When I was in the Bay Area in February, I had a chance to visit Mister Jiu’s during Chinese New Year – which this year is the Year of the Pig. In celebration of the Lunar New Year holiday, they offered some special items, but I also enjoyed some of their classic famous dishes. If you haven’t heard of Mister Jiu’s, it is a restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown owned by young couple Brandon Jew and Anna Lee. They have put a spin on classic Cantonese but with modern California sensibilities and ingredients (many made in house) for a next generation Chinese American take. Mister Jiu’s was rated the #3 Best New Restaurant in America 2017 by Bon Appetit and is a One Michelin Star restaurant.
Mister Jiu’s takes reservations, but if there are none available on Resy you can try to hope for an empty seat at the bar in the front, which will serve the full menu for walk-ins. We had reservations, but because of some traffic shenanigans (the Richmond-San Rafael bridge was closed in both directions for a while because of falling concrete) we drove directly to Chinatown from the airport instead of dropping off our luggage first. When Mister Jiu’s opened their doors at 5pm, we were early for our reservation so enjoyed a beverage at the bar.
The selection is great – F found a beer he was interested in, and they even offered 1/3 bottle carafes of wine besides the usual by the glass options. I had this cocktail called Year of the Pig with vodka, lotus, almond, white vermouth, passion fruit, egg. Although this cocktail didn’t qualify, other ones on the menu were available in punch bowl size for 3-5 or 6-8 people!
The Mister Jiu’s interior finds a balance between nods to traditional and also clean modernity while feeling warm.
Since we were a party of two, and one was vegetarian, I had to be realistic about what I could eat. So I pared down my small bites wishlist to unfortunately leave out the famous dumplings
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But, I had to have the Dutch Crunch BBQ Pork Buns. They take the baked BBQ Pork buns you find ubiquitously at Chinese bakeries and upgrade them with the more meaty chunks of pork and cleverly change out the slightly sweet but thin bun enveloping the meat center with the San Franciscan specialty of Dutch Crunch bread with its crispy crunchy top while still being soft inside.
I did the full test of these – I ate them fresh at the table, and just like when I was a kid, also the next day at room temperature or microwaved slightly to warm it up 2 days later. Although these are smaller then normal BBQ pork buns (which are the size of my hand, vs dinner roll sized here at Mister Jiu’s), it delivered on my childhood memories while satisfying my grown up matured tastebuds. Take a look at the better meat inside these pork buns.
I also had to have the Mister Jiu’s small bites dish of Sea Urchin Cheong Fun. These were ok – Northern California has amazing sea urchin, but the ones here were normal rather then delicate creaminess I was expecting. The rice rolls were also ok, but not an upgrade on regular dim sum Cheong Fun, in my opinion.
Vegetarians can rest easy at Mister Jiu’s because you will have quite a few options. For instance, F enjoyed a small bite of Mushroom Bao and then a noodle dish of Carrot ‘Ma Jiang Mian’, a cold noodle dish with mustard greens, chanterelle, sesame, bergamot that has nutty flavors.
So I just feeling so not greedy at all that he only ordered those two dishes and I got the two dishes I already named… and then the two additional dishes below from the large format section. I had told my server that we were from out of town and I intentionally wanted to same a lot of dishes – and to be prepared with to go boxes, which she totally was, whisking plates away from our two-top to make room for the next dishes and boxing them up so that I could enjoy these leftovers for a couple days after this dinner.
So… first large format dish, which probably can serve 2-4 people ha ha, was the special Suckling Pig with mantou buns, cabbage slaw, hot mustard and a citrus salad to cut down on the richness of the pig and the heat of that cabbage slaw with hot mustard.
Next is a dish on the regular menu, I got a half order of the Liberty Farm Roast Duck served with pancakes, peanut butter hoisin, and cucumbers. This roast duck not also includes the expected meat and crispy skin of Peking Duck, but also a duck confit leg, a skewer of gizzards, and the serving of rich, creamy duck liver pate which I would just spoon directly into my mouth duck pancake bundles, thank you.
There was one last sweet bite to finish off the meal once I got the check!
There were so many more dishes I wanted to try: the crispy scarlet turnip cakes, the toasted rice congee with Maine lobster and grapefruit and peanut, their various dumplings, the Salt Baked McFarland Springs whole Trout crusted in salt served with lotus leaf and trout roe… maybe some future visit?
Do any of the dishes of my post intrigue you? Have you heard of Mister Jiu’s before, would you visit them?
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