This eagerly awaited S.F. restaurant won’t ever earn three Michelin stars — and that’s a good thing

If you look at James Yeun Leong Parry’s resume, one interpretation is that things start to go off the rails around 2018. That’s when, after stints at fine-dining restaurants helmed by celebrity chefs in Hong Kong, London, Tokyo and San Francisco, he left Benu for a position at Palette Tea House. 

No disrespect to Palette, a high-volume restaurant in Ghirardelli Square that traffics in newfangled dim sum, such as taro puff swans, their lacy bodies blackened with charcoal, and har gow skewered with pipettes of lobster butter sauce. But a certain breed of ambitious chef would note that it has three fewer Michelin stars than Benu. (Which is to say, none.) Parry’s pivot is the equivalent of a violinist leaving the symphony to take up the fiddle with a bluegrass band.

Now, with three years as head chef at Palette under his belt and several more running successful tasting menu popups, Parry has struck out on his own. After months of frothy anticipation, the Happy Crane opened in August in Hayes Valley. A modern Chinese restaurant, it sings the greatest hits from Hong Kong (where Parry spent much of his youth), Beijing, Chongqing and beyond with a California accent. It’s the opening salvo of a chef with a point of view, and a welcome addition to the city’s contemporary Asian culinary scene.

It’s possible to engage with the Happy Crane’s menu on multiple levels, depending on your familiarity with — or desire to be educated about — Chinese cuisine. An appetizer of a split bao, griddled in brown butter and topped with chicken liver mousse and thinly sliced coppa ($11 per piece), could conceivably be at home in a New American restaurant serving deviled eggs and an heirloom tomato salad. But the curious might ask about the name of the dish, “golden coin,” which is a reference to the esoteric Cantonese snack gum tsin gai, or gold coin chicken. Originating as sustenance for the working class, it was a way for roast meat specialists to sell char siu offcuts, pork fat and chicken livers, all stacked on a skewer, glazed with sticky-sweet sauce then served sandwiched in a bun.

The staff at the Happy Crane, while gregarious, are not walking encyclopedias. They might mention that an entrée of fish-fragrant fish featuring local lingcod ($48) is a cheeky nod to fish-fragrant eggplant, a dish that contains no fish whatsoever, but they’re far from pedants. Unless you drive the conversation, you might not learn about the braising technique applied to the beef shin ($18), or jiang niu rou, a process whereby the meat is babied for nine hours in master stock. This flavor-packed liquid, a sweetened mix of soy and shiaoxing wine infused with spices and aromatics, shares common ground with a sourdough mother or sherry aged using the solera method: After each braise, the master stock is saved and topped up, a never-ending continuum of flavor that will, presumably, only get better as the Happy Crane gets older.

What results is an impossibly tender and savory cut of beef that, thinly sliced and still rosy in the center, is what roast beef wishes it could be. Parry then gives it a mala xiang guo treatment, dressing it with a Sichuan peppercorn vinaigrette and plating it with some vegetables that are commonly found in dry hot pot (celtuce, fried lotus root) and some that decidedly aren’t (last month, creamy confited artichoke hearts). It’s a masterpiece.

The same consideration for balance — crunch meeting softness, acid tempering richness — is evident in the char siu pork jowl ($43). Glistening with its maltose glaze, the sweet, fatty roast pork begs for something sharp and structured. Parry pairs it with shaved raw fennel — mirroring the licoricey notes in the five-spiced marinade — and intense, translucent crescents of green apple that are infused, under vacuum pressure, with lime juice and ginger. I’d like to keep a jar of those pickled apple slices in my fridge to munch on whenever I need to feel alive.

Parry’s attention to texture is so dialed in for his most successful dishes that the ones that fall short come as genuine surprises. A saucy crab rice roll ($32) made with steamed rice noodles that are milled in house should have been a triumph, but the cheung fun was frail, lacking chew and integrity. And the main crunch came not from the celery but, unfortunately, bits of crab shell. 

Whether fair or not, diners will want to know where to mentally situate the Happy Crane among San Francisco’s other titans of modern Chinese cuisine; I look forward to a time when, like Cal-Italian restaurants, there are so many excellent examples that we no longer have to play them off one another. On the casual-to-swank spectrum, it falls solidly in between Four Kings and Mister Jiu’s — both on our list of the top 100 restaurants in the Bay Area. It’s a date night or pre-theater spot where the service is informal and, although a tasting option exists ($120 per person), the menu does not aspire to fine-dining pageantry. 

Parry’s time in exacting, three-star kitchens is evident — the knife work, the plating, the wink-wink cleverness — even in humble stir fries and smacked cucumber salads. Kate Moss without makeup still has cheekbones. But I, for one, am grateful he chose a less buttoned-up road. I don’t dislike a tasting menu, but that $18 beef shin deserves to be eaten by everyone.

451 Gough St., San Francisco. thehappycranesf.com

Hours: 5-9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday

Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible, no outdoor seating

Meal for two, without drinks: $125-$240 (for the “happy as a crane” tasting menu, which is $120 per person)

What to order: Ginger scallion scallop ($18); beef shin ($18); golden coin ($11 per piece); oyster pancake ($28); char siu pork jowl ($43); Peking duck service ($110, by preorder); mango sago sorbet ($14)

Meat-free options: Smacked cucumber and smoked figs ($14); snap pea dumplings ($7 per piece); maitake biang biang noodles ($36)

Drinks: Spend some quality time with the drink menu, which features gorgeous original artwork by Parry’s sister, Yolande Lui Parry. Creative cocktails ($17-$20) with housemade cordials incorporate Asian flavors; try the Serpent’s Kiss, which layers miso and hot mustard atop an agave base, but skip the too salty non-alcoholic Flying Nimbus. A couple Taiwanese beers and a dozen or so wines by the glass, with Advanced Sommelier Justin Chin on-site to assist with bottle selection.

Best practices: The blazing hotness of the Happy Crane currently makes securing a reservation challenging, but eventually this will become an excellent pre-opera/symphony option for the Civic Center crowd. Half the bar is reserved for walk-ins, if you’re striking out on Open Table.