity does not mean dirty.
Authenticity does not mean clean.
Authenticity does not mean it has to be made by someone versed in that cuisine.
Authenticity does not mean cheap.
Authenticity does not mean expensive.
Authenticity does not mean obscure.
Authenticity does not mean difficult to western palate.
Authenticity is not branded.

              I have difficulty saying what is and isn't authentic. The word gets banded around a lot and if someone is speaking about an "authentic place' generally they mean it's not been diluted to the hegemonic standards of the ruling class; that is to say populated by locals and with a menu suitably obscure to allow for some pontificating on the fact that members of your party have never had bitter melon before.
This is bullshit.
       
             When arguing authenticity one never hears the case for General Tso's Chicken, although, as a dish developed here in chinatown over 100 years ago, what else is it? Sure, it's most of the time a terrible sweet affair, but it's something invented here, from here and still served here still mostly to white tourists; it's an unusual example of something that is truly authentic, with absolutely no perceived authenticity. The other end of the scale is the innovative things that the chef at "The Pot Sticker" is cooking up, preserved egg with jalapenio;. That's not a Szechwan dish, or even a dish before he invented it, it's a made up perfect creating using traditional (that is to say unusual to western palates) ingredients, and because of this it has a high perceived authenticity.

      

Evolving introduction.

About Chinatown

San Francisco's Chinatown is purportedly the nation's largest; it was leveled by the 1906 earthquake, and almost moved to hunter's point; however, the five companies persevered and carved their own space out in the middle of the city.

       S.F's Chinatown speaks cantonese, and the majority of new arrivals come, it seems, from Hong Kong. The area is an autonomous zone, the rules are different here from the rest of San Francisco. Most spaces are grandfathered in, no one pays attention to the no plastic bag rule and cigarettes are $4 a pack. What this means for restaurants is that they operate in generally smaller spaces, with less city oversight, and buy their food from the chinatown market.
         
         The Chinatown Market spans across Stockton Street and not only provides fresh vegetables, but also all the dried goods essential to this style of cooking; there is also, crucially, a large supply of living meat, with fresh pork and beef coming in every morning.

         Also on Stockton street at barbecue stores, selling roast pork, duck etc; a lot of restaurants in the area use these bbq ingredients on their menus with a markup; that does not mean it's not great barbecue   just something to think about before questing for "the finest roast duck' on Grant street.

About The Author

           I'm a chef living in Chinatown for the past 2 years. I don't claim to have any special knowledge or insite into true Chinese cuisine, and I have no cultural ties to either San Francisco's Chinatown or mainland China. I am a white male, raised in the kitchens of Europe, and while I may be considered an expert on European cuisine, I am certainly not in Chinese. I start this endeavor as much to increase my knowledge on the unique type of food offered in Chinatown, as to offer advice. I'm coming from a place of white male entitlement, so, I'm not going to talk about 'authenticity'.

           Chinatown is home to American-Chinese food, which I think of as fried balls of meat coated in a sweet, corn-starch thickened sauce. I'm sure there is more to it than that, but I generally won't risk $7 on something that has a 90% of being boring.

          I'm coming