Late night Beijing street food at Beijing Restaurant [San Francisco]

[Thomas Nash]

Beijing Restaurant (Alemany & Ocean) is doing Beijing street food late nights from 1030PM-2AM every night. We tried it last night and it was fun and authentic and different.

The BBQ menu offers single sticks at varying prices. We tried the lamb skewers, chicken wings, eggplant, and shrimp. All have spicy Xinxiang flavoring (much like cumin lamb) and are good. The lamb skewers are available on the regular menu, but the others are not. The shrimp were 2 large shrimp and particularly good. The egg plant is a whole eggplant spit and grilled and garliced (!) and spiced.

We also had the very interesting Beijing style pancake roll with beef. It is completely different from the other regular menu pancakes. It is more of a quesadilla like roll briefly cooked on the grill to crisp up the outside.

There is also a large "ma la tang" selection of items that are cooked for you in spicy soup set up over burners on tables in the center of the room. You can select from a display of items to put in the soup. Very good soup and choices. You pay by the item.

We gorged and spent $50 with tip. Owners and staff are very helpful.

Photos of menu and ma la tang selections attached.

Altogether a great late night chance to see what real Beijing street food is like. Seems like there are lots of young Beijing ex-pats in town and this is filling a craving.

[hyperbowler]

Not available on Monday nights, on which they close at 9:30pm.

[hyperbowler]

Late night menu isn't available on Mondays and Tuesdays.

[Thomas Nash]

Not sure it is still available any night [?] I haven't seen any indication/announcements/signs indicating they are still doing it the last few times we were there. Too bad, it was fun.

[hyperbowler]

Yup, they had it last night, and the various week nights I've been in over the last few weeks (they told me the MT I cited above). I think you have to ask for the late night BBQ menu, but the hot pot skewers are on the center table at about 10:30.

[Fine]

Can't find anything about this on its web site--says closes at 9:30.

Why would it be such a secret??

[hyperbowler]

I don't know that it's an active secret-- their online menu and physical menu have discrepancies as it is (e.g., they don't mention the jian bing (egg covered crepe w/ crunchy wafer inside) on the website, but it's in the front of the current menu... and delicious). I can ask next time I'm in, but my guess is that they just haven't gotten around to updating the website.

[Melanie Wong]

Now that you've had jian bing, you can understand why it's spawned so many requests over the years. I'll have to get over there some night to try it.
http://www.chow.com/search?query=%22j...

[hyperbowler]

It's at the beginning of the regular menu, so no late night dining required!

For some reason, it's not in same section as the other pancake things. I hadn't realized I was ordering anything so coveted--- my meal was otherwise very starchy, and I was hoping to balance it out with what appeared on the menu to be a Chinese omelette!

Here's a pic of a mostly eaten one.

[Dave MP]

Yes, this is coveted!!! I hadn't noticed it on the menu previously, but I haven't been to Beijing in a while. Will definitely try it soon

[srr]

Just in case someone isn't familiar with this place, it's actually at Alemany and Ocean, not Alameda.

[Thomas Nash]

Whoops. Too late to edit... I think I made the same slip before once.

[Dave MP]

This is awesome. Thanks so much for posting!

I noticed the sign for this when I was there a few weeks ago, and I definitely want to give this a try. So they are offering this 7 days a week!?!

[Thomas Nash]

Apparently 7 days. Was nearly full at 11 on Saturday and one of the owners said typically the young Chinese crowd shows up around 1230!