Chinatown’s Z & Y balances fiery spice and deft cooking (2024)

“You have to get more Chinese restaurants in your Top 100,” said Cecilia Chiang one night at dinner.

At 96 years old, the former owner of the Mandarin is one of the few people alive who has a taste memory of Chinese cuisine before the communist revolution. I’ve asked her countless times for recommendations and her response has always been pretty much the same. “Nothing is very good,” she’d say — and that would be the end of the discussion.

However, a few months ago, Z & Y came up in our conversations, and I stopped by the Chinatown restaurant. It was during that visit that I became acquainted with the chicken with explosive chile pepper ($13.95), where nuggets of golden fried dark meat are buried like treasures in hundreds of dried red chiles. It was one of the best fried chicken dishes I’ve had, with the bonus of a bold buzz at the end.

Chiang discovered this 8-year-old Sichuan restaurant a few years back, but she kept it under the radar as she tried more and more dishes, including at a banquet there, and continually became impressed by chef-owner Li Jun Han’s repertoire. Since Han, who also owns Chili House in the Inner Richmond, was the chef for two Chinese presidents, multicourse events are in his wheelhouse.

Even though Chiang is approaching the century mark, her palate, and eyesight, are as keen as ever and she’s not easy to please. “He really knows Chinese food,” she said with a contented smile.

Part of the problem with many Chinese restaurants is that the chef isn’t celebrated. So when he moves on to a new restaurant, the quality plunges and most diners won’t know why. At Z & Y, Han is the owner, along with his wife, Michelle Zhang. He’s generally in the kitchen, making it a safe bet that the food will be consistent. In the dining room, she runs the show, often standing in front offering warm greetings to guests.

I decided to return without Chiang to try what’s on the laminated, sometimes-sticky menu filled with more than 150 dishes and dozens of over-lit photos. It took a while to get through it — and I still didn’t try even half of what’s offered — but after four more visits, I too became a fan. Of course, I’m not alone; if you don’t reserve ahead, there is always a line at prime time.

Like the menu, the interior of the restaurant is pretty typical of what you’ll find at any of the dozens of places that line the streets of Chinatown. There’s scuffed walls, tables with deep red clothes, matching vinyl banquet chairs and dozens of lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

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The only clue that this restaurant may be different, aside from a continual gaggle of diners milling around the cigarette-littered sidewalk, is the perfumed aroma of spices that permeates the room: a potent smell of roasted cumin, chiles and Sichuan peppercorns. Those peppercorns can feel like a thousand needles dancing across the tip of the tongue when they sneak up in such dishes as the whole fish ($29.95) with its candy-apple red sauce. The dish tricks the palate by going in sweet before the buzz saw of peppercorns numbs, tickles and fires up the mouth. The cumin beef ($13.95) has enough of the spice to fuel a Mexican restaurant for a day, stopping just short of being too harsh. When the flavor of the meat and the still-crunchy onions push through and tame the spice, it feels like an exciting roller coaster ride. It’s this type of seesaw of flavors that makes Han’s food so compelling.

It can take a half hour to decide what to order, even after weeding out such things as sweet and sour pork ($12.95) and chow mein ($8.95). I had to try it and it will please its die-hard fans, but you can tell the chef’s heart wasn’t in this standardized preparation. However, he does better on other staples: salt-and-pepper calamari ($8.95), mushu pork ($12.95) and soup dumplings ($7.95), with their rich broth and loose ball of pork nesting in the center.

The West Lake soup ($8.95-$13.95), also as ubiquitous as chop suey on Chinese menus, shows how Han elevates the standards. The egg whites that ribbon in the intense broth look like miniature wedding streamers and add a mouth-filling, velvety texture that belies its lightness, accentuated with a generous hit of cilantro. The steamed chicken soup ($10.95/$15.95) with Chinese herbs has the same rich stock and dozens of goji berries that are both sweet and bitter. Just when you think the soup may be too acrid, the rich broth clears it away.

Han’s version of scallion pancakes ($7.95) is also distinctive with the savory pastry’s rich oiliness and flaky, bronzed exterior. One of my favorite appetizers is bitter melon that’s shaved into long threads and piled on a mound of crushed ice and then drizzled with honey. The bitterness of the cool melon and the sweetness of the honey offer a magical play of contrasting elements.

Our waiter seemed surprised when we followed that with beef tendons ($8.95), which look like translucent velvet streamers doused with chile sauce and a flurry of sesame seeds. The neutral flavor and crunchy texture seem designed to showcase the numbing, prickly characteristic of the Sichuan peppercorns. It’s also telling that some of the more polarizing dishes — hot and spicy pig feet ($15.95), pork intestine stir-fried with dried red chile pepper ($15.95), pork ear in house spicy sauce ($8.95), and frog in flaming chile oil ($16.95) — don’t appear in the online menu but are incorporated in the actual restaurant menu.

The more fiery dishes, which comprise about half the menu, are marked with a red chile pepper and include the popular ma-po tofu ($12.95) with its cubes of soy curd, ground pork and fire-engine red sauce with an intense, slightly smoky heat. Han also produces a steamed dumpling, fat with ground pork ($7.95) doused in an oily red sauce filled with hundreds of chile seeds and mounds of chopped garlic. At first the dumplings don’t seem all that spicy until the peppers do their rumba across the tongue.

While chiles may fuel the menu, Han is also a master at vegetables, whether it’s the stir-fried Chinese cabbage ($9.95) or pea shoots with garlic ($12.95). The menu also offers a seasonal vegetable. On one visit, it was braised celery with fresh lily buds, which are sweet and candylike; on another, it was Chinese cabbage braised in stock with herbs and dices of red bell pepper.

During one of my meals at Z & Y, I happened to run into Chiang, and I felt guilty for not asking her to come along. She, of course, had found dishes not available to lesser guests, such as a special cod milt soup.

It’s not uncommon for Chinese restaurants to offer special dishes to those they know will enjoy them. What sets Z & Y apart is that even the regular menu showcases the talented Han’s deft cooking and refined balance.

★ ★ ½

Z & Y

Food: ★ ★ ★

Service: ★ ★ ½

Atmosphere: ★ ½

Price: $$

Noise: Four Bells

655 Jackson St. (at Kearny), San Francisco. (415) 524-7222. zandyrestaurant.com Open 11 a.m-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday and until 11 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Beer and wine. Reservations for four or more. Credit cards accepted.