San Francisco’s Chinatown is caught between past and future
LA TimesHo Chee Boon, one of the most celebrated chefs in San Francisco, was about to lead me on a walking tour of Chinatown, where his new restaurant stands. The restaurant, Empress by Boon, towers over Grant Avenue, Chinatown’s main tourist drag, and in some ways it’s a sequel to years gone by: From the 1960s until its shutdown in 2014, the same building held the Empress of China restaurant, whose sixth-floor dining room was a centerpiece of the neighborhood and of San Francisco tourism — a jacket-and-tie venue where Westerners converged for a taste of the East while prosperous local Chinese American families gathered for association dinners, wedding banquets and red-egg parties to celebrate babies’ milestones. “We think the future of Chinatown will be more food, more entertainment, more unique cocktail lounges like there were in the 1950s,” Lion’s Den co-founder Steven Lee told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Everything comes full circle.” San Francisco’s Chinatown is the oldest on this continent. “No white rice!” said Simon, who grew up eating eight-course family-style meals in the neighborhood’s Cantonese banquet halls, including the old Empress.
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