To help make sense of the diversity of Chinese cuisine available in the Bay Area, this project aims to document restaurants that specialize in a regional, or ethnic-based, Chinese sub-cuisine, or at least have uncommon regional dishes. The list is a superficial treatment, but it will point you to over 400 restaurants whose specialties fall outside the general Cantonese or Chinese American umbrellas. Regions of course don’t live in a vacuum, and a chef’s pedigree (or menu) says nothing of their skills at making regional dishes. Treat these categories as rough guidance, and be warned the list includes outstanding restaurants and real stinkers. I’ve also included links to Chowhound discussions and journalist reviews, and each restaurant is linked to Yelp for address and location info.įor a more in-depth discussion of a restaurant or regional cuisine, and to help separate restaurant specialties from fool’s gold, check out linked discussions on Hungry Onion or start a new discussion to get the ball rolling. For a curated analogue of the guide, consider the San Francisco Chronicle’s James Beard Award winning Many Chinas, Many Tables project, which used this list to identify candidate restaurants, and which contains short descriptions and dish recommendations for dozens of restaurants.įor additional background on cuisines, the Modern Chinese Foodways conference has a bountiful resources page. For specific dishes, I recommend looking through Carolyn Phillips’ website and book on regional Chinese cuisine, All Under Heaven. Also check out Clarissa Wei’s regional Chinese guide to LA and Jim Thurman’s Essential Guide to Regional Chinese Food in LA. Some Cantonese sub-categories are included, but let’s focus on Cantonese (i.e., Guangdong) and Hong Kong in other posts since they form the foundation of the Bay Area’s Chinese cuisine, and have lots of specialty shops worthy of their own discussions (e.g., dim sum, desserts, meats, etc.). The San Francisco Bay Area Cantonese Primer is a quick primer to get you started down that route. Please add new discoveries and let us know if anything has been mis-characterized, especially if a place’s menu doesn’t reflect the purported region.

Chef chen brentwood menu