Tips for Dining, Eating, and Food Shopping in the SF Bay Area (including Berkeley, Oakland, Napa, Sonoma, Marin, and San Jose)
Start New ThreadI went to Chef Liu this week for the first time in a while, I still like them.
By bbulkow
on Feb 24, 2010 09:20 PM
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C'mon, ya gotta give us more deets about Chef Liu's eats.
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Fair enough.
I have a soft spot for Chef Liu. I like the room, I like the down-home atmosphere, I like the waitstaff that doesn't speak enough english to know the word "bread", and I like the prices. It's not pretentious, and never crowded. (Yulong I think of as slightly pretentious).
["Bread" came up because I was trying to order what usually translates as "Sesame Flatbread", which they call "panroll", after my main order without a menu.]
For heaven's sake, they put *forks* on the table. 80% of their customers speak some form of chinese, the rest are aquainted with chopsticks. And yet, you have to ask. I even ate my most recent meal there with a fork, because I didn't want to bother them on a light night when they were closing up. Eating chinese with a fork is very, very hard - the food just slips off. But that's an example of the quirky pleasantness of the place.
They make an honest dumpling. They're served at 10 large to the order in a big steamer, but they only have 4 or 5 flavors. they aren't great dumplings, but they're good, and I don't think they serve XLB - it's more shrimp dumplings in those translucent skins. Straight steamed, no pan fry.
I had some kind of cabbage dish. I was thinking fondly of China Village's cabbage, but this was a different dish. Lighter, no wok char. Tasty.
The other dish was a "hunan lamb". It was more of a mongolian lamb, lightly seasoned with some leek-type objects. Again, tasty.
What I can't get my head around with Chef Liu is their niche or category. It's not as particularly Szchuan as Trend, or as Hong Kong as Fu Lam Moon. The menu is all over the place. It's on the light side which I'd consider more southern, but doesn't have a particularly Cantonese or Shanghai slant. Few organ dishes. it doesn't try to be overwhelmingly authentic.
Nothing there is great. Nothing knocks my socks off. I can't give you a discourse on any particular dish. But everything is _good_, and the taste has a certain authenticity. After a month eating in china, Chef Liu was the first place I ate that brought back the memories. *That's* what food in China tastes like, I said. Just like everyday food in random restaurants.
Every time I eat there, I leave happy and satisfied and not much poorer. How do you write a review based on that? You want to highlight certain dishes, tell a story. It's just good, solid chinese food.
I wouldn't recommend Chef Liu as a destination, but if you're just looking for a good honest plate of eats on a street that's turning more upscale by the month, Chef Liu deserves a bit of your business.
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Isn't Chef Liu a Shandong place like Yulong? If your Chinese travels were in the north, that would make sense.
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I didn't make it to Shandong, but was north, south, and west of there. Perhaps that's why I can't put a finger on their style but it seems familiar. The staff seems to speak a straight-up mandrin, because I can pick out a few words here and there, consistent with the Shandong theory. Liu is less of a noodle specialist than Yulong.
Speaking of chinese regional, I would still kill for Wu'xi style soup dumplings. Thick skin, sweet soup.
Yes, mountain view.
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