TOP Restaurants
Top S.F. Chinatown Restaurants
Chinatown's many culinary institutions, both old school and new wave, make it a brilliant place to eat.
By Soleil Ho |
Updated: Dec. 16, 2020 9:14 AM
In San Francisco, there are, ostensibly, two Chinatowns in one. In this neighborhood, tourists flock to trinket shops and chop suey houses, snapping photos of erhu players performing on street corners. Meanwhile, generations of residents have tirelessly worked to turn it into a true cultural and commercial hub for the Chinese community. Established in the 1850s, the neighborhood has survived systemic discrimination, fires, earthquakes and crisis after crisis. Over time, multiple waves of immigration have shifted the demographics of the neighborhood, layering it with cultural influences from diverse regions of mainland China, as well as Hong Kong. Unsurprisingly, one can taste all of those shifts in the restaurants here: chow mein and chop suey from the oldest of the old school institutions, tingly and hot noodles from Sichuan, and ambitious and youthful approaches to Chinese cuisine from a new generation of restaurateurs. In a scene this complicated, it can be hard to suss out the true diamonds, but here are 15 of my favorites in our historic Chinatown. Restaurants with an asterisks are also on the Top Restaurants list.