Rated: ♣♣♣♣
I love love love Beijing Restaurant. It has definitely become my new favorite Chinese restaurant in the city. Mine and Yao Ming’s. Wha??? Yes, Yao Ming! Every time he comes to play the Warriors, Yao stops at this restaurant. And might I add, this restaurant is a hole-in-the-wall and is completely inconvenient to anyone not living near the area. If Yao Ming comes all the way to this tiny little restaurant to eat Chinese food, this place has got to be good.
Their famous dish is the sliced fish and preserved vegetable warm pot. I have never had anything like this. Tender fish with tart cabbage in a light, sour broth. The hidden gem is the chewy clear noodles. I’m Chinese and I’ve been to hundreds of Chinese restaurants. Not once have I seen noodles like these and they’re perfectly amazing.
If you can get over the smell, I recommend the cumin lamb. One whiff and you can imagine breathing in the stench of a homeless man during a heatwave in Arizona. But not to worry, it tastes A LOT better than it smells. So smoky and spicy. It’s like eating curry lamb, but dry.
Next, we had the dan dan noodles (or black bean noodles). They serve all the ingredients separately and it’s the patron’s job to mix it altogether. I thought this dish was alright. A little cold, not enough sauce… San Tung has a better version.
Anytime I see soup dumplings on the menu, I order it. These were not the kind of soup dumplings I’m used to though. The skin was more bread like rather than thin and fragile. The difference could be because I was at a Beijing restaurant as opposed to a Shanghainese restaurant.
If you dine at Beijing Restaurant, you HAVE to order the sweet chewy cake. It’s probably one of my favorite desserts at a Chinese restaurant and I’ve never seen it anywhere else. This dessert is like a sesame ball minus the sesame seeds and topped with sugar. The red bean paste is so smooth and it’s got tiny pieces of chestnuts and pine nuts in the filling. I find it very odd that they serve it over a bed of cabbage, but it didn’t hold me back from eating 4 pieces!
Beijing Restaurant
1801 Alemany Blvd
(between Ocean Ave & Ruth St)
San Francisco, CA 94112
Neighborhood: Mission Terrace