Sam Wo, century-old Chinatown noodle joint, blooms anew

David Ho and Steven Lee were standing in the middle of the dining room of the newly relocated, soon-to-open Sam Wo, staring down to the basement kitchen through a giant, gaping hole.

The rest of the polished dining room was complete, densely hung with vintage photographs of the century-old San Francisco noodle joint, stark against a red wall of modern murals. The hole in the floor would soon house a custom-made dumbwaiter, shuttling plates to and from the various levels — a nostalgic reference to the iconic dumbwaiter at the original Sam Wo, which had been in business for a century before closing in 2012.

“It cost us $30,000,” said Lee of the dumbwaiter, the final piece of the puzzle. “If we could have found someone who made it, it would be one-quarter the amount, but nobody knows how to make it.”

Despite the hassle and price tag, building a new dumbwaiter was a non-negotiable element for longtime owner Ho and his new partner, Lee. The resurrected Chinatown hole-in-the-wall restaurant was famous for such quirks, along with its dirt-cheap noodles and night-owl hours. It was also home of the late Edsel Ford Fung, known as “the world’s rudest waiter.”

Just a few blocks away

This month, pending navigation of a labyrinth of permits and inspections, the restaurant will finally reopen. The new Sam Wo is a few blocks from its former home — the rickety, decaying Washington Street building that prompted Herb Caen to once dub it the “skinniest Chinese restaurant in town” — and directly next to another Chinatown gathering place, Portsmouth Square. The buzz has been building steadily over the past few months and should reach a crescendo as the restaurant’s tentative opening date, Oct. 19, approaches.

Ho has owned Sam Wo for 30 years. Speaking through a translator — his daughter, Julie, who also works in the restaurant — in a soft and gravelly voice, he confesses that when the restaurant was forced to shut down 3½ years ago for health code violations, he never expected it to reopen.

Ho explains that Sam Wo represents much more than tomato beef chow fun and a funky dining experience; for himself, his family and countless other Chinatown families, Sam Wo was a community hub for first- and second-generation Chinese Americans.

“It’s really a community project as a whole. There’s so much community,” said Stefano Cassolato, a neighborhood lobbyist helping the Ho family with permits. “It’s a labor of love for them.”

The return of Sam Wo also represents a piece of San Francisco culture restored.

It was the place where Allen Ginsberg and company went to eat after the historic “Howl” reading in 1955. The family-run business was immortalized in Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” series in the 1970s and 1980s, and in 2007, even found its way into a skit on Conan O’Brien’s TV show. Most important, it provided a place for San Franciscans to gather, be merry, and dine — cheaply — at all hours of the day and night.

Charm mixed with caution

Over the decades, the restaurant resisted renovation and modernization. The anachronistic nature of the business was part of the charm for its legions of regulars, but the various city departments — namely health inspectors — thought otherwise. Due to a laundry list of violations, Sam Wo closed its Washington Street restaurant in April 2012 despite a line out the door in its waning days.

“Any city has a lot of rats, so they’ll find a way to get in,” said Lee, echoing the sentiments of many Sam Wo loyalists who scoffed at the violations. “You can’t really blame the health department, but then again it displaced a family’s business.”

Lee, a partner in several San Francisco nightclubs, was one of the dozens of diners who made the pilgrimage to Sam Wo on its final day, telling the Ho family that he would be there for whatever they needed. He wanted to make sure that they could reopen at some point, be it at the same location or a different one.

Following the closure, the Ho family and the building’s landlord tried to work out a deal. Lee helped them raise the money necessary for renovations, but the rent increase was insurmountable. The deal fell through.

Lee prompted the Sam Wo contingent to trademark the name, ensuring that no one else could open a Sam Wo in the space, without David Ho. Remarked Lee: “He is Sam Wo.”

The search for a new location began — and ended up taking years. The requirements were simple, but not easy to fulfill: The new Sam Wo had to be in Chinatown, in an older building, and not too expensive.

Eventually, they landed the former Anna Bakery space at 713-715 Clay St., across the street from Portsmouth Square and a few blocks from the Financial District. And, in a serendipitous twist, a mezzanine and basement allowed the regime to recreate a version of Sam Wo’s three-story dynamic.

But old-timers might not recognize the place, despite a smattering of rescued signs from the old location.

“We’ve updated the decor,” said Lee. He added what he describes as a Hong Kong noodle house flair, making it a modernized version of the original location, which is rumored to become an outpost of a cosmetics supply chain. “It’s not the funky place it was, but it has that old-school feel.”

Greatly reduced menu

There will be differences beyond the new address as well. Citing a desire for cooking consistency, the menu will be greatly reduced from its sprawling last incarnation, which ran dozens of items — though Julie Ho promises that all the classics, led by the famous rice noodle rolls, will still be there. And she vows to keep prices as low as possible.

The Ho family will still be front and center. But operations will no longer be a slapdash affair.

“It’s different. It’s a larger place, but it’s cool because it’s going to be a team of employees,” said Julie Ho. “It’s now a real business, not just a family thing.”

Chief in that movement toward financial legitimacy is Lee, a businessman who built a number of nightclubs around town and has a network of investors.

He has plans to eventually sell Sam Wo products in the restaurant, like jars of hot mustard, and even envisions getting into the wholesale business. “If Ling Ling can do it, Sam Wo can do it!” he exclaimed, referring to the frozen food brand that began as a Bay Area restaurant.

Plans are under way to offer beer and wine, which would slightly change waiter Fung’s house rules that were preserved atop the menu after his death in 1984: “No Booze, No B.S., No Jive, No Coffee, Milk, Soft Drinks, Fortune Cookies.”

Lee, like many others, sees opportunity in a new generation of Chinatown.

Nearby food-centric projects like Mister Jiu’s, a forthcoming modern Chinese restaurant in the former Four Seas space, and China Live, a sprawling food complex inspired by New York mega-marketplace Eataly, are expected to attract fresh faces to the neighborhood. Meanwhile, even longtime neighborhood dive bars like Li Po and Red’s have already been commandeered by younger crowds.

Story of a neighborhood

For his part, David Ho is optimistic about the return of Sam Wo, calling it a feel-good story that depicts how a community can band together, as it has done for a century.

He explains that Sam Wo — the original version — was born in the wake of a tragedy, the 1906 earthquake. Government funding from China helped rebuild San Francisco’s Chinatown, and through subsequent decades, waves of various San Francisco characters passed through the restaurant, kept it going and added to its layers of legend.

“A long time ago, it was built from something bad, and something nice blossomed from it,” David Ho said. “The restaurant blooming again is something to look forward to.”