Hing Lung Co.

Last Sunday, I saw Grahame Lesh and his band play in the panhandle of Golden Gate Park. Grahame’s dad, Phil, used to play in the panhandle too, as bass guitarist for The Grateful Dead.

We all dream about seeing our favorite bands perform live. With The Grateful Dead, I’ve made peace with the fact that I will never get the chance.

But Grahame knows the music, every song, just as he knew his dad — better than all of us. When Graham and his band play The Dead, the music feels less like a cover and more like a natural progression.

Hearing them in the panhandle on Sunday, it was hard to imagine how the music could have sounded any better.

Hing Lung Company is the first place I recall wanting to visit when I moved to San Francisco. I had landed in North Beach, a neighborhood I knew very little about outside of the fact that it shared a border with Chinatown, a neighborhood I had heard quite a lot about.

I spent my first few days exploring Chinatown and noticed Hing Lung almost immediately. A dozen whole golden* ducks and about as many char siu pork collars hung from hooks in Hing Lung’s large front windows. The display was headed by a classic Chinatown sign — two languages, bold colors, and large serif font: Hing Lung Co.

If you’re familiar with this sort of Chinese BBQ outpost — maybe you’ve spent time in New York or China — Hing Lung looked just the same. I had never seen anything like Hing Lung, and I knew I wanted it, but everything here was served family style. Orders of pork, or duck, or bok choy were portioned to fill the same black plastic to-go container.

When I had a hankering for Hing Lung, or when I thought to go at all, I never seemed to have anyone to join me. So I put it off.

When I moved out of North Beach, I still hadn’t made it to Hing Lung. Then, I heard that Hing Lung had closed. These events felt simultaneous to me at the time, as though one had triggered the other.

For a time following its closure, Hing Lung’s meat hooks hung bare in the vacant property’s front windows. This image that has stuck with me as a reminder of how quickly things can change in a fragile city like San Francisco — what was once abundant and available to me was gone in a moment and before I ever got around to trying it.

Two years passed before I overheard that Hing Lung had never closed. It had only changed ownership, from parents to two twin sons, who moved the family business out to Bernal and decided to call it Go Duck Yourself (GDY).

I’ve never been sure about the name change. I always found the name Hing Lung carried history and character with it while Go Duck Yourself is the sort of name my mom would scrunch her nose at.

My first time visiting GDY, I learned that their menu mirrors Hing Lung's almost exactly. Following that first visit, I never paid any more mind to what it is called.

The char siu at GDY was the char siu I had always wanted to try — charred pink exterior, sliced thin, drenched in honey, and packed with as much flavor as any pork I’ve had in my life.

And the roast duck was just as I imagined — crispy golden skin and juicy chunks of meat served with steamed buns, scallions, and a plum sauce vin the brothers had been working on.

When everything hits the table at Go Duck Yourself, you realize this is Hing Lung, just as it looked hanging in the window.

There is a through line between these two places — a natural progression. GDY is new, and fresh, and full of life, while their recipes remain tried and true to what has kept this family in business for so long.

There are things Hing Lung was that Go Duck Yourself can never be — a historic Chinese BBQ outpost in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. And Go Duck Yourself has brought Hing Lung to places it has never gone before — a proper sitdown restaurant with table service, plateware, and draft beer.

I can’t say if GDY is as good as Hing Lung has ever been. The same way I can’t compare seeing Grahame Lesh to seeing the Grateful Dead. I never went to Hing Lung and I never saw The Grateful Dead.

I will still daydream about seeing The Dead in their prime. The same way I daydream about trying Hing Lung back when it was on Stockton St.

Grahame Lesh and Go Duck Yourself make these daydreams feel less farfetched. When someone’s raised on the real thing, it’s hard to imagine how it could be any better.