On our second day in San Francisco, my wife Jun and I wanted to get a quick bite for early lunch before meeting our dear friend and her husband for dinner at Lazy Bear later that day. As we had not had dim sum in a while, and San Francisco is not a slouch when it comes to dim sums, we made a quick trip from our hotel in SoMa to check out HK Lounge Bistro. We had no background on HK Lounge Bistro whatsoever (I later learned that the original restaurant Hong Kong Lounge II in the Richmond District of the city burned down in 2019 and this was a second act from the same time), but in any event we were so glad we stumbled upon this restaurant because the dim sum here was incredible.

Having lived in New York City many years, Jun and I had of course been to Chinatown numerous times to get our dim sum fix. So how does a San Francisco establishment stack up against NYC Chinatown? Jun found herself surprised to admit that HK Lounge Bistro was better than what she had encountered in Manhattan. Take, for instance, the beloved classic Shanghai soup pork dumpling. Jun was thoroughly impressed how pure and clean the flavor of the soup was, in contrast to NYC’s version that feels, while delicious, like the kitchen focuses too much on emphasizing richness of the broth to perhaps accommodate non-Chinese diners. The shrimp dumpling was also spot on with wonderfully crunchy texture of the shrimp. My favorite dish during our meal was the spicy shrimp wontons. Having seen spicy wontons with pork much more often, I was curious to see how using shrimp worked and it turned out to be quite a delight with addictive but not overwhelming spicy flavor of the wontons making me wish we could’ve ordered more even after getting an extra. We could tell that the restaurant’s focus on execution shines in other dishes such as salt and pepper soft shell crab which Jun was very fond of, as well as string beans that were dry fried to perfection.      

The restaurant is relatively modest in size and it is not surprisingly a very popular place in the city, so I highly recommend either getting a reservation in advance so just walking in right around the time the restaurant opens. As we were savoring all the deliciousness thinking how lucky we were to walk in without a wait, we saw multiple diners without reservations turned away. Add some hot teas (even the tea here was not some generic version using tea bags but real tea leaves), and you have one heck of a dim sum meal. HK Lounge Bistro was a revelation in our California trip and we won’t hesitate to come back for more of the wonderful dim sum dishes here next time we are in San Francisco.   

Address: 1136 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

KenScale: 8.5/10 (Jun’s Score: 8.5/10)

Website: https://hkloungebistro.com/

Reservation via OpenTable