How chefs are leading Chinese cuisine’s fine-dining rise

Upscale restaurants in the US are challenging the long-hold belief that Chinese food should be cheap

- AP

Taiwan-born chef George Chen, whose family immigrated to Los Angeles, US, in 1967, remembers vividly how his school lunch of braised pork and Chinese sauerkraut between two pieces of bread was looked at by his classmates.

"Oh, God, what are you eating? That's gross," Chen recalled during a recent busy lunch hour at his San Francisco restaurant and bar, China Live, on the edge of the nation’s oldest Chinatown. “Now everybody wants braised pork and Chinese sauerkraut. Hopefully, perception of Chinese (food) has now come a long way.”

The immigrant kid who felt like he had to hide his food has built a reputation for serving Chinese fine dining in the Bay Area. At China Live, Chen is like a circus ringmaster overseeing a dumpling-making station, a stone oven roasting Peking ducks, a noodle station and a dessert station churning sesame soft serve.

With all this, he hopes to one day revive his upstairs restaurant, Eight Tables, where course-by-course dinners ranged from $88-$188. In addition, his wife Cindy Wong-Chen and he are getting ready to launch a similar concept, Asia Live, in Santa Clara.

The Chens aren’t the only ones elevating Chinese cuisine. They're within walking distance of the equally established Empress by Boon, Mister Jiu's, and the newer Four Kings.