Chef/owner Leroy Douglas started cooking for his family in Jamaica at just 10 years old and after a long, winding career cooking all over North America, he ended up in South San Francisco opening this casual, charming restaurant with a definitive rendition of jerk chicken.

It has the ideal mix of Scotch bonnet peppers, cloves and a host of other spices that strike the right sharp spice/earthiness notes in coating the chicken without overwhelming it. The marinade has an interesting thickness to it that is rarely seen in jerk chicken preparations and must contribute to keeping the meat extra moist.

A jerk chicken and oxtail combo with plantains and rice & beans at Flavas Jamaican Grill. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

Guests can order the jerk chicken à la carte or as part of a combo with fall-off-the-bone oxtail or jerk salmon. There’s terrific detail in the cooking—huge depth to the gravy with the oxtail, deft seasoning with the rice and beans, perfectly caramelized plantains.

Outside of a Bob Marley poster and a painting of the Caribbean Sea at sunset, Flavas keeps it low-key on the design front in the tidy dining room. But when diners look at that shimmering Caribbean water and have a bite of the jerk chicken, there’s a special moment where diners have no worries, whether it’s just a quick lunch or dinner before a redeye.

Royal Feast

148 El Camino Real
Millbrae

Royal Feast in Millbrae is a favorite destination for locals and for travelers with its location by SFO and Millbrae BART. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

You can count on one hand the number of restaurants between the South Bay and Daly City that San Francisco Chronicle dining critics Michael Bauer and Soleil Ho named to their annual ‘Top 100’ guides in 2018 or 2019. Royal Feast, a relatively intimate 80-seat spot in Millbrae, is one of them—and for good reason.

Chef Zongyi Liu is one of the Peninsula’s most acclaimed chefs, both because of how consistently excellent his cooking is with a roughly 100 item-long menu and because he competed in the Bocuse d’Or global gastronomy competition representing his native China several years ago.

The feast is under way with a table of smoked duck, fried rice, kung pao chicken and more at Millbrae’s Royal Feast. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

His menu is a mix of Szechuan favorites, seldom-seen royal banquet dishes generally served in large format styles, and the more expected Chinese or Chinese-American fare. The quality is strong, where even the oft-ridiculed kung pao chicken turns out to be a delight of spice, crunch and, yes, plenty of numbness from the ma-la sensation of Szechuan peppers.

Keep an eye out for the mapo tofu, pork dumplings in chili oil or the must-order poached fish fillet in chili oil, along with items in the ‘Chef’s Recommendations’ (the pork belly and sea cucumber won over this jaded pork belly eater) and ‘Royal Cuisine’ sections. For diners in the mood for Beijing-style smoked duck with crackling crispy skin served on a duck-shaped platter (it’s true), this is definitely one of the better renditions in SF or the Peninsula.

A plate of ‘dumplings in chili oil’ at Royal Feast in Millbrae. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

Finally, one other recommendation—every table should get at least one order of the scallion pancakes. They arrive scalding hot, slightly doughy in the center and, not revealed on the menu, accompanied by a baba ghanoush-evoking eggplant dip. Use the pancake with everything—spread the eggplant, dunk it in chili oil, use it for the additional duck slices, slather sea cucumber on it. It’s your feast. Enjoy!

Gintei

235 El Camino Real
San Bruno

The relaxed yet elegant sushi counter at Gintei in San Bruno. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

While omakase-only restaurants in San Francisco now charge north of $200 for their exquisite offerings, an omakase for sushi or sashimi at Gintei in San Bruno is either $50 or $65 — and generally a dozen of their fish offerings come from the same source: Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji Fish Market.

It’s easy to get carried away price-wise going the à la carte specials route at Gintei when the likes of Hokkaido uni and A5 Wagyu are over $20 per bite. However, an enjoyable bento box lunch or sushi-filled dinner here doesn’t have to focus on the luxury ingredients.

The Rainbow #1 roll at San Bruno’s Gintei right by SFO. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

Gintei satisfies that hard-to-find niche where the omakase isn’t stratospheric, the à la carte fish quality is sensational AND the non-sushi or sashimi plates are equally well-executed. Of all the restaurants in the immediate SFO area, this is the one that is the most flexible for all kinds of diners.

Come to the sushi bar, say “omakase” and out comes a parade of minimally adorned, maximum quality shima aji, kanpachi and katsuo. Or, bring the family, sit in the slightly sleek dining room (bring a jacket because the air conditioning can be strangely strong here), and order individual rolls or nigiri offerings from the various specials board or printed menu.

An assortment of nigiri specials at Gintei. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

But wait, then there’s the beautifully fried tempura, grilled salmon collar, and a delightful bowl of chilled ankimo (monkfish liver) that tempt from the kitchen. There are lots of choices. The good news? There’s no going wrong here.

Sam Choy’s Poke to the Max

629 San Mateo Ave.
San Bruno

Eating at Sam Choy’s Poke to the Max in San Bruno is a fun—and a learning—experience before or after a flight. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

Before celebrity chefs were celebrity chefs featured on gossip websites and Instagram feeds, they were just iconic, game-changing chefs like Sam Choy was (and still is) to the Hawaiian Islands. Along with the likes of Alan Wong and Roy Yamaguchi (the ‘Roy’ of Roy’s in San Francisco), Choy lifted up the ingredient quality and culinary identity of Hawaii’s beautiful and delicious cuisine. Not only that, Choy was one of the first ‘celebrity chefs’ that an airline used to design menus to make airplane food going to Hawaii actually not just, well, airplane food.

Coincidence or not, almost a decade after he began consulting for American Airlines, Choy’s first restaurant outpost is one of the closest eateries to SFO. As the name suggests, poke is the headliner.

Customizable poke bars are becoming as ubiquitous as sandwich delis in the Bay Area, but the shoyu salmon and creamy avocado here are as good as it gets anywhere in the region thanks to the pristine fish quality used. The customizable option comes into play where diners choose between tacos, wraps, salads and rice plates as the base for their poke. Unlike other poke bars, this one doesn’t offer an endless array of garnishes.

A ‘classic shoyu’ ahi poke rice plate at Sam Choy’s Poke to the Max in San Bruno. (Trevor Felch/KQED)

Beyond the poke, there are several other Hawaiian favorites like musubis (think sushi burritos) that include the obligatory spam but also branch out to other proteins. Classic Hawaiian plate lunches are served with the signature scoops of macaroni salad and rice alongside hearty proteins like ‘loco moco’ that can be a beef patty or, as is so 2019, a vegan one with ‘Just Egg’ and an Impossible burger patty.

There is a pleasant refinement here in general that makes it more along the lines of a ‘fine fast-casual’ spot than just ‘fast-casual.’ Plants hang from the walls, the poke is nicely plated instead of being just an uninspired scoop on a rice bowl, the scoops of rice sports flecks of umami-rich dried seaweed on top, and sunlight comes streaming in making the place positively glow even on foggy mornings.

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