Category: Food Service

Customers choose from a variety of street snacks, skewers, dim sum, desserts, boba drinks, wok-tossed rice plates, congee and cart noodles.

“I am really in love with Chinese street food,” owner Kevin Lee said. “It’s a sensory overload every second from the moment one sets foot on a sidewalk full of open kitchen stalls.”

My bowl of comfort

Lee was born and raised in San Francisco, and his parents are originally from Hong Kong. They ran a hobby shop on the South City property when he was young. When Lee took over the reins in 2016, he opened Spruce Cafe & Patisserie, one of the first third-wave coffee shops in South San Francisco. He then opened the Night Market next door in 2017, closed it in 2018 for a remodel and then reopened it in 2020.

Called dai pai dong (“big license stall”) in Cantonese, the food stalls date back to Hong Kong’s post-World War II era. They were a reliable stop for cheap eats among hungry patrons, students and night owls on a budget.

Still, the dai pai dong have been in decline in Hong Kong since the 1970s, as its government modernized. Places like the Night Market have become increasingly important in preserving a distinct part of Hong Kong’s culture.

Although I’m tempted by everything I find at the Night Market on a recent Thursday afternoon, especially as I spent many a drunken night myself at such stalls in Hong Kong, I’m here on a mission: to eat dumplings.

All of the dumplings at the Night Market were once made in-house. Today, with the kitchen short-staffed, a well-known restaurant in Millbrae (which Lee is mum about) makes most of the market’s dumplings and delivers them fresh, to be cooked on-premises. The wontons and a sweet dumpling called tang yuan, however, are still made here.

Wontons have their own identity, separate from Northern China’s jiaozi dumplings. The Cantonese version is smaller, in a thinner square wrapper, and made with a base of ground pork with one-third to one-half of a shrimp.

At the Night Market, Lee’s head chef, who prefers to go by Chef Fung, has more than 40 years of restaurant experience. He can deftly make hundreds of wontons by hand in one session, and he does just that, folding ground pork and shrimp into a square wonton skin effortlessly.

His secret ingredient is a canister of brown powder. It’s ground flounder, made from dried fish bought whole in Chinatown and then ground in the kitchen. Another canister was full of white sesame seeds, also ground in-house. These are key to giving the wontons their distinct flavour.

Wonton noodles are an iconic street food in Hong Kong, simple and straightforward. Chef Fung, however, treated the creation of each bowl as if it were meant for royalty, tenderly turning thin, fresh egg noodles boiling in chicken and beef bone broth with a pair of tongs every so often to get an even cook. He boiled the wontons simultaneously.

When they were finished, he handed me a bowl topped with Chinese yellow chives. While the wontons were the size of a small jawbreaker candy when raw, they nearly doubled in size after being boiled,

Not every restaurant needs to win a James Beard Award in order to be considered gourmet. For many, the notion of what constitutes “gourmet” is a subjective opinion as wildly varied as bread baskets and drive-thru preferences. Sure, tasting menus take top billing when it comes to gourmet go-tos and special occasion meals—but you needn’t take out a loan and indulge in a multi-course degustation to experience something refined, comforting, and special. And that’s where dine-in chains come in for many Americans.

Despite having locations spread across the country, some dine-in chains ascend to gourmet glory for all kinds of reasons, be it nostalgia or culinary surprises. Even professional chefs can’t resist the all-American appeal of the comfort food served at some of these places. While certainly not all dine-in chains can be categorized as gourmet, just like fast-food guilty pleasures, these are certain brands that serve surprisingly above-and-beyond cuisine.

RELATED: The #1 Order to Never Make at a Steakhouse, According to Chefs

For Pace Webb, co-founder and founding chef at sandwich-slinging Daddy’s Chicken Shack in Houston, dine-in comfort is all about nostalgia. “I’ve always been a fan of House of Pies,” he says. “Growing up in Houston, it was a perfect late night spot. My order is always the same to this day: a slice of Bavarian chocolate mousse pie and a side of cottage fries.” Doubling down on nostalgia, Webb says he likes to actually dip his fries in the pie, conjuring memories of another iconic chain. “It’s kind of like dipping fries into a chocolate frosty at Wendy’s. I love that sweet and salty combo.”

According to Joseph LoNigro, executive chef and chief operating officer at Brine in New York City, his gourmet nostalgia skews a bit meatier. His pick? Hillstone, an upscale chain with a proclivity for steaks, burgers, and other burly American fare. “No matter where you are, the food and experience is always consistent, delicious, and special,” he proclaims, adding that his standard go-to order is the Thai steak and noodle salad. “They also make one of the best veggie burgers I’ve ever had—and I’m definitely not a vegetarian.”

Another steakhouse that can be even more surprisingly gourmet is the Longhorn Steakhouse. That’s per Zac Lennoxcorporate chef for the Houston-based Palacios Murphy restaurant group, who says the key reason is the wood grill.

“There is something that just jingles your DNA when you eat meat that has been cooked on a wood fire,” he explains. “For 99.9% of mankind’s existence, if your food was cooked, it was cooked on wood fire. When you get a piece of meat and the smoke is in the juice, it just takes you to another place. It is enjoyment on a cellular , timeless level. Steakhouses are all over the place. You can spend five times the price and not get a steak that is as satisfying as the Longhorn offering. I just think it is underrated, but I don’t mind because I can usually get it a table right away.”6254a4d1642c605c54bf1cab17d50f1e

Lennox adds that from a chef’s perspective, cooking over wood fire is tough—and should be respected. “You have to watch the food you are cooking, but you also have to watch the fire. It’s no joke keeping a fire in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ of not-too-hot and not-too-low for a five-hour service. To keep that fire right and still hit temps on steaks every time? That takes a special kind of someone.”

Longhorn, he says, is that special kind of person, noting that the chain has a “wood grill school” that has been attended before they let employees send food out to guests. “Restaurant chains usually dumb it down to make it easier on themselves, ie broilers, gas grills, sous vide, planchas, etc.” Lennox says. “Super high-end steakhouses usually do not use wood fire because, well, its hard to find cooks who are competent and willing to endure the heat. Longhorn went for it. I applaud their audacity.”

As with other chain-loving chefs, Lennox says it’s important for him not to overdo it with his love for Longhorn, so as to retain the nostalgia and adoration. “I am afraid to go too many times and ruin it for myself. But if I do find myself in the ‘where do I want to go? I don’t know, where do you want to go’ spin cycle with my significant other and we just feel like a well-cooked hunk of meat with no reservation needed, I can’t deny it, Longhorn delivers.”

Matt Kirouac