Michelin-starred chef now serves dumplings at cheaper SF spot

We’re lucky that Michelin-starred chef Ho Chee Boon, originally from Malaysia, thinks that San Francisco “is the perfect city.”

He decided to settle here with his family after opening the SF location of opulent international Cantonese chain Hakkasan in 2012. After its pandemic closure in 2020, Ho made the grand and risky move to open his own fine dining Cantonese establishment, Empress by Boon, in the former historic Empress of China space in Chinatown — still in pandemic times in 2021. The opening was met with success and a listing in the Michelin Guide. Now, while restaurants still face uphill challenges, Ho just made another bold move by opening a casual yet sleek Pan-Asian restaurant called Blue Whale Restaurant & Lounge in an area not usually known for Cantonese cuisine — Union Street, just a few blocks south of the Marina. 

Ho’s restaurant partners already had the location and restaurant name in mind when they invited Ho to come on board to create the concept, menu and restaurant design. “I think it’s very good for me to export my Cantonese cuisine to let more people know about it, to learn about Asian cultures through food,” said Ho during my dinner visit to Blue Whale during its soft opening. With nearly four decades of restaurant experience, ranging from opening high-end dim sum restaurant chain Yauatcha to working in other fine dining establishments in Moscow and Singapore, Ho was an early player in shaping high-end Cantonese restaurant spaces and having them make a bigger footprint in the then-Eurocentric restaurant scene.

Blue Whale occupies the former Osha Thai space, which had been vacant for years, on Union Street between Webster and Buchanan. Keeping with the ocean theme, a simple, elongated dark-blue marquee entrance felt accessible and piqued my curiosity as to what might be on the other side. Next to it was a bright-teal storefront with a porthole window on the door. It was closed, but the space is also part of the restaurant and may become a coffee shop or other food-related business in the future.

The Blue Whale entrance took me through a tunnel-like hallway reminiscent of the whale scene in “Pinocchio” when the boy-puppet enters Monstro the whale’s body — if the animal’s insides were arranged in a sleek and muted style. The restaurant then revealed its logo, which looks like a woodblock print of a blue whale swimming under the sun. The inside, with a classy retro submarine theme, felt spacious, with dark-blue seashell booths under warmly lit hanging lights contrasting with light marble tabletops and circular-patterned tile floors. The furniture had no sharp corners, adding to a relaxing ambiance. Most of the dining was on one side, and the inside bar and kitchen were on the other.

The outside area was even more stunning than the inside, with a huge yet snug-feeling courtyard protected from the noise of Union Street by high walls. A towering banana tree grew in the corner of the courtyard, and its leaves are also used for the grilled snapper and halibut dishes. A second bar serves the courtyard patrons.

Sitting outside was perfect for enjoying the last few weeks of the Bay Area’s late summer, but the courtyard is also equipped with heat lamps and branded blankets to use when it’s cold. Plenty of staff members are on hand, most of them young and some still a bit green — but all kind, smiling and quick to attend to patrons.

Because Blue Whale is a stand-alone restaurant, there isn’t much menu overlap between it and Empress by Boon. However, the farm in Gilroy that provides much of Empress by Boon’s produce also distributes some goods to Blue Whale, like chile peppers and pea shoots. Fans of Ho’s salty, melty Ibérico ham xiao long bao that were once offered at Empress can also now find them at Blue Whale. Similarly, the vibrantly orange crispy pumpkin puffs are akin to a dim sum dish from Ho’s Yauatcha days. 

Blue Whale’s more casual a la carte menu is divided into sections of salad, small eats, baked/grilled/fried, and rice/noodles, with separate drink and dessert menus. The format of Blue Whale lets Chef Ho play a bit.

Much of the menu is a way for Ho to reminisce, not only through his professional culinary career that has taken him to several Asian countries and more but also through his childhood. “If people are missing some items, I’ll bring it back,” he said about Nyonya street food dishes like rojak, a refreshing salad that, in his version, consists of cucumber, daikon, green mango and extra crispy youtiao (Chinese donut), covered in spicy peanut dressing and fried garlic bits. “In Singapore, it’s something people still do eat but not much now. I’ve never seen anyone in the U.S. selling this item,” Ho said.

Another dish close to his heart is the grilled red snapper, which Ho said is a common street vendor food in Southeast Asia. The filet is coated with a thick, red coconut curry paste and served on a banana leaf, sourced right from the tree in the courtyard. The soft, juicy flesh of the snapper doesn’t lose moisture on the grill, and the red and green contrast in presentation makes it a celebratory dish to share with a few friends.

After a litany of suggestions from the chef, I obviously had to focus on the dumplings. The novel Ibérico ham XLB described above should be an item to tick off for XLB fans, but some will like the subtle melding of Spanish and Chinese flavors more than others. It wasn’t as cured meat-forward as I would have expected but still had a velvety meatball texture inside the hand-rolled dough. The crab XLB had a more obvious seafood flavor, but its taste was still largely grounded in the pork mince base of the filling. All the XLBs were on the smaller, delicate side — good for saving room to try more dishes.

The seasonally appropriate aforementioned crispy pumpkin puffs — a trio of cute pumpkin-shaped dumplings, with an orange dough and stem made of pea shoots — had a first bite that was surprisingly sweet. Then, I came to see these were a take on Cantonese dim sum item ham sui gok — fried glutinous rice flour dumplings with a touch of sugar in the dough, usually filled with chopped mushrooms and ground pork. Blue Whale fancied up its version with roasted duck in a black pepper sauce. The chopped mushrooms dominated the filling, but the dumplings were too cute to be mad at.

The shredded roasted chicken with cumin salad is a flavor combination typical in Northern Asia, but this dish in particular made me pause, as I rarely have had cumin on cold meat (as opposed to skewers of cumin barbecued chicken or lamb). The cooling chicken combined with the warmth of the cumin and heat of the chile peppers made for a cold dish with personality much welcome during the recent heat wave.

Huge tiger prawns were lightly battered and fried, with a slight touch of wasabi adding that horseradish-like tingle in concert with sweet-tart pineapple pieces atop the meaty crustaceans. Fans of honey walnut prawns and coconut shrimp would like this one. Sliced Thai-style crispy chicken topped with shredded green papaya provided another way to get those core Southeast Asian flavor combinations in one bite — spicy, hot, crispy chicken with the juicy crunch of cold, tangy green papaya. Aside from the rojak salad, the seasonal mushroom noodles are a must-have for vegetarian diners. This visit featured a medley of Japanese mushrooms, including shimeji and enoki, with their slim stems blending in with curly, chewy wheat noodles, in an addictive, mild chile oil sauce. All the noodles clumped together when I tried trying to scoop up a small serving, but the taste made the giant clump forgivable.

Blue Whale’s cocktail program, helmed by Brandon Clements of the Saratoga and Bacchus Management Group, is also not to be missed. Both the alcoholic and nonalcoholic options are dressed for Instagram, with Southeast Asian fruits and spices. The instantly popular Cherry Blossom is a gin-based cocktail, magenta from maraschino cherry liqueur and garnished with a pressed cherry blossom flower and a sprinkling of green pandan dust. The Andaman Sour sticks to its bourbon roots while gently allowing mango into the traditional lemon backdrop to this modern, egg-free whiskey sour. The cocktails could easily veer into gimmicky, overly sweet territory but instead are sophisticatedly balanced between spirits and novel fruit or floral elements.

If you’re curious to dive into Chef Ho’s food nostalgia, sample his food at a more affordable price point or simply hang out in a stunning space, then Blue Whale is your ticket. As a newly opened restaurant, Blue Whale still has minor kinks to be ironed out, but the vision and experience of Chef Ho make for a promising future.

Blue Whale Restaurant & Lounge, 2033 Union St., San Francisco. Soft opening hours are 5 to 9 p.m., with lunch hours coming soon. The grand opening is slated for Oct. 17.