Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
&
415/421-1429
), where the Shanghai-
style cuisine includes traditional pot stick-
ers, green-onion-and-shrimp pancakes,
and a long menu of entrees; ask the waiter
to recommend a daily special. Despite its
obscure second-floor location,
Oriental
Pearl
(760 Clay St.;
&
415/433-1817
) is
usually packed; among its Chiu Chow
dishes (a regional variant of Cantonese),
the best are the house special chicken
meatball, the
pei pa
tofu with shrimp, and
the spicy braised prawns. Fish tanks line
the walls at
Great Eastern
(649 Jackson
St.;
&
415/986-2500
), a popular Hong
Kong-style seafood house. Things are
always hopping at the three-story
R&G
Lounge
(631 Kearny St.;
&
415/982-7877;
www.rnglounge.com), known for its deep-
fried salt-and-pepper crab, the chicken
with black-bean sauce, or the R&G Special
Beef that melts in your mouth.
For spicy Hunan food, two great options
are
Hunan Home's
(622 Jackson St.;
&
415/982-2844
) for great hot-and-sour
soup, prawns with walnuts, and Hunan-style
scallops; or
Brandy Ho's Hunan Food
(217
Columbus Ave.,
&
415/788-7527;
www.
brandyhos.com) for excellent fried dump-
lings, fish ball soup, or the Three Delicacies
(scallops, shrimp, and chicken served with
black-bean sauce). For a classic dim sum
lunch, there's cavernous, cacophonous
Gold Mountain
(664 Broadway;
&
415/296-
7733;
dim sum until 3pm). And though it's a
bit of a dive,
Sam Wo
(813 Washington St.;
&
415/982-0596
) is a beloved standby for
the ultimate Chinese comfort food,
jook
(or
congee,
as it's called in Hong Kong)—a thick
rice gruel flavored with fish, shrimp, chicken,
beef, or pork.
(
San Francisco International (14 miles/
23km).
L
$$$
Hotel Adagio,
550 Geary St.
(
&
800/228-8830
or 415/775-5000; www.
thehoteladagion.com). $
Hotel des Arts,
447 Bush St. (
&
800/956-4322
or 415/956-
3232; www.sfhoteldesarts.com).
Chinatowns
270
Manhattan Goes Chinese
A Little More Mott Street
New York, New York
It's one of those secrets that New Yorkers
like to keep under their hats: Manhattan's
historic Little Italy is a tourist fiction by
now, a strip of restaurants preserved just
for out-of-towners, while all around it the
side streets have been taken over by a
booming Chinatown that long ago spilled
over its traditional Canal Street boundary.
And it still can't contain all the city's Asian
immigrants, who have also moved out to
Queens's Flushing neighborhood, where
you can find yet more authentic restau-
rants and shops.
In the 1870s, when no other immigrant
groups would live in these marshlands
northeast of City Hall, a wave of Chinese
workers migrating eastward from San
Francisco moved in and made the area
their own. Today, Chinatown—which is
really a Pan-Asian conglomeration, with
Vietnamese and Thai immigrants adding
their own flavor—is a feast for the senses,
with street signs bearing Chinese charac-
ters, banks and fast-food restaurants gus-
sied up with pagoda-style roofs, and a
perpetual din in the narrow streets, where
sidewalk bins display piles of silvery fish
and exotic fruits and vegetables, and
bright-red roast ducks hang in steamed-up
shop windows.
