5/29/2023 0 Comments La times the chinatown punk wars![]() “We think the future of Chinatown will be more food, more entertainment, more unique cocktail lounges like there were in the 1950s,” Lion’s Den co-founder Steven Lee told the San Francisco Chronicle. The Lion’s Den, the neighborhood’s first new nightclub in decades, opened in March in a space on Wentworth Place once occupied by the Drag’on A’ Go-Go club. The 97-year-old Great Star Theater on Jackson Street has been reborn as a nonprofit venue featuring music, magic, circus arts and comedy (though its SF Sketchfest comedy show in January was recently postponed because of Omicron worries). Other entrepreneurs are chasing their own ideas about remaking Chinatown. Many of the restaurant’s ingredients come from its farm in Gilroy. He opened the restaurant in June with a $78 prix fixe menu and an Instagram-ready dining room that combines Chinese tradition, contemporary techniques, Western influences, an antique pergola from the old Empress and sweeping views of the city and bay. With Empress by Boon, Ho joins this company in the pursuit of a new, younger, more prosperous audience. It’s hard to know where this new year will take us, but here’s one thing we can control: Let’s resolve to thrive this year, and start enjoying life again - safely, of course. Upstairs in the elite Eight Tables dining room, you can get an eight-course chef’s tasting menu for $225 per person. Downstairs you can get four pork dumplings for $15. The Gold Mountain restaurant on Broadway, another favorite among old-timers, was replaced in 2017 by the ambitious China Live, a restaurant, retail and bar space that’s as lively and handsome as any Eataly, and just as dependent on noodles. The executive chef and co-owner, San Francisco native Brandon Jew, has won a Michelin star for his Cantonese cuisine with California inflections. The Four Seas banquet restaurant on Waverly Place, for instance, was replaced in 2016 by upscale, contemporary Mister Jiu’s, joined by its bar, the Moongate Lounge. A handful of those restaurants have been replaced by sleek new venues with younger, hipper, more Westernized customers in mind. So are most of the neighborhood’s old banquet restaurants, which served a mix of tourists and locals celebrating special occasions. On the fall day that Ho led his tour, we passed signage for several ghost gift shops, some of long standing, some younger, all aimed mostly at tourists: Eternity, Asia Image, Asian Styles, Peking Bazaar - all gone. “Half of the restaurants and half of the retail will not come back, the way I look at it.” He sees the new restaurants and shops as a sign that the rich are getting richer. “The golden age is gone,” said Stephen Chan, 76, owner of Vy’s Jewelry on Grant. ![]() The Li Po Cocktail Lounge (since 1937) is still serving the Chinese mai tais that tempted Anthony Bourdain a decade ago.īut with international tourism at a low ebb for 22 months - and San Francisco hotel occupancy rates running behind those in Los Angeles and most major U.S. ![]() These days, the old folks are still playing cards in Portsmouth Square, and you can still check out the production line in the tiny Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory (since 1962) in Ross Alley. Storefronts on Grant Avenue aimed at selling Chinese souvenirs or luxury goods to Western tourists, while Stockton Street served mostly Chinatown residents, many of them recent immigrants living in high-density upstairs apartments and struggling to keep above the poverty line. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |