Chinatown’s newest eatery is ode to one of China’s most popular street foods

Rice rolls in Guangdong province, China, are as common as pizza or hot dogs in America. But despite the dish’s popularity — and the fact that much of The City’s Chinese population is originally from Guangdong — few restaurants in San Francisco specialize in the silky rice noodles wrapped around minced shrimp or pork and then smothered in soy sauce.

Tom Zhen and his family are hoping to change that. Later this month, the Zhens are opening Rice Roll Express in a small storefront at 1131 Stockton St. in the heart of Chinatown. As the name suggests, the shop will almost exclusively serve homemade rice rolls — or “cheung fun,” as they’re called in Cantonese.

“It’s a comfort food that provides a nostalgic and sentimental value,” said Zhen, who recalled a rice-roll vendor on practically every street corner of his hometown of Kaiping, a small river city about 80 miles southwest of Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong. “We hope that whoever comes to Rice Roll Express can find comfort, especially when they are having a bad day.”

It’s not that you can’t find rice rolls in San Francisco — the dish is a mainstay on dim sum menus throughout the Bay Area. But usually, rice rolls are one of dozens of items available on carts that roll through crowded aisles.

Because of that, rice rolls at dim sum parlors are generally pre-made and heated up later for serving, a process that Zhen said robs the dish of the same substance and flavor as the fresh rolls he grew up with.

Though the process is more labor-intensive in rice-roll-only restaurants, the end product, Zhen says, is far more rewarding.

Raw rice is soaked overnight and ground into a fine consistency. Then, it is steamed inside a square metal device, which Zhen called a “cheung fun machine.” It is filled with meat or seafood, steamed again, and topped with soy sauce. The result is a tender, flavorful noodle-wrapped bundle of sweet and savory deliciousness.

“Our differentiator is our freshness, freshness and freshness,” he said.

That confidence is why Zhen, 29, said he was willing to leave the security of his tech career to enter the far more precarious restaurant business. The venture is also a tribute to his family.

For more than a decade, Zhen said, his father ran a rice-roll restaurant in Kaiping, which he had in turn inherited from his father. But with the rice-roll business so competitive in the region, it was difficult for him to keep prices low and turn a profit.

So, Zhen said, his father abandoned the struggling restaurant 12 years ago and immigrated to San Francisco with his wife and two sons to give his children better opportunities. The family slept on bunk beds in a studio apartment in Union Square, Zhen said. His dad worked as a mechanic, while his mom was a restaurant server.

“At the beginning, it was very rough,” he said. “Our family didn’t have any resources from the beginning, and my mom and dad didn’t speak any English. So it was very difficult for them to find jobs.”

Zhen took classes at San Francisco State while working different jobs at night, he said, including serving milk tea at the boba chain Quickly.

Eventually, he and his brother found stable jobs, with Zhen working as a software engineer. But as their careers took off, there was a nagging desire to return to their roots and rejuvenate their family’s old rice-roll restaurant as a thank-you to their parents, he said.

Still, he could hardly find any successful rice-roll vendors in the U.S. Even in San Francisco, with its abundance of Chinese eateries, specialists such as the Spicy Shrimp , a rice-roll deli on Waverly Place in Chinatown, were few and far between.

However, Zhen said, his skepticism changed when he learned that the rice-roll scene had exploded in New York City over the past decade. He said the restaurants thriving in Manhattan showed him that a business like his father’s could be successful in their new home.

Zhen wasn’t the only one to take notice.

“I have just been completely blown away by all the rice roll shops that have popped up in New York City,” said Grace Young, an award-winning cookbook author, activist and San Francisco Chinatown native.

“I think the appeal of it is that it’s super fast,” Young said. “You don’t have to wait long and it’s done, and of course, when it’s fresh, it’s incredibly delicious. And it’s extremely affordable.”

Young said the cultural importance of such restaurants can’t be overstated, especially as Chinatown populations shrink across the country. Establishments that specialize in traditional Chinese cuisine could help save what she described as a Chinatown culture at risk of fading away .

“We live in a culture now where you can go to Trader Joe’s and Costco and Whole Foods and buy frozen dumplings,” she said. “You can go to a P.F. Chang’s or Panda Express. When you have a business that is making rice rolls by hand ... It’s the heart and soul of Chinese cooking to make something by hand, fresh every day. Nowadays, that’s what’s so precious about going to Chinatown — you can still experience artisanal food.”

Malcolm Yeung, president of the Chinatown Community Development Center, said he hopes Rice Roll Express can add to the authenticity he and his fellow advocates hope to preserve .

“For Chinatown residents, this is another affordable and sustainable option just like our bakeries, noodle shops and take-out delis,” Yeung said. “For visitors, this can be an additional pathway to learn about our community, especially when you are in line rubbing elbows with a Chinatown grandma.”

For now, the shop is a true mom-and-pop operation. But Zhen said he hopes to hire more employees as it gains its footing.

Zhen fully acknowledged how risky the proposition is in this economic climate, especially in a district as pandemic-hurt as Chinatown. But, he said, he thinks his rice rolls will speak for themselves.

“Maybe we haven’t arrived at a good time for the economy,” he said. “But we have all the necessary ingredients on our side to make a successful operation.”