Bay Area Bites: What dishes can customers look forward to?
Hargrave: It’s a funny concept and not totally different than Tacolicious, which we took a lot of heat for. I have a super love of noodles and dumplings and you can go to a few places in the Avenues, but overall it's just not prevalent and available here. Sara wrote a book 12 years ago about Asian vegetables, and it's a topic that she really knows a lot about. We're going to have vegetables and cocktails along with baos and Dan Dan noodles that will be authentic, whatever that means. Look for Korean and Japanese flavors. It's not going to be fusion.

Bay Area Bites: What are the tough parts about opening?
Hargrave: We don’t speak Mandarin, so sourcing ingredients means I have to take a picture, and go to a market in Chinatown, because I don’t have any words. If I go to La Palma for Tacolicious, I can speak Spanish and order 50,000 tortillas. If I go to Chinatown, I am not able to do that.

It's just amazing, when people tell me “if you’re going to do a Chinese restaurant you have to have a wok and these are the dishes you have to do.” I say no, I don’t have to do a wok station, it’s just not my concept. San Franciscans are very funny about authenticity.

Cucumbers all busted up dish. Photo: Chino

I was in Taipei, Taiwan and there was super mashed-up food showing Japanese influence and lots of fresh seafood. We went to a place called Addiction Aquatic, that has the most amazing fish market. The pork with peanut in spongey white bread is Taiwanese and we're bringing that back.

Chairman Bao and M.Y. China use Peking duck. At Tacolicious we do a taco of the week; the bao is almost replaceable with a tortilla. At Momofuku, I tried a pastrami bao that was delicious and really good. There is also a Cubano with chile cheese, and pork that was pressed... those things would bug the purists to no end.

The Commissary
101 Montgomery St. (at Sheridan Ave.), San Francisco
(415) 561-3600
Twitter: TheCommissarySF
Facebook: www.facebook.com/TheCommissarySF

Chino
3198 16th St. (at Guerrero), San Francisco
(415) 420-9869
Twitter: SFChino
Facebook: www.facebook.com/chinorestaurant

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Hot Eats: The Commissary & Chino Open