Chinese chicken salad is a California Chinese American plate of shredded chicken, romaine, fried wonton skins and a sesame-soy dressing, popularised through San Francisco.
The salad's modern shape came together at Trader Vic's, Madame Wu's in Santa Monica and Cecilia Chiang's The Mandarin in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square through the 1960s and 1970s. Chiang opened The Mandarin in 1968 and introduced San Franciscans to the regional cooking beyond Cantonese (Sichuan, Shanghai, Hunan); the salad as a composed plate of cool chicken with crisp aromatics was on her menu. It moved into chain kitchens (Wolfgang Puck's at LAX, P.F. Chang's nationally) by the 1990s, then back to the chef-driven rooms (Mister Jiu's serves a refined take). The dish is now closer to the city's Cal-Chinese vocabulary than to any single mainland origin.
2 editor picks for Chinese chicken salad in San Francisco, ranked by editorial score. All San Francisco signature dishes · Chinese chicken salad across every city.
Mister Jiu's ★ 4.8
chinatown · 28 Waverly Place, San Francisco, CA 94108
Mister Jiu's in San Francisco is Brandon Jew's Cal-Chinese flagship in old Chinatown, holding a Michelin star and a separate cocktail bar worth a visit alone.
Z & Y Bistro ★ 4.2
chinatown · 606 Jackson Street, San Francisco CA 94133
Z & Y Bistro in San Francisco is the contemporary sister to Chinatown's Z & Y on the same Jackson Street block, with yakitori, Lanzhou ramen and Sichuan classics.