Hunan House

4 stars for the chicken with explosive peppers. The dish consistens of fried chicken thighs (split in half) with chilis. Its nice and crispy, not too oily, and has a good chili kick to it. I’m still working through the rest of the menu to find out what I like and they make well. In the meantime I will keep coming back for another fix of the explosive chicken.

I think they call it a café so they can charge al le cart prices. I don’t like the fact that they charge rice by the bowl. The waitress took a half pot of cold tea from another table where the people had left and put it on our table, and the tea was so weak like drinking lukewarm water.
The same waitress was agitated when I asked a couple of questions about the dishes we wanted to order. In the end, our main dish never arrived, after having waited for almost an hour. The tables around us were all served, but our main dish never came.
The manager apologized and the main dish finally came, but the volume seemed only 60% of the picture. We were so hungry and ate it.
No tip for a bad experience.
I see the same address has different names.

We tried this place yesterday and hoping to find a good Chinese restaurant in SF Chinatown. Here’s what I think:
— Small portion but taste OK (nothing special but overall not bad at all!)
— Waiters are very attentive and nice.
— The lady in the front was rude. (visited 1÷14÷2016 PM)
— Yes, it is an Americanized Chinese Restaurant.
Overall, I’m not going back there. Really not worth your money and time.

Overpriced and tasteless.
I meant to go to Hunan Home and I accidently typed in Hunan House (!!) and was taken here. Didn’t realize it till after we finished dinner… No wonder I didn’t see the Peking duck (though they did have duck chin? — where’s the rest of the duck?). Was wondering why the food was not that great. So disappointing.
Manager sweet talks white people and wealthy looking young Chinese Americans. Customer service is horrible. You literally need to grab someone to ask a question.
Food is overpriced and not tasty. Everything tastes oily.

I find myself agreeing with many of the two star reviews, so here is the short of it:
— Food is bland and over priced
— Service is mediocre
— Décor is standard.
We tried a variety of dishes, many of which were simply unpalatable for me. My son was excited to get the Oyster Pancake (as we had just returned from China a few months ago and he LOVED the street pancakes) only to be incredibly disappointed in what tasted like an over cooked omelette with over-​sized, overly chewy bits of oyster here and there. I was able to stomach the pepper short-​rib, but what we were served was mostly veggies and bone. The pot-​stickers were fine, but I would have liked a fresh over frozen taste. The garlic chicken skin was alright but then again, there was barely any meat. I filled up on steamed rice and got a snack about 20 minutes later. The only reason for the second star? They validate parking if you ask them.
If you are in the area, overwhelmed by the Chinese food options and having a hard time deciding, I recommend you try something else.

This was my favorite restaurant at Chinatown a year ago when I came visit San Francisco. I loved their oyster!
But now! I am so despoint! Their food are so salty, I had to drink lots of tea along with it. So eventually I have no appertiz to any food. I asked to NOT put pig intestines in my spice pot. However, there are plenty pig intestines there! Gross!!! Will not be back!

This was my second time back at Hunan House on Washington Street. It was AMAZING! Their food will forever be the standard that I compare all other to! We had Mongolian Beef with fried rice! Perfect blend of flavored and spice!!!

Spicy numbing beef noodles were a big success, although I finished the dish wondering if there were actually any prickly ash peppercorns used. Regardless, I’d eat this dish again.

Some of food was tasty but very greasy. Otherwise not a lot different from most other Chinese I had before. Garlic noodle dish was very good and stood out.
Lacks ambience. Strong smell of cigarette smoke in the dining area. Appeared to come from an upstairs area used by workers/​family. Waitress very serious and not very friendly.

Excellent flavors. Very tasty food and spicy to the highest level you want. Fresh, served in an appetizing way and you can’t help but want to have just one more bite.

Food was excellent but service was terrible they do not serve you. However best sweet and sour chicken ever. Thus the 1 star.

My brother took me here and I thought the food was really great! The menu is a mix of a variety of regional cuisines, including Cantonese, Szechuan, presumably Hunan, etc. We had the szechuan chicken (slightly battered and served on top of a ton of chili peppers), the lamb chops, ma po tofu, some Chinese vegetables, and a thin rice noodle soup. Everything was very good, and we could make reservations.

One of the greatest 桂林米粉（Guilin rice noodle) I have ever had. It comes with many healthy ingredient — spinach, beef, beef tripe, peanut, acid beans, and even quail eggs! I had never expected all of my favorite food summoned in one bowl. Not only that the rice noodle texture is very good. I had too many SF chinatown cantonese restaurants that had never met my definition of «rice noodle». The soup is definitely comfortably mild for you stomach. Of course, this is personal taste but I highly recommend this dish.
酸豆角炒肉 (aid bean fried ground pork) is above-​averagely good as I love Chinese sauerkraut and it’s not common even in Chinatown. I also recommend 毛家红烧肉(braised streaky pork) if you enjoy streaky pork like me:) but it’s heavily sauced and fat intensive — be careful if you crave for healthy ones.
火爆腰花(Saused Pig’s kidney), not very good, it’s overly cooked.
鱼香肉丝(Shredded pork with garlic sauce), average.
Price is fair given the quality and quantity. Environment is very good in Chinatown because it’s newly opened for about just a year. Service is average.
5 star for the 桂林米粉（Guilin rice noodle), cheers!

I love spicy food! Just try to not have them too often!
Sometimes I realized that it’s pretty hard to find a good place to eat in Chinatown, that’s my honest opinion; the restaurants are overrated or have terrible services. This place is not bad.
The size of the restaurant is not that big, about 20 tables. I went on a weekday night and it was packed with people, no wait though. The atmosphere is a little bit dark with a few spot lights on tables.
They have the option of hotpot and/​or just regular dining. I am not going to talk about how spicy it is because everyone handles spiciness differently, but I was fine with most dishes.
Jalapenos with Preserved Eggs (⁵⁄₅) $ 5.95– In case you didn’t know, preserved eggs are preserved in a mixture of different ingredients for at least a month and they usually have a very strong taste with slight acidic aftertaste. This is a cold appetizer with house-​made spicy garlic sauce. It’s so good! Everything is good with garlic though.
Chong Qing Chicken with Explosive Peppers (³⁄₅) $ 7.95-Not bad overall. They used chicken wings for this dish, I don’t quite like how they cut the chicken wings in small chunks, because that gives small pieces of bones from the cut. So, watch out. I think it was too salty with just a little too much MSG.
Nonetheless, most dishes are spicy, so they do put a lot of chili as well as chili oil. I suggest not drinking cold water while eating oily food. It is always good to pair spicy foods with white rice.
Bottom line, I would visit again.

I got confused here with Hunan Home, which seems to have way more reviews and is packed/​popular… there’s a lot of choices in Chinatown, but I ended up walking in here…
You get the stereotypical royal Chinese service treatment here… as in, forgotten and left alone… lol
Like I walk in and nobody greets or helps for several minutes… Finally get seated and no menus or anything for another several minutes… lol seriously??? Yeah, we just want to sit down in the restaurant and watch instead of eat.
I had to be generic and order Kung Pao Chicken to see what «real Chinese food» version would be like… it was just super spicy but the chicken itself was hard and flavor was not good at all…
I guess they expect over 20% tip and not bring back change either. Well, it was definitely an «authentic» Chinese experience in Chinatown. lol

Even though it’s china town it can be surprisingly hard to find good Chinese. This is the place you’re looking for. Very chill and the food is really really good.
Had sea weed salad, spicy black fungus, and the frogs legs. Incredible flavors, especially the fungus. Please don’t order lame stuff like beef with broccoli or orange chicken. It’s not even Chinese food.
Fun fact: chairman Mao was born in Hunan province.

Clean and inviting establishment in China town.
I came here because i was really craving shanghai dumplings ($ 5.95) but ended up also ordering the lunch special walnut prawns which comes with rice and the house soup ($ 7.95 and plenty of other options available)
The soup was a very simple and lightly salted carrot, egg, and ginger soup but I thought the broth was tasty anyway. The walnut prawns were good and not over breaded like many other walnut shrimp dishes I’ve had in the past. Just a lovely light batter. I particularly liked the candied walnuts! Last but not least the shanghai dumplings… these were ok. They were flavorful and filled with a little bit of fatty meat and soup, although there wasn’t as much soup in them as I would have liked. The skins of the dumplings were ok and better than other dumplings I’ve had outside of NY.
Service was what I expected a Chinese restaurant to be minus the rude haha. Mediocre… they don’t check on you often, or pretty much ever aside from ordering and paying, but that didn’t bother me much.
Overall friendly and clean with mediocre Chinese food. I’d come by here again, but this time I’ll try one of their Hunan specialties.

As far as finding a restaurant in Chinatown that is clean, this one is as close as you’ll get. They actually were one of the best and cleanest we could find. The food was very delish, I ordered chicken chow mien, chicken potstickers and veggie fried rice. Pretty basic, but we weren’t that hungry. It was good and not too salty or fishy like I feel some Chinese good can be.
Service was good, the waitress let me unplug the hot pot burner to charge my phone. They don’t check in with you much, but that’s okay, I went from a scary 15% to 65% on my phone, sitting there practicing eating with my chopsticks.
I’d go back next time we’re in Chinatown.

Sehr authentisch und lecker.
Ein kleines Minus: Die Dim Sums, Xiaolongbao etc sind nicht sehr gut, aber das ist freilich keine Hunan-​Spezialität, von daher müsste man es eigtl gar nicht anbieten, so gut wie der Rest ist. Evtl für Touristen?
Die Hunan-​Spezialitäten dagegen waren spitze, genauso wie die allgemeinen Nationalgerichte.
Am Ende haben wir uns noch nett mit der Bedienung unterhalten sowie der Inhaberin, und haben einige wertvolle Touri-​Insidertipps erhalten (allerdings auf Chinesisch).
Für ein Lunch nach dem Sightseeing in Chinatown (vormittags mit den Märkten auf der Straße) nur zu empfehlen.

It looked nice in the first place, but there were hair in the sweat sour Chicken we ordered! They took this one dish off our check but still made us pay everything else, and didn’t really offer anything as an excuse. We left directly, and as the food was pretty greasy, we felt a little sick afterwards.

This place is awesome… Ordered a random motley of dishes and each one was a hit:
1) free soup — seaweed carrot and pork. Nice clean flavor.
2) tong choy with bean paste — flavorful and well cooked — not too oily. Maybe too many thick ass stems but not a big deal.
3) Szechuan spicy cold noodle — amazing numbing peppery sesame paste goodness. noodles weren’t quite al dente but still yummy and better than most places.
4) egg white tofu with mixed mushrooms — loved it, egg tofu is my fav. Crushing it.
5) explosive chili chicken — chicken had the perfect amount of light breading, more numbing pepper and super juicy. Had the option to choose with bones or without — an unexpected nice option.
Def check this place out. Doesn’t seem like it gets super packed but its only 2 months old. Oooh they just mentioned free taro tapioca dessert — score!

I’m really happy about this new addition to Chinatown. The food is authentic. The décor is clean but channels old China luxury. And the waiters are sweet/​bilingual!
The dishes came out just as the pictures portrayed, and the flavors /​portion sizes were great. The menu can be overwhelming at first, but just sit with it for a couple of minutes, take a leap of faith, and I think you’ll be pleased.
I’ve been here 3 times now, and would highly recommend the beef pancake and the lamb with scallions. One quirky thing to note — they charge $ 0.50 per take-​out box.
Still a lot more dishes to try. I’ll keep you posted.