A Decorated Dowager

PHOTO BY JASON DOIY

Chef Sing Lui prepares roast duck at the Empress of China in San Francisco Chinatown.

Why Empress of China rules--as a tourist attraction

BY M.C. ANDERSON

Empress of China restaurant enjoys a rock-solid spot on the Chinatown tourists' circuit. The million-dollar views! The attentive service! The elegant decor! The food!

Framed snippets of reviewers' praise decorate the ground floor of the tower that houses the restaurant: "Food is great!'' raves Vogue Living. "Don't miss the experience of dining here.'' exclaims Esquire. "Best menu, decor and view'' gushes Town and Country Magazine.

Plaudits aside, Empress of China is worth a visit for the views, the ornate decor, the generally good service and a visual confirmation that the tourist industry is thriving in San Francisco. But the food? The most that can be said about the Chinese American fare is that it's a cross between the inoffensive, the mildly pleasant and the dull.

Nonetheless, it was a kick for this jaded Bay Area resident to see tourists enjoying San Francisco at its most charming. Camera-toting tour groups from all compass points squeezed themselves into the elevators to this sixth-floor rooftop restaurant. At lunch or dinner, it's the "click-click" of cameras as jolly diners oooing and ahhing at the views of North Beach's hilly landscape and Coit Tower line their buddies up against the plate glass windows for their own photo-op. Empress of China's ground floor hit parade is worth a look, too. The walls are plastered with pictures of celebrities, past and present, who've chowed down here. Remember Englebert Humperdinck, the singer? There he is on the wall, near beaming Raymond "Perry Mason/Ironsides'' Burr. There's also Terilyn Joe, Jackie Chan, Willie Brown, Pete Wilson, Jack Lemmon, Judge Lance Ito, Tony Bennett and on and on.

Even food critics Craig Claiborne and James Beard are beaming. Maybe they're smiling about the impressive decor. As you get off the elevator, you walk into a pavilion at the center of which is a pine tree bathed in light filtering in from a skylight. Tapestries and other artwork, carved panels, an intricately tiled floor and little signs explaining what you're looking at make for a palatial entrance area.

Several dining rooms and a cocktail lounge are on this floor--quintessential rooms with a wiew of North Beach, Portsmouth Square, Nob Hill and Russian Hill. Chandeliers, soft lighting, thick rugs and sconces with peacock feathers decorate the main dining area. Elegance extends to the service, too. The food, in silver dishes on pedestals, is wheeled to you table on carts, and the servers prepare each plate. They are very gracious in answering dumb questions like, "What's this crunchy stuff?''

The dinner menu, too, has its pretensions, boasting that it offers dishes from all regions of China. It flags dishes from Beijing, Shanghai, Canton, Szechuan and Mongolia.

But whatever their provenance, the dishes we tried were unmemorable. Take the Peking potstickers ($5.75), for example: The meat filling was a mushy mound of blandness, with only ginger shreds and hot oil covering the outside to add flavor. The sizzling rice soup (North China, $5.95) was pleasant but had a thin-tasting broth.

We went on to Szechuan and the chicken in plum sauce ($12.95), which had a one-dimensional steady heat among all those chicken chunks and sundry vegetables, including bamboo shoots, red peppers and bok choy. That old standby, sweet-and-sour pork, (ascribed to Canton, $11.25) was deep-fried pork, stiff with a orange-red cloying, sticky-sweet sauce. The Mu Shu vegetarian ($10.25) tasted only of onion and mushrooms.

The least-successful dish was a very big-ticket item: braised sliced abalone with vegetable ($37.50), consisting of thin slices of faintly fishy-tasting flesh smothered under limp cabbage coated in brown sauce.

To its credit, the much shorter lunch menu dispenses with pointing out regional pedigree (and raising expectations). Old Chinese American standbys, including chow mein, wontons and fried rice, take the stage.

Still, a sampling of the lunch fare was less impressive than the dinner menu: The golden prawns ($7), served with sides of mustard and sweet-and-sour sauces, were buried in thick batter and fried till they resembled Chicken McNuggets. The shredded Cantonese duck mein ($7.75) was a bland tangle of slivers of duck and sprouts and thin noodles that left a sheen of grease in the mouth.

So, if you aren't a tourist, why go? The views are worthwhile, the service pleasant, the setting elegant, quiet and romantic. And the food won't get in the way of the experience.

Albert Gorgonio of Los Angeles gazes out toward Coit Tower while dining.

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