Adrianna Tan
One of the reasons why SF doesn’t have as large or exciting of a ‘new’ Asian food scene is, I think, that we don’t have a really large universities the way that Berkeley and Palo Alto have those. SF State is great but it is a commuter school and largely isn’t a magnet for international students. USF is.. not one either.
All of the exciting ‘new’ Chinese and Taiwanese food is in Berkeley and Palo Alto / Cupertino, for that reason. Among others.
Adrianna Tan
There’s a lot of old people Chinese food in SF, which I like, but the demographics of that has also shifted. Across America, the Chinese population is decreasingly Cantonese or Toishanese and not even southern. New Chinese immigrants, like me, largely find this type of old style American Chinese food to be an interesting cuisine from the past.
I still frequent places like that, but my taste buds are increasingly more aligned with ‘modern’ Chinese regional cuisines as well. To get those, I have to go to East and South Bay, or LA.
Adrianna Tan
Four Kings in SF Chinatown is doing interesting stuff, but for every four kings, there are dozens more, hundreds more, in San Jose, Fremont, LA, San Gabriel Valley, Flushing, Seattle, doing really interesting modern Chinese food that doesn’t get the hype because they’re not in San Francisco.
Adrianna Tan
@aliceonboard Fremont, which i listed is east bay.
Oakland is great, but closer to SF in terms of having more old style immigrant Asian foods. Better than SF by far
Aliceonboard
@skinnylatte you forgot Oakland. Amazing Asian cuisines of all varieties.
Adrianna Tan
The other factor is the shift in demographics.
Old style Chinese food ‘shifu’ are getting.. well, old. Their kids aren’t taking over the family business. Their kids are all professionals, fed and educated by the power of the wok.
We see this everywhere there is a significant Chinese food scene.
Younger Chinese restauranteurs know they often can’t compete with the ‘masters’ on Chinese food classics. So they do something else. We see this in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, all Chinese cities. Probably Vancouver and Toronto and LA as well.
Who wants to do the 18 hour soup and arduous overnight prep that so much traditional Chinese food demands?
We’re seeing a shift in global Chinese food palate, where before it was Cantonese dominant, but now it is Sichuan.
I don’t have more thoughts on this other than to note that it is happening. San Francisco may be one of the last bastions of old style Cantonese cooking. Even in Singapore, and Malaysia, where the Chinese population has very southern Chinese taste buds, our new restaurants are increasingly not southern, and our old style foods are still there. But their practitioners are dying.
Adrianna Tan
@evanwolf some.. I should probably connect with people who are.
Stuff like this (not Chinese but in the same region) is so valuable in preserving the meaning of the ingredients, dishes, techniques. In the ideal world there should be something like this for each southern Chinese immigrant group
https://www.thefoodofsingaporemalays.com/
I know someone did something quite well for Hakka food in the Hakka cookbook, but it went wide (Hakka food around the world) rather than deep (the 10 different ways to make this one dish from this one region), which I’m interested in
Phil Wolff
@skinnylatte Are there efforts to preserve food skills and culture, the way some organize to preserve language, art, music?
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