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House of Nanking

919 Kearny St, San Francisco, CA

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House of Nanking opened in 1988 in San Francisco's Chinatown, founded by Peter Fang, and the small, unassuming restaurant became known for a genuinely idiosyncratic house style — a spicy, garlicky approach to Shanghainese-influenced dishes that diverged noticeably from the more standard Cantonese-American food found at many neighboring Chinatown restaurants. The restaurant built a reputation for a somewhat unusual dining format in which servers frequently recommended or directly chose dishes for tables rather than relying purely on customers ordering off the printed menu, an approach some diners found charmingly direct and others found presumptuous, but one that became part of the restaurant's specific identity. House of Nanking drew celebrity visitors and extensive media coverage over the decades specifically because of that combination of bold, personal cooking style and its cramped, no-frills dining room, a contrast that became part of the restaurant's broader appeal as an authentic-feeling alternative to more polished Chinese restaurants elsewhere in the city. House of Nanking's combination of Peter Fang's distinctive, spicy Shanghainese-influenced cooking and its unusual server-directed ordering format has made it one of the most singularly personality-driven Chinese restaurants anywhere in the country.

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