Posts Tagged “soup”

Starting to fall behind on SF posts, sorry about that. I asked the concierge at the Hyatt where I could find the best dim sum. She swiftly disparaged all of Chinatown with some references to mystery meat and suggested Yank Sing in the Rincon Center. Dim sum in a food court? I’m not sure if I’m ready to sign up for that. On the other hand, Zagat rates the place tops for dim sum, too. During a meander South of Market, I stumbled into the Rincon Center (a refurbished art deco post office with a Rivera-esque mural!) anyway. The place looked right. I came back the next day with Professor N.

Yank Sing spells it “deem sum” which suggests a certain history and pedigree - they’ve been serving it up since before the orthography settled down. They consider Shanghai soup dumplings a specialty, so we had a batch of those. Also, some shrimp dumplings, my old fave turnip cakes and some interesting veggie items with spinach and peapod stems.

Clockwise from top above: Shanghai soup dumplings (xiao long bao), snap peas, basil dumplings, turnip cake (lobag gao), and shrimp dunmplings (ha gow). If you haven’t had the soup dumplings, you should try them, perhaps at Joe’s Shanghai in NY. They somehow make a dumpling containing both meat and soup. You eat them carefully (since they’re usually piping hot) with both chopsticks and a spoon. Ha gow and lobuk gao are standys, both executed well but not stunningly. The basil dumplings were refreshingly different.

From the veggie cart, we sampled (clockwise from top) savory vegetable dumplings, spinach dumplings and peapod stem dumplings. The colorful savory had a touch of curry in it, or maybe it was just that they were orange. Spinach and peapod stems were fresh and flavorful. The peapod stems have something in common with fresh grass clippings, but in a good way. Oolong tea in a nice glass no drip pot was a great addition.

Having great Chinese food is always a treat, but having it in such a location was just another reminder that the touristy Chinatowns aren’t always what they used to be. Or at least its not so easy for random outsiders to find the gems.

I’ve written about the odd similarity and familiarity of Chinatowns I’ve been to around the world before and it came together again in San Francisco’s Chinatown when I walked past a kosher deli just inside the gate, saw designer fakes openly for sale, and sat on a bus that was stopped to make way for a random passing lion dance. It looks like the same lacquered ducks hang obscenely in shop windows around the world.

Chinatown is a classic immigrant neighborhood. Most of the original immigrants who could afford to have moved away, possibly creating newer, nicer, Chinatowns in their suburbs even while they visit the city center for weekend shopping. And new immigrants from other places have made themselves at home in the old downtown Chinatowns.

Boston’s Chinatown has an additional layer of history on it - it’s one of the oldest, and its been carved up by highways and other urban renewal projects even while it remains a lively patch squeezed in between other old Boston neighborhoods.

For all these reasons, I’m very glad that this weekend, my good friend C will be opening a temporary art space right in Boston’s Chinatown. It will be interesting to see how the mix of contemporary photography and Chinatown history goes down as masses of locals and tourists turn out for the August Moon Festival on Sunday. Read more about the Hudson Street Gallery on facebook, upcoming or going. I hope you can make it to the open house. There will be a grand opening later on.

I passed it during the day after checking out SF Camerawork - an unassuming brick building, formerly a warehouse or something like that, with subtle signage that says “too hip for the likes of you” while reading simply, “salt house.”  Was it really a salt house?  What is a salt house anyway?  Could somebody who likes salt as much as I possibly pass this up?  Especially after the morning’s flyover of salt ponds?  I made a note and resolved to return in the evening.

At 9pm on a Wednesday, salt house (they use e. e. cummmings’ capitalization - or more likely, k. d. lang’s - in the name) was packed.  It seemed a little late for the after-work crowd but maybe people work late here, or just go for a drink after work and linger.  Lots of business casual and not so casual, and a few poor souls who were still wearing their company logo gear after a trade show.  True to its warehousy heritage, Salt House is all exposed brick and weathered metal and wood.  Way too dark to photograph without flash.  There’s a loft space in the front and double-high ceilings in the back, lit by fixtures made from postcard racks with 4×6 bits of wood in the slots.  In addition to regular tables, there’s a small bar and a long but narrow communal table that reminds me a bit of the one at Toro in Boston.  I found a spot at the group table.

I immediately got a 3-segment pain d’epi (that French bread that looks a bit like a stalk of wheat where you tear off individual rolls) served on a sheet of butcher paper, and after asking, a milk bottle of tap water.  The wine list divides the universe into reds and whites by new world and old world.  Being in California, I chose a 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon from Silver Palm on the new world’s North coast.   It was extra purple with a big plum cherry currant thing happening, a little spicy at the end.  Delicious.

The dinner menu was on the brief side with seven entrees and a dozen or so small plates.  Keeping it light since I intended further grazing, I ordered white corn soup with aleppo chile and crispy scallions and heirloom tomatoes with garlic croutons and balsamic.

The soup arrived first with dire warnings about the plate temperature.  It was a bisque with a small pile of whole kernels and fried zucchini flowers in the middle.  No sign of the scallions, but there were a few swirls of chile oil to keep things interesting.  The white corn was smooth and sweet, and the flowers perfectly done with just a bit of crunch, and the chile oil wasn’t overpowering.  I had to slap away an attempt at premature bussing as I reached for some bread to mop with.

I’m almost never disappointed by a nice plate of tomatoes, but I have to say my heart sank when I saw this one.  It was huge.  I was hoping to have room for a third dish (peaches with bacon and pistachios, marinated yellowtail, and poutine were all on deck in my mind) or even dessert.  And it was tasty enough that I ate nearly all of it anyway.  Big chunks of red and yellow tomatoes were heaped in the center with the croûtons under a layer of microgreens and some shaved cheese on top and pools of oils and vinegar all around.  The thoughtful waitress brought salt and pepper.  The tomatoes were meaty and sweet, working well with the cheese and greens.  The croûtons had gotten soaked in balsamic, and I’m not that big a fan of overbalsamified things, but it all worked together well.  I did add salt, but not that much.  it was sea salt from a grinder, but nothing special, salt-wise.

Definitely worth a return to check out the entrees and desserts.

When I ran across The Fryer’s Delight, I was actually on my way to Lamb’s Conduit Street, where a guidebook had suggested I might find some nice restaurants. Leaving aside why I stopped for fish & chips instead, let me say that “Lamb’s Conduit Street” is one of the coolest street names I’ve run across anywhere. It’s even better than Einbahnstrasse.

I returned on my final night in London, and found myself in a pub with the almost as interesting name of “The Perseverance.” The website gives no indication of how they chose the name, but I settled in for a cider - Kopparberg Swedish pear cider over ice - and perused the menu.

“Our menu is based on traditional pub fayre; it is home made, freshly prepared honest pub grub at reasonable prices,” claims the website. Note sure if anything in London seems reasonably priced on the lousy dollar these days, but I ordered leek and bacon soup and salmon-haddock fishcakes.

For some reason I was expecting a thick, creamy or potatoish soup with crumbled bacon. I was wrong but not disappointed. The soup was not too think, definitely not creamy, and had real leek flavor without too much of anything else. Except bacon. There were good sized bits of thick smoky bacon in the soup. The cibatta and English butter made the prospect of a main course a little worrying.

The salmon and haddock fishcakes (with homemade tartar sauce) were served on some of the best greens I’d had in a week in London. The cakes themselves were full of good-sized chunks of both fishes and potatoes, too. Not spicy like a crabcake, but hardly bland. The salmon added interest to what might have been a too-predictable pub dish. Very satisfying. I’m glad I persevered.