The much anticipated new replacement restaurant in the former Monsieur Benjamin space on Gough Street is getting set to open in two weeks.
Happy Crane, the brick-and-mortar venture from former Benu chef James Yeun Leong Parry, has just announced an opening date of August 8, at 451 Gough Street. Parry, who previously served as chef de cuisine at Palette Tea House and worked in Michelin-starred kitchens in Hong Kong, was born in England but raised in Hong Kong, and previously wowed in-the-know diners with his Happy Crane pop-up. And we first learned about the move to Hayes Valley back in January.
The move to the Gough Street space is something of a passing of the torch for Benu and Monsieur Benjamin chef-owner Corey Lee, who helped to mentor Parry. Monsieur Benjamin closed its doors last summer after 10 years in the space.
As the Chronicle reports today, the open kitchen now features a prominent wok station that will be visible from the dining room, and Parry has installed a high heat "duck oven" for roasting whole Peking duck.
Happy Crane will offer both an a la carte menu and a $120 chef's tasting menu, showcasing Parry's unique twists on dim sum and other Cantonese cuisine. Dim sum, which is associated with Hong Kong, where Parry grew up, originated in nearby Guangzhou, and is itself a somewhat modern (comparatively) subset of Chinese cuisine, having originated in tea rooms on the Silk Road in the late 19th Century.
Parry's brings his own background and creativity to the cuisine, using traditional dim sum formats like dumplings, rolls, and buns as canvases for new flavor combinations. The Chronicle has word of a rice roll featuring Dungeness crab, noodle sheets made from fresh-milled rice, and a sauce made with crab shells, butter, and shaoxing wine. Fish-stuffed eggplant comes topped with uni and, in a nod to Parry's birthplace, Worcestshire sauce.
Parry also plans to feature a once-popular dish in Hong Kong that has been going extinct, the gold coin, which is a skewer of stacked pork fat and chicken liver.
A favorite grilled meat dish from the pop-up, pork jowl char siu topped with ginger-pressed green apple, will be featured on the opening menu. In addition to Peking-style duck, there will be roasted quail, Cantonese-style, with a similarly lacquered skin.
"A lot of my inspiration comes from humble ingredients or humble dishes and those techniques, I feel, are dying," Parry tells the Chronicle. And when it comes to updating traditional dishes, the chef has previously opined, "Modern doesn’t need to be fusion."
Earlier pop-up menus have featured dishes like a shrimp and shiso spring roll dusted with crispy rice, and maitake mushroom "biang biang" with Silk Road spices, and those dishes seem likely to return as well.
Parry's pop-up was first highlighted in a Chronicle feature in the fall of 2023 that looked at the emerging trend of modern, more delicate Cantonese cuisine at restaurants like Empress by Boon and popups like Happy Crane and Four Kings — which at that point had not yet debuted its brick-and-mortar spot in Chinatown.
And while Four Kings has enjoyed wait lists and daily lines since opening, the kitchen where its chefs, Mike Long and Franky Ho, previously worked, Mister Jiu's, remains the beacon of modern Chinese cooking in Chinatown, being the United States' first and only Chinese restaurant to earn a Michelin star in 2016.
Thus the pressure — and the buzz — is on for the opening of Happy Crane, which seems poised to draw some similar attention.
The prominent central bar in the Gough Street space will feature cocktails developed by Kevin Diedrich of Pacific Cocktail Haven, and will be led by bar manager Carolyn Kao (previously of True Laurel, Good Good Culture Club, and Oakland's Viridian). And Justin Chin, previously of Ju-Ni and Gary Danko, will serve as general manager and sommelier.
The reservation books for Happy Crane are now open, beginning August 8.
Happy Crane - 451 Gough Street - opening August 8
