{"id":347059,"date":"2026-06-04T21:31:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T21:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/347059\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T21:31:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T21:31:15","slug":"good-taste-diving-deep-into-crustaceans-secret-kitchen-for-a-family-treasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/347059\/","title":{"rendered":"Good Taste: Diving deep into Crustacean’s ‘secret’ kitchen for a family treasure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Good Taste is a menu for eating well in the Bay Area and beyond, as this week\u2019s look at an iconic California dish reveals!<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, I had the distinct honor and joy to usher in T\u1ebft, the Vietnamese New Year, by having lunch with the groundbreaking chef Helene An at the Southern California location of Crustacean<\/a> (468 N. Bedford Drive, Beverly Hills). <\/p>\n

An, 82, does not get enough credit for creating her world famous garlic noodles, which are also served with succulent roasted Dungeness crab, lobster, and other seafood treasures at the San Francisco location of Crustacean<\/a> (195 Pine Street, SF) and Thanh Long<\/a> (4101 Judah Street, SF). Nor does she get the appropriate light for being an immigrant woman chef with longevity who raised five businesswomen.<\/p>\n

Helene An\u2019s garlic noodles have spawned countless imitators in food trucks, restaurants, and home kitchens across California and the nation. I\u2019ve risked smelling like garlic for the rest of my days to come to the educated conclusion that no one does these noodles like she does. Sweet, slightly salty, with a lasting umami bomb that may cause a pleasant tongue clicking and\/or the sensation of eyes rolling back.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Garlic noodles at Crustacean Beverly Hills<\/p>\n

Garlic noodles didn\u2019t come from Vietnam, where An grew up as the youngest of 17 children in an aristocratic family who had three private chefs (one Chinese, one French and one Vietnamese). An says she created the recipe in San Francisco as a young mother in response to her daughter Elizabeth\u2019s requests for money to go get Italian pasta in Nob Hill. In other words, the original, \u201cWe have food at home\u201d later became one of California\u2019s culinary calling cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe that food must not only taste good, but also be good for you,\u201d Helene wrote in An: To Eat (Recipes and Stories from a Vietnamese Family Kitchen<\/a>. \u201cHow food feels on the palate is also very important to me. Food shouldn\u2019t be heavy, sticky, overpowering, fatty or oily. Complex flavors and textures must always be balanced with freshness and lightness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Helene\u2019s daughter Monique An and Monique\u2019s husband Kenneth Lew are at the helm of Crustacean in San Francisco. Lew happily demonstrates that the much-lored secret garlic noodle-producing kitchen within the Crustacean kitchens are actually real! They\u2019re sealed off from the rest of the staff by a trap door-like contraption that serves up the finished plates of noodles, dropping no clue as to how they\u2019ve been prepared.<\/p>\n

Monique shared a fun fact that cements the status of garlic noodles in San Francisco: They are in rotation for lunch in the San Francisco Unified School District, where her granddaughter can share with her friends that her grandmother invented them.<\/p>\n

Sponsored link<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Chef Helene An<\/p>\n

Back in Beverly Hills, Helene revealed the biggest secret: there is one viable way besides being a family member to get her to share the recipe for her garlic noodles!<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can have it if they work for me for over 10 years,\u201d she revealed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was tempting to ask for a job on the spot and mark the days, because I really want that recipe. I published a well-tested home recipe for An\u2019s garlic noodles in a 2022 Good Taste column<\/a>. My version uses fresh egg noodles instead of dry spaghetti, which is an outrageous ingredient in the New York Times recipe, and I\u2019d duel with my dish any day!<\/p>\n

An fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon, lived in a refugee camp in Guam, and eventually settled in San Francisco, where she lived with several relatives in a one-bedroom house in the Sunset District. She worked as an accountant during the day. At night, she helped out in the old Italian deli that her mother-in-law bought on a whim during a vacation, overpaying for the privilege. That deli became Thanh Long, which still draws crowds from across the Bay to the edge of the Pacific in pursuit of a cracking good time.<\/p>\n

\"\"Helene and family in San Francisco. <\/p>\n

After relocating from its longtime Polk Street space, San Francisco\u2019s Crustacean is approaching one year in business in the Financial District. It\u2019s the An family\u2019s most stunningly designed space\u2014including the famous fish embedded in the floor in the Beverly Hills restaurant\u2014and is the most exquisite and homey of them all.<\/p>\n

As the anniversary approaches, San Francisco\u2019s Crustacean recently launched a \u201cFiDi Power Lunch\u201d prix fixe menu (three courses for $46 on Tuesdays-Thursdays from 11:30am to 2:30pm). That\u2019s going straight into my rotation of upscale downtown afternoon recommendations, whether for a business meeting or memory-making occasion, because it\u2019s an opportunity to see the restaurant\u2019s range. <\/p>\n

Anyone would be forgiven for adding a plate of garlic noodles to the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good Taste is a menu for eating well in the Bay Area and beyond, as this week\u2019s look…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[143,145,144],"class_list":["post-347059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347059","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=347059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}