{"id":28947,"date":"2025-10-29T18:40:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T18:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/28947\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T18:40:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T18:40:16","slug":"after-40-years-a-mission-restaurant-staple-closes-to-make-way-for-affordable-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/28947\/","title":{"rendered":"After 40 years, a Mission restaurant staple closes to make way for affordable housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the sun streams in from the windows facing 16th Street, Joey and Judy Yu buzz around the Mission Hunan dining room in matching kelly-green aprons and white button-down shirts. They\u2019ve been servers at this unpretentious Chinese restaurant for more than 20 years \u2014 and for the most part, the scene looks like any other Monday lunch rush.<\/p>\n

A Spanish-speaking mom bounces her squirming toddler on her lap between bites of wonton soup. An elderly Chinese woman wearing a flat-brimmed baseball hat watches the static-y TV, while a construction worker scooches two tables together to squeeze in the rest of his group. Delivery drivers wearing motorcycle helmets stroll in to pick up orders. Beneath it all hums a quiet symphony of English, Spanish, Cantonese, and Mandarin.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t just another Monday. This is the last Monday that Mission Hunan, a neighborhood staple serving affordable Chinese food for nearly 40 years, will be open at 16th and Capp streets. Friday will be the restaurant\u2019s last day of service.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Mission Housing Development Corporation, which owns the building, plans to demolish the restaurant to make way for La Maravilla, the neighborhood\u2019s largest, and most controversial<\/a> affordable housing development. The first of the project\u2019s three phases will include the construction of a nine-story, 136-unit building to serve homeless residents. Construction vehicles and workers have already set up shop at the tiny-home community behind the restaurant in preparation for a December demolition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And for the loyal customers of Mission Hunan, the countdown clock is ticking.<\/p>\n

\"A\u2018Everyone comes here\u2019<\/p>\n

The restaurant has been the life\u2019s work of Bing Chiu Wong and his wife, Lai Mei Cheng, who opened Mission Hunan in 1987, with Cheng working the kitchen and Wong running the front of house. At the time, the neighborhood had few Chinese restaurants. \u201cA lot of people who came in didn\u2019t speak English, so I spoke Spanish with them, my amigos,\u201d Wong says. He lived in Venezuela in his 20s and used that experience to his advantage as he fielded orders of General Tsao\u2019s chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and pan-fried potstickers.<\/p>\n

Because of its blue-collar, multicultural ethos, Mission Hunan has also been a restaurant-industry favorite for decades, says Eric Ehler, the chef and owner of pizzeria Outta Sight. \u201cIf you\u2019ve worked in restaurants in San Francisco for at least five years, and you came here on a random day, you\u2019d see your dishwasher, your line cook, and whoever else, because everyone comes here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TwoJudy Yu, left, and Joey Yu, long-time employees at Mission Hunan.<\/p>\n

Ehler guesses he\u2019s eaten nearly every item on the restaurant\u2019s expansive menu over the last 17 years. When he lived in Potrero Hill, he\u2019d hop on his bike to grab a quick bite before making his way via the Wiggle to his job at Black Sands in the Lower Haight. There are many \u201cbangers\u201d on the Mission Hunan menu, he says,\u00a0 and only a handful of items exceed $20 \u2014 a rarity even in the cheapest of Chinese joints in the city. \u201cEveryone else\u2019s portions at restaurants get smaller and smaller\u201d Ehler says, before pointing at a heaping plate of crispy salt-and-pepper pork. \u201cI think that that got bigger,\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who come here are working-class people, blue-collar people, people of color from the area,\u201d he continues. \u201cWhen you come here, you know you can get a good-quality meal with big portions at a pretty reasonable price. Once you subtract that out of the equation of their lives, it\u2019s so impactful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m really sad that it\u2019s gone.\u2019<\/p>\n

When Ori Tom Ravid moved to San Francisco in 2021, he had a hard time finding work and says that Mission Hunan helped him navigate those lean times. \u201cEveryone has their thing that gets them through the day,\u201d he says. \u201cFor me, that thing is Chinese food.\u201d He\u2019d order the combination chow mein topped with sweet-and-sour pork and would stretch it to last for two days.<\/p>\n

But affordability is just part of the reason Ravid loves this hole-in-the-wall. \u201cWhen I think of the 16th Street BART stop, I think of Mission Hunan,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a staple and a symbol of that neighborhood for so long. It served the community, and I\u2019m really sad that it\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

There is a silver lining for fans \u2014 albeit one that requires a 18-minute BART ride. On Saturday, Judy and Joey Yu will start work at Andy\u2019s Hong Kong Restaurant in South San Francisco, also owned by Wong and Cheng. Ehler says he\u2019s willing to drive south to get his favorites, like hand-rolled crispy spring rolls, sticky-sweet sesame chicken, Korean fried chicken wings, three-meat chow mein, and dry bean curd with lamb clay pot.<\/p>\n

Still, it won\u2019t be quite the same, and the Mission won\u2019t be either. Wong looks to retire soon \u2014 \u201cI am old,\u201d he says with a chuckle \u2014 and he knows what he\u2019ll miss most about Mission Hunan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will miss them,\u201d he says. \u201cI will miss my amigos.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the sun streams in from the windows facing 16th Street, Joey and Judy Yu buzz around the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[21587,2399,412,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-28947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-chinese-food","tag-mission-district","tag-restaurants","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}