Excelsior? Where? Plus a brief review of Wei’s Hunan.
Almost everyone I’ve told about my new neighborhood has the same exact reaction: “Excelsior? Where is that? In the city?” Even the ones that have heard of it, know little about it: “Um.. it’s near a park, right?” And these are people who’ve been living in the City for close to 10 years.
The reasonable explanation might be that there might not be a reason for people to venture out here unless they know someone here. Neighborhood restaurants aren’t typically found in Zagat, and Citysearch and SFStation rarely review anything in the district. That’s because the Excelsior is primarily residential, with what seems to be a strong working class neighborhood. The businesses are primarily Mexican or Asian, and they’re mostly of the low-cost variety — no 5 star restaurants here.
But gems are often found in the roughest of places. There are mom-and-pop stores a-plenty, with one at almost every other block. And when you hit the main streets of Mission and Geneva, there are quite a few choice spots to be found.
For example, I decided to enter this Chinese hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Mission called Wei’s Hunan Restaurant. The majority of the signs on the wall were in Chinese, and the small restaurant held an all-Chinese clientele. I can’t read a lick of it, and I can barely understand a word. I knew instantly this place was the Real Deal, not some Americanized Chinese spot. The tipping point was the menu on the wall: “Boiled Frog” and “Baked Oxtail.” This was authentic Chinese all right, no doubt about it.
I proceeded to order up a plate of preserved veg with pork, and a tofu claypot. I simply pointed to the menu and uttered the numbers, spitting out any semblance of Cantonese I could muster. The owner spoke English to me at first, but once he knew I could understand Cantonese, he spoke to me in Chinese the entire time, and was actually repeating the menu items back to me in Cantonese — it was like an impromptu language lesson.
Anyway, the food was exceedingly delicious. He even gave me a complimentary bowl of Chinese herbal soup. It was simple Chinese home cooking — the sort of stuff mom used to cook up at home. From my vantage point, it looked like the chef was the owner’s wife, and the only “waiter” available was the owner himself. Talk about a mom-and-pop operation! The food that the other clientele ordered looked similarly delicious. I’ll probably have to go back some time to try some other menu items. And maybe learn more Cantonese in the process.
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Yup, welcome to my neck of the woods. I am glad you found the restaurant, there are a few more gems around there when you look hard enough. Look for the Italian restaurant near Geneva that opens pass mid-night. This restaurant in particular seems to be popular with many Cantonese folks not only for the food itself, but for the herbal soup that you speak of. It’s actually a pretty common Cantonese pratice that you cook the soup for many hours with all kind of stuff (wink, wink) in it.
The owner is a pretty nice guy and he usually give away the soup with the meal. But on weekends, you could ask for the “special” soup which he charge to compensate for all the expensive stuff he put in there. There are generally two types of client in the restaurant, the locals non-Chinese patrons who would order Chinese-American food, and then Cantonese folks from all over town who heard it from their friends.