Crystal Jade - San Francisco

Continuing the discussion from Yank Sing - dim sum - San Francisco:

What else do you like there?

The XLB is a must. So good I get 2 orders.

He har gow, shrimp and scallop dumplings, shrimp and spinach dumplings are excellent.

Get the double boiled soups.

The other dim sum standbys are also well done but the above are standouts.

I’ve been looking askance when I see XLB on a dim sum menu (and hopefully they’re cooked to order). Since they’re Shanghainese I wonder if dim sum places have started serving just cause they’re seemingly so trendy.

How are the chicken feet, stuffed tofu skin - not the usuals?

This is the Crystal Jade branch from Shanghai and Hong Kong. High end Hong Kong dim sum places do XLB also. Some of the best. $4-5usd for 1 kind of places.

They are steamed to order. So are all the items there.

I don’t usually get chicken feet. As I said, the standbys are all good. The XLB and seafood dumplings are all best in class.

Thanks. I’d forgotten that. I’ve eaten at Din Tai Fung in Seattle a couple of times and their XLB all but make me weep :smile:

Oh yikes, while looking for the SF website, I came across this. Obviously not everyone liked them.

Bauer Takedown Compares Dinner at Crystal Jade Jiang Nan to Proctology Exam - Eater SF

There were reports of all kinds of problems when they first opened. Seemed like they just couldn’t ramp up properly trained staff fast enough.

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He didn’t try the XLB.

And let’s be honest, if you order cellophane beef and sweet and sour shrimp, you’re going to get mundane Americanized Chinese food anywhere.

Go for the dim sum. Skip the overpriced roast pork and duck.

Thanks. And I believe I’ve read that Bauer anyway is no expert on Asian food.

And I agree that when people order dishes like that I’m skeptical of their opinions from the get-go.

Finally got around to trying this place. Mostly empty around 8pm on a Thursday. Despite there being window tables they seated us at the back.


Whole Peking duck ($49) was great, but the service was odd. They didn’t present it so I could get a good photo. They parked the cart on the far side of the table and made all the little bundles. I tried to stop them from putting the sauce in them since as I expected it was unnecessary and overpowered the more subtle flavors of the duck by itself, but they still put it in half of them. We’d have been much happier if they’d just taken the skin off the duck and let us do it ourselves.

The dim sum platter ($15) was great. Best har gow I’ve ever had, lots of meat, subtly seasoned with a hint of ginger. Best siu mai as well. What are those other ones? They were stuffed with scallop and shrimp, lots of both, simple but good. Do they have a full dim sum menu at lunch? The web site is not very informative.

Lobster and shrimp potstickers ($9), really good, again stuffed with lots of meat.

Eggplant, green beans, and several kinds of mushrooms ($14), excellent ingredients, nice wok hay, very good.

Noodles made with the rest of the duck ($12), tasty but hacking up the meat instead of taking it off the bone doesn’t really match the style of the room. Kind of gloppy, I was expecting a dryer style with wok hay.

Drank a nice Cape Mentelle Sauvignon Blanc-Semillon blend ($42).

Overall, kind of puzzling. They spent a fortune on building the place out, great view, fancy decor, nicely-dressed staff, the food is first-rate, but the service is sort of like you’d expect in a strip mall in Fremont.

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Hi @robert,

Thanks for the report back. :slight_smile: Have you tried Dragon Beaux in SF? Just curious how the dim sum compares. Thanks.

Dragon Beaux’s location is really inconvenient for me.