Hong Kong Lounge unrivaled in the West
By: Patricia Unterman
Special to The Examiner
February 20, 2009
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| A model of its kind: Hong Kong Lounge’s Peking duck is such a mouth watering treat. (Bret Putnam/Special to The Examiner) |
SAN FRANCISCO — When Alice Wong imported her family’s Hong Kong Flower Lounge to San Francisco in the mid-1980s, she ushered in a new era of dining in the Bay Area. The kitchen used a far wider range of high quality ingredients than Chinese restaurants typically had previously, especially seafood, and kept up with the latest dishes from Hong Kong.
Alice Wong’s famous restaurant is gone, but a new Hong Kong-style restaurant succinctly named Hong Kong Lounge opened three months ago in its former location. The new owner and his managers, all experienced professionals, not only redecorated but rethought, taking out the bar to expand seating in the front dining room and lowering prices, to attract volume and regularly returning diners.
The dim sum/lunch menu varies daily. And the fabulous prix fixe dinner — $69.99 for four, which includes a fortifying broth to start; a choice of Peking duck or sautéed lobster; plus four other dishes selected from a changing list of 32 possibilities — makes the experience at Hong Kong Lounge different each visit.
Peking duck ($24 a la carte), a model of its kind, comes with hot, puffy white buns into which you stuff slices of crackling, bronzed skin denuded of fat, juicy hunks of meat, a swipe of plum sauce and scallion threads. No cuisine in the world has produced a better dish.
The snowy meat of Golden Crab ($20) seasons itself as you tease it out of a pre-cracked shell coated with a crumbly, crunchy, salted egg crust. Like the Peking duck, it is an unsurpassed dish.
From the prix fixe dish list, try an original preparation such as a colorful stir fry of chewy fish cake, scented with dried tangerine peel, sweetly cured Chinese bacon slices and Chinese broccoli stems. Texturally exciting and colorful, this dish epitomizes the new approach of the Hong Kong Lounge kitchen.
Everyone here orders claypot rice ($6.50), a casserole of rice topped with any one of scores of possibilities, cooked slowly until it forms a crisp crust on the bottom. When the waiter opens the lid, the fragrance of toasted rice wafts around the table.
A lunch for two of clay-pot rice, a bowl of won ton soup ($5) — starring the restaurant’s rich double broth — and a plate of garlic pea sprouts ($8) will set you back $10 a person. For quality and pleasure, the meal can’t be beat.
The kitchen cooks all dim sum to order. Make a mark on the dim sum form next to Chiu Zhou dumplings ($2.75), made with clear tapioca flour wrappers that reveal a filling of chili-spiked pork, peanuts, dried shrimp, mushrooms and water chestnuts.
The kitchen uses Japanese ingredients in a number of dishes, such as stuffed tamago tofu ($4.75), delicately creamy tofu enriched with egg, cut into pillows and pan fried with a dab of black bean sauce. Divine. I could go on but I leave it to you to explore lunch and dinner menus full of new dishes.
On all my visits a vivacious, very pretty manager, Annie Ho, has recommended dishes. I finally remembered her from Emeryville’s Hong Kong East Ocean at least 15 years ago. She hasn’t changed a bit. It must be her diet. I’m trying hard to eat mostly Cantonese.
Patricia Unterman is author of the “San Francisco Food Lovers’ Pocket Guide” and a newsletter, “Unterman on Food.” Contact her at pattiu@concentric.net.
Hong Kong Lounge
- Location: 5322 Geary Blvd. (between 17th and 18th avenues), San Francisco
- Contact: (415) 668-8836
- Hours: Monday through Friday 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 5 to 9:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 5 to 9:30 p.m.
- Price range: Dim sum $2 to $6, other dishes $6 to $14
- Recommended dishes: Peking duck, golden crab, claypot rice, steamed pork ribs, salty pork bone porridge, stuffed tamago tofu
- Credit cards: Master Card, Visa, Discover, American Express
- Reservations: Accepted
Dungeness Crab Week
Feb. 19 through March 1
Heirloom Tomato Week comes in August. Strawberry Week arrives in April. But right now, San Francisco is celebrating the Dungeness crab, arguably the meatiest, sweetest, most easily picked crab in the world.
Though the local season starts at Thanksgiving and continues through June, February brings the best specimens of a sustainable harvest. Crab fishermen use traps that allow undersized crabs and by-catch to escape. They set the traps within three miles of the coast, which means that the crabs can reach the wharf within twenty four hours of catch. Since it’s a crime not to eat these crabs fresh from the boat, 54 San Francisco restaurants are preparing special dishes featuring this succulent crab.
David Lawrence at 1300 on Fillmore will be serving Dungeness crab etouffee over hot grits. Staffan Terje at Perbacco combines hand-picked crab meat and wild nettles in an inspired risotto perfumed with Meyer lemon. Mark Gordon at Terzo also strikes a seasonal note with crab and celery root remoulade with orange segments sprinkled with maras pepper.
Go to www.sfchefsfoodwine.com for a complete list of restaurants, their crab dishes and the second annual Dungeness crab cookbook.
