48 - Chef Lau's - Oakland

301 8th St, Oakland, CA 94607, (510) 835-3288

Last visit - March 2010

Chef Lau's was very accommodating. While the parking is scarce in the primary areas of Oakland's Chinatown, Chef Lau's is worth the wait. They have a very small restaurant and not more than twenty tables exist inside. Plastered along the wall are seasonal specials that don't have subtitles. If you want frog or other delicacies, you better bring your Chinese friend with you.

We had the lamb claypot, the lobster noodles, the Chengdu spare ribs, steamed oysters, an egg souffle-like dish, honey walnut prawns, and beef and Chinese broccoli. They also gave us complementary soup and dessert; which were both good that night. That was enough food for 8 I think, but there were only 6 of us, so we were really stuffed towards the end of the meal. The beef was good and so was the lobster. Lobster noodles is a new find for me, and I will definitely order that again the next time I go. The Chengdu ribs were tasty too, enough sweet and sour sauce but they didn't overdo it to make you feel like you're biting on candied pork.

They did a good job and I definitely will go back again. Spacing is really limited, but that is a testament to their popularity. Maybe we'll try the frog next time. There's also a dish that comes in a conch shell and with a mini burner. There's a lot of goodies in the shell, and the burner keeps it heated. I'll have to go back for that one too.

40 - Rang Dong Vietnamese Restaurant - Oakland

724 Webster St., Oakland, CA. 94607, (510)835 - 8375

(image from Yelp.com)

Placed on the outer edge of Chinatown is a pretty efficient pho noodle restaurant named Rang Dong. For the longest time it was known as "Vi's noodle shop", but after an interior make-over they renamed themselves. The place is clean and the service is fast. It's one of the few pho shops left in Chinatown. If you can imagine, people go to Chinatown to eat Chinese food, so to make a Vietnamese food place there would be a challenging feat. Yet, this place survives with its reliable service and hearty dishes.

They redid their menu recently, so the Pho Noodle soup with everything on it is no longer #1, but instead #11. How absurd is that right? Every store's #1 should be the big bowl of pho with everything on it: beef, tripe, flanks, beefballs, shredded pork, the whole shabang! But it's now #11. So don't fret, it's still there; and it's still good.

I've gotten the Pho Noodle eating ritual pretty much memorized. I suspect I can do it with my eyes closed if the bottles of condiments were identifiable by touch. First I grab a dish and pour in seafood sauce. Next I dab in the hot sauce, which is always Sri-Racha at these places. I give it a nice whirl then I put in some fresh lemon juice into my little platter. From there, I begin peeling off culantro leaves and gently sprinkling it in my soup. This is almost ritual, I don't even notice the difference in smell or taste. Lastly, I gather a couple chop stick grabs of raw bean sprouts and let it cook in the broth. It's rather simple, but I have heard of people mistaken the plate of garnishes as a salad for the soup, and eating it all. I hope this review will help first time pho noodle eaters avoid that kind of mistake.

Note: On summer days, I often get the Vermicelli noodles with imperial rolls and skewered pork. That's actually a really tasty meal. It goes good with Vietnamese drip coffee, but I have to admit it's amazingly strong there.

10 - Shooting Star Cafe - Oakland

Shooting Star Cafe - 1068 Webster St., Oakland, CA. 94607 (510) 251-9882

Last Visit: June 2008


Shooting Star Cafe is a Hong Kong style cafe in the outskirts of Chinatown. It opened two years ago and is going strong. Hard to believe this, but if it's 11pm at night and you want somewhere to drink and chat with a friend, this is the place. People complain about the noisy people, but I guess it's not that bad if you're part of the group that's making the noise.

Shooting Star Cafe is an excellent example of a "third place". I'm fascinated by this notion and have written about it before. The idea behind a "third place" is that a person's first place is Home and his or her second place is Work (or school). Then there is the third place, a place away from the intimacy of home and the demands of work. People go here to hang out. The food is not as bad as people say, and the service is as good as any restaurant in Chinatown; you'll be attended to eventually.

What you can expect is a loud atmosphere and a cup of hot tea no matter how late it is at night. I must have went there three times one week; there were not many options that week. Actually after a certain time in Chinatown, you will be forced to go to either Shooting Star Cafe, Gold Medal HK restaurant, or Ying-Kee Restaurant. ABC bakery is shaky, sometimes it opens late, sometimes it closes early.

I do have one thing that I recommend at Shooting Star, try the Borscht Soup. It's actually done really well. The sauce is pretty thick and there's a kick of spice in it. Great for crackers, but don't even think about it - it's Chinatown, there's no crackers with soup. If you're adventurous, try the cornucopia of Hong Kong style desserts, I tend to avoid the sweets.

Yelp's two cents