Eatery - Great Eastern Restaurant (CA)

649 Jackson St, San Francisco, CA 94133 (Neighborhood: Chinatown)
Pricing - $$ | Dining - Casual | Cuisine - Chinese, Dim Sum

Since I was vacationing in San Francisco for a weekend, I knew I had to meet up with a friend I hadn't seen in years who had moved to the area. We agreed on dim sum and this was her suggestion for sit-down dim sum in Chinatown (there are mostly to-go dim sum places there). It wasn't hard to find at all but there was definitely a line when we went in on a Sunday morning around 10:30. Lines usually mean everything's great right? My friend told me while we were waiting that instead of traditional dim sum carts being pushed around, we would get a menu and order (sushi bar style almost). That was pretty interesting - it was a good thing there was also a picture page so we weren't lost by the translations.


We actually ordered a ton of food but managed to eat it all; hoorah for having a guy eat with us eh? I really liked everything except for the shrimp rice noodle which is my favorite of the typical dim sum dishes. It was probably BECAUSE it's my favorite that I was so critical. The fried crab balls were very juicy and delicious. I introduced the two to the taro and meat crisps, and we all tried fried shrimp paste. Great stuff. As for more traditional/steamed foods, the shu mai and har gow were great. There was also a shrimp & cilantro dumpling that I tremendously enjoyed for the bursts of flavor it gave me. Overall, a somewhat crowded place (hence the lack of carts being pushed around) but delicious food and quick service. My only real beef is that it was much more expensive than I'm accustomed to dim sum being!