Hunan Restaurant

Went to dinner last night at my favorite restaurant in San Francisco, the place the New Yorker magazine, back in 1978 or so famously called “the best Chinese restaurant in the world, Henry Chung’s Hunan Restaurant. I had the same thing to eat as I’ve had every time I’ve been there in the last twenty-five plus years: Hot and Sour Vegetables (preceded by an appetizer of Onion Cakes and washed down with a couple or three Tsingtao beers) and the meal was, as it always is and has been, delicious.

Most of my friends and family humor me about my affection for Hunan; they’ll come along and eat, but nobody, it seems, really shares my great delight in the food--although they do, for the most part, take a measure of delight in my delight, bless their hearts.

Part of my affection is, no doubt, historical. I’ve eaten at Hunan in four decades, at a number of different locations, from the whole-in-the-wall on Kearny (in a building condemned after one of the SF’s earthquakes), to their lunch counter on Sacramento, to the flagship warehouse on Sansome.

I was introduced to Hunan by Larry Livermore in about 1977; I had many a lunch there with my buddy, Looey Sargent back in my Golden Gate theater days; when my sister come to visit me in 1979, I broke the hippy grape fast I was on there with her; Hunan was the first place I treated my parents to dinner at; when Jen and I came to SF back in 1985 or so, Hunan was one of the first places I took her to; I celebrated my 40th birthday there; I even talked about it in my book, Choosing the Right Thing to Do.

Thinking about it is making my mouth water, right at the corner of my jaw where the hot and sour tastes gets you; I wonder if I can persuade anyone to go to Hunan for lunch.