Yuet Lee is painted a green that has no defence and no explanation. It is on the corner of Stockton and Broadway, it has fluorescent lighting that could be described as unforgiving, and it stays open long after almost everything else in Chinatown and North Beach has shut. For a very specific kind of late San Francisco night — the kind where it is one in the morning and somebody says the words salt and pepper squid — it is the only correct answer.
Yuet Lee keeps its own hours and takes its own day off, and finding that out at the door at midnight is a bad way to end an evening. Ask Karpo whether the green corner is open tonight.
The salt and pepper squid
This is the dish, and ordering anything before it would be a mistake. The squid is cut, lightly battered, fried hard and fast, and tossed with salt, white pepper, chopped chilli and spring onion. It arrives blisteringly hot in a metal dish, the coating is thin and shattery rather than thick and doughy, and the squid itself is tender because it has spent almost no time in the oil. Eat it immediately; it is a substantially worse dish four minutes later.
What makes it work is that it is fundamentally a Cantonese seafood restaurant rather than a late-night place that also does seafood. The wok is hot, the frying is precise, and the kitchen has been doing the same short list for decades. The hour is a bonus, not the product.
What else to order
Steamed fish is the other thing this kitchen does properly — whole, with ginger and spring onion and hot oil poured over at the end — and it is what a table of four should be ordering alongside the squid. Beyond that: clams in black bean sauce, prawns, and a plate of greens with garlic to cut through the frying. The noodle and rice dishes are solid and are there to fill out the table rather than to be the reason for it.
Order seafood. It is a seafood restaurant, the prices reflect that, and the things it does best are all on that half of the menu. Ordering a plate of fried rice here is not wrong, it is just a waste of the trip.
The room, and setting expectations
There is nothing soft about the room. Hard fluorescent light, formica, paper on the tables, a tiled floor that gets mopped constantly, and a level of noise that goes up as the night goes on. Nobody is trying to make you comfortable and nobody needs to. The food comes out fast, the turnover is high, and the whole thing runs with the efficiency of a kitchen that has been doing this for a very long time.
Bring cash. A restaurant of this age and this format has always been safest to treat as a cash business, and it removes the one thing that can go wrong at the end of an otherwise good meal.
The hours are the reason you know about it
Yuet Lee's reputation rests on being open when nothing else is — well past midnight, when the bars along Broadway and Columbus have emptied and the only other options are a slice or a burrito. It also, in the long-standing manner of Chinatown restaurants, takes a full day off during the week rather than at the weekend, which catches out people who assume a restaurant known for being open is always open.
Confirm the day before you build a plan around it. That single check is the difference between the best late meal in the neighbourhood and standing on a corner at half past midnight.
How to order for a table
The mistake groups make is ordering one dish each in parallel, which produces four separate meals and no table. Cantonese seafood cooking assumes shared dishes arriving as they are ready, and the correct shape for four people is: the squid, a whole steamed fish, one shellfish dish in sauce, one plate of greens, and rice. That is five dishes for four people and it will be more food than you expect.
Order the squid first and separately if you can, because it needs to be eaten the moment it lands and everything else can wait. Saying so at the point of ordering is entirely normal here and the kitchen will handle it. The other timing note: whole steamed fish takes the longest of anything on the table, so if the group is impatient, order it at the start rather than adding it later.
Where it puts you
The corner of Stockton and Broadway is the seam between Chinatown and North Beach, which is one of the more interesting places to be standing in San Francisco at any hour. Broadway's bars and clubs are immediately east, Columbus Avenue and the North Beach cafés are a couple of minutes north, and Chinatown proper runs south from the door. If you are constructing a late route, this is the pivot point rather than a detour.
Parking is difficult at any hour and impossible at the weekend. The neighbourhood is well covered by late buses, and this is one of the few late-night meals in the city you can reach on public transport with no planning.
Practical notes
Yuet Lee is the bright green corner restaurant at Stockton and Broadway, between Chinatown and North Beach in San Francisco. Order the salt and pepper squid first and eat it immediately; add a whole steamed fish, clams in black bean sauce and a plate of garlic greens for a table. Stay on the seafood half of the menu. The room is hard fluorescent light and formica, and the noise rises with the hour. Bring cash. It runs well past midnight but takes a weekday closing day, so confirm before you go. Late buses serve the corner well; parking does not.
Tags: #SanFrancisco #YuetLee #Chinatown #NorthBeach #RestaurantsOpenNearMe #LateNightSF #SaltAndPepperSquid #CantoneseFood #SFEats #BroadwaySF #NeighborhoodGuide #BayAreaFood #SeafoodSF #SFClassics
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know whether Yuet Lee is open tonight, how late it is running and what else nearby is still serving? Ask Karpo for a live read on the Stockton and Broadway corner, tonight's closing time, and a backup within two minutes if the green lights are already off.
