It’s in a dirty old building, on a crowded lively street in Chinatown. It was the butt of a joke by Conan O’Brien, during his 2007 San Francisco stage show and in a related spoof television commercial, in which Conan ran through the cramped space, expounding on all of its…charms.
I can confirm that yes, one enters directly into the kitchen, where, on my visit, a woman in a faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt sat in the front window conducting a hygienically suspect preparation of dumplings. After ascending a steep stairway, the diner enters the dining room, with fluorescent lights, chipped formica tables, and all of the homey ambiance of a Soviet submarine deck. Sam Wo, it appears, has nothing to hide. And their lack of concern for cultivating appearances is extreme to the point of hilarity.
But the laughing stops when the food arrives.
I visited with a party of eight, and we ordered nearly the entire menu. The Chinese doughnuts were pillowy and crunchy, the famous raw fish salad was a brightly acidic relative of sashimi and ceviche, and the barbecue pork rice noodle rolls, dipped in nose-searing Chinese mustard, were out of this world. Every new arrival from the dumbwaiter elicited cheers from our cramped dining crew, and the hits kept coming. Even the pork intestines, spared any euphemistic treatment on the menu, are really damned good – they’re comfortingly fatty, with a texture nearly the same as the noodles, served in a flavorful broth. And the congee – oh man. I honestly thought I just didn’t like congee, but now I can comprehend the cravings of homesick Chinese expats. This heavenly piggy porridge is what I’ll want on every cold dreary day from now on.
The restaurant is BYOB, so a Chinatown-standard red plastic bag of bottled beers should be acquired before arrival. An extra bonus? The prices are shockingly, there-must-be-a-mistake low. Our eight bellies were full for a tad under $65.
Friday’s late night visit was on a whim and a recommendation, so I didn’t yet know about Sam Wo’s long history of polarization. Sam Wo engenders great love and great hatred, as evidenced by the string of rants by disgusted Yelp reviewers, equally balanced by words of praise from lovers of this dirty hovel of a restaurant. But this is only the latest in a tradition of love-it-or-hate-it that began a hundred years ago, as I was soon to learn. (Possibly as long ago as the 1890s)
Our post-Wo aftermath
In an astounding coincidence, just yesterday, less than a week after my visit, I stumbled by accident upon an entry in Doris Muscatine’s A Cook’s Tour of San Francisco, written in 1963, devoted to Sam Wo. According to the book, Sam Wo is maintaining fidelity in their menu’s historical roots, which are claimed already to have stretched back 70 years at the time of writing. This dates Sam Wo to around 1893, well before the Great Fire of 1906.
This 1963 books claims 1893 as Sam Wo's founding
The story is entertaining, and shows that Sam Wo is in many ways a time capsule of late 19th and early 20th century Chinese American food. In its early days, San Francisco was one of the only places in the US where Chinese food could even be found. I haven’t found this passage elsewhere on the internet, so in the spirit of fair use, I’ve manually transcribed the whole excerpt of this 1963 account here, complete with recipe for Raw Fish Salad:
Sam Wo
813 Washington Street
very inexpensive
People who are seeking color will find a rainbowful here. Sam Wo is a unique San Francisco institution, a spot to which all but ladies with the most delicate sensibilities and a penchant for compulsive housekeeping should certainly repair. Technically, this smallest of all restaurants is known as a jook (or chuk) house, because it specializes in a rice gruel of that name. It has probably the least expensive good food in the city. You can still get a substantial meal here for under a dollar. Portions are so large that one bowl of jook is a meal in itself.
The establishment is over seventy years old, and the name means “three in peace,” a reference to the partners who started the business. Lee Chong, or Ho Suey, as he was more often called, was one of the founding fathers, and worked well into his seventies. He had a grin that showed off some fancy dentistry, a wizened narrow face that peeked above a pointed grey beard, and he made the best Chinese crullers around. These holeless doughnuts, first introduced to Chinatown at Sam Wo, are still a specialty. Another old-timer, no longer working, is Johnny Gee, Dragon Master of Chinatown, who teaches the young boys about the ceremonial winding dragon that characterizes the great festivals of the Chinese community.
Sam Wo occupies quarters about the size of a small railroad car turned on end. The downstairs is both entry and kitchen, and here you can watch the chef kneading up a cloudlike batch of the lightest cruller dough imaginable. A narrow staircase juts precipitously up to the second – and again to the third – floor. On these upper levels a few tables line each side of the skinny room, the aisle space just large enough to pass through. At the front, windows overhang bustling Washington Street. Cuspidors still dot the floors. However, modernization has set in, and waiters no longer sing their orders down the dumb-waiter shaft. Very late at night, when there are no waiters on duty, hungry patrons serve themselves, and eat standing on the first floor by the kitchen. Another restriction goes into effect at half-past one in the morning; after that hour, no fried food is served.
Edsel Ford Fung, now one of the partners, and certainly the liveliest waiter in all the city, is a cross between Chum Fun of Dragon Lady fame, and Jack Benny. He makes jokes about everything, maintains a constant wide grin, and jumps about the premises like a jack-in-the-box. He told me that the doughnuts sell like hot cakes. He characterizes the Sam Wo menu as “no rice, no chop suey, no won ton, but oodles of noodles.” He is the son of one of the original partners – not silent, I’m sure – who has now retired. He will help you select a good lunch, dinner or snack, and will encourage you to try out some of the things which may be new to your palate. On one occasion, when I had had more than enough to eat, he insisted that I try just one more delicacy. When I hesitated, he hopped to the kitchen, brought back a nibble-sized portion, picked it up with a pair of chopsticks, dunked it in a dish of sauce, and one-two-three plunked it in my appreciative mouth. I hadn’t been reluctant enough.
Edsel tells me that in the old days they used to make Yoan during the two weeks before Christmas. Yoan are sweet-rice dumplings served with sliced turnips combined with chicken, duck, pork, beef, ham, shrimp, tripe, and all sorts of other protein. They also used to cook up Chinese jello as a regular item, but it takes too much work, so they have dropped it from the menu. They do, however, still make marvelous rice noodles on the premises, and serve these big, wide ribbons in soups, soft fried, or boiled. The soup form comes with roast pork, beef, beef stew, chicken, duck, or curry. The soft fried noodles are cooked with chow yuke (bean sprouts or mustard greens with roast beef or pork). If you come in early enough, there will be rice noodle rolls, marvellous [sic] for dunking in small saucers of oyster sauce. (Edsel recommends that you dunk the Chinese doughnuts in oyster sauce, too). If you come in late enough – after 7 p.m. – you can have jook, a thick rice soup. Jook (also called Congee) comes in nearly a dozen varieties – mixed with raw beef, shredded duck or chicken, small shrimp, shredded pork, razor slices of beef, pork meat balls, or with giblets, tripe and liver (called “mixed soup”). In combination with chunks of beef, pig’s liver, pork tripe and giblets it is called beef stew soup – “authentic and exotic,” Edsel chimes in. Without the addition of gruel, this stew comes as a side order.
If you want to eat in style, the chef will cook up a rice noodle roll with oyster sauce and sesame seeds, a “super deluxe special,” in the words of you know who. Another specialty is raw fish salad, much less daring than it sounds, and for which the Sam Wo recipe follows. This is one of the few Chinatown establishments that brews egg tea, a sweet, thick dessert tea, a little like hot chocolate, with an egg, raw, medium, or hard boiled, plopped in the middle of it. Edsel is all for the raw egg, which looks less raw when you stir up the syrupy brew. There is also herb tea, supposedly good for what ails you, but this black drink is not to my taste, cure what it may.
There is an assortment of chow mein listed on the menu – with sprouts, greens, or tomatoes, and pork or beef; or you can order any other combination of fried noodles – with chicken or shrimp for instance. There are also excellent fried shrimp and fried rice.
If a party of four comes in and leaves it up to Edsel to order for them, their dinner will start with duck or chicken soup (rice base), and include a medium fish salad, fried shrimps, rice noodle roll (if there is any left) soft fried noodles with cooked greens, and tomato beef. And maybe some egg tea.
If you try this recipe for raw fish salad, it is necessary to use the very freshest fish and to clean it meticulously.
MARINATED RAW FISH SALAD
1 lb. of any of the following: cod, salmon, hardhead (steelhead trout), smelt (grunion or jacksmelt)
¼ tsp. of cinnamon
pinch of salt, black pepper
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. sesame oil
¼ cup oil for marinating (Sam Wo uses the oil from frying doughnuts)
1 tbsp. each: pickled onions or Japanese scallions, preserved sweet cucumbers, preserved red ginger, preserved sweet and sour yellow ginger (hot), and fresh chopped broad-leaf parsley
juice of one lemon
¼ lb. rice noodles
oil for deep frying the noodles
2 tbsp. sesame seeds, toasted
Skin fish, remove bones, cut into very thin slivers. Mix together cinnamon, salt, pepper, sugar, sesame oil, and marinating oil, and pour over fish slices. Toss well together, marinate ten minutes. Drain the fish, spread it out thin on a plate, put all vegetables, diced, over the top, add the lemon juice. Deep fry the noodles, and add along with sesame seeds just before serving, so they don’t get soggy. Serves two.
Note: If you are not up to raw fish, cold boiled fish can be used, though Edsel would point out with some measure of disappointment that this was neither authentic nor exotic.
Exterior photo thanks to cbcastro
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