FoodWaterShoes

We love getting a great deal almost as much as we enjoy eating which is why one of our favorite times of the year is Restaurant Week. A number of cities across the country host their Restaurant Weeks simultaneously. Right now you can catch Chicago Restaurant Week, NYC Restaurant Week and SF Restaurant Week. This year 130 restaurants in San Francisco and around the Bay Area are participating in SF Restaurant Week. Restaurant Week hot spots will be offering prix fixe menus, special or new items that they’re testing out and/or discounted grub from Jan. 22 to Jan. 31, 2018.

SF Restaurant Week presents a wonderful opportunity for you to try new restaurants that you may not be familiar with, but it also serves as a wonderful reminder to support local joints you love. Our SF Restaurant Week selection this year was one of our favorite local haunts, China Live in San Francisco. We used our visit to nosh on a few of the dishes we know we love (like China Live’s xiao long bao and its moist pork belly buns). We also decided to road test a few of the plates we hadn’t sampled during our first trip to this wonderful Chinese marketplace and restaurant.

One of our favorite new items that we tried were the pan fried pork dumplings. They just might be one of our new go to dishes at China Live. The dumplings were perfectly browned and the insides were piping hot. No wonder they put little wooden sticks in the dumplings noting, “Hot & Juicy.”

In addition to China Live, here’s a list of other neat little local spots we love in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In honor of SF Restaurant Week, China Live is offering both a prix fixe lunch menu and a prix fixe dinner menu. Twenty five dollars at lunch will get you a drink (either 8 Treasure Tea or a pint of Marin Brewing Co. China Live Shanghai Blonde Ale), a take home jar of China Live’s house made chili sauce, one appetizer or dim sum item and one big plate. For $40 during dinner you can snag a drink (8 Treasure Tea, China Live Shanghai Blonde Ale, a glass of cava, sauvignon blanc or pinot noir), a take home jar of China Live’s house made chili sauce, one appetizer or dim sum item, one big plate and a dessert item (we highly recommend the soft serve durian ice cream we had during our first visit to China Live).

The big plate item that we ordered during our lunch was the Shanghai “fat” chow mein with pork, shrimp and chicken. The chow mein and the pork belly lotus buns were both solid, but it was the xiao long bao and the pan fried pork dumplings that really knocked our socks off.

We didn’t necessarily need another reason to pop into China Live, but SF Restaurant Week sure was a good excuse for us to get our tasty Chinese food fix. It also saved us some serious dough. Had we ordered the chili sauce, an ale, the pan fried pork dumplings and the chow mein à la carte that portion of our meal would have cost us $41.95. By ordering off of the SF Restaurant Week menu, we saved ourselves $16.95, supported a local business and had happy tummies.

SF Restaurant Week
Here is the full list of restaurants participating in SF Restaurant Week.
Dates: Jan. 22 to Jan. 31, 2018

China Live
Address: 644 Broadway
San Francisco, California 94133
Hours: Monday Through Thursday 11:00am to 10:00pm, Friday 11:00am to 11:00pm, Saturday 10:30am to 11:00pm, Sunday 10:30am to 10:00pm
Phone: (415) 788-8188
Email: Info@ChinaLiveSF.com
SF Restaurant Week Pricing (All in USD): Lunch Menu $25.00 Per Person, Dinner Menu $40.00 Per Person