San Tung in my top 3 Chinese restaurants

I'm Asian, with a Chinese maiden surname and maybe 1/16th Chinese blood.

I grew up eating my Mom's Chinese-influenced dishes.

Our weekend lunch outs and family celebrations meant mostly going to a Chinese restaurant.

Currently, our default takeout food is either  Chinese, Filipino or Thai.

So yes, I do know my Chinese food.

However, there's Chinese food and THERE'S Chinese food.

San Tung (Inner Sunset, San Francisco) falls in the latter category.

We went here for the first time this week after our Legion of Honor visit and to see what the fuss was all about.  It always gets mentioned as a must-go Chinese restaurant and it's highly-rated in Yelp.  Happy to say it did not disappoint:

Free kimchi appetizer which for me was spicier than usual with a sweet note to it.  I personally like the more traditional preparation for it.

Dry fried chicken!  $10 for 12 pcs and definitely worth every finger-licking bite.  This one lived up to the hype.

Shrimp and leek dumplings for $8 which was good but nothing great.

Black bean sauce noodles for $9.50 which was borderline bland.  Not a repeat order.

Dried sauteed string beans for $8.50
When we entered, this guy was prepping this huge pile of string beans and now we know why.  This dish truly deserves to be a bestseller.

My top 3 Chinese restaurants, in no particular order, are now:

• San Tung
• Koi Palace, Daly City - xiao long bao!  And so much more than that...
• Mission Chinese Food, San Francisco - the scary walk through the 16th St BART station was worth it
• special mention:  Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot in either San Mateo or Union City -  the only time I don't mind walking out of a restaurant smelling like hot pot :D

Tip:  I've read the lines can get pretty crazy so we deliberately went mid-afternoon and even found parking right in front of it.