San Dong Best

We went to San Dong Best very hungry around 4:15PM. We had somewhere to be by 5:00PM so we were looking for a quick fix. We went in and the place was quiet empty since it wasn’t dinner time yet. We ordered Onion Pancake for appetizer and Mopo Tofu Fish Fillet with side of rice and Chicken Chowmein for entrée. I hadn’t had chowmein for a while so I was looking forward to it.
The Onion Pancake came pretty quick. It was a good amount of serving. It was a little oily but it was quite delicious. They had a little sauce on the side of the table which tasted amazing with the pancake. We weren’t even done with our appetizer when our entrees arrived. Mopo Tofu Fish Fillet was quite good! The flavors were very rich while the fish was cooked and seasoned perfectly. The chowmein was a bit too soggier than I had expected. It was not the best chowmein but it was decent.
There was only one server who was helpful during our time there. The ambiance of the restaurant is very simple and convenient. There was an old couple making dumplings while facing the window towards the street. It was super cute!
We were there for quite fix and that’s exactly what we got. A very simple yet decent meal. We were out of the restaurant by 4:50PM.

I drive 30mins from SOMA and this has been my weekly Chinese take out go-​to lately for their delicious food. It’s a hole in a wall so don’t expect any service, grab your own menu if they’re busy and when you’re ready to order wave them down with a smile. The staff are nice kids fluent in mandarin but english is limited so be patient with them.
These are my favorites:
1) cold noodle — doused in numbing chili oil, sesame paste, vinegar, garlic, peanuts and cucumber threads. This is my favorite dish and I always get two orders.
2) napa and pork dumpling — pretty good
3) beef rolls — not better than what you get in LA but does its job
4) beef combination — numbing chili oil marinated slices of beef and tendon, this is my other favorite dish.
5) soup noodles — not bad, but not the best I’ve ever had. The noodles are chewy and seem homemade.
It’s not panda express style so don’t expect beef and broccoli or sweet sour chicken, but it is good northern Chinese comfort cooking if you know how to appreciate it.

very good food, I recommend the Sliced Beef Pancake, Shrimp with Chives Dumplings, Combo Beef, Spicy Beef Tendon! Also if you come with friends, the Xinjiang Chicken with Wide Noddle is your MUST order!

Best Restaurant I really loved it a lot. The food was great but not expensive. The waitresses were truly friendly. I couldn’t help to pay more than 20% tips. I had dinner there last night. I would go there more often for sure.

–Lamb dumpling, MUST order if you like Lamb
Their noodles are freshly made and perfect texture.
Dont expect service.

I sat down and had to get my own menu from the adjacent table. There were 2 waitresses working and not a single 1 ever looked my way. I waited at least 10 minutes before I walked out of the door.
So incredibly rude. Never again will I ever set food in this place.

I’m updating the review because of the horrible owner here.
Their food is great, and I like it a lot. What’s not acceptable is that when I try to offer more tips to the sever. The server kindly refused it because he’s never going to get it. This owner doesn’t give tips to their servers at all.
This makes me very uncomfortable and No wonder a lot of customers are complaining about their service.

My S/​O, and I wanted to grab some dumplings for breakfast while I was visiting SF, and stumbled upon this restaurant because it was nearby. We decided to give it a try after seeing the prices and reviews…
Quite frankly, and to be short, our experience was completely ruined by our first inattentive waiter. We had to wait to be seated in a nearly empty restaurant, and he also completely looked us off as we raised our hands for a good 5 – 8 minutes before ordering. Luckily, one of the girls came by and provided us proper service.
We ordered the pork+napa dumpling, and the dry-​fried green beans. The dumplings were on the side of over-​cooked, unfortunately as they had a pretty good amount of chew to them. On the other hand, the green-​beans were delicious! They had a good bite to them, and the onions on them were awesome.
TLDR; The food was aight, and the waiter sucked donkey sack.

Sunday afternoon, looking for a noodle place for lunch, pictures on Unilocal look pretty authentic!
* * * EXPERIENCE * * *
Pros:
— Zero waiting time (~2:00pm Sunday)
— Food came quickly
— Lots of choices on menu
Cons:
— Cash only for under $ 15
* * * FOOD * * *
Xian Cold Noodle: A-​.
Surprisingly good. Wide/​flat + cold rice noodle and pork and some other vege. With $ 5.25, the portion was pretty big even though it’s considered an appetizer. It had a bunch of different tastes mixed into the sauce/​soup, with the peanut sauce standing out the most. Menu said it’s spicy and I couldn’t really feel the spiciness. Overall a very refreshing dish especially in the summer.
Comb spicy pork/​chicken/​seafood noodle: B.
Quite disappointed with this main dish. Not sure how I would describe it… it’s supposed to be spicy while it’s not. The soup was in red color but I couldn’t picture what they had used to make it red… it wasn’t tomato or pepper… the noodle thickness was not consistent and it’s different every bite.
Didn’t get a chance to try their dumplings, but not sure if I would go back just for that.

Probably one of the best Chinese restaurants I’ve been to in SF. The food is excellent. The portions are huge, price is low and service is quick.
Because this is in the Richmond, parking isn’t a problem (at least on weekdays) and the place wasn’t super crowded when I went there.
We got the Chicken Chow Mein, seafood noodle and an appetizer.
The noodle soup was excellent, spicy, tasty, enough veggies and meat. Not to mention he huge portion! Between the two of us we couldn’t finish 2 dishes and an app.
The chicken chow Mein was also very good, the noodle was chewy and less spicy. I would have liked more meat in the chow Mein though.
The interior of the restaurant isn’t the best so if you’re brining guests then don’t expect them to be impressed by the ambience. But the tasty food might just make up for it.

I’m a fan of the noodle. In fact, it will be my last meal if I ever was on death row (no plans for that in the future). So I was psyched when the 38 Geary bus was riding by, and I was able to discern the Chinese characters for hand pulled noodles. I am so there… the next day.
Walking in, you walk by the lady sitting in the window making the fresh dumplings. Service was pretty decent… no smile but she was very attentive to the point where I never had to ask for the check, yet I was there for an ample amount of time. Because I had a date later that day and I didn’t want to appear as a tearing hot mess, I stayed away from what I really wanted: the spicy beef hand pulled noodles, and went with the beef tendon hand pulled noodles instead. Not that this was truly a concession… the noodles arrived toothsome with the rough knife cut that you see from hand pulling, tender well-​cut beef tendon, crisp and fresh greens, and some really flavorful soup. Yay, I will be back… for that bowl of spicy beef noodle soup!

3.5 stars is definitely appropriate for this place, but given the scarcity of 4 star Chinese eats in San Francisco I felt compelled to make it known that this place is pretty darn good. There is a caveat though, and that is you need to KNOW what to order here. It’s like going to a donut shop and asking for a pizza, you’re kinda of guaranteed to have a bad time. So similarly, at a San Dong restaurant, you should order «mian dian», which is Chinese for all things made of dough (particularly buns, dumplings, and noodles).
To start you off, get the cold sesame noodles; then order any of their hot soup noodles. I personally didn’t enjoy the shrimp chives dumpling, but I suspect SDB has good pork dumplings.
I’ll be back again, at which time I’ll update my review. (Came back a couple of weeks later and ordered the cold sesame noodles again. It tastes better this time and I suspect it is because the owners are here to (micro)manage. One hiccup with our chicken and corn dumplings, which turned out to be pork and corn dumplings. Shivers. Make sure to double check your orders are what you ordered!)

³⁄₅ solid stars
We came here in a large party and ordered a variety of dishes. There were some good dishes and mediocre dishes.
Parking can be difficult to find in this area.
Ordered:
1) Fried pork bao: ³⁄₅
2) Cucumber with peanuts: 2.5÷5 a little bit too oily for my tasting
3) Chinese pancake filled with beef: 2.5÷5 I was looking forward to these, but they were not so impressive. They came out a bit cold.
4) Beef noodle soup: 3.5÷5 the noodles were tasty!
5) Spicy beef noodle soup: 3÷5÷5 I really like the noodles PLUS the broth
6) Chive dumpling: ⁴⁄₅ These were my favorite on the table
7) XLB: 2.5÷5 eh, barely any juice inside
8) Beef dumpling: ³⁄₅ ok, but the chive dumplings were better.

We got a 夫妻肺片，dumplings and boiled beef here on a weekend evening a few months ago. We first noticed a lady hand rolling dumpling dough/​wrappers in the front. Very authentic dumplings with nice chewy dough and fillings. All the dishes were great and representative of the northern Chinese cuisines. I will come back again soon to try more dishes.

*** In Short ***
Finally, a decent Chinese noodle place!
*** In Depth ***
Really, that’s all that needs to be said. While we have plenty of okay to great noodle shops for the other Asian cuisines, I’ve always found SF to be a bit lacking when it comes to solid Chinese or Taiwanese noodles. And, while SDB doesn’t satisfy the latter, it does a better job of the former than anything else that I can think of in the city.
I don’t remember particulars about the spicy beef noodle and lamb noodle soups we tried, but they were both enjoyable. Not great, not terrible, but certainly enjoyable. That said, I seem to recall them being a bit stingy with the protein. It might also look like there isn’t much food in these bowls, but you’ll realize how filling it is as you near the end!
***Accessibility Info***
Venue — Accessible, with plenty of spacing between tables, as far as I can recall.
Bathroom — Didn’t try them.

I have such mixed feelings about this place (as evidenced by the 3-​star rating).
I’ve been here a few times now, and the service has been terrible every time. One time they forgot to put in our order; we only discovered this after later-​arriving customers were getting their food. They’ve gotten at least one dish wrong each visit. And the servers ignore you after the food arrives, meaning empty water glasses and a very hard time getting the check.
But the food is delicious. I’m craving it right now as I write this. And the prices are super reasonable.
So if you’re not too high-​strung, and you love authentic no-​frills Chinese food, you should eat here at least once and see if the food outweighs the bad service for you. It does for me. I’m coming back soon. Maybe I should just bring my own water this time?

San Dong Best reminds me of the «greatest rock & roll/​soul/​country» hits cd’s popular decades ago. questionable selections in each CD. same at San Dong Best.
wandered in. stood a second or two. staff too busy to seat me, grabbed a menu from a «finished» table and sat myself. only one waitress working… flagged her down to give her my order. (not a happy look on her face, just neutral at best).
offerings: soups, xinjian noodles, lamb skewers, steam dumplings, appetitzers, etc.
eats: xialongbao (6/4.95)
–texture too doughy, no dipping sauce nor ginger slices provided
–ginger inside xlb. little meat, little soup, disappointing.
xinjian noodles w/​lamb (8.95)
–chewy, fresh noodles definitely hand pulled (of some sort)
–mixed with tender lamb, onions, bell peppers, tomatoes in salty, non spicy (bean?) sauce.
–thought it was soup. live and learn.
crumbs:
–large menu offerings, pricies reasonable, not cheap.
–understaffed. slow service when busy.
–noodles an hit, other dishes may be not be.
3ish stars.

This is one tough review to write. You see, on the one hand, they serve the best noodles in SF, so they totally deserve my 5-​star review. On the other hand, I really don’t want this place to become so popular that I have to wait for 2 hours to get in like other popular restaurants in SF.
But here we are, after 5 visits and had consistently good food, it would make me a terrible person for not sharing this place with all you fellow Unilocalers, who have helped me discover all the tasty places in town.
What should you order here you ask? Everything! They are one of the very few places that roll their own doughs and make noodles/​dumplings/​baos from scratch. And it’s not just for show. Their noodles here have superior texture. They don’t overcook the noodles like many other sloppy kitchens. It’s like al dente for Chinese noodles.
So yeah, next time when you pass by Geary and 2^nd, do yourself a favor and try this place out. I hope they’ll stay consistent and continue to serve these delicious noodles.

I think I found my new favorite 1) hole-​in-​the-​wall restaurant, 2) local restaurant, 3) Chinese restaurant! San Dong Best delivered in terms of flavor, prices, portions, service, and (at least for me as a neighborhood resident) convenience/​location. I’m so glad San Dong Best replaced the previous tenant (Xi An Gourmet) because that was just awful. Unlike Xi An Gourmet, San Dong is the real deal. I went in last night with my boyfriend for dinner around 8. For being a relatively new restaurant, it was very busy — and that was a good sign upon entering. (Also, you’ll notice at the entrance a woman making homemade dumplings. Part of the window display to attract passersby? Yes? Well, I think so! It’s very convincing!)
Based on the amount of seating, I would recommend San Dong Best if you have a large party. In fact, I noticed there was a partially eaten birthday cake in the back indicating someone had a birthday party there earlier in the night. Anyway, this spot is no-​frills authentic Chinese food — just what I like! Each table is equipped with chopsticks, condiments, napkins, plates, and tea cups. You’ll be happy to know, they serve a good jasmine tea that is gratis of course.
Alright, the important stuff… the food. The first dish to come out was the Shredded Pork in Garlic Sauce. This is always one of my favorite Chinese dishes: spicy, garlicky, and a little sour. They give you a decent portion so it goes a long way. The Xianjian Noodle was on point. My boyfriend thought this was the best dish of the night. The noodles are long, cooked to perfection, and the sauce is simple but satisfying. The dish also has bell peppers, celery, onions, mushroom, tomatoes, and lamb (though we ordered beef as a substitute). (The celery was slivered which made it more palatable because I otherwise don’t enjoy big chunks of celery! Not. My. Jam.) Interestingly enough, our pan-​fried dumplings came out last. They give six per order which I think is a good value considering it is $ 4.95. Again, another satisfying and tasty plate!
The servers are friendly. While service isn’t their strong point, you don’t come here to be waited on hand and foot. You go for the reasonably-​priced and scrumptious food!

Some definite winners here, but also some plates that were just «meh» at best.
Favorites:
1. Xian Cold Noodles — not too spicy, but peanuts, spicy oil, and crisp cucumbers pair perfectly with an ample amount of flat noodles that really get the appetite going.
2. Xinjian Noodle — bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes definitely give this dish a good amount of sweetness but the main focus should definitely be on the noodles. They are made in house by a deceivingly small woman. They were cooked perfectly and still a bit chewy — yum!
3. Dumplings — skin is not too thick. Price is average. Not much else to say…
Pass:
1. Dry Fried Chicken Wings — not even remotely close to San Tung… these were definitely more like sweet and sour wings. I will give them a thumbs up for using jumbo wings though.
2. Black Bean Noodle — the noodles were completely hidden (overwhelmed) by the amount of STUFF accompanying them. When it was delivered, it looked like a bowl of onions, green beans, minced meat, and black bean sauce. It was also rather salty — my grandmother didn’t hesitate to point to out and the waiter was actually nice enough to add some noodles which did temper it out a bit.
3. Pan Fried Dumplings (Xian Jian Bao) — way too doughy despite the fact that it looked pretty coming out. Very few places make it well though.
I definitely appreciated the customer service that we received. We even had a fairly long chat with the chef (i.e. the one who makes the noodles) — very friendly establishment.