After opening in August in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood, Happy Crane has garnered acclaim far and wide.
So, it’s no wonder that landing a reservation to enjoy Chef James Yeun Leong Parry’s contemporary take on Cantonese cuisine is as hard as getting invited to Taylor Swift’s upcoming nuptials.
A tip to the wise: Reservations open up 30 days in advance at noon on OpenTable. So, set yourself up with your phone, laptop or desktop five minutes before, and keep refreshing the page over and over again. When the reservations finally so pop up, immediately pounce.
That’s how I managed to secure a reservation for four a few weeks ago. And it was absolutely worth jumping through those hoops.
Like with Mister Jiu’s and Four Kings, both in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Happy Crane has reinvigorated Chinese food with fresh, young energy with the use of top-quality ingredients, time-honored and modern techniques, and playful reinterpretations.
It’s apropos that Parry opened his restaurant in this location, once home to Monsieur Benjamin, a French-inspired restaurant by Chef Corey Lee of Michelin three-starred Benu in San Francisco. That’s because Parry once worked at Benu, one of several Michelin-starred establishments around the world where he honed his craft.
The cocktail program here is strong. The Serpent’s Kiss ($19) pairs tequila and mezcal with the unlikely partners of apricot, miso, mustard, an apple aperitif, citrus, and whey. It arrives with a foamy head and beguiling smoky, savory, and tangy character.
The menu is divided into small, medium, and large plates, all of which are ideal for sharing.
Thinly sliced beef shin ($18) is a classic starter at Chinese banquets. A lean cut, it takes care to cook so that it doesn’t dry out and turn tough. Here, the deeply beefy tasting slices get cooked in the restaurant’s master stock, an umami bomb with a complex soy sauce taste. The tender slices get garnished with confit celery and crunchy, fried slices of lotus root. It’s an opening punch that immediately gets your mouth watering for the rest to come.
In contrast to that muscular dish comes the daintier sugar snap pea dumplings ($7 each). These are very delicate. So much so that you’ll need to exercise care in picking one up from the steamer basket with chopsticks lest you puncture it. The wrapper is thin, supple, and slightly chewy that’s wrapped around a filling of shiitakes, summer squash, and peas. It’s presented under a foam tinted green from peas. It’s wonderfully juicy, with the natural sweet taste of peas. Parry was once the head chef of Palette Tea House in San Francisco, and it shows in these masterful dumplings.
The rice noodles ($32) are not only from scratch but the rice for it ground in-house. They are thin and silky, though not as toothsome in texture as one would expect. Topped with crab butter, crab pieces, and orange trout roe, it all gets tossed together before diving into what’s a most comforting dish.
The whole Wolfe Ranch quail ($42) is excellent with its bronzed crisp skin and incredibly succulent flesh. Tingling Sichuan salt comes on the side to sprinkle on, while crunchy chunks of pickled turnip provide a palate refresh. I appreciated that the kitchen sliced the quail into manageable pieces, too, to make sharing easy.
The oyster pancake ($28) was one of my favorite dishes of the night for the sharp contrast between its crispy foundation and plump, soft, and juicy oysters. Finished with spicy fermented chili sauce and a creamy ramp dip, along with frizzled negi onions and fresh herbs, it looks like a cross between a pizza and an okonomiyaki. It’s sturdy enough to pick up with your fingers to enjoy, too.
The poetic-sounding Fish Fragrant Fish ($48) brings a black cod fillet, its skin crisp, and its interior stuffed with fried, custardy eggplant. It’s napped in a tangy, wine-y black vinegar sauce.
Smoky tasting hedgehog and shiitake mushrooms top hand-pulled noodles ($36). The soft, wide, chewy noodles are fragrant with cumin and Sichuan pepper, making for one of those dishes that beckons you back for seconds, if not thirds.
If there is one must-order at Happy Crane, it is without a doubt the chasiu Iberico pork jowl ($43) that comes with a bowl of scallion rice. The lacquered pieces are hidden underneath paper-thin slices of compressed Asian pear. This is one of the most luscious tasting renditions of Chinese chasiu I’ve ever had. Take a bite, and it yields immediately, sending a gush of sweet porky juices into your mouth.
For dessert, there’s a play on the familiar Italian chocolate, Ferrero Rocher. Instead of a wafer shell covered in chocolate, the mochi Rocher ($13 for two) sports a soft, chewy exterior made with Japanese glutinous rice flour that gets dusted in chopped hazelnuts. Inside, there’s a molten filling of gooey cinnamon chocolate.
If at first you don’t succeed in getting a reservation at Happy Crane, try, try again. You won’t be disappointed.
More: Dining at Benu
And: Dining at Four Kings