Title: Hakka (Chinese) Restaurants
Author: jean komatsu
Last saved by: ENU

Hakka (Chinese) Restaurant
4401 Cabrillo St. @45^th Avenue, San Francisco, CA
No website/Yelp reviews: http://www.yelp.com/biz/hakka-restaurant-san-francisco 
Review date: September 2011

Carlos, Inez and I met Carlos' aunt and uncle here for lunch in San Francisco's Richmond district. The Hakka are generally held to be a subset of the Han Chinese who migrated southwards from Central China, and their cooking is best described as close to Cantonese – lightly sauced, simply flavored, favoring offal (such as intestines and stomach) and seafood (an influence they picked up from the Cantonese).

Unfortunately we weren't able to try some of the dishes I wanted, mostly because we weren't paying for lunch and the salt-baked chicken they're most famous for wasn't going to be ready for another hour, which was too long to wait. Nor did Carlos' relatives want to try the crab for which Hakka is famous.

Instead, we tried five other dishes:
•	Braised fish and tofu claypot
•	Catfish and bitter melon claypot
•	Chinese broccoli (gai lan) with garlic
•	Deep-fried spareribs
•	Minced pork with dried scallop

The free soup was a pallid version of Westlake Beef Soup. This is not a cheap or easy soup to pull off, and although it's nice that Hakka was willing to offer it – it's long been one of our favorites – they don't do it very well, and it contains a fair amount of MSG.

The waitresses don't speak much English, so Carlos' aunt ordered in Cantonese. The menu does have plenty of photos one can point to, although I couldn't figure out how they had it organized. There were plenty of pages, but no categories, at least none that were easily discernible.

Everyone but me liked the catfish and bitter melon – I'm not a fan of either one, especially when the catfish hasn't been filleted, just cut into chunks with skin and bones still attached. The batter-fried spareribs were indifferent, although the green beans with it were bright green and barely cooked. Sprinkled copiously with browned chopped garlic, flakes of red chile and paper-thin slices of hot green chile, they were the best part of the dish. Like most Chinese restaurants, "spareribs" is something of a misnomer – these are thin-cut pork chops on the bone, chopped into two hunks.

The best dish was the braised fish and tofu claypot. The very fresh tofu had been lightly fried, then combined with a good white-fleshed fish of some type – not tilapia or catfish. I'd like to think it was Pangasius (see Michael Bauer's blog entry on the 9^th most popular fish on menus: http://insidescoopsf.sfgate.com/blog/2011/09/13/what-is-pangasius-only-the-9th-most-consumed-fish-in-the-usa/) but really, I have no idea outside of the opinion it was a saltwater fish, not a freshwater species. The gravy was very tasty without being overly salty or too bland. Frying the tofu and then braising it gives this normally bland food a way to pick up the flavor of a good gravy; it's one of the best ways to eat tofu.

The gai lan was surprisingly good, either due to our unusually cool summer in 2011 or they've started growing it in coastal fields instead of Central Valley farms. Chinese broccoli is a cool-weather lover, and growth slows down when the heat rises, and it becomes tough and fibrous. This gai lan was very good, with that faint touch of bitterness that distinguishes it from American broccoli.

The minced pork, mixed with salted egg, was topped with shredded dried scallop and salt-pickled vegetables. It's always spread into a thin patty on a dinner plate, and steamed until done. I liked this, but for everyone else, it wasn't salty enough – this type of steamed pork dish is traditionally very salty, a dish one eats just a spoonful atop a large bowl of rice.

Servings are relatively generous here. We could have gotten away with just four dishes instead of five. 

Although Yelpers give this restaurant four stars, we'd rate it as average – more like 3.5 stars. It's definitely better than the East Bay Chinese restaurants, but most of the SF places are. And you still have to pick your way through the menu to get a four star meal. The advantage of eating in SF is that the better neighborhood Chinese restaurants have a higher batting average of hits, compared to what we get in the East Bay. 

Like most of its ilk, it's not a destination restaurant. If you're in the area, it's one of the few Chinese restaurants in this part of the Outer Richmond, as most of them are concentrated in the inner- and mid-Richmond neighborhoods.

As we didn't pick up the tab, the cost is unknown, but Hakka Restaurant falls into the 'moderate' cost category according to Yelpers – around $11-30/person.