"i don 't normally bother with 3* places: not bad enough to never come back; not good much less great. but this will be the first in a series on steam table takeout chinese which i hope will be better than my series on baked bao during the lockdown, or the abandoned plan to review central valley romani fortune tellers in visalia. the bao series failed because the best places are the bakeries which had a high rate of termination during the lockdown (of course most of the survivors didn 't lockdown in the first place . problem with the fortune tellers related to some uncalled for nastiness. the interest in steam table takeout chinese dates to my back pages living on the bowery near canal in manhattan. i could go on and on about the tragic and twisted effects this area has on living creatures here, much like how gamma radiation distorts the growth of exposed baby chicks, bunnies, gardenias, etc. (all because of course this very corner is on one of the 12 edges that contain the cubic world as we know it, but never one to stray off topic i 'll explain all that another day. otherwise, chinatowns are great places to live for a few years; perhaps try it yourself sometime? it 's good if you 're in thin-wallet days and there 's never any trouble with neighbors because of the cultural language barrier. just mind your own business, keep your head down as you come and go and don 't complain when cooking odors seep through the wall. you will need to eat something too, and the cheapest way to do so is brings us back to this place, clement bbq. these days this is my go-to for roast duck, merits a 4*. the guy behind the counter with the cleaver knows me on sight now; i just signal i want a big one adding a peculiar gesticulation that means i also want the head. you may well get this anyway but i think expressing some minor demand assures not getting white boy treatment as someone here complained. ducks cost about $20 now; the skin is of course salty so if that bothers you separate and save it for your pet snake. the baked char siu bao is also good here, generous pork without filler like onions. but overall the menu is salty savory, nothing sweet like nai wong bao. to the downside: there maybe some nasty off-flavors brewing on the steam table. yelpers ' descriptors being it 's rotton, like wet basement, nyc subway, old gym socks and shoes, etc etc. there are also one or two reports of food poisoning which if true is more serious. but what 's going on for the rest results from the restaurant 's diverse population of non-pathogens that live in various parts of the kitchen. these are benign and don 't result in closure by the sfdph inspector because all restaurants have some of these bacteria as they 're rather durable. on the brightside they contribute to food their own unique and characteristic sensory complexities. i 've experienced worse and i usually notice it when it 's gotten riper after a day 's aging in my fridge. so i don 't keep leftovers or if i do i add a healthy dose of chili sauce. but you might try something else: think of these malodors as something akin to that stinky bret character in certain wines that tasters gleefully expound on. just think of it as clement street bbq 's terroir ."
