Fang — Restaurant in San Francisco

My family of 6 went there on Mother's Day. We were so excited because we heard such good things about this restaurant. To our disbelief, the staff were unfriendly, uninterested and like we were bothering them. As soon as we walked in (we had reservations), there were two men (unbeknownst to me, one of them was the owner/chef) standing by the inside door. None acknowledged our presence. They just looked at us. I approached one of the persons and told them we had reservations for 6. He immediately pulled a nearby round table and placed it in front of the drafty door. I told him it was too cold and I did not want a table blocking the door entrance and besides, if this is an a la carte restaurant, there is no way that small round table will do. He said to go downstairs. The hunt for the stairs were on our own. I asked if he had an elevator since I have mobility issues. He pointed and I did not know what he was pointing at. Eventually I figured out it was a door that blended well into the wall.

The elevator is not well lighted. The inside doors opened before the elevator landed. The inside door and outside doors have a gap. It's definitely not safe for young children or adults who have their backs to the elevator door. When I got off the elevator, it was dark and I could barely get out of the elevator because there where numerous huge bags stashed there and it was quite heavy for me to push to get out of the elevator. While struggling to create a safe walking path, a staff came minutes later to help me maneuver around these bags. Where was OSHA?

We were again given a round table. I told the staff that I wanted a larger table because I know my family will be ordering many dishes. He puts us at a table that is smashed up to a bar filled with cookware. See picture. He gives us beverage menus that we can hardly see - the downstairs is dimly lite. We asked for a meal menu and was given only one. We asked again and he said the owner will talk to us. Why? Did we complain? We had no idea why the owner was coming.

Finally, the owner/chef (one of the persons we encountered when we entered the restaurant) came to our table and introduced himself as the chef who will be cooking our meal. He asked us our dislikes, likes, preferences, etc. As he was asking questions and taking notes, he studied each of us. I thought this is really a chef that wants to please his customers. He created 9 dishes for us not including dessert. Each dish had its own personality, flavors, uniqueness, tastes, and smells which were all presented well. The dishes came out fast and were temperature hot. For us, it was like a tasting menu (eat slowly to savor the food ingredients) because there were dishes we never had or dishes that are cooked differently from what we had before. All in all, food was excellent and well prepared. This is definitely a 5 star rating for its food and restaurant ambiance. The cost was about $90 per person.

The best showy entrée was the fried rice that is cooked at your table. See pictures. The fried rice is shaped like an upturned bowl that sits in the middle of a hot grill. The server slowly pours the egg mixture around the mound of the fried rice. As the eggs are almost cooked, he slowly mixes the rice and egg together. This was something new to us. Whether you like fried rice or not, you should give it a try just to see the show.

I am giving this a 3 star rating because of an unsafe elevator, not well lited for people with mobility issues, being seated with cooking dishes and staff...

Sadly, a truly dreadful experience and the worst Chinese food I’ve had in a long time! Fang is a toothless attempt at Chinese cooking. I honestly cannot equate the rest of the positive reviews on here to what we ate - to the point we wondered if were in a completely different restaurant. Everything felt and tasted like it had come from mass produced frozen bags and dumped unceremoniously in a deep fat fryer. Certainly the cooking was done with all the skill of a McDonalds trainee at the fries station. People talk about the fact the service is quick, and it is - but alarmingly and suspiciously so. The duck bao buns were served within minutes of ordering them. Bao should be fluffy and glutenous, but here were stiff and flavourless, a mix of cold onions and semi-warm duck, served in a dense white bread case. I’ve been lucky enough to have home made bao buns and certainly nothing was cooked fresh to order or made on premises here. The ‘melt in the mouth calamari’ just tasted of boredom. Truly the work of a chef who just doesn’t care. The batter was limp and unseasoned, and there wasn’t even the politeness to try to enliven them with a sauce or a sprinkle of spice - just plain, soggy, bog standard calamari that is an embarrassment both to both strong traditions of a city that is located by the ocean and with strong Chinese heritage. The ‘Fang signature’ beef short rib dish was simply badly roasted beef rib, diced then evidently forgotten about in the back of the freezer before being again dumped into that deep fat fryer. Little cubes of grizzled, dried beef, slashed over with a smear of honey and served with cold pak choi. This isn’t Chinese cooking - this is just a cynical way to remove money from customers, using the least possible effort. House special noodles were cold and lifeless too. A zing of some sort of tomato sauce added to them, but not in any way to make them enjoyable. Sadly if Tina Fang’s chefs had 10% the skill of her publicist or plastic surgeon then this place may have been passable, but they don’t - and it wasn’t. Fang is the stereotype of a restaurant trading off past glories. It may once back in the day been interesting and cared for - but now it’s the epitome of lazy cooking and tired ideas. Only propped up by a the presence of a celebrity ‘chef’ that is too busy focusing on Instagram than her restaurant. I dare say everything is mass produced somewhere else and just fried off on premises, certainly it doesn’t taste like any actual cooking is done here, nothing started from a base of raw ingredients. This is supermarket ready meal food, served at great expense. We finished maybe 1/3rd of our food and asked for the bill within 30mins of being seated (yes, they can take order, serve you and you can eat in that time - I did say it was suspiciously quick), yet the waiting staff didn’t seem to care or be curious about why almost all the food was left - evidently they have the same care for the food as the kitchen staff. We left as depressed as the food had been, this place has impressive write ups, but I can only think it is by people who’ve rarely eaten food, let alone Chinese cuisine and are just giddy that they aren’t having to do the washing up later. It truly was terrible and should be avoided at all cost. I’m not sure what was sadder; the waste of $130 that could have been better spent anywhere else, or the waste of time and calories consumed, either which this place is an affront to San Francisco’s food heritage, the concept of a restaurant (ie - not just deep frying ready made food), and...

Horrible experience! We were so excited to try Fang since we watched the tv show so we decided to make reservations for lunch on New Years day. When we got there, everything seemed great, they were able to sit us down right away since there were many tables open. While looking over the menu, one of the waitresses came to our table and just stood over me, she didn’t say a word, just stood there, which I thought was weird. I told her that this was our first time here and she just said “ok”. So we decided on trying a few things, 5 dishes to be exact. 4 of the dishes came out at a good time, which was great! The food looked pretty good but while I was scooping the first dish, I found a HAIR in my food!! I turned right around and tried to waive down a waitress. There was no one walking the floor for a good 6-7 minutes. Finally a waitress saw me waiving and I told her “there’s a hair in my food” so she took the plate back. I watched her to see what she would do and she just took the spoon and replaced it with another and tried to give it back to me, even with the hair still on the plate !!!! I said NO, I’m not taking this, there’s a hair in it! She said “oh ok” and brought it back again and threw it away, like she was suppose to. Wow, that just blew my mind, trying to give me the same food! Finally got a new dish which looked fine. The last dish was the fried rice which we didn’t get yet and we were basically done with our food so I had to waive down the waitress AGAIN. Mind you, NO waitress checked on us to see how the food was or if we needed anything! After waiving her down, I said, we’re still waiting for our fried rice, she had some white rice that she just put in a bowl, she said “oh your fried rice? You want this one?” What kind of service and restaurant is this? I said No, I want my fried rice. But still didn’t get my fried rice until 10 minutes later! Terrible, terrible service! Even after we were all done, I had to waive a waitress down for boxes. She eventually came with boxes and the tablet for the bill. After entering my info, it printed out a receipt. The waitress didn’t say a word to me, she just ripped the receipt and threw it on the table!! Even my wife was saying how rude that was!! I was pretty upset myself, so while walking out, she was at the register and I asked for her name, Kimmy, she said. I said Kimmy, that was a horrible experience we just had. The service was terrible! She said “oh me or everyone” I said you and everyone! Please read this before going to this restaurant. The food is just ok but more on the bland side and the service or better yet the lack of service needs...