Chinese Bakery Near Me in the Outer Sunset: Sheng Kee's Taiwan Toast

Sheng Kee Bakery's Irving Street store opens at 7 am, and an 8-inch Japanese light cheesecake ordered through its own website costs $31.95 for pickup at the counter. The shop is at 1941 Irving St, San Francisco, CA 94122, between 20th and 21st Avenues in the Outer Sunset, and its Google listing shows it open until 7 pm. For a chinese bakery near me search on the west side, it is the Taiwanese-style option on the Irving corridor, built around soft loaf bread and buns rather than Cantonese dim sum.

Sheng Kee tells its own history plainly. Its Our Story page says the business began in Taiwan in 1948 as a small neighborhood shop selling everyday goods, ice cream and fresh bread. In the Bay Area it later took on a role it is proud of: in the early 1990s, the company says, it helped introduce handcrafted mooncakes to America. A 2019 post on its blog shares a scanned old Taiwanese newspaper article about the original shop.

The company has kept growing. Its FAQ describes 13 locations across the Bay Area, and a blog post dated March 11, 2026 announced the thirteenth store, in Dublin. The Irving Street shop is the one the cake ordering page labels Sheng Kee Bakery 101. Do not confuse it with the former Inner Sunset branch on the 800 block of Irving, which review sites now list as closed; the 1941 address is the active one.

Sheng Kee names its two master bakers on its website, which few bakery chains bother to do. Chef Lin, the master baker for buns, has been with the company for more than two decades. His résumé on the site includes three years studying and working in France and Belgium, five years of training at the Japanese bakery chain Sunmerry, and more than 20 years as a master baker for five-star hotels in Taipei, including the Hilton and the Howard.

Chef Ze runs cakes and pastries and has also been with Sheng Kee for more than 20 years; the site says he has been making cakes for well over half his life and is behind the wedding cakes as well as the everyday slices. That split is the way to read the shop: Chef Lin's soft breads and filled buns on one side of your visit, Chef Ze's mousse cakes, Swiss rolls and fruit-topped Danish on the other, and the bakery's own product gallery describes its buns as known for soft texture, balanced sweetness and fresh daily baking.

Start with the bread, because that is what Sheng Kee does differently from the Hong Kong bakeries on Irving. Its signature Taiwan Toast is a soft white loaf sold uncut, thin sliced or thick sliced. The same dough is swirled with custard, coconut or red bean for the sweet loaves, and there are also whole wheat, raisin, and raisin walnut wheat versions. A thick-sliced Taiwan Toast is the house answer to a weekday breakfast.

The pineapple bun list is longer than most. Sheng Kee's blog lists the classic custard and red bean fillings plus taro, chocolate, coconut and peanut, and the bakery also makes a pineapple dinner roll with the sugary crust on a plain roll. The Taiwanese pineapple cake, a crumbly pastry filled with house-cooked pineapple jam, is the gift item, especially during the Mid-Autumn Festival, when mooncakes take over the front counter.

On the pastry side, look for the Strawberry Crème Danish Boat, a boat-shaped Danish filled with cream and topped with strawberries and blueberries that the bakery wrote up on its blog. Review summaries single out the Swiss rolls, in flavors such as honey lemon and orange, as some of the best in town. Coffee and tea are sold too, so you can finish a loaf-and-drink breakfast without a second stop.

Whole cakes are the one place Sheng Kee publishes prices online, and they are ordered on its website for pickup in the shop. The 8-inch Japanese light cheesecake is $31.95, the 8-inch mango mousse cake and green tea red bean cake are $36.95 each, the tiramisu cake is $37.95, the fresh taro cake is $40.95 and the fresh strawberry cake is $42.95. A 6-inch pink piggy cake shaped like a pig's face is $31.95, the same price as the 6-inch chocolate teddy bear cake.

The pickup window on the ordering page for this store runs from 10 am to 5 pm, ending at 4:30 pm on Thursdays, with 30 minutes of preparation time. At the shop, give the cashier your name and order number, as the FAQ instructs. Payment is cash, Visa or MasterCard. For special designs and wedding cakes, the FAQ points you to the in-store booklet for pricing and options.

Mornings are the right time. The shop opens at 7 am and the bread is freshest early, and review summaries warn that popular items sell out later in the day. Google rates this branch 4.1 stars from close to 400 reviews, and the recurring advice in those summaries is simply to come early for the widest choice of buns and sliced loaves.

One honest judgment: do not come here for Cantonese dim sum or savory steamed buns. Sheng Kee's strengths are Taiwanese loaf bread, sweet buns and Japanese-style cakes, and its own FAQ describes the range as bread, cakes, mooncakes and pastries plus coffee and tea, with products varying slightly from store to store. If you need a whole cake, order it online for a pickup slot rather than hoping for one in the case.

If the shelves are thin, Pineapple King Bakery is a few doors east on the same Irving Street block, a takeout counter that specializes in Hong Kong-style butter pineapple buns. Between the two shops you can compare a Taiwanese bun and a Hong Kong one on the same short walk.

The N Judah does not run on this part of Irving Street; west of 9th Avenue it uses Judah Street, one block south. The closest stops are Judah Street at 19th Avenue and Judah Street at 22nd Avenue, each a short walk up to Irving. Riders from downtown can stay on the N through the Sunset Tunnel. Street parking on Irving and the numbered avenues is metered on the commercial strip and tight on weekend mornings.

Lincoln Way and the southern edge of Golden Gate Park are one block north. With a loaf under your arm and a pineapple bun in hand, it is an easy walk into the park for breakfast on a bench. Later in the day, San Tung on Irving Street near 11th Avenue is the neighborhood's well-known dry-fried chicken wings spot if you want lunch on the same corridor.

Sheng Kee Bakery, 1941 Irving St, San Francisco, CA 94122, between 20th and 21st Avenues in the Outer Sunset. Google lists hours of 7 am to 7 pm. Payment is cash, Visa or MasterCard. Whole cakes can be ordered on shengkee.com for store pickup between 10 am and 5 pm. Nearest Muni stops are on the N Judah at Judah Street and 19th or 22nd Avenue.