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