Brandon Jew’s favorite places in San Francisco’s Chinatown

In many ways, Brandon Jew has become synonymous with San Francisco’s Chinatown. The chef of Mister Jiu’s has defended the restaurant’s Michelin star for seven years in a row. And while Jew is fluent in the language of fine dining, he is also a champion of Chinatown’s history and wants to help restore the neighborhood to its glory days.

“The mix of small family businesses and then restaurants like ours, the dive bars, all that – we need all of that to make it work,” Jew said. Robb Report recently, after dinner at Mister Jiu.

One way Jew is trying to bring his cooking and Chinatown’s heritage to a wider audience is through a new partnership with Alaska Airlines. As part of the partnership, the chef has created a new first-class menu for flights between San Francisco SFO and New York JFK. Available starting August 28, the menu includes a breakfast option and two lunch/dinner options: In the morning, Alaska’s elite travelers can enjoy brown rice porridge with soy-cured eggs and tender braised pork belly. In the afternoon or evening, they can choose between a tender braised duck leg with sesame egg noodles (using the same Liberty Farms poultry used in Mister Jiu’s whole roasted Peking duck) or tender seared black cod with silken tofu.

As part of a trip organized by Alaska Airlines, we got a taste of Jew’s new menu items, and it’s safe to say they’re better than the usual airline fare – first class or otherwise. We also had the opportunity to take a food tour of Chinatown led by chef and San Francisco native. Jew took us to his favorite spots, from tea rooms to take-out dim sum to grocery stores and more. These are the places he frequents, and why he loves them.

Red Blossom Tea Company

Red Blossom has been around for nearly 40 years, and the high-end shop treats tea much like sommeliers treat wine. The shelves are filled with all kinds of varieties, and the shop’s teas have been served on everything from private jets to yachts. “In China, everyone drinks tea, and it’s like how we drink coffee here in America,” says Jew. He starts his day with a pot of tea, but “I also feel like there’s so much for me to learn about tea. That’s why I come here, so I can learn more about these special things.”

Fong Seng Company

Fong Seng is no ordinary grocery store. The shelves are lined with all kinds of dried seafood, like scallops, which Jew uses in sauces and broths, or shrimp, which he puts in noodles. Behind the counter, you can shell out $1,200 for a large can of dried worms that eat cordyceps mushrooms. “I also come here to learn about traditional Chinese medicine ingredients,” Jew told us. “I came here mainly to learn what these ingredients are – why they’re considered so special. And then to be able to turn them into a delicious dish. That’s been a focus for me this year, I’ve really tried to incorporate more traditional Chinese medicine ingredients into our dishes because I think there’s so much out there.”

Stockton Street

“This is the busiest street in Chinatown,” says Jew. “Everything is bought here.” With its many shops selling produce, meat, fish, traditional Chinese medicine and more, Stockton Street is the bustling heart of Chinatown. We arrive early enough in the day that it is not yet crowded, but that can change at any time as locals and people from further afield flock to Stockton to buy ingredients for the evening. Jew used to come here with his grandmother as a child; she used her Sunday outings to shop, of course, but also to meet with her friends and assess the social scene. It is also home to Good Mong Kok Bakery, one of Jew’s favorite places for take-out dim sum. He claims the bakery has the best shrimp dumplings, and they bake 1,000 pork buns a day for customers lining up down the block.

Capital Restaurant

You might not immediately associate chicken wings with Chinese food, but that’s sure to change after a visit to Capital. The restaurant is best known for its simple salt and pepper wings (they really don’t skimp on the salt), with perhaps the crispiest skin anywhere. Jew also loves it because “it’s not just about the food they serve, but because it’s a community gathering place and you share food at the table with others,” he says. “It’s a staple of the neighborhood, where people from the neighborhood come three or four times a week and meet up with friends.” That’s evident as we meet locals we met earlier in the day and as they reconnect with each other, with an older man and woman realizing they went to middle school together decades ago. If you think there’s no community in a big city, bring it here.

Egg cakes

Unfortunately, Jew’s favorite place for egg tarts—Golden Gate Bakery—is “closed 90 percent of the time,” so we can’t stop by on this trip. Instead, we grab boxes of the traditional Chinese pastries from nearby Yummy Bakery & Café, a shop Jew hasn’t heard of yet but was keen to try. The egg tarts are fresh out of the oven, and we dig into both the yellow and white versions of the treat—”the way they are warm, it’s kind of a new level,” Jew says. While he admits that Golden Gate is still the winner when it comes to egg tarts, Yummy is a good fallback if you can’t get into the first shop.