"The food is awesome and the place has a small, hole in the wall feel."
(in 4 reviews)
"The clay pot rice dishes (bo jai fan) are damn good."
(in 4 reviews)
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Golden Chopstick
Rating Details »
Categories: Chinese, Vegetarian
Neighborhood: Outer Richmond1650 Balboa St
(between 17th Ave & 18th Ave)
San Francisco, CA 94121
(415) 221-6288
- Hours:
Tue-Fri. 11:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Sat-Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
- Attire:
- Casual
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Street
- Price Range:
-
$
- Good for Groups:
- No
- Good for Kids:
- Yes
- Takes Reservations:
- Yes
- Delivery:
- Yes
- Take-out:
- Yes
- Waiter Service:
- Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
- Outdoor Seating:
- No
- Good for:
- Dinner
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24 reviews for Golden Chopstick
Review Highlights
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This place has AWESOME service.
I came here with a friend of mine who's family has been going here for ages. The food was great, try the bitter melon, and when we left they let her take one of the dishes which had our un-eaten dessert in it. She'll bring it back, of course.
Oh, and that dessert was epic. Tapioca pudding with pumpkin in the center -- yumm.
I'll have to say, I don't generally eat Chinese food in San Francisco unless its a few selected locations, Golden Chopstick being one of them. I love this place because the food is authentic and inexpensive. It's a nice kept secret in the Richmond. The restaurant may not be much for a place to eat in at but I still like the food and is a great for take out. I beleive they deliver as well.
I think I might have found the best won ton house in the city. Texture of the meat, the won ton skin, the broth. It is all there. This is actually a great restaurant hidden in the Richmond district in San Francisco. It is a very tiny restaurant and most of my staff usually order from here because it is good and cheap. This place is actually a lot better than most Chinese restaurants in the city. Take into consideration that I only had a few dishes here, but I can see that this is a place that is solid.
It's a mom and pop restaurant and seating is limited but is never full. A bit strange. They do a lot of delivery and take outs. Their fried dumplings are great here. They are a little slow but if you are wiling to wait and be patient, this is a great little place on the corner of 18th and Balboa in the Richmond district.
Like them because they deliver, service is quick and the orders are correct. Give them a shot, good food, really fresh!
1 Previous Review: Show all »
-
10/23/2006
Maybe I shouldn't go here after 3 bottles of champagne because I liked it. I thought the service was… Read more »
I think it's pretty awesome that I moved in across the street from a decent and cheap chinese restaurant. I can get my carry out in my PJ's! My new roomie and I always get the hot & sour soup. It's really really good and perfect for stay-home-and-watch-movies nights. Spring rolls are good, if not just a little too overfried. Haven't had much else there because the hot & sour soup is so good.
Fast, friendly, inexpensive, close. Works for me!
I joke that Americanized Chinese food is basically meat donuts: chicken that's battered, deep-fried and covered with a sugary sauce.
Which, of course, is nothing like the Chinese food I ate while growing up, which is simpler, subtler, way less saucy. And, we didn't use soy sauce like it was ketchup.
But, I'm not a snob. When I order Chinese delivery, I know what I'm getting: variations of the meat donut, greasy noodles, veggies drowning in a cornstarch-thickened sauce, plastic-wrapped fortune cookies, and some soy sauce packets with the wonton font on it. Their main customers are white, and they're giving them what they want.
Why do I submit to the dumbing down of Chinese cuisine? Well, I'm wearing my pajamas, farting on the couch and watching Project Runway, I didn't have to pull a pot out of the pantry, and yet I'm eating a hot meal. And, I don't have to do the dishes later. God bless America.
I've conceded that if you want the real deal, you can't get it delivered to you. And, maybe that's OK. I don't expect Chapeau! and Aziza to deliver. The highest expectations I should have for delivered food is cheap, hot and fast.
Still, I wondered: couldn't I get Chinese delivery that's less saucy? Something neither fried and oily, nor fried and sweet?
I got a menu for Golden Chopsticks in the mail and noticed they had items not on your usual Chinese meat donut places. Frog in clay pot. Ong choy. Jook! Tomatoes and beef. And what the hell is thick soup ramen? Whatever, they deliver!
I live with and love a white man, so I didn't go buck wild with frog and jook. We tried the following: pot stickers, general's chicken, filet of cod with tender greens, chinese broccoli with garlic and, from their limited dim sum selection, pork dumplings.
The dim sum thing was a mistake, but I kinda felt that coming. It was pretty clearly frozen gyoza from Costco. I think every Chinese restaurant within five blocks of Ton Kiang feels like they have to offer dim sum, even if they're not interested in making it. So, I'll give them a pass on that.
But, the rest of the food was surprisingly delicious. Their version of the meat donut was crisp and not overly sauced. The fish was NOT over-cooked, which is difficult when you're doing delivery. The Chinese broccoli wasn't greasy. The serving size was huge, too: the food took up the whole square container and was piled up high. And, I think delivery only took 20 minutes.
Definitely the highest-quality Chinese delivery I've had in this neighborhood. Can you get better, more authentic Chinese food in a sit-down place? Definitely yes, even in the same neighborhood, heck probably even in Golden Chopsticks if you went there and sat down. But, if you consider the physical and time restraints of delivered food and the whole in-pajamas-on-the-couch paradigm which we must not disrupt, Golden Chopsticks fulfills my needs.
I am staying in the Richmond watching an old friend's dog (Petey) while he is out of town. I looked up some of the local places on Yelp and and this place had an A-OK, so since it is right around the corner from my friend's place I decided to give it a chance.
First the positive - This place is really clean. Next the service is great. I was out on a walk with Petey and I stuck my head in to ask for a takeout menu. The woman was super nice and had walked over with a menu for me before I even said a word. I'm sure since I had a bag of poop in the other hand that she was especially eager to help me out. She even offered to come back out for my order and payment. I don't know much about Chinese food so I ordered the Chicken with basil and three flavor sauce, some spring rolls and some rice.
Now for the not so good. Maybe I ordered wrong or caught them on a bad night, but that food was not good. The chicken was way overcooked to the point of being like leather (it could not be chewed) and one of the three flavors was dehydrated ginger drenched in sauce. The spring rolls tasted like fried grease. I threw it out and ate the Rice & Sriracha (she gave me Sriracha because I asked for medium spicy, because the menu told me to specify). So basically I had a couple of buckets of overcooked, over sauced, greasy nastiness, which is everything I have disliked about most of the Chinese food I have had. I don't think I am going to order anymore Chinese food until I am actually in China, because everyone tells me that real Chinese food is simple and fresh.
OMG, this is a hole in the wall,small but clean!
AND the food is so good that clay pot rice with Chinese preserves meat is so tasty...and the dessert steam egg custard is to die for!!
And the waitress is so super sweet!!
this place is awesome. The food is awesome and the place has a small, hole in the wall feel. I hope this place stays that way, which is why rating it on yelp makes me nervous. I'll definitely hit this place up again.
OMG, food illiterates should not be allowed to write on yelp. People who ordered sweet and sour pork, mongolian beef, and orange chicken wrote about this gem in the Richmond. Such disgrace.
Let's look at the alternatives we had tonight:
1. Hand-shredded Chicken with slightly "drunken" skin and meat tossed with a subtle sesame/peanut sauce
2. Vegetarian stuffed half wintermelon served upside down (stuffed with finely chopped up water chestnut, shitake mushroom, bamboo shoot, and pine nut
3. Marinated deep fried tofu so saucey on the inside I thought I was eating a xiao lung bao (steamed soup dumpling ShangHai style)
4. Steamed whole fish Hong Kong style
5. Whole cold served crabs with a Chinese red vinegar and minced garlic
6. Baked tapioca pudding with a layer of lightly sweetened pumpkin puree sandwiched between, top torched.
This is high class authentic Hong Kong cuisine found at the corner of Balboa and 17/18th Ave in the Richmond. This is what you would expect when you're dining at Lung King Heen inside the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong. I am amazed how a tiny kitchen can manage to serve up complicated dishes like these.
Please educate and open up your mind. If you want to order Orange Chicken, Mongolian Beef, or Sweet and Sour Pork, go to PF Chang or Panda Express.
It makes me puke!
I hate the color of the canopy.
Yelloe on Red!?
Because Chinese restaurant?
I know that a little bit of color history .
Yellow as Gold and red are the most good luck color for Chinese.
But, in this 21st century, we have a lot more color!
This place was a little French restaurant before.
they had week-end champagne brunch.
I thought it was not too bad.
But,
They couldn't keep-up.
Maybe rent was too high.
I don't know.
But,
this new owner painted the canopy Yellow and Red.
It is ugly as Fxxx!
I do not eat any food inside of Yellow and Red painted restaurant.
include McDonalds, Burger King and Quickly.
what we ordered:
vegetarian mu-shu
broccoli and tofu
kung pao chicken
$29 bucks delivered including tip and tax
what we thought:
The food tasted old, bland, and was pretty much inedible. In fact we wound up throwing away 85% of it and eating PBJ sandwiches for diner. The mu-shu pancakes were actually store-bought flour tortillas. The chicken in the kung pao tasted old and rubbery. I felt so ripped off that I actually called and asked for my money back (which I have never done before in my life); they did not do anything to make it right so I opened a Yelp account and this is my first posting.
I feel a little bad posting such a negative review and feel bad if this review hurts their business in a significant way. This is just one person's experience and opinion. Hopefully they get better, things do change.
EDIT(4/27/08)
cash, visa, MC accepted. $15 minimum delivery. delivery available 3p-9p only.
when this place first opened, it had all kinds of cool stuff in its menu - frog for one thing. it had authentic dishes.
a couple months later, they popped out a new menu and, well, now its a glam'd up panda express.
complete with mongolian beef, kung pao chicken, and lemon chicken.
their simple traditional chinese plates like the fried rice and beef chow fun are good, but how do you fuck that up really? all the other shiny, gelatinous american-chinese dishes are plain poo.
yeah, poo, i said poo.
Another undiscovered Iron Chef here! I was referred to this place from a friend that lives near by.
Although the restaurant space is tiny...about 20 or so seatings MAX, the chef can really cook! It's a mom and pop joint, which means the chef is also the owner or related to the owner, which also means they care about what they serve unlike other Chinese restaurants with hired minimum-waged help. I live in the 650 area code and we drive 25 miles just to have some delicious Chinese food. And we drive all that way not because of their reasonable price...I mean if we wanted to do cheap, we could go to Chinatown for $2 porridge.
Anyhow, in the beginning we only came here for dinner....and we would order items that were not on the menu and any order that you throw at him....he'll perfect it to your taste! For example, we ordered Drunken Dungeness Crab, Frog Legs w/green onions in claypot, Herbal Turtle Soup (huge pot - can serve 15 people), Chinese Greens with Beef, their Chef's Special Empress Chicken and several others I don't remember. I couldn't stop downing the soup and every dish on the table.
This is one of the few places I do not regret for eating so much! You know what I mean....Todai and all the buffet restaurants in Reno and Vegas! Ooh I hate buffets!
So anyways, we tried Golden Chopsticks for lunch and got the same results.....mmmmm delicious! I ordered the Chinese Greens or sometimes Bok Choy with Beef over rice. Although they give you a ton of rice and just an adequate amount of the greens/beef, it was amazingly very tasty for this kind of chinese dish. My babe ordered the Minced Beef with an egg over claypot rice (this is specially cooked in an individual claypot and will take at least 20 minutes to cook but it's worth the wait). I've been here for lunch for about 3times already and I still can't stop ordering the Chinese Greens with Beef over rice...I'm not ready to switch yet.......!
I gave them 5 stars because not only can they hit you with Iron Chef quality dinner dishes, they can hit you even harder with their yummy lunch menu items for only $4.95!
My mom tried this place before me and was hyping it up a bit so one day she took us here to order some food for a party. It's a really small place with limited seating so I would say if you came here to order food, it's probably better to do takeout.
So we ordered a tray of rice noodles and it seemed to lack some flavor but I am willing to try this place again. Maybe the fact that it was a large order may have altered the taste of it. More noodles and ingredients and not enough seasoning.
I will try ordering something "regular" size and see if there is some improvement.
Since we all know the weather lately has been wet and cold, I decided to stay in last night and keep warm. The only bad thing was I had no food in my house and I was hungry. Seeing that I was freezing and was in PJs, I was looking for some good delivery (other than pizza), and boy did I find it.
I have never tried Golden Chopsticks before, and I decided to give it a whirl since it was close by and they delivered. I order the prawns with mixed veggies (extra hot), and some spring rolls. They said it would take about 30 min. and they were right on the money! Sure enough about 25-30 min. later my door bell rang and I was so ecstatic. For the first time, a delivery service that was on time (extra plus for me). Aside from the fast service, the food was pretty good as well. The spring rolls were pipping hot and very crispy. Yummy all around! Not to mention a lot of food to eat for left overs.
Although I have never been to the place itself, if you are looking for some good Chinese for delivery and live in the outer Richmond, give them a call. Super friendly, super fast, and suuuuuuuper good!!
I spent the whole day cleaning my apartment so I thought I'd reward myself with some take-out. Actually, I just didn't want to get my kitchen dirty.
Delivery took 15 minutes longer than they said it would. The mu shu pork was really tasty and the sweet and sour pork was pretty good (a little chewy but still edible), but the brocoli beef had little flavor. The portions are huge though and the price very reasonable (kinda like the costco of chinese food). I would definitely try the restaurant again ... their menu is huge.
Not to sound like a snob, but people that don't like this food probably never had much homestyle chinese cooking. This place services some dishes like the way your grandma would cook it without all the heavy sweet sauces and grease of your typical cheap chinese joint. The clay pot rice dishes (bo jai fan) are damn good. And the beef stew is dope with the perfect mix of lean beef, tendon, and fat chunks. If you don't know about chinese beef stew, you probably are more used to sweet and sour pork, hot and sour soup, and kung pao chicken. Which is fine, I enjoy my americanized chinese from time to time. This food is much more subtle in flavor and doesn't rely on deep frying and sauce drenching to make up for cheap ingredients and lack of cooking skill.
For a little hole in the wall in the middle of a resedential neighborhood, you cant beat it! The prices are very reasonable and the portions could feed an army.
I highly reccomend the Spareribs in Black Pepper and Honey Sauce, Fantastic. If your interested in trying a lot of different items this is the place, great selection of foods.
There is nothing golden about this place. I ordered three different rice dishes for lunch, and each one was overbearingly bland. I felt like I was eating textured air. However, if you're really really hungry and you're stomach can only wait 5 more minutes to be filled with food, this is the place to go because they literally cook customers' food in 5 minutes. One star for the speedy service.
I found a hair in my food. And it wasn't just mixed in, it was actually IN my food. It was like in a tomato between the skin and the tomato's meaty part. ugh. I think I found something else, but that's the one I remember.
Been wanting to try this hole in the wall for a while now. Pretty good. Pricey for chinese food, but quite yummy. I thought about my noodle lunch for the whole day after gobbling it up, and will definitely be going back for more.
Having walked by this restaurant countless times, my hubbie and I finally went in for lunch today. Why did we wait so long?!?! The food was terrific. The eggplant with minced pork sechwan style was really well done. I loved the texture added by the tree fungus. Portions are way too big, but that just means leftovers to enjoy later. I took home the menu and can't wait to try other dishes soon.
Nothing special about this place and slightly pricey for the area. I once had them deliver to me 3 blocks away due to rain though.
