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Chinese fine dining slices through America's takeout-food stereotypes
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Sous chef Frank Bonilla cooks House Famous Kung Pao Firecracker chicken at China Live in San Francisco, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. - photo by AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Taiwan-born chef George Chen, whose family immigrated to Los Angeles in 1967, remembers vividly how his school lunch of braised pork and Chinese sauerkraut between two pieces of bread was looked at by his classmates. “‘Oh, God, what are you eating? That’s gross,’” Chen recalled during a recent busy lunch hour at his San Francisco restaurant and bar, China Live, on the edge of the nation's oldest Chinatown.