San Francisco

There is a place where visitors can browse through Chinese herbal shops, sample rare and fragrant blends fresh from the tea fields of Taiwan, enjoy a bowl of steaming Vietnamese pho, tuck into a platter of spicy Korean barbecued short ribs, wander through galleries of Indonesian art treasures and shop for fashions inspired by Tokyo’s pop art scene—all in the space of a few hours. And it’s not in Asia.

All of these experiences—and many others—are easily available in San Francisco, a place where nearly a third of the population is of Asian descent and where dim sum and tai chi are as much a part of the scene as cable cars and sourdough bread. If Hong Kong or Kyoto are not in the meetings budget this year, there is still plenty of Asian culture to enjoy on this side of the Pacific.

“When people are inquiring about things to do in San Francisco, we always emphasize the Asian elements—they’re so much a part of the culture here,” says Katheryn Horton, senior director, conventions, events and services for the San Francisco CVB. “Whether it’s a walk through Chinatown or doing a special event at the Asian Art Museum, there’s a lot to choose from.”

Chinatown
Although its densely populated streets and alleyways are just steps away from Union Square and the Financial District, San Francisco’s Chinatown, the largest in North America, remains a world unto itself. While few visitors get beyond the gaggle of souvenir stores along Grant Avenue, a variety of group-friendly walking tours offer the chance to delve below the surface.

“The best way to begin a journey is to stroll through Portsmouth Square, which, because many living spaces in Chinatown are very small, is kind of an outdoor living room,” says Shirley Fong-Torres, a chef and owner of Wok Wiz, a company that has provided walking tours and culinary experiences in Chinatown for over 25 years. “This is where people gather daily to talk and relax.”

Fong explains that while the Chinese in San Francisco were once only allowed in a five-block area comprising the core of what is now Chinatown, “the community has grown and thrived, with over 100,000 people now living here.”

On her tours, Fong-Torres proceeds from Portsmouth Square to Hamu Kai or “Salt Fish” Alley past outdoor fish tanks to call at the shop of a Chinese brush artist. Then, passing through the throngs on Grant Avenue, she stops at Red Blossom Tea, a narrow store with shelves lined with tins of 100 types of green, white and black teas with names like Dragonwell and Gun Powder. Visitors can sample tiny cups of freshly brewed tea and learn about the different blends, what foods they are best served with and how to properly brew them.

After the tea tasting, tours progress to the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, which supplies fortune cookies to Chinese restaurants around the world. Along with sampling the cookies, visitors learn that the crunchy treats were invented in San Francisco, not China.

While the original Chinatown began in the mid-19th century, shortly after the Gold Rush of 1849, most of the fanciful, pagoda-style buildings in today’s neighborhood date from the post-1906 earthquake era. One of the most charming is the tile-roofed Chinatown YWCA building, which was designed by architect Julia Morgan in 1932 and now houses the Chinese Historical Society. Along with presenting an exhibit on the history of Chinese immigrants in America, the building is available for small receptions and meetings.

Along with Wok Wiz, many local DMCs also provide group tours and culinary experiences, such as a classical banquet or dim sum lunch in Chinatown. Among them is Mana, Allison & Associates, which has even arranged to close off an alley in Chinatown for private outdoor receptions.

“We’ve done this for corporate groups of 100 or 200—taking over an alley and arranging for lion dancers to welcome the attendees,” says Jennifer Witherington, director of sales. “We bring in foods and gifts from local vendors. People just adore it.”

Japanese Culture
Although much smaller than Chinatown and farther from downtown, San Francisco’s Nihonmachi—or Japantown—is also a place to experience Asian culture. A traditionally Japanese neighborhood since the early 20th century, its centerpiece is the Japanese Cultural Center, a complex of shops selling ceramics, cookware, antiques and other specialty items from Japan.

Restaurants in and around the center are also varied, running the gamut from hibachi steakhouses to noodle houses and sushi bars. The cultural center is also home to Kabuki Springs, which offers traditional Japanese spa treatments and communal baths, and Sundance Cinema, state-of-the-art movie theaters owned by Robert Redford that are devoted to independent films and are available for private screenings and events.

Opened last year, New People is a three-story entertainment complex near the cultural center that is a showcase for Japanese pop culture. It includes an art gallery exhibiting the work of contemporary Japanese artists, a boutique selling trendy fashions from Tokyo designers, a gift gallery of Japanese pop culture items and a 150-seat theater showing new feature films from Japan as well as classics, documentaries and anime.

“Our intent is to be a window on Japanese culture—the hip and popular side of it,” says New People spokesman Eric Hansen, adding that the building can serve as a venue for up to 300 people. “Groups can buy all or part of the space, including the theater where you can do multimedia presentations. It’s a fresh and fun place to hold an event—you can network while having a lot of fun stuff to look at.”

To experience Japanese culture at its most exquisite and traditional, the Japanese Tea Garden, located west of Japantown in Golden Gate Park, is the place to go. Built for the 1894 California Midwinter International Exposition, the garden is a tranquil oasis of cherry trees, arched bridges, pagodas, ponds and a traditional tea house.

“The tea garden is a favorite destination—we take people there for a tour and end with tea and cookies served at the teahouse by ladies in kimonos,” says Constance Adamopoulos, owner of Organized Chaos, a local DMC. “It’s an enchanting place, especially if you time it right for the cherry blossoms, usually in late March. If the wind is right, it looks like snow.”

Art and History
Presenting one of the world’s finest collections of Asian art, San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum is also one of the city’s most popular venues for receptions and dinners. Housed in a palatial Beaux Arts building that was once the city’s main library, the museum features nearly 15,000 artworks drawn from all the major cultures of Asia, everything from Chinese jade to Cambodian bronzes and Persian ceramics.

The museum offers a variety of event spaces that can be rented in conjunction with access to one or more gallery floors. Spaces include the marble-lined Samsung Hall, which can be used for seated dinners or receptions for up to 350 people. The adjacent Loggia, a U-shaped balcony overlooking the Grand Staircase, provides additional space for up to 175 people. If rented in its entirety, the museum accommodates up to 1,400 people for receptions.

“We love using the Loggia at the Asian Art Museum,” says Witherington at Mana, Allison and Associates. “We’ve done pillars of candles on the staircase for great lighting effect. There’s a nice flow to it, with access to the second floor galleries of Asian art.”

South of San Francisco on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, the Cantor Art Center is another place to view Asian ceramics, jade and other treasures. With over 4,000 objects dating from Neolithic times, the museum’s collection is especially strong on Chinese, Japanese and Korean art. The stately 1894 building and outdoor sculpture garden are available for special events.

Offshore from San Francisco, the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island, which was restored and opened as a museum last year, is an evocative place to learn about the story of Asian immigration to America. Accessible by a short ferry ride from San Francisco or Tiburon, the immigration station is where an estimated 500,000 people, about a third of them from Asia, passed through between 1910 and 1940.

With immigration laws especially harsh for people from China and Japan, some immigrants spent as long as a year in detention on Angel Island before they could proceed to the mainland. Group tours take visitors into the mess hall, administration room and the detention barracks to view photo displays and Chinese poems that were painted on the walls by detainees.

Dining Around
Few places offer more ways to explore the diversity of Asian cuisine than San Francisco. Almost every neighborhood offers a wealth of storefront eateries serving everything from Vietnamese pho—a hearty noodle soup usually containing rare beef and topped with bean sprouts, mint leaves and cilantro—to spicy Korean pork or beef short ribs barbecued on charcoal grills set in the middle of the table.

Just south of San Francisco, Daly City, which has the largest Filipino population in the U.S, is the place to try such Filipino specialties as lumpia, a savory appetizer akin to egg roll, and bistek, tender beef chunks, at restaurants like House of Sisig and Sinugba.

For group dining, the choices are also varied. In Chinatown, popular restaurants with large banquet spaces include Empress of China, Imperial Palace, Four Seas, Oriental Pearl and R&G Lounge.

“We work a lot with the Empress of China, which has a large ballroom on the fifth floor with windows overlooking the city,” Witherington says. “We also like Four Seas, where you can take over the main dining room or use the private banquet space upstairs. Both are in the heart of Chinatown and very festive.”

Along with full-scale Chinese banquets, where a half dozen or more courses are served in sequence, dim sum lunches centered on dumplings and other bite-sized delicacies are also popular for groups. Considered by many to be the city’s premier dim sum restaurant is Yank Sing, which includes a location in the downtown Rincon Center that has areas for private dining.

“Yank Sing is a big hit with groups, and a dim sum luncheon is a great thing to do in conjunction with a walking tour of Chinatown,” says Adamopoulos at Organized Chaos. “Each bite is its own experience. Dim sum is the highest level of culinary delight.”

Other group-friendly restaurants with an Asian theme include E&O Trading Company, a three-floor downtown restaurant designed after an ancient Asian trading warehouse that offers private dining space and a fusion menu inspired by the cuisines of China, Japan and Southeast Asia.

For Vietnamese dining, Le Colonial in the city’s downtown theater district evokes the tropical elegance of 1920s French colonial Indochina with its shuttered windows, rattan furnishings and ceiling fans. A former Trader Vic’s, the restaurant offers several atmospheric dining areas for 40 to 90 people as well as a spacious verandah.

Theme parties in hotel ballrooms and other venues can also take on an Asian theme, replete with Japanese taiko drummers, calligraphers and other artists, noodle and sushi-making demonstrations, and pan-Asian food stations.

An example is a recent gala dinner held at the Westin St. Francis for a sales incentive group of 400 qualifiers and their spouses. Asian elements included not only food, entertainment and decor, but details such as silver fortune cookies embossed with the company logo and containing customized fortunes for the attendees.

“When the client asked for something that was very San Francisco and also very elegant, we felt the Asian theme was perfect,” says Jennifer Wies-Brown, senior partner at Benchmark Destinations, the DMC that organized the event. “It’s such a big part of what San Francisco is.”

While most hotels are adaptable to Asian-themed events, some group-friendly hotels in San Francisco offer an Asian-influenced atmosphere on an everyday basis. Downtown properties with Asian flair include the Hotel Nikko San Francisco, which is part of Japan-based Nikko Hotels, and Mandarin Oriental Hotel San Francisco. In Japantown, there is the Hotel Kabuki, operated by locally based Joie de Vivre.