The Hand-Pulled Noodles We Didn't Get to Taste at San Dong House BBQ

By Luis Chong Wed., Sep. 15 2010 at 3:25 PM

Categories: Late Night, Now Open, Pop Review

Luis Chong

San Dong House BBQ's pork dumplings: Great flavor.

We were strolling around the Inner Richmond area one night when we spotted a new Shandong cuisine restaurant and decided to check it out. San Dong House BBQ replaced Teo Korean ― the old exhaust hoods for the table grills still hang from the ceiling. House specialties here are hand-pulled Chinese noodles (la mian, $6.99) soups, handmade dumplings (sui jiao, $5.99-$6.99 per dozen), grilled skewers (chuan, $1.50-$3 each) and many offal dishes (mostly $7.99).

This piqued our interest, since there are only a handful of restaurants in the city that make hand-pulled Chinese noodles: San Tung, King of Noodles, San Wang, and Beijing Restaurant. Best of all, unlike the other places we mentioned, San Dong House makes the noodles in full view of customers, a great opportunity for anyone who's never seen this before.

Luis Chong

Teo Korean used to be here ― the exhaust hoods still dangle from the ceiling.

We were told that the noodle master goes home at 10:30 p.m., so the last noodle order is taken around 10. We opted instead for some late-night snacks, a dozen pork dumplings and lamb skewers (yang rou chuan, $1.50 each). The excellent boiled dumplings had great flavor, and while the spiced fatty lamb skewers were good, they couldn't compare to the ones at Beijing Restaurant or Happy Dumplings.

Luis Chong

Spiced fatty lamb skewers.

Our waiter's language skills were limited, but we were able to have a friendly conversation with the owner, fluent in both English and Mandarin. The hope is that customers will appreciate San Dong's Lanzhou-style beef noodle soups.

Everything is cooked to order, so expect to wait awhile. We hope that doesn't become a problem once the restaurant is full. And in case anyone notices the Shandong chicken appetizer here, they're not like the chicken wings from San Tung.

Oh, and stay tuned for a follow-up post about those hand-pulled noodles.

San Dong House BBQ: 3741 Geary (at Second Ave.), 668-5888; Sun.-Thu. 11 a.m.-midnight, Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-3 a.m.

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