RICE PAPER SCISSORS

Saturday, January 26th

7pm

Gung Ho Restaurant - 680 8th Street (at Townsend)

$65 / Tickets here

Crab season ain’t over yet — and we’re not letting it pass without doing it up Cajun-style (and just in time for Mardi Gras!)

Our next installment of Dungeness Crab House is inspired by Vietnamese Cajun seafood restaurants, popular in San Jose and Garden Grove in Southern California — cities with large Vietnamese populations.

Seems random, but like every fusion of cultures, there’s a backstory. After immigrating to the States, many Vietnamese families settled in the Gulf Coast, where “boiling points” or crawfish houses reign supreme.

Like any good New Orleanian, the Vietnamese also have an affinity for rice, spice, and seafood. Inspired by Creole cuisine, Viet-Cajun joints came to be — with an added Southeast twist of lemongrass, muoi tieu chanh (a lemon, salt, and pepper dip) and garlic noodles to go along with boiled crustaceans bathed in butter.

These restaurants are known in Vietnamese as “quan nhau” — basically, a restaurant where you can get crunked.

So in true Vietnamese and Louisianan spirit, come dine and be sure to leave the table with empty crab shells and beer bottles — always a sign of a good time.

Tickets are $65 and can be purchased here.

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Menu

Crawfish Étouffée Bouchée

thick crawfish and sea snail gravy served in a puff pastry

Louisiana Shrimp, Pork and Pomelo Salad

with cucumbers, mint, and fried shallots

Southeast Cajun Crab

1/2 Dungeness crab and corn simmered in lemongrass and Old Bay Seasoning. served with a trio of sauces: tamarind, garlic butter, and salt-pepper-lime.

Garlic Noodles

housemade oyster sauce, butter, garlic and topped with Grana Padano cheese

Grilled Okra

with a housemade XO sauce

Bananas Foster & Beignets

rum bananas, fried beignets and fish sauce ice cream

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More details and tickets here

Winter marks the beginning of crab season, so we’re celebrating with Dungeness Crab House, a private kitchen dinner celebrating the Bay’s favorite crustacean.

Tickets are $60 and can be purchased here.

To accompany our Salt & Pepper Dungeness Crab, we’re serving up Truffle Garlic Noodles using the good stuff straight outta Oregon.

We’ll have Wet Naps for your hands, and an awesome beer selection for purchase.

See photos from our past Dungeness Crab here.

Note: We’re crossing our claws in hopes that the crab fishermens strike will be resolved by next week. If not, the dinner will become The Bass Haus with an alternate main course of steamed whole fish with rice wine, ginger, and scallions.

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Saturday, December 15th

6:30-8:30pm

710 Florida Street

$60

+ Eventbrite fees (prices includes sales tax)

Purchase tickets here

Menu

Chicken and Persimmon Salad

with shredded cabbage, Vietnamese mint, coconut, fried shallots and nuoc cham

Pork and Shrimp Wontons

housemade dumplings served with ham broth, bok choy, yellow chives, and cilantro 

Salt & Pepper Dungeness Crab

½ Dungeness crab wok-fired with garlic, shallots, ginger, scallions and jalapenos

Truffle Garlic Noodles

egg noodles with housemade oyster sauce,

Grano Padano and shaved Oregon truffles

Sauteed Pea Shoots

with garlic and chiles

Jasmine Tea Shaved Ice

with grapefruit and condensed milk

Illustration by Tom Smith

Photos by Albert Law/Pork Belly Studio

COM GA CANTEEN POSTPONED

— We’re postponing this dinner for a future date due to logistical reasons. We’ll keep you posted on our new date! —-

A blog post about what inspired Com Ga Canteen, our Private Kitchen dinner on Saturday, May 12th.

Photo taken by @faketv in SF.

We were walking past a garage after doing some nighttime cafe-hopping in District Three and noticed this amazing frying machine — streams of hot oil blasting these little cornish hens, a vertical drip fryer that gave the birds a perfectly brown crisp. And then there was another machine — an electric mixer that dry-fried red rice until it reached the perfect toothsome texture.

The dish? Fried Cornish Hen with Red Rice.

Immediately enchanted, we had to investigate. We peered down the sidewalk, where aluminum tables and orange plastic chairs were filled with people chowing down on chicken and rice.

We both grabbed a seat (despite not being hungry at all) and out came this simple yet enchanting plate of fried chicken and red rice, stained red/orange by annatto seeds and tomato paste, which slightly matched the shade of our little orange chairs.

Katie and I picked away at the chicken until it was no more. The poultry was succulent, rice flavorful, and the side salad of lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers gave the dish some cool relief.

Once we finished, the grilling began. We asked the three workers how they had acquired these machines (China), if they the only ones with the machines (yes, they’ve got a monopoly on this hot oil waterfall trick) and why the rice was so awesome (the result of a two-day process of seasoning, steaming, refrigerating, steaming [again], and dry-frying the rice.)

We left our camera at home that day, so unfortunately there’s no photographic proof of this set-up. You just have come to our next Private Kitchen to give it a try.

Rice Paper Scissors Presents

Friday, March 30th
and
Saturday, March 31st
6:30-10pm
Location will be emailed the day of

$80/person (+tax)

BYOB

Purchase tickets here

For our next Private Kitchen, we are celebrating Asian family meals.

In Vietnam, we were fortunate to have Co Tho, our family cook, who constantly amazed us with dishes like clams simmered in freshly squeezed coconut milk and Com Tam (broken rice plates) — simple, yet mind-blowing meals that we savored, dissected, and looked forward to bringing back to the States.

We also had another kind of family meal. During the course of our month-long trip, we were lucky to be invited to staff meals at the numerous street food stalls we filmed during our trek through the country.

So come and enjoy some of our favorite family meals (like roll your own spring rolls using special paper we brought back from Vietnam) all done family-style, so get ready to fatten your friends up by adding food to their plate, even if they insist they’re full (a true Asian move).

Join us in celebrating the act of cooking and eating together.

Purchase tickets here

Menu

Banh Beo
steamed rice cakes,
topped with ground dried shrimp and fried chicharrones
served with nuoc cham

DIY Spring Rolls
poached chicken, pig’s ear, and mango salad
served with rice noodles and special rice paper

Coconut Milk Simmered Cockles
clams slow cooked
in fresh coconut milk,
lemongrass, shallots, and chilis

Wok-Fired Dungeness Crab

served with a tamarind dip

Broken Rice Plate, Family Style
with
caramelized claypot sturgeon
braised tea eggs
stewed pork and jicama meatballs
simmered mustard greens
house pickles

Avocado Ice Cream
served with a drizzle of condensed milk and roasted peanuts

Menu subject to change.
We can only accept cancellations 72 hours prior for a full refund.
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