Shan Dong

The kitchen boils fifteen hundred to two thousand dumplings a day off Brang Hung's recipe, and the hand-cut sesame paste noodles only reached the menu around 2005.

Why go

The Hung family opened this in 1991 and Charles Hung has run it since he dropped out of City College a few months later to help his parents. I've been stuck here ever since, he told SFGATE.1 His father Brang taught as a professor in Taiwan after the family fled mainland China, and started his American life washing dishes when the credentials did not transfer.1 The dumplings are Brang's recipes and the kitchen boils them fifty at a time from open to close, fifteen hundred to two thousand a day.1 The dough is thicker than a Beijing cook would make it and Hung knows why. The volume is so high for dumplings, we have to make them fresh and freeze them, he said. So the dough has to be a little bit thicker.1 Thin dough breaks in the freezer. The sign is easy to miss and the queue is not.2

Order this / avoid

Order: the pork-and-leek dumplings, the ones Margot Seeto came for.1
Order: the sesame paste noodles, hand-cut. Seeto is firm about which version.1
Order: the dry-braised string beans and the salt-and-pepper fish.1
Note on the house dumpling: Visit Oakland's Chinatown guide gives the house special as pork and cabbage, so there is more than one to work through.2

What locals & experts say

Margot Seeto, SFGATE's Dumpling Report (January 2024), on the pork and leek: steaming hot pillows of dough the size of tangerines give way to a thick, soft bite that reveals a juicy, porky center well balanced by punchy ginger and mildly sweet, bright green leeks.1
Charles Hung, second-generation owner, on his critics: Customers from China say it's too doughy.1
Seeto on the sesame noodles: Nutty, creamy, thick and chewy.1

Good to know

The room: yellow square tables, round ones with lazy Susans, gray walls hung with framed calligraphy. Seeto's description, and she notes it feels older than 1991.1
Queue: locals and visitors wait outside at both lunch and dinner.2

Verdict

should-visit — Charles Hung boils fifteen hundred to two thousand dumplings a day off his father's recipe and will tell you straight that the dough is thicker than it should be, because the volume means freezing and a thin skin cracks. That is a kitchen that knows exactly what trade it is making. The famous dish is younger than it looks: hand-cut sesame paste noodles only landed on the menu around 2005 and now the line forms for them. Held below must-visit on evidence volume, since the strong account is one columnist's visit and everything else is a listing.