King of Noodle   Another King of (insert food item considered sovereign among its kind here) Restaurant?  Yes.  Does the grandiosity of its title belie its humble nature? Again, yes.  The Sunset District’s King of Noodles won’t be featured on any CNN news tickers, nor will it make

Xiao Long Bao’s dumpling factory Strewn along Clement Street, roughly between Avenues Fourth and Tenth, are numerous Dim Sum restaurants, three of which I’ve profiled among the glowing pages of this website as a part of my Clement Street Series.  Wing Lee, Happy Garden, and Good Luck Dim Sum are all stalwarts of that

                Happy Garden Restaurant   One could argue that Chinese dim sum is the Grand Pu Bah of small plates traditions.  Because it’s Chinese.  And anything Chinese, be it pottery, noodle-making, basket-weaving or the serving of various little bits of food  to be

Listen up, I took a handful of Film classes in college, watch tons of foreign movies on my home projector, and could be seen as what some may call a “film snob” (actually that last part’s not true– unless citing my favorite flick as Home Alone 2: Lost in New

There are few brave enough to venture out into the Richmond district, even if it’s the Inner Richmond which is like four blocks from Upper Haight. If you’ve lived here long enough, you can hear the gasps of neighborhood-elitists when you say, “I live out in the Richmond/Sunset.” I honestly

Sure, San Francisco’s Chinatown is world-renowned, but why not hop the Bay to Oakland’s Chinatown? It’s less hectic, possibly more authentic, and almost no tourists. I especially recommend Shan Dong, which I will go on record as saying that they have the best dumplings in the East Bay. Not to

Like any cheap Chinese restaurant worth its copiously sprinkled salt, Shanghai Dumpling King has a hilarious and somewhat unsettling menu. You’ll find such mysteries as “vegetarian goose” (quotation marks theirs) right next to more matter-of-factly stated items like fish head casserole. Sliding your eyes a little to the right, you’ll notice most