A Sneak Peek at the Stunning Dishes Debuting at the Happy Crane

Eater

4 hours ago

is the regional editor for Eater's Northern California/Pacific Northwest sites, writing about restaurant and bar trends, upcoming openings, and pop-ups for the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, Seattle, and Denver.
Chef James Yeun Leong Parry is opening his highly anticipated modern Cantonese restaurant the Happy Crane on Friday, August 8. This is the crowning achievement of his culinary career thus far, which spans Michelin-starred restaurants in Hong Kong (Bo Innovation), Japan (Nihonryori RyuGin), and the United States (Benu). For the last year or so, he's been touring the Happy Crane around San Francisco as a pop-up.
Fittingly, he's found a home in the location of Benu chef Corey Lee's former restaurant, Monsieur Benjamin, in the busy Gough Street corridor. His vision is 'to represent something that feels authentic, that is rooted in traditional flavors,' he says, but given its San Francisco location, the Happy Crane will also be taking advantage of local seasonal produce with a mashup of traditional and modern cooking techniques. 'What I hoped to represent is food that doesn't look overly complicated, but actually in the back end, that's where the work is,' Parry says. 'The real hard work is in the preparation and the techniques.'
Read on for the inspiration and details behind four dishes on the Happy Crane menu.
XO Little Fry King
Jeremy Chiu
Parry calls the XO Little Fry King, 'a wok dish that's super flavorful, very umami-forward.' It's a street food made in dai pai dongs, or food stalls in Hong Kong, incorporating vegetables and dried seafood, like shrimp and fish. In Parry's version, he focuses more on folding in fresh seafood. Cantonese food is highly seafood-focused, and that's something that he is passionate about. Parry will change this dish with the seafood 'seasons'; at the restaurant launch, the dish stars abalone, but he hopes to swap in shrimp or firefly squid when it's the right time of year.
Parry works around the chewy qualities of the abalone through Japanese knife techniques, tenderizing it with thin knife cuts before lightly steaming the meat. This gives the abalone, as Parry puts it, 'the right amount of bite, but it's not overly chewy and still showcases the freshness of the ingredient.' The abalone is then stir-fried with bay shrimp, salted duck leg in place of the more traditional Jinhua ham, Chinese chive flowers, Jimmy Nardello peppers, bean sprouts, and cashew nuts. It offers different textures with the chewiness of the abalone, the crunch of the vegetables, and the umami notes of the XO sauce. 'It looks simple, but actually there's real tension and thought behind it — and it's tasty,' Parry says.
The XO sauce is worthy of its own write-up. As Parry explains, 'It's a labor of love in that there's just a lot of steps, then the yield is quite small.' As Jinhua ham is not allowed into the United States, he is instead making a duck ham, air drying it in the walk-in and adding it to his XO recipe, along with dried scallop and shrimp, raw and dried chiles, garlic, and shallots. The sauce then marinates for six days before it's used in this stir-fry dish. Eventually the team will scale up the amount of XO they make, but for now, this is the only dish it stars in. 'Truthfully, the reason for that is, I'm really stingy about it,' Parry says, laughing. 'It's so labor-intensive.'
Crab rice roll
Jeremy Chiu
Parry admits that cheung fan, or rice rolls, are more of a dim sum brunch dish, 'but I wanted to serve it as a dinner item, almost like a noodle, where we freshly mill the rice ourselves,' he says. He does not include any flour in his batter; instead, the bouncy, chewy gelatinous texture is achieved through soaked jasmine rice ground on a stone, then steamed.
Parry's rice roll is a nod to another dish, similar to a hor fun with gravy — a less common dish at restaurants, he says — so his version comes with a sauce made of crab butter made of crab shells, chicken stock, and Shaoxing wine. The rice rolls are then dressed in this sauce and topped with Dungeness crab, Chinese celery, and yellow chives.
Brent Wolfe quail
Jeremy Chiu
Parry admits he is also very passionate about Cantonese roast meats, and from the start, his team makes its own char siu, or Chinese barbecue pork; siu yuk, a Cantonese roast pork belly; and quail (with plans to expand the offerings down the line). He uses quails from Brent Wolfe, whom Parry calls one of the best quail purveyors in the country. For this dish, Parry takes Cantonese roast duck cooking methods and applies them to this smaller bird, dry-aging it up to six days for a crisp skin. The duck is marinated in their house-made five spice, along with ginger and fresh and dried spices, along with a glaze.
The dish requires a three-step preparation: First, he cooks it at a low temperature before tossing it over a charcoal yakitori grill. It's then finished at a high temperature 'fry' where hot oil is ladled over the bird to crisp up the skin at the end. The bird is then served, bone-in, claw and all, with a side of Sichuan pepper-salt and fresh lime, plus salted, pickled Tokyo turnips to reset the palate.
Mochi Rocher
Jeremy Chiu
Ferrero Rocher chocolates are a favorite gift to give family and friends around Chinese New Year, Parry says, and it serves as the inspiration for his dessert jian dui, or fried sesame dumplings. Traditionally filled with red bean paste or lotus seed, his version is instead filled with dark chocolate ganache and a candied, salted hazelnut, plus a chopped hazelnut exterior.
Parry makes his dough with both rice flour and glutinous rice flour. The dark chocolate ganache is then portioned out with the candied hazelnut at the center, and frozen, before it's wrapped in the dough. The dumplings are then rolled in those toasted hazelnuts, rather than the usual sesame seeds, then fried to order. The result is a still-warm dumpling with a runny chocolate center; to complete the look, it's presented in a Ferrero Rocher-like wrapper. 'It's just a fun, fun way to end dinner, that's not too sweet,' Parry says.
The Happy Crane (451 Gough Street) debuts Friday, August 8, and is open Tuesday through Saturday, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Reservations can be made via OpenTable.
Jeremy Chiu
Jeremy Chiu
Eater SF
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