327 Balboa Street, San Francisco, CA 94118
(415) 221-8498
Parking: limited street parking
Last Visited: March 19, 2006
Food: 3 to 4 stars
Atmosphere: 2 to 3 stars
Service: 2 to 3 stars
Price: $ to $$$
Turns out that this Bay Fung Tong restaurant has an affiliation with Best Panda (now closed) a number of blocks down the street. However, Bay Fung Tong is quite a bit more spacious, and offers dim sum at lunch time.
Many of the same items at Best Panda can be found at Bay Fung Tong – large portions and fresh ingredients are trademarks of both restaurants. The atmosphere is extremely casual with lots of fluorescent colored papers listing specials posted on the wall. Nothing fancy, but good food at a great value is available.
This evening’s set menu for four available for $36 consisted of the following:
- Seafood soup with tofu – Hot soup is presented in plentiful portion with shrimp, fish, tofu cubes, and yellow chives. It’s lightly thick and quite filling. For four people, it’s more than enough to have a second helping. Good.
- Vegetables with squid, prawns, and scallops – Snap peas or other seasonal vegetables are sautéed with squid, prawns, and scallops. On cool evenings, this dish cools down super fast, but it’s fine on a warm night. The seafood is fresh and the vegetables are crispy. Good.
- Deep fried quail (3) – Three quail are deep fried and halved. A half of lemon is served with the quail along with dry dipping seasoning. The quail has a lot of flavor from the marinade and the dipping seasoning adds a touch of saltiness. Today’s quail was light brown in color, and due to the size, the meat tends to taste dry around the areas where there is less flesh. Okay.
- Ginger and green onion sautéed crab – If you’re willing to get your hands messy, this is an excellent dish with crab sautéed in a sauce that contains ginger and green onion that flavors the cooking oil and the crab. Again, more fresh seafood and good wok air, but on a cool evening, this dish also cools down quickly. Good.
- Clams with black bean sauce – This is one of my favorite dishes. Black bean sauce is used to sauté a mix of clams, onions, green onions, and peppers to give the clams just a hint of heat. Very good.
- Dessert of the day: Tapioca in coconut soup with ginger – Today’s tapioca was a little on the thick side for the soup, so the consistency tasted a little less light on the palate, but the ginger gave the dessert distinctiveness. Okay.
- Steamed Rice $0.80 per person
The overall experience was similar to that found at Best Panda. Great value and fresh food, but I prefer this location to the other; however, note that parking is quite difficult at Bay Fung Tong and be willing to walk a few blocks to the car. At both Best Panda and Bay Fung Tong, the turnover rate of the food is high due to the quantity of patrons, so the food is consistently fresh, even if the presentation looks like home cooking. I would like to check out dim sum at Bay Fung Tong sometime soon.
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