Rong, my classmate at Stanford, told me about a beijing-style hot pot restaurant that was “more authentic than the restaurants in Beijing.” Not being able to resist such an overwhelming endorsement, I rallied a group of 8 and headed to the “way outer sunset” neighborhood of SF, for a visit to 老北京 (It’s chinese name, which means Old Beijing).
It’s a small place, maybe with three large tables and four small ones, located in a neighborhood who’s only distinguishing characteristic is that it was so undistinguished that I can remember nothing at all about it. Lao Beijing was the only lit up building on the block.
Authentic it was. We no sooner indicated that we wanted the hotpot that the server, clearly the daughter of Mr Yan, the owner brought out a steaming bowl o scented stock and lit it’s burner. Only then did she turned to our order, and food started flowing freely thereafter in the copious streams we have become acustomed to.
Lamb is the house specialty, as we were informed when we tried to order half-beef, half-lamb for dipping into the then boiling stock. We ended up with four lamb orders, one beef, which combined with all the vegetable acoutrements was plenty of food for the 9 of us. Having plenty of food, of course, did not stop us from ordering more. The hotpot was truly delectable, and while we didnt order the spicy version, it was very flavorable. The lamb dumplings were clearly freshly made and while not at all the kind of delecate affiar you might get yourself into at a Cantonese restaurant, they had an earthy crudeness that did indeed remind me of a village somewhere on the mongolian plains. The mongolian tofu was out of this world: some kind of fried tofu bits tossed with chili and seasonings. Some of the best I’ve had. The group also ordered some more traditional chinese fare, such as eggplant with garlic, and veggie chow mein, and they were passable, but the cooks in the back clearly took more pride in their own specialties, such as the beef pancake and sesame pancake and of course, the Mandarin lamb (lamb with lots and lots of cumin).
The owner, Mr Yan, is from beijing, and resisted any attempt to acertain the provenance of his Islam. He is not Uigher (from western china), I imagine he is Hui, which is another muslim minority. All he divulged was that “his family had been in Beijing for 400 years. They are just muslim.” I suspect that like many chinese muslims, his devotion ran to the extent that he did not serve Pork in his restaurant (no small concession for a Chinese of any stripe). I did enjoy washing my meal down with a frosty Tsingtao beer, however.
Overall, this was one of the best chinese restaurants I have been to in the US, and probably one the top-3 most authentic (it’s competition is in Flushing, NY). 4 Stars, highly recommended.
(An interesting aside: a plaque on the wall proclaimed that this had be declared by some quasi-Chinese govt agency to be one of the top-100 Chinese restaurants in the US. I googled, and found this web page http://top100.c-r-n.com/top100winner2006.htm. Aparantly, this is some kind of annual list. We will investigate further.)
Old Mandarin Restaurant
3132 Vicente St
San Francisco, CA 94116
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