Just Won Ton is a noodle soup shop located across from some accountants' offices, on Vincente Street in the Outer Sunset. Hot Beef Wonton Noodle Soup and their fried tofu stuffed with pork are the two items I consistently order. It's a Cantonese diner style food with some homestyle rice plates and a neighborhood crowd. The wontons are the best thing they have, with a thin wrapper, a good ratio of shrimp to pork and a nice little pop when you bite into them. The hot beef is actually not that spicy but adds a little hot oil flavor to the broth.
The fried tofu is nothing special, but it's a nice conduit for soy sauce and the hot pickled condiments. Each fried tofu triangle is has a small slit in the middle where they stuff some ground pork to add a bit more to it. This might actually be more successful if the tofu pieces were a bit smaller. The large tofu pieces drown out any porky taste, but still I like their general thinking on the dish.
In search of a place to sit down and enjoy a long meal, we headed to El Delfin on 24th Street. The service was very homey and we were immediately given freshly fried tortilla chips. The two rounds of sangria were reported as excellent. We had the molcajete volcano as a starter then two types of shrimp, enchiladas and fajitas. The molcajete (mortar) volcano was bubbling red mortar full of spicy red sauce, fresh cheese, green onions, nopales, and beef accompanied by tortillas. The sauce was spicy and was supposed to be balanced by the cheese, but the cheese was a plain farm cheese which did not add or reveal any depth to the sauce. The nopales and meat were good wrapped in the tortillas, but overall the interesting presentation overshadowed the one dimensional taste of the red sauce.
The restaurant offers several different preparations of shrimp. We chose the camarones de arbol chile and the camarones de chile chipotle. De arbol chile originated in Mexcico and is popoular in Western Mexican cooking. It tastes similar to it's cousin the cayenne pepper, but had more depth than cayenne. The pepper was cooked with a cream resulting in a creamy red-orange colored sauce. The shrimp were perfectly cooked and complimented by the spicy sauce. The camarones de chile chipotle was also excellent and had the bold flavor of chipotle chilis, milder and more smokey than the de arbol sauce.
The enchiladas are a favorite of the one El Delfin regular at the table. He felt that the red enchilada sauce was more flavorful than the other places on Mission and would definitely order this dish again.
Next time, the camarones de chili arbol and sample a dish that uses the enchilada sauce.
Cupcakes from That Takes the Cake. The owner is a very friendly and experienced caterer. Sampled three different flavors: Sleepless in SF - chocolate buttermilk cake topped with coffee buttercream -- moist chocolate cake with chocolate chips, the coffee buttercream was a good combo, a very chocolatey and rich tasting cupcake. Bunny Bites - carrot cake with pecans and pineapple topped with cream cheese frosting was good, but the cake was not as moist as at Noe Valley Bakery and the cream cheese frosting was not as sour as I like. Orange Zinger - orange cake with orange buttercream frosting was my favorite, a zesty orange flavored cake and the citrus helped cut the cream frosting so that it was not sugary tasting.
I've passed New Cheung Hing too many times to count. Somehow their hanging ducks have never enticed me to taste something from their counter of prepared foods. The few times that I have walked into the restaurant, the prepared foods seemed like they had been in the steaming trays for a long time. It just didn't appear as fresh as the food found at similar places on Clement. On a night when I was craving some vegetables, I decided to give the sit down part of the restaurant a try. The menu had a lot of decent sounding items and I quickly zoomed in on the Rock Cod Fillet with Tender Greens. When I asked what the greens were they told me it was bok choy. O.k. that's typical for a Cantonese restaurant, but I was craving something else. After asking if they had anything else, she said no, but then I suggested Kong Xin Tsai (water spinach) one of my favorite greens and she said they could do that. I was a little hesitant because I wondered whether the produce would be fresh. Turned out great. Some nice fillets sauteed in a light garlic sauce with a heaping mound of vegetables, the sauce was light and allowed the fish and the greens to shine. It tasted great and looked so good that the table next to me asked for theirs to be cooked the same way.
To whet my appetite, I started with the Crab with Fish Maw Soup, one of my favorite soups. Their version had a decent amount of fish maw and real crab. Though they might have gone a little overboard with the thickening agent, I would definitely order this again.
The menu shows some very inexpensive family dinners ranging from four to ten folks, which might be worth trying. The place is not bad, the food much better than I expected and the service efficient. I probably wouldn't get anything from their already made counter except for the duck or roasted meats, but wouldn't mind coming back to sample a few more of their freshly cooked items. Irving and 20th
Just Won Ton is a noodle soup shop located across from some accountants' offices, on Vincente Street in the Outer Sunset. Hot Beef Wonton Noodle Soup and their fried tofu stuffed with pork are the two items I consistently order. It's a Cantonese diner style food with some homestyle rice plates and a neighborhood crowd. The wontons are the best thing they have, with a thin wrapper, a good ratio of shrimp to pork and a nice little pop when you bite into them. The hot beef is actually not that spicy but adds a little hot oil flavor to the broth.
