Chinese Food In San Francisco

San Francisco Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in the United States, dating back to the 1840’s. Like New York’s Manhattan Chinatown, San Francisco Chinatown has the benefit of old age. Old Chinatowns are THE BEST Chinatowns. They have a deeper culture of generations of families that grew up in Chinatown and that have created their own ecosystem and community. With traditional culture comes old-school Chinese food. These types of Chinatowns are essentially time capsules of previous styles of Chinese cuisine. If you seek the classic Chinese food dishes prepared in the ways of decades past, you have to come to one of the O.G. Chinatowns, like New York Chinatown or San Francisco Chinatown. In fact, it’s even difficult to find these uber traditional dishes or ways of cooking in China or Hong Kong proper given the passage of time and the development of newer trends. But San Francisco’s Chinatown still stands as a haven of the old ways.

G&Y Bakery Restaurant

881 Clay St, San Francisco, CA 94108

(415) 291-8688

Immediately after landing in the San Francisco International Airport, we hit the ground running to our first stop in the beautiful city of San Francisco: lunch! G&Y Bakery Restaurant offers breakfast from 7:30am-11:00am and afternoon tea specials from 2:30pm-5:00pm in addition to traditional lunch and dinner. We wanted to taste test the chef’s ability to impart wok hei smokiness to its dishes, so we ordered our favorite stir fried beef and black pepper spaghetti and a clay pot rice dish. The wok hei was superb and I appreciated that they used SO much freshly ground black pepper, lending an almost lemony aroma from the peppercorns. A good amount of heat spice accompanies the dish just from the black pepper, so make sure you can tolerate a mild amount of heat to enjoy this. The clay pot rice was very generously portioned with Chinese sausage and Chinese bacon, with burnt crispy rice at the bottom. I recommend eating here and would return!

New Regent Cafe

638 Pacific Ave, San Francisco, CA 94133-4410

Another day, another Hong Kong breakfast. At New Regent Cafe, we ordered our tried and true breakfast favorites: pickled mustard green with pork rice noodle soup and soup macaroni, with hot Hong Kong style milk teas. All the components of the dishes were done very well – the noodles were not springy and the soups maintained a light savoriness while still taking on the flavors of their constituents.

V.I.P. Coffee & Cake

671 Broadway, San Francisco, CA 94133

We love sampling (and judging) various Chinatown bakery egg tarts, and per our research the best of San Francisco Chinatown’s egg tarts were from Golden Gate Bakery. However, Golden Gate Bakery was closed that day. The next best option is supposedly VIP Bakery and Cafe, so off we went. The egg tart crust was crumbly and layered as it should be, but I found the filling a little too custard-forward in flavor. It was more vanilla rather than egg in taste. Nonetheless, it was still one of the better egg tarts we’ve had in the US! We also returned a second day for Hong Kong breakfast.