Mister Jiu's San Francisco - One MICHELIN Star Restaurant [Review]

This is a throwback review of my dinner experience at Mister Jiu’s, a one-star MICHELIN star restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

At Mister Jiu’s, Chef/owner Brandon Jew offers his uniquely Californian take on Chinese cuisine. The menu celebrates the Cantonese cooking he grew up with alongside the Bay Area’s seasonal bounty.

At the time of my visit, they had just an a la carte menu but since then they have changed to a tasting menu format.

The menu was divided into snacks; dumplings, noodles & rice; seafood & meat; and dessert.

Here is what we tried:

For snacks, we had the sourdough scallion pancake with a French onion sauce with Paddlefish caviar. This was an elevated version of the traditional Chinese pancake. Certainly, a bit of caviar takes it to the next level.

Next was the smashed cucumbers with Hodo Foods tofu skin, avocado, and woodear mushrooms. This was also a more elevated take of the traditional Chinese smashed cucumber salad which is garlicky and tangy. Served with a wonton crisp.

The star of the show was the Salt Baked McFarland Springs Trout with charred ginger, scallion, and smoked roe. This was deboned at tableside. The McFarland Springs Trout was delicious and it was baked in salt rather than a traditional steamed whole fish. I enjoyed the tender trout meat along some bursts of umami from the fish roe.

We also had the Silken Tofu made with Hodo Foods soy milk, sea lettuce and cherry tomatoes.

Chicken “Dirty” Fried Rice with Brentwood corn and okra was delicious. The crispy chicken skin made the fried rice quite tasty.

Finishing off was a Sweet Lime Granita with lychee jelly, coconut, and raspberry.

The Sweet Lime Granita was a nice, palate cleaning dessert to finish off the evening.

Pretty much all the dishes we ordered could be recognizable as a Chinese dish but just elevated with some higher end ingredients (like caviar) and using Californian ingredients along with some modern takes.

The service was not as polished as I expected as the servers seemed rushed and the timing of the dishes was a bit off. Sometimes the food would come quickly and sometimes it there would be a long break.

At the time of my visit, the restaurant was also very noisy combined with conversations at the tables and cooking sounds from the open kitchen.

I think my experience at Empress by Boon (MICHELIN recommended but not starred) fared better in terms of food, service and ambiance but I would give Mister Jiu’s a try again in the future.