Four Kings 四大天王
Franky Ho and Mike Long met in the kitchen at Brandon Jew's Mister Jiu's. They opened this room on Commercial Street in 2024. The squab is dry-aged for a week and fried to order. In March 2026 the San Francisco Chronicle's critics made it the No. 1 restaurant in the Bay Area.
Why go
The Four Heavenly Kings were Cantopop singers who ruled Hong Kong radio in the nineties. Four people run this room. Ho and Long cook, Millie Boonkokua works the floor, Lucy Li keeps the books. MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez are the Chronicle's two restaurant critics. They put it on their Chinese list in August 2025 and wrote that this is likely the most fun restaurant in the Bay Area.
2 It debuted at No. 2 on their 2025 Top 100, thirteen months after opening.
Ho and Long's kitchen cures the bacon and the sausage that go into the clay pot rice. Roasted peanuts and smashed cucumbers land free when you sit down. Mapo spaghetti and XO escargot with milk bread sit on the same card.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the squab, first thing. Eater's Dianne de Guzman warns that availability is limited.4
- Order: the clay pot rice, for the house bacon and sausage.
- Order: the scallop vermicelli. The scallop is seared quickly and set on glass noodles in garlicky brown butter, $18 in May 2024.7
- Avoid: emailing for a table. The venue asks that every request go through OpenTable.
What locals & experts say
- MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez, San Francisco Chronicle, March 2026:
Located underneath what is surely the most delicious smelling Kumon in the city, it was exactly the type of feel-good party San Francisco needed in 2025.
1 - Fegan, reviewing it alone in May 2024, traced the room back to a year of pop-ups and to two childhoods, Long's between Hong Kong and Los Angeles and Ho's between Guangdong and San Francisco.7 The three-colored egg custard she describes sets salted duck egg and century egg into steamed egg.
- Order around the richest plate, says Ricky Rodriguez of The Infatuation, who put the room at 8.4:
Some dishes are a bit heavy (looking at you, bacon-topped claypot rice), so balance those out with vegetables, like the snap peas with tofu dressing.
8 - The MICHELIN Guide California inspector, on getting in:
Reservations evaporate almost immediately, but determined diners can line up for counter seating before doors open.
5
Good to know
- Getting in: OpenTable and nothing else. Slots release three weeks ahead.
- Closed: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Dinner only for the rest of the week.
- Where: 710 Commercial Street, in Chinatown.
Jeff's take (his words)
- Note: "Best new top 50 resto times"
Verdict
must-visit — Come as four. Chinatown has nothing else at this pitch.