Yum Yum House

To those worried that Yum Yum House was gone forever, have no fear. Yum Yum’s is alive and well, just in a new home with a new name. They are now called Yum Yum Hunan and live in the Pac Heights area. The menu is exactly the same, all the same meals, the same chef. Everything. Big Lantern, however, is not at all the same food… do not be fooled!
I’ve strictly ordered Chinese delivery from Yum Yum’s for years and years and I’ve actually never ordered anything I didn’t like. Their spicy mandarin eggplant is my fave dish, also the mango prawns and mongolian beef. Deeeelicious AND cheap. After feeling sad for months that one of my favorite restaurants was gone, I randomly saw their window on Divisadero and pretty much jumped for joy. Since then, I’ve ordered food from them once again and all is back to normal. We just need to keep up our orders… and hopefully they won’t lose their lease again!

Crap! They closed! noooooo!
No wonder it was closed last week when i went tuesday at lunch.
The horror!
Same owners at biglantern? will try it.
For those of you who don’t know, yum yum house had the best lunch specials and chinese dishes ever. With a cheap price to boot. I miss their stuffed tofu and eggplant over rice.

As of 5/​1, Yum Yum House is closed due to the Valencia location’s lease running out. Fortunately, the same owner also owns Big Lantern on 16^th, so they combined the whole operation there.
Be aware that if you call the former number for Yum Yum House, it will forward immediately to Big Lantern. Imagine the odd feeling I experienced when I walked up to a dark and shuttered Yum Yum House tonight, 15 minutes after calling in my order. For a moment I thought I had completely lost my mind and made up the order sequence on the phone in my head.
To their credit, the man taking my order tried to make sure I understood they were now on 16^th, but I didn’t hear him well over the background noise. They were apologetic about the confusion and confided they were worried about losing their loyal neighborhood customer base.
Yum Yum fans, we can’t let these guys down. Be sure to say hi to the crew at Big Lantern, which is only one block away on 3170 16^th Street, closer to Guerrero.

The good — great food, big portions, awesome lunch special.
The bad — hole in the wall, cheap and dull ambiance.
The ugly — lousy service.
They deliver so you can avoid the bad and ugly and come out ahead. This is the best Chinese food I’ve had in the mission hands down.

I used to work in this area and this is our favorite place to order chinese food. The food is ok and we love it because they deliver!
Onion Pancake
Pot Sticker Pork or Vegetable
Kung Pao Vegetable & Bean Cakes*
String Bean Beef*
Vegetable Delight*
Mushu Pork

RUSTY NAIL.
my friend found a BENT, RUSTY NAIL in her chow mein in ’05. how does that even happen? where do RUSTY NAILS come from? dilapidated 2x4s? what’s one of those doing in the kitchen?
anyway, at the time she loved this place and didn’t want to call and complain because the staff was so nice and she thought the food was so good.
i try not to hold grudges. i mean especially about things that didn’t even happen to me. i think this is the only (and longest) grudge i am currently holding! grudge nailed in the brain, by a RUSTY NAIL.

Delivery is a beautiful thing.
Food always tastes better when it’s brought to you.
Eating straight from a plastic container with plastic knives and forks — — is exhilarating.
I love the idea, that I can watch trashy TV, with a forkful of greasy noddles. I love that I can curl up on my sofa while I shovel rice in between phone conversations. I love that I don’t need to wait for a check, for water refills, or have to endure too loud conversations. I can just be.
Me, some takeout, and a good movie — is often the perfect night.
Yum Yum House not only delivers in this sense, but they also deliver in taste.
Despite being located in the Mission they make treks out to the Haight. Their lightly fried eggplant, chow mein, mango prawns, and sizzling basil beef are all worth ordering. Not only are they reasonably priced, but the meat tastes fresh, and the vegetables are cooked just right.
If you’re having a cozy night in with your partner, or are looking to go all out with some friends you haven’t seen in awhile — definitely call Yum Yum and be sure to try at least a couple of their specials.

I had broccoli and prawns. It kind of sucked. But everyone else gave this place 5 stars so I’d hate to fuck up their score.
I got nothing. delicious. sure why not.

yum yum house does not disappoint! never has. I have been ordering from YuYu for the last 12 years at least. Not consistently so perhaps i missed the peaks and valleys of their quality.
I really really really like Yum Yum, I just do. it is not fantastic, out of this world chinese food, but it is consistently good!
We just ate it and it was ho-​o-​ot! That is great news! Had lots of broccoli as it was featured in the sechuan broccoli dish. then we had some in the cashew chicken which is ALWAYS good! and the mushu pork was so so good. Abundant, tasty, yummy, filling, and will be eating it for days!
Yummy!

If you do not mind eating every meal with anti-​diarrheal medicine, this place is cheap and the food relatively edible.
However, if you have an poorly stocked medicine cabinet then sing with me:
Wake up in the morning, put your feet on the floor,
Do the fifty yard dash to the bathroom door,
(ahem!)

First let me say, I’d give Yum Yum HOUSE five stars if some of their vegetable dishes weren’t swimming in pools of oil. That sort of thing makes me wish I’d sucked it up and made my own (ok, asked my gentleman-​friend to make) tender baby bok choy instead.
The wonderful thing about Yum Yum HOUSE is that they will substitute almost any of their murdered-​chicken dishes with tofu or «mock chicken,» so vegans & vegetarians have a larger selection than usual. Yum Yum HOUSE loves to make customers happy!
My ideal order from Yum Yum HOUSE: Chef’s Special Mandarin Chicken, and Szechuan broccoli. Those of us with larger appetites can also choose between a free (with orders of $ 10 and up) order of fried rice (no egg? no problem!) or chow mein. I always entertain the thought of putting on some rice after calling for delivery, figuring the delivery-​person should arrive around the same time the rice is finished, and my rice is different colored and fragrant and fun; clearly superior to restaurant white.
If you can’t say no to free food, the fried rice no egg is better than the chow mein, which is too greasy for me. I spent a couple of my teenage years eating the cheapest, worst, most delicious chow mein ever: $ 2 for a box stuffed full of noodles, cabbage, and «chicken» if you wanted it, fifty cents more for a soda. O sodium. Two school years of that killed my taste for chow mein, so thought my gentleman-​friend devours it, I can’t speak directly to its quality.
Yum Yum HOUSE! so nice, so timely, such reasonable prices. don’t ever change; unless you want to increase your vegan menu, in which case, send me a flyer post-​haste.

Yum yum it is! And a steal!
I just went here today for lunch as half the staff in my office gets their Chinese food from Yum Yum so I wanted to give it a try. I was not disappointed.
The lunch specials are AWESOME! My entrée was only $ 5.50 and the serving was colossal! The quality was pretty good too.
The reason I am really impressed with Yum Yum is b/​c of their graciousness. I ordered the spicy eggplant with tofu, which wasn’t on the lunch menu but they said they could cook it. I usually make a point of asking if there’s meat or specifying that I’m vegetarian. Well today I forgot. When my food arrived I was surprised to see chunks of chicken and shrimp thoroughly mixed in with everything. I felt really bad to ask but when I did ask if they could take it back and make another one without meat, they said yes and brought a new plate out really quickly. And they did not charge extra! Any place that can swallow such a cost without blinking an eye gets my business.
Last thing I have to say is that Yum Yum is simple and casual. The food’s yummy and the prices are affordable.

The first month I moved here only-​friend-​I-​had-​in-​the-​City and I went to Ocean Beach and smoked a lot of pot next to an AA meeting. Yeah, we’re that kind of cool. Right after that he asked me what I wanted for dinner. He asked if Yum Yum House sounded alright; having not been there and only knowing the name I said no, it sounded terrible.
If I’m eating there and its dinner time the Yum Yum eggplant is all this girl could want. They have the best lunch special in the Mission and their Orange Chicken is to die for. Fake or real; totally doesn’t matter. Also, they’re super nice, even if they did think my best friend and I ate there three times a week because we were part of the creepy church around the corner, not because we were broke (and they were cheap) and we were working nights…

The one dish I always get is the one that isn’t listed on the menu — vegetarian General Tsao Chicken.
Cubes of mock chicken and broccoli in a delicious brown sauce — who thought deep fried mock meat would taste so good?
Throw in some brown rice, and I’m in (vegetarian) heaven.

This was better than any Chinese food I’ve had in Chicago. If that means anything to you, this review will have been worthwhile.
If you are a Bay Area or West Coast native, I suspect you will not be as impressed as I was.
Again, as in a few of my reviews thus far, I was a little drunk by the time I sat down to eat. In the spirit of full disclosure, I thought you should know.

The «secret vegan menu» is where it’s at. The Mandarin meatless chicken seems to be a univeral favorite among vegetarians and vegans who know about this place. My omnivore friends really liked it, too. I also enjoy their General Tso and Kung Pao meatless chicken.
This place has reasonable lunch specials. If you’re vegan, make sure you ask for a vegetable soup because their default hot and sour soup has egg in it. Please note: the Mandarin meatless chicken is not included on lunch specials.

I love Yum Yum. They have the BEST vegetarian kung pao chicken and deicious oh-​so-​bad for you mandarin meatless chicken.
We normally order delivery — it sometimes seems to take a bit longer than I would like. And I haven’t been thrilled by the potstickers. Still all of the entrees I’ve ordered have been darned tasty.
Writing this review makes me want to order Yum Yum for dinner… tonight!

This place ain’t bad. I judge a place a lot by how good their water is. I thought that their water tasted funny. I ordered the basil tofu dish which was pretty good and definitely reasonably priced. We weren’t expecting extravagance but just something to fill us up enough to go on with our mission evening.
The name is great but I was un sure of what kind of restaurant they were until I walked in and saw the menu. A lady coaxed us into coming in…“just try one dish… it is the best chinese in this area”. We went for it.
My boyfriends orange chicken tasted like chicken nuggets with honey to me but he liked his soup.
The service was stellar. I mean, they were there whenever we needed them and brought us extra rice when they saw that we were low.
I’d come back but it wasn’t the best chinese I have ever had.

This is a completely decent but not particularly exciting Chinese joint. It’s conveniently located on the main stretch of Valencia Street, so that alone is a big draw for me, as it’s a couple blocks from my place.
It’s small but doesn’t feel too crowded, the service is friendly, and the dishes are mostly satisfying. Some of it was a little too rich for my taste, but I found the seafood entrees to be quite yummy.

Lunch specials are cheap at $ 5 – 6. The Mandarin Meatless Chicken was a delight (or, ‘Yum, yum,’ I should say). But don’t bother with the green onion pancakes. They score extra points for having faux meat and brown rice on the menu, and for delivering to the Pac Heights area. (Are they really related to Big Lantern on 16^th? There’s definite similarities.)
Depending on the server, service ranged from indifferent to friendly. Along with Jasmine Tea House and Big Lantern, I can rely on Yum Yum for good veggie Chinese food in the Mission.