Lee Hou Restaurant

I tried to go here a week or two ago and found out it had closed :(
It was fantastic — their honey wings are amazing!
I wonder why the «first Chinese restaurant on Clement St.» wasn’t grandfathered into ADA! This place was historic, and in these economic times I understand the pressure they were under.
Best of luck to all those who gave us wonderful food and service at Lee Hou!

WARNING: Not your typical review.
I’ve never had dinner here. In fact, I’ve never even eaten in the restaurant. The ONLY DISH I have had over the years and the only thing my parents order to take home is…
the snails.
Yes, those slimy-​looking creatures that live in a shell and move slowly. We’ve been coming here to buy the snails for as long as I can remember. These snails are the BEST snails you will ever taste. The sauce is simply superb. Amazing. Unbelievable. It has bits of pork it it, jalapeño, black beans, and cilantro. I don’t know why, but it’s just so good!
(As far as I’m concerned, I’m the only normal person among you crazy people who don’t like snails!)
So yes, 1 dish from this restaurant is enough for me to give it 4 stars. That should give you an idea of how much I love this dish. Simply indescribable. I pretty much wouldn’t care if the other dishes tasted like crap. Sue me.

Been coming to this restaurant since I was a kid and it’s never let me down. Chinese food here is excellent! I’ve been here for a few wedding banquets and I never get tired of the food. When I come here for dim sum, all the plates are 1.95. THAT’S EVEN CHEAPER THAN CHINATOWN! I usually come here to eat with family or friends and it’s usually family style. The one thing that I order EVERY time is the HONEY GARLIC WINGS. THEY ARE THE BEST WINGS I’VE EVER HAD HANDS DOWN!
Service here is exceptional. The waiters and waitresses here remember my family and are always friendly/​social to them.
***Parking***: Parking may be hard to find during lunch and dinner hours. Street parking only. FEED THE METERS TO AVOID THE TICKET!
***QUICK TIP***: If you come here and do not order the honey garlic wings, YOU are a SUCKER! THOSE WINGS ARE A MUST TRY! I GUARANTEE IT WILL NOT DISAPPOINT!
Cash/​Credit are accepted here.

Come here for the regular entrees — excellent chow mein, spicy good Mongolian lamb, adequate beef and broccoli, great fried rice, all at affordable prices. I’ve eaten in — okay service, clean tables (never used the restroom). I’ve also gotten take out — ten minute wait but food was still good.
Just a note — I’ve never had their dimsum, which I notice a lot of reviews slam.

I am kicking myself for not writing this review four years ago! This place is one of my favorites — awesome down-​home Chinese food that is very vegan-​friendly. I’m a big sucker for the salt & pepper fried tofu — perfectly fried crispy cubes of tofu-​y perfection with fat slices of jalapeño and green onions. They also have fantastic pea shoots with garlic and serve many delicious dim sum that are vegan friendly. Fantastic green onion pancake!
The restaurant is huge and the clientele mostly are Asian — I’ve never had a problem with the service or quality of food, and they are very cheap!

When I lived in Boston, it was a tradition to go to dim sum on the weekends. As poor students who had poor money management skills, dim sum was a place where we could see the food before we paid for it, order a lot, and pay around $ 11 per person for a full stomach.
San Francisco has not been as gentle a transition. No longer am I able to go to dim sum on the weekends. Partially I blame the school thing. Undergrad was a cakewalk compared to law school. Freaking angry amounts of work that never end. And also I blame the emerging foodie in me that started to control my thoughts. Unilocal was too powerful an influence. I was unable to go to places that had less than 4 stars. I could not just walk down the street, pick a place, and eat it. It was paralyzing. It was an addiction.
Lately I have been seeking help for my obsessive compulsive self-​destructive ways in the form of online self-​help articles and blogs about spiritual awareness. BTW, on this point I believe that twitter will never replace the blog. Who can be spiritually touched in 140 characters or less? I need at least 2000 characters of bullshit before being broken down into the slipper shell of a human being, only to be built up by the online wikiHow guru’s soothing words. Ah. The interwebs. Al Gore created a good thing.
This afternoon, I went to the Bouquets and Art thing at the de Young museum where I got trampled by several hundred women with no boundaries. Just because it’s a flower arrangement, DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN TOUCH IT. Or stick your nose in it. After all, it’s being displayed next to Rothko. And Sargent. And it’s suppose to last all effing week, not just long enough for your luncheon.
Then we came here. A crusty old crone on the street was walking by as my parents and I pressed out little asian noses against the window in wonderment. On clement, I know as much about dim sum as the plumber knows about my UTI. The old crone told us that this place was really good, very good value. Upon inspection, the menu boasted (in chinese) that everything dim sum was $ 1.95. AMAZING. Table service for that price? Small, Medium and Large? All for $ 1.95? During the weekdays.
We ordered about 11 dim sum dishes and 1 BBQ pork fried rice (for the BF, don’t want him to feel left out or punished). The total was $ 32. We brought home 3 take-​away containers.
The dim sum was tasty. The ingredients tasted vibrant. The rice wrapper was not gooey or melty or over steamed. It came out in dainty little bamboo steamers. Wielded by an angry asian girl with a pair of dull scissors. I guess I’m so used to being man-​handled by the merchants on Clement that I accept the abuse as part of the experience.
NOT SO. Do not let yourself be oppressed. Do not accept the limited attention and the other rude diners who cut you out of line for some limp har gow. Stick to your guns. Because one day a while back a man dared to dream a dream. He dreamed that we would sit down at the table together and eat. He did not mention anything about taking the dim sum in a plastic bag. So I believe that table service for dim sum should be affordable. I don’t think the floors have to be super clean (have you ever seen China? Why do you think SARS originated there? And the bubonic plague?) in order for the food to satisfy your soul.
I’m going to make a weekly habit of this: museum with the parents, then dim sum or some other dainty.
Live to die, to live to dream. To live to eat another round of dim sum.
Oh, and just for future reference, wearing maternity legging pants whilst NOT pregnant is not helpful for portion control or weight loss goals. Exact opposite.

Durian anyone? They have this flaky dessert filled with Durian inside. If you like Durian, you would love this. It is not too sweet and not at all greasy. Another special dessert is the salty egg custard steamed bun. It doesn’t look like much when it comes and when you bite into it, you’re wondering where is the salty taste. Go to the center. I haven’t been to Lee Hou for a long time and I’m glad they have changed hands and there’s new wait staff — younger with less attitude. Why do Chinese wait staff have attitudes? Maybe working 12 hours per day and being unappreciated. Oh, this isn’t a social review. Forgot. I really liked that Lee Hou’s dim sum is not so salty. There is so much to chose from, snails anyone? tripe (boiled or spicy)? We had eight dishes and came out to be $ 23. Not bad.

It’s strange how their dim sum is so much cheaper than their dinners.
I’ve been here a few times usually for cheap and decent dim sum. The menu carries the standard shrimp dumplings, shu mai, BBQ pork buns, chicken feet, and some eclectic items that I don’t usually see at other restaurants like skewer lamb or steamed salty egg yolk bun. I rarely find egg yolk buns with salted yolk. It’s good. To give you an idea how cheap it could be, we ordered 11 items and the bill was less than $ 41. I’m a fan.
However for dinner, $ 41 got me only 4 items, plus or minus $ 10 depending on what was ordered. I had crab meat & fish maw soup, snow pea leaf with garlic sauce, salt and pepper rock cod fillet, and steamed chicken with ginger scallion sauce.
The pea leaves were fresh with a crisp bite. The soup could use a little more salt but nothing a few shakes of salt couldn’t solve and also I prefer my food saltier than most people. The salt and pepper rock cod fillets had fried bits of garlic and fresh slivers of jalapeño. It’s one of my favorite. If it’s on the menu, i’m ordering it. Lee Hou made it tasty and not greasy.
Now the steamed chicken is something else. Either it was premature or on a diet because there were hardly any meat on it though the meat was lean without any fatty deposits. The chicken was moist and tasty with the ginger scallion sauce. The sauce was perfect and I would have rice with just the sauce alone.
As always, service was prompt for dim sum or for dinner.

The best green onion pancakes I’ve ever had. Great honey garlic chicken wings (on the dim sum menu, not sure if also on the dinner menu). Very good Singapore-​style black pepper crab. Good Mama’s pork hocks with vinegar. And the black sesame dessert (like tong yuan but fatter with peanut powder) was very good too.
If you come for dimsum and there is a long line, go to the front and ask for/​demand a number. I waited for a long time after being told there was no waitlist only to find out people that came after me were given numbers.

The waiters might be a little dull, but the owner is really nice.
The food is good and it’s not pricey. After we finish are meal, we sometimes get dessert, no charge.

Ok so I know it’s odd to give 5 stars to a one $ sign restaurant that has an average 3 star rating. but I couldn’t find anything wrong with this place and I really enjoyed dinner here :)
Tonight I had the Singapore pepper crab ($ 18. Yea, $ 18 for a crab!), garlic Chinese broccoli, and steamed rice. SO good. Tons of sauce on the crab, and I poured it all over my rice. And the broccoli was crunchy so I could bite it and it’d break off in crisp pieces without it getting all string-​y on me or having to use fork + knife.
I’d also recommend black bean mussels, deep fried flounder (only $ 8 OMFG#@#8!!!), salt & pepper wings.
Dirt cheap, delicious food, attentive servers. So rare to get that even at $$$$ places lemme tell ya.

Yummm! Delicious, bizarre and authentic! Service was ok. Scoot over Andrew Zimmern this is where the real experience for trying ‘something different’ happens. Frog legs. Sea snails. Jelly fish. Fish in spicy yumminess… dim sum…
I’m definitely coming back for more… affordable and unusual… anyone up for something different?

I have only been at Lee Hou at hours past dinner time on Friday nights. We have ordered a myriad of dishes that are on the menu, but one of them clearly rises above the rest. Often times, I would regret ordering the other dishes, and secretly hope that they only bring out this dish in place of all the other ones.
I am talking about the Salt & Pepper Chicken Wings of course.
Each wing is a piece of art, splashed full of seasoning and carefully fried. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about these wings. Well, not really, but I just wanted to let you know how good they are.

This review is for their dimsum only as I have not tried their dinner menu.
Majority of their dimsum dishes are $ 1.95 each, so dont come here expecting Koi Palace or another high class restaurant quality because you get what you pay for. I’ve been here twice so far and the first was more memorable than the second.
The first time I came a few months ago with my grandmother and all the dishes that we ordered were steaming hot when it arrived. Today was a different story. We ordered their clay pot rice, which was fresh and not bad tasting at all. For the dimsum, we ordered the following:
Shanghai dumplings: way too soggy. The meat slipped right out of the skin as I picked it up. Skip
Pork Sui Mai: not bad at all!
Shrimp Dumplng: OK
Beef and shrimp rice noodles: the noodles were too thick in my opinion and not as silky???
Steamed spareribs: good
Chicken feet: would taste better if it came out steaming out rather than warm
Turnip cake: came out warm as if it had been sitting
Shrimp w/​chives: filling was a bit dry
Bean curd: I was too full to eat this!
The total was only $ 38.00 and we had a ton of leftovers!

Nothing really impressed me except that the bill came out to $ 12 per person after tax/​tip and I had to be practically rolled outta there because I was so full.
Siu Mai — Yum.
Shanghai Dumplings — Where’s the soupy bottom? They were tough and stuck together, not delicate and filled with soup.
Baked BBQ Buns — For some reason it is hard to come across a good one. These ones weren’t piping hot and not filled to the brim with pork. I would get it again just because not many people serve good ones.
Egg Tarts — Didn’t taste flaky and fresh. I just scooped out the custard to eat.
Sponge Cake (Chinese corn bread) — Was good, but I always end up having to try to finish this myself because no one likes it but me.
Chives Dumpling — Got a nice crunch to it. They weren’t sticking together like all the other dumplings!
Shrimp Dumpling — Not bad, but seemed over-​steamed because all 4 started sticking together. I hate when you have to mutilate the dumpling to peel them apart.
Shrimp Noodles — OK. The noodles weren’t as silky as I would have liked.

12.25.09
Christmas dim sum with the fam.
I actually expected waits up the butt seeing how Chinese restaurants are the only things open on Christmas, but the variety of Asian places on Clement helped out quite a lot. We were seated promptly and tea/​water were served quickly.
Don’t expect dim sum ladies here — they hand you a two-​ply menu that you mark and the waiters bring you your orders.
Breaking it down to the must haves and the must skips.
Have:
Pork dumplings
Shrimp rice rolls
Cilantro rice rolls
Pork blood and scallions
Clay pot rice with bok choy and cured pork
Fried taro
Fried egg rolls
Green onion pancakes
Skip:
Shanghai dumplings — flavorless and soupless
Egg tarts — taste like they’ve been sitting on the counter for days
Specialty chicken feet — flavorless, nothing special at all
Turnip cake
A huge plus is that they don’t charge a fee for tea like most other dim sum places. Our total was $ 40+ out the door — and that’s for seven people! Cheapest meal I’ve paid for in a while :)

Raised to four stars. Been here for dinner before, a long time ago, but never dimsuming. Got in at 11:45am on a Sunday, half full (not a good sign on first impression) but no problem picking our own table (as opposed to the one near the front entry, or the waiter-​picked heavy-​traffic table near the doorway leading to the kitchen). The patrons were half OG-​foreign Asians, half ABCs, with a smattering of non-​Asians — so it’s all good.
Ordering was from a check-​off form and came consistently at intervals (no lags, no bunching up). The servers were prompt once able to flag them down, though they don’t auto-​replace your plates once they get too messy to eat with. Must ask for. They don’t bring extra bowls for entrée items at dimsum. Must ask for.
Pretty much the dimsum standards:
2 steamed chicken feet
2 stuffed bell peppers
1 shark fin soup dumpling
1 shrimp dumpling
1 fried taro cake
1 turnip cake
1 Chinese broccoli
1 shrimp flour crêpe
1 seafood pan fried noodle plate
All for only a few cents under $ 40, that’s ATBT (after tax, before tip) — that’s great for «yum cha» ITTET. Everything was quite good (this decision was made before even seeing the bill) and will return for dimsum, even within the very-​difficult-​to-​find-​parking Inner Richmond.

Another fav hits the spot today
Stopped in today for a clay pot of lamb with bean curd stick.
Tip: before they bring you tea, ask the waiter if they can bring you
Ga’ uk-​Fah tea. (chrysanthenum flower tea). My favorite yummy tea.
Lamb with Bean Curd Stick is the jam today.
Comes on a bed of hot rice; it’s an arresting sight: of bean curd sticks sauteed with lamb meat. This combination is yummy in a way only the chinese can create: it tastes of spices and chinese cooking wine.
Comes with a tiny saucer of fermented tofu bean paste.
Enough for two medium eaters.

I came here after a nice, typical night of drinking in the neighborhood. The plan was to simply cure some post alcoholic munchies that often accompany a night of debauchery and lighter wallets.
I expected to leave here full.
What I didn’t expect was the FXXX’ING worm in my food!
OH NO U DIDNT! Do I look like I WANT A SHIPMENT OF EPIC FAIL CAT IN MY FOOD?! YOU FOOLS DIDN’T WASH YOUR VEGGIES?!
I mean, never mind that the 2 types of pork weren’t bad nor was the Yin Yang fried rice, but wow, a fried worm for the LOSE! And we’re not talking a cute, snuggly little worm here. We’re talking the MEATY, CHUBBY, caterpillar that didn’t get the part in «A Bug’s Life» because he was TOO FAT!
Once I pointed this out to the manager, he simply looked it, took it away, and within 3 minutes, brought out the same dish. WTF?! You think I want the SAME thing twice? Have you not heard of post traumatic stress syndrome?
Shocked, I just sat there with my friends, looking at the «new» dish. The manager then disappeared and wouldn’t come out from his hiding spot. When the check came, they brought out the wrong check. I thought they were making amends to our misfortune by reducing the bill, but nooooooo! So when we paid, the waitress came back with our real bill, which was quite expensive.
I took one look at her and said «You need to give us a discount. And you charged for white rice? I should charge you $ 1000 having to put up with this FOOLIO IGLACIOUS mishap! In fact, you should pay ME for having to live with this nightmarish memory forever!»
So she went and spoke with the manager (who was conveniently out of sight in the front behind the dim sum area), and we got a $ 2 dollar reduction on our bill.
FXXX’ING LEE HOU! If there is such a person, I’m going Bruce LEE on your ASS.

Way Decent dining in SF, especially if you are on a budget. This place is similar to many of the very casual tea houses and lunch cafes in Hong Kong, with service to match.
Walk in, tell the manager what kind of tea you want (their jasmine is pretty good and so is their oolong). You then should WIPE DOWN the table and utensils with some of your Purell wipes, mark what you want on the piece of paper they give you, hand it to the bus person, and Bingo.
Their dim sum is pretty darn good, as are their soups and noodles. One trick my Dad taught me when going out for dim sum is to always order soup and a big noodle dish, such as chow mein or chow fun, for your table so you get filled up faster and order fewer of the pricier smaller dishes. Try it, it works!
Come for the cheap food, not the service. On that note, since the servers do not actually serve your table, much less attentively take your order, you do not, and probably should not tip as much as you would in a more formal dining place. They rarely get more than a few dollars, unless they totally screw up our order, which has happened a few times here.