Here’s an SF Tenderloin doorway:
I was nearly banqueted to death Thursday night.
My friend Michael, the one whose siblings browbeat him fifteen years ago into moving back to Taiwan to take care of their mother, was on a business trip to this country and took a couple of days of vacation to stop in SF and complete his extrication of himself from a real estate tangle.
To celebrate this, he took five of his friends to Great China in Berkeley, where he had reserved the best table and pre-ordered the Beijing duck.
I’ll be researching the proper names, etc on this, but as a preliminary report, here’s the dinner:
First course, hot and sour soup, as good as I’ve ever had.
Second course, a dish featuring a tasty, if wonderfully strange, gelatinous substance that looked like clear jello but was somehow extracted from green beans.
Third course, the Beijing duck, definitely the best preparation of this dish I ever ate.
Fourth course, a crab meat and egg dish that I’d never eaten but was very good.
Fifth course, snow pea shoots and leaves. Never had better.
Sixth course, an excellent lemon shrimp dish.
And finally, fresh cold orange wedges.
Not to mention great conversation and fine companionship.