Brandon Jew - Mister Jius in Chinatown: Recipes and Stories from the Birthplace of Chinese American Food

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe my sanity, joy, and optimism to my wife, Anna Lee; without her, Mister Jius would not look as it does, would not feel so thoughtful, and would be way harder to run day in and day out. I wake up every day feeling like the luckiest man ever.

Thank you to my family: my parents, Winfred and Mona, who instilled a sense of dedication, integrity, and commitment in me; my older sister, Heather, for your encouragement; and my younger brother, Travis, for your constant positivity.

Thanks to my team, past and present, at Mister Jius. We got better together and the food followed. Special thanks to Sean Walsh, Franky Ho, Melissa Chou, Will Do, Kim Hirota, and Kelly Teramoto for laying the groundwork for our kitchen culture, systems, sense of humor, passion, and work ethic. Special thanks to Maz Naba, Marissa DOrazio, and Jared Feldman, who work behind the scenes to make the restaurant function.

Thank you to Betty Louie, our landlady at Mister Jius, who believed in my vision for the space and has been instrumental in our success. Thank you to my investors, who knew investing in our restaurant also meant investing in Chinatown.

Thank you to my cousin Ryan Lee, you put in so much work to help me design all aspects of the brand. Thank you to my Auntie Char, you didnt let me give up when I thought I had to. Thank you to Uncle Mike, who built all my crazy ideas, like a built-in lazy Susan table and a moon-gate skylight. Thank you to architects Bonnie Bridges and Stephanie Wong, who helped us design and build a space that brought back the glory that the neighborhood deserved.

Thank you to Tienlon Ho, for writing this book with me, for qualifying our ideas, and for pouring your heart into enriching these pages with Chinatowns fascinating history. Thank you to Christine Gallary, for your exacting eye and for patiently decoding all our notebooks into recipes. Thank you to Pete Lee, for being invested in our food and our staff much more deeply than just snapping photos. Thank you to Danielle Svetcov, for your enthusiasm and readiness to help; you were therapeutic. We are all grateful to Dervla Kelly, Doug Ogan, Lizzie Allen, Emma Campion, Serena Sigona, Leda Scheintaub, and Ann Martin Rolke at Ten Speed Press, for carrying us to the finish line.

We owe thanks to all our Chinatown neighbors, some of whom we had the honor of including in this book. Thank you especially for your expertise and stories to Wing, Simon, Eric, and Patricia Cheung of Hing Lung Co.; Tane Chan at The Wok Shop; Dorothy Polka Dot Quock; Candy Lu at Produce Land; Hons Wun Tun House; LeeAnn Lee at Mow Lee Shing Kee & Company; Yau Kung Moon Kung Fu; Hue An Herbs and Ginseng; Mr. Zeng at Tung Fong Herbs; Jones and Judy Wong at Wongs TV & Radio Service; William Wu at Traditional Chinese Medical and Traumatology; Henry Lam and San Francisco 9-Man; Susan Lin at Tin How Temple; Nancy and Kevin Chan at the Chinatown Fortune Cookie Factory; Zhuo Fan Ye at Stylers Art Gallery; Dots Printing; Orlando Kuan at Eastern Bakery; Far East Caf; the Ho family at Sam Wo; and Simmone Kuo at Lien-Ying Tai-Chi Chuan Martial Arts Academy.

Thank you to April Chan, for your help diving into history; Im so glad we crossed paths again. We owe Mai Tais at Li Po Lounge to Tim Mah, Sarah Hauman, Marko Sotto, Jonathan Kauffman, Arielle Johnson, Jowett Yu, Aralyn Beaumont, Sarah Henkin, Andrea Nguyen, Albert Cheng, Chris Ying, Rachel Khong, and AJ Wang. Thank you to Ken Ho and Wenhuei Ho, for sharing your knowledge, and to Jon Adams and Quin Adams Ho, for lending me your most important person. Thank you to Martin Yan, for your commitment to Chinatown and for butchering that chicken so damn fast.

Thank you to Sik Lee Dennig and Mingfei Lau, for dialect expertise. The history in this book draws from the work of many, including Sucheng Chan, Gordon Chang, Jack Chen, Yong Chen, Thomas W. Chinn, Philip P. Choy, Andrew Coe, Marlon K. Hom, Madeline Y. Hou, Nina F. Ichikawa, Liu Junru, Him Mark Lai, Heather Lee, Rose Hum Lee, Beth Lew-Williams, Emma Woo Louie, Jennie Low, Anne Mendelson, Brett de Bary Nee, Victor G. Nee, David Shields, Diane Yee, Connie Young Yu, and Judy Yung, as well as the staffs at the Chinese American Historical Society, California Historical Society, San Francisco Public Library, and University of California, Berkeley and Irvine Libraries.

This book could not exist without the work and inspiration of the many Chinese American cooks, teachers, and visionaries before us. Thank you for paving the way.

BRANDON JEW () is a native San Franciscan and the chef and co-owner with Anna Lee (the Missus) of Mister Jius, a Chinese American restaurant in the heart of North Americas oldest Chinatown.

TIENLON HO () is a writer originally from Columbus, Ohio, where the best Chinese food was always in her family's kitchen. She lives with Jon and Quin in San Francisco.

PETE LEE () is a Taiwanese-born filmmaker and photographer based in San Francisco who loves kung fu movies and is perhaps best known for his elaborate dumpling parties.

CHRISTINE GALLARY () is a recipe developer who ate her first restaurant meals in Oaklands Chinatown. She now calls San Francisco home with her eager taste testers Hayden and Sophie.

ONE LAST THING

For many professional cooks, the work/life balance swings wildly day by day. We love cooking and the restaurant business so much that its easy to justify all the sacrifices, so long as everything holds together.

The first case of Covid-19 in the United States was confirmed in January 2020, and everything changed for every business in Chinatown. On February 25, San Francisco declared a state of emergency, and the streets in this neighborhood emptied out. On March 16, the city was ordered to shelter in place, and all of San Francisco ground to a halt. I wrote this on March 24, when everyone in restaurants around the world were placed in a position we never imagined.

Being in Chinatown, we got hit early. But we are not going down without a fight. We are using every resource possible to support the farmers, grocery stores, customers, our staff, and our food systems. They in turn support us. We are staying nimble and trying whatever we can to stay inspired and inspire others. We are taking it day by day.

Emotionally, it has been a rollercoaster. It has been hard to figure out what to do and how to be responsible as things kept changing. It didnt help that the president keeps calling the virus a Chinese virus. But it also makes me want to fight harder. Everyone on the team at Mister Jius wants to do as much as we can.

We pulled together in crises before, not on this scale, of course, but just as life changing to us as a restaurant family. On New Years Eve 2018, my then-twenty-nine-year-old sous chef, Eric, suffered cardiac arrest while working at Mister Jius. He lay in our kitchen unconscious and bleeding as we stood silent and helpless around him. A 911 operator walked us through CPR until the medics arrived with a defibrillator. Over the course of a week, as Eric fought through a coma, I questioned everything about how I ran the kitchen and about our industry in general. By some miracle, Eric woke up, and walked back into the kitchen with a permanent defibrillator, as lively as ever. Its still hard to believe.

Its hard to imagine the future for Chinatown, where so much is about community, where meals are a bunch of people gathered around a lazy Susan, sharing plates of food. I worry that such experiences might be gone and never come back, and that makes me so sad. When the restaurant industry bounces back from this, we have to work together to change. Our work is physically relentless and stressful. We grind eighty hours a week. No one can live on adrenaline forever. Since that night we almost lost Eric, I have tried to be more creative in ways to support my employees, not just in terms of practical things such as salaries and retirement plans but schedules and systems, communication, mental health resources, community building, and other forms of sanity to get us all through not just the week but the next crisis, happier and healthier.