Chinese; fish

San Francisco, March 26, 2011—

YOU WHO KNOW ME know I do not eat Chinese food. I have my reasons for this: 1) Many Chinese restaurants are really quite bad (like many Mexican restaurants). 2) Chinese cuisine is hopelessly complex and vast; much too much to try to take on after one's turned thirty. 3) I ate a fair amount of quite unpleasant Chinese food as a child, when I lived with my grandparents, who had spent many years in China (my mother was born there), and who had no discrimination when it came to the table.

But we're spending a few days in this city with friends, and I thought no glimpse of San Francisco was complete without a tour of Chinatown, and it was lunchtime, and we were hungry, and there we were in front of one of its best-known restaurants. So we took the elevator up to the sixth floor and took a table at the window, with a fine view over the rooftops toward Coit Tower and Telegraph Hill.

The girls ate lightly: won tons and pot-stickers. Hans and I lunched like Princesses: crispy won tons; hot and sour soup; sweet and sour pork (Goo Lo Yuk) (cubes of pork deep-fried with pineapple, green pepper, and onion in sweet and sour sauce; Empress Beef (stir fry slices of beef and onion, sauteed with five spice sauce); and rice, of course. Tea, and house Sauvignon blanc (not very distinguished).



The food was not to my taste. I found the soup repulsive at first, on the nose, though strangely attractive on the palate; later the sensations reversed. The pork was okay, and the beef quite tasty. The setting is kitschy, I suppose, but really quite beautiful in its way.

Empress of China, 838 Grant Ave, San Francisco; (415) 434-1345

WE WALKED ON TO North Beach for a coffee at Caffè Trieste, looked into a couple of churches, admired a wedding party leaving SS Peter and Paul, and took a cable car back downtown to our parked car, then worked our way back to our Noe Valley apartment. By nine o'clock, though, we were a little hungry again — for fish and a salad.

We remembered hearing about a good fish joint nearby and gave it a try: mixed salad (little lettuces, cherry tomatoes, grated carrots, and the requisite beets), fish and chips: Alaska cod in a very light batter, deep-fried in decent peanut oil, with lemon and malt vinegar to spice it up, and a little cole slaw and of course the Tartar sauce. This left us happy.

Pinot grigio, Fish Eye (Southwest Australia), 2010

Woodhouse Fish, 2073 Market St., San Francisco; 415.437.2722

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