San Tung - Review

Intro
San Tung - Recommended
1031 Irving St San Francisco 94122
Btwn 11th & 12th Ave
Phone: 415-242-0828

The fiancee's brother took us to San Tung for dinner (thanks Tony!). I never realized how good Chinese food in the bay area is. NY really can't touch the Chinese food out here. It's not generic Americanized Chinese food, but really is representative of the many different styles of Chinese cooking. San Tung represents the Shantung region in Northern China (imagine that). Overall, I give the restaurant an 80/100.

My Menu
1) Preserved Eggs - Highly Recommended
2) Vegetable Dumpling - Recommended
3) Original Dried Fried Chicken - Highly Recommended (must have)
4) Three Deluxe Spicy Noodles - Highly Recommended
5) Black Bean Sauce Noodles - Recommended

Dish Comments
1) Hard boiled eggs with Chinese five spice and a light sweet soy. I'm a sucker for hard boiled eggs, and this was done perfectly.
2) Decent dumpling, but skin was a little thick for my liking. Every Chinese place we've been to in the Bay Area does it proper providing the vinegar, soy, and ginger. Great combo with the dumplings.
3) Our friend Steph was raving about fried chicken so luckily for us, this place is known for their fried chicken wings. Perfectly crispy on the outside, yet tender meat on the inside. A little sweet, but not KFC sweet. The perfect little fried chicken wing.
4) Basically a combo of very thick rice noodles, shrimp, calamari, and scallops, with some veggies and very flavorful sauce. Again, evoking why I love it out here in the Bay. Fresh crisp veggies, fresh seafood with a wonderful sauce. Goes perfectly with white rice or the noodles.
5) Housemade noodles with a thick black bean sauce as well as beef, shrimp, and calamari. Noodles had a great texture and the sauce was surprisingly light.

Overall Restaurant Experience (80/100)

• Food 8.5/10 - Very good Chinese food.
  
• Service 7.3/10 - Average Service. We asked for rice 3 times and they finally brought it out on the third time.
  
• Atmosphere 7.5/10 - This place gets packed. We got there at 6 and there was already a 30 minute wait. By 7:30 the place was packed with people outside - had to be at least an hour wait. The crowd is mainly young Asians, but there were a bunch of non-Asians there as well. Standard Chinese restaurant motif.
  
• Price 8.8/10 - Price point is great for the quality.
  

Closing Comments
This is the style of food that the tri-state area is sorely lacking. We have pretty good Cantonese style food, but nothing like this.