Tags
chow fun, Edsel Ford Fong, favorite restaurants, hole in the wall restaurants, jennifer tanner, jook, Sam Wo, taste memories
A couple years ago, my husband took me to a swanky restaurant in the City for my birthday. After the impeccably dressed host greeted us, we were whisked off to the dining room. The dining room manager pulled out my chair, unfolded my napkin, and placed it on my lap. Menus appeared. Another member of the waitstaff filled our water goblets.
The “bread girl” arrived. Her sole job throughout the evening was serving rolls with silver tongs. Our meal was as impressive as the service.
But apart from the restaurant’s much photographed interior and the carefully orchestrated service, I can’t remember what I had for dinner.
We have certain expectations when we walk into a restaurant. We expect to be treated well. We want good food and value for our money.
So you’ll wonder why I was saddened today when I heard that a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, with a reputation for cheap eats and rude service, was closing. After 100 years, Sam Wo Restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown will fire up the wok one last time this weekend.
Sam Wo is an institution. A destination for tourists and generations of Bay Area dwellers. Housed in a narrow (I mean narrow, like twelve feet wide), three story building, customers entered through the kitchen on the first floor. After navigating your way past the cook and kitchen helpers chopping vegetables, you’d hike up the stairs to the second or third floor to get a table.
Ambience? Zero. No white linen tablecloths here. Beat up stools and worn wooden tables line the dingy walls of the dining area. I suspect the tables date back before the war. (WWI)
I was a college student the first time I ate at Sam Wo. Upon arriving on the second floor, my friend and I were greeted by the restaurant’s infamous impressario Edsel Ford Fong. He pointed to a table and barked, “Sit down!” We sat.
He tossed a grimy menu, an order pad and a stubby pencil on the table, and told us to write up our order. We were too intimidated question him.
Edsel returned a few minutes later and scratched off all but two of the items we’d scribbled on the pad. “Too much food.” He laughed maniacally, handed me a teapot, and told me to pour tea. For the other diners.
I poured.
As I went from table to table refilling tea cups, I observed Edsel moving a startled couple, mid-meal, to another table with two strangers because he needed their table for a party of four. Is this guy for real?
Orders from the kitchen arrived in a dumbwaiter. My beef chow fun was delicious, with just the right wok char to meld the flavors. While we ate, we watched Edsel slam plates onto tables and blast diners for leaving paltry tips. He’d scowl and let loose a stream of Cantonese curse words. Some customers looked shell-shocked. Others seemed indifferent. They must have been regulars.
Arriving customers were treated with the same glaring disdain we’d experienced. Diners would have their plates whisked away before they were finished with their meals. More table switching. A new victim pouring tea.
I sat back and enjoyed the show. I guess you could call it bargain dinner theater.
As my friend and I were leaving, Edsel slung his arm around me and kissed my cheek. My shock was tempered by his friendly grin. I smiled back. Happy and full, I couldn’t wait to tell my friends about this place.
I’d never been treated so badly in a restaurant. And yet, it was one of the most memorable meals I’ve ever eaten.
By the time I paid another visit to Sam Wo, Edsel had passed away. Still, the restaurant remained a popular destination. Open until 3 a.m., it was the perfect spot for a late night snack. The same yellow walls greeted me in the shoebox-sized dining area. I’d order a noodle dish or have the jook (rice porridge) with sticks of yao jia gwei, a fried bread, which is one of my earliest taste memories. The food was good, but without Edsel, it didn’t feel the same.
I know I’m not the only one with fond memories of perfect chow fun and the man with a scowl…and a smile.
Do you have a favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant? A particularly memorable meal?
Those are the best restaurants. Sorry to hear it’s closing, I would have loved to experienced eating there. We love eating in hole-in-the-wall places like that, and in fact, have given up on the whole fancy restaurant thing. We never feel like we get our money’s worth, when we like the food better at Mom & Pop’s. In Japan, they had a name for us, BQ gourmets (we love B level food). One of the best ramen restaurants in Tokyo (with a line that always stretches around the block) has about 10 counter seats and a woman who yells at you if you talk. You are supposed to go in, order quickly, and slurp your noodles in silence. Talking means you are wasting time for the people waiting. You put up with rudeness when the food is worth it.
That ramen place in Tokyo reminds me of the Soup Nazi episode on Seinfeld. When I was in high school, I used to eat at this hole-in-the-wall Mexican place. They had the best carne asada tacos. There was a little store in the boonies that sold delicious chicken and beef tamales. I’m salivating just thinking about them.
We eat at all kinds of restaurants. Hate it when the hype is better than the food.
Hah. =) We had a guy the other day who was going to leave because we’d run out of filets. I told him to sit down or I’d staple him to his seat. =) We used to eat, way back when I was a kid, at a mom and pop place called Mom’s and Pop’s. Greasy fries that soaked through the bag, and I don’t think anyone ever actually ate INSIDE the restaurant, it was all to go. But boy, it was goooood foooood.
I always thought the hamburgers at the mom and pop places tasted better than McDonalds. Some of those places had slushy ice in their soft drinks. Yes, I know it’s ice, but I liked slushy as opposed to crushed or cubed. Now you’ve got me thinking about this place called Pie and Burger in Pasadena. I needed a shower after eating one of their burgers.
Did he bring out all the articles of himself on some very tattered laminates?
He would brag about how Herb Caen wrote about him.
The first time I was there it was on a weekend and the place was packed. He kept busy moving folks from table to table and exchanged curses with the kitchen help by shouting down the dumbwaiter shaft. I do remember reading Herb Caen’s column and his many references to Edsel. I miss Herb.
I was ready to CRY when I read Sam Wo was closing! I LOVE that place! I took so many friends there for a meal. Their chow fun truly was TO DIE FOR!
I didn’t discover the place until Edsel was gone, but I think his younger sister worked there. I always sat on the 3rd floor so she would wait on me. She was about 4’9″ and would also slap the menus down on the table and demand, “What you want?” Man, she could handle that loaded dumbwaiter like an NFL linebacker! Also if you showed any aptitude at all with chopsticks, you got on her good side. One time (out of all the many times we ate there) the DH and I somehow got on her good side enough that she left us each a piece of hard candy with the bill! That was a red-letter day for us. 😉
There will never be another restaurant quite like Sam Wo.
Gee, I never got a piece of candy with my bill. Just a dismissive scowl. Their chow fun was really good. The noodles were fresh and wide cut, not like the skinny cut noodles some restaurants use now. Real Cantonese style cooking is getting harder to find.
Wow. I haven’t been to Sam Wo’s since college. We used to stuff money in someone’s pocket and force them inside (the sacrifice), to order take-out. They’d reappear a while later with a sack of containers so hot you had to balance them on fingertips. Most of the time we didn’t get chopsticks so you learned to order food you could eat with your fingers. So sad to know it’s gone. What a great memory though.
Did you ever get the noodle rolls? Heaven! I’ve got this vision of you eating chow mein with your fingers. Finding parking in Chinatown is hell, but I remember my meal at Sam Wo was usually cheaper than what I paid for parking. 🙂
Great post, Jen! I don’t think I’ve ever been to a place quite this memorable, but your writing is so great I feel like I have….
I agree, Ellice. Jennifer took us right into Sam Wo’s with her. Evocative writing!
Long ago Vancouver had a restaurant called The Only Seafood Café. With its iconic neon seahorse sign, for decades it was an institution where the menu offered, you guessed it, only seafood.
Beautiful halibut were displayed on a bed of ice in the window. A kitchen worker peeled and chipped the potatoes. Over the horseshoe-shaped counter a sign announced “No restrooms”, an acceptable standard when it first opened in the 1920’s.
You paid your money and got your plate of fish and chips or bowl of oyster stew and a slice of fresh white bread and a dab sweet butter. No one made eye contact as they processed customers like widgets on an assembly line.
I don’t know when the place changed hands. Last time I was there – more than 10 years ago – the fresh bread had been replaced with tasteless buns. Pre-done potatoes were dumped into the fryers from large plastic bags. The quality of the fish plummeted. None of this deterred the local drug dealers who soon moved in, given the easy proximity to the Downtown Eastside, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada.
It closed in 2009 but I choose to remember my early meals there, not the tawdry place it became.
That is also a great story, Maggie. 🙂
Hi Maggie,
I love the idea of a neon seahorse sign! It sounds like the new owners thought they could rely on the reputation to keep the business going. What a disappointment that they tried to save money with pre-packaged food.
I’ve had some of the best seafood in Vancouver. The Dungeness crabs in Vancouver taste sweeter than the Dungeness we get in SF. I wonder if it’s because the water is colder up north… Thanks for stopping by.
Today, the SF Health Department gave Sam Wo a reprieve. Once the restaurant corrects the violations, they can re-open. Hooray!
Hi Ellice!
Every city has its favorite hole-in-the-wall eating establishment. San Francisco has hundreds of restaurants but there aren’t many that have been around as long as Sam Wo…maybe five or so?