Henry’s Hunan, San Francisco
Today for lunch, I decided to try Henry’s Hunan near SF MOMA. I wish I hadn’t.
Seattle doesn’t have any authentic Hunan food, and I love spicy, so I try to get Hunan food when I’m in cities that have it. San Francisco has plenty of options in Chinatown, so I assumed that this place wouldn’t be bad.
For starters, there were no Hunan choices on the menu. The menu was standard American-Chinese food that you would get at any generic “Chinese” restaurant in suburban America. It is not the kind of Chinese food you would expect in the city with the highest percentage Chinese population in the country. I overheard conversations at a couple of tables with people regaling their coworkers with stories about “You’ve never had Hunan food?! It’s sooooo spicy!” But from the bland stir-fries on every plate, I think their definition of “spicy” is not what I think when I think of Hunan food.
Now, I exaggerated a bit when I said there were no Hunan choices. There were exactly two menu choices that seemed like authentic Hunan food. One was an appetizer, “Cold sliced 5 spices beef”, and the other was the “Extra spicy cod fish” entrée. I ordered both.
After a long wait, the appetizer and entrée arrived at the same time. The fish is shown on the left, cold sliced beef on right:
Now, the fish was nothing at all like I expected. It was chunks of battered and fried cod, American-style, in some nasty sticky salty sauce. It was not even the slightest bit hot or spicy. This dish can be delicious, but I have no idea what they were thinking when they made this.
The cold-sliced beef, on the other hand, was pretty good. Considering that it’s a cold appetizer, and they probably just by it from Chinatown and stick it in their refrigerator, this isn’t a reflection on the quality of the restaurant.
From the picture, it looks like they give a big pile of beef (which you don’t want). But it’s just because the beef slices are piled on top of cucumber slices. It’s all soaked in nice Hunan-style hot oil. Here is a picture of the hot oil and cucumbers after I ate most of the beef. The color on my camera phone stinks; that hot oil is redder than it shows here:
What they lack in selection of good Hunan food, they make up for in volume of rice. Here is the large bowl of rice they gave me. I guess the rice is to cool the taste buds of all the laowai panting from the “sooooo spicy” stir-fry:
My total bill, sans tip, came to $20. Four people could have gotten Pho in Chinatown for that much money.