Lucky Liu's Delivers Chinese Cuisine to Downtown

Grid View

Alex Thao, the restaurateur behind local Thai spots Rama and Celadon, is back with another Asian concept for San Diego; this time it's Chinese, to honor his Taiwanese heritage. Thao is working with Jaime Partners and OCIO Design Group on Lucky Liu's, a 3,000 square-foot downtown restaurant just steps from the original site of San Diego's 1900's-era Chinatown.

One of our anticipated fall openings, Lucky Liu's is due by late October.

The front door will open onto a bar serving beer, wine and soju (a spirits program will follow); beyond that sits an 80-person capacity dining room decorated with paper lanterns. A second phase, post-opening, will bring a wrap-around sidewalk patio.

Thao calls Lucky Liu's an "elevated Asian diner", and the menu will be a mix of familiar Chinese takeout favorites (kung pao chicken, chow mein) and his grandmother's recipes, which include potatoes sauteed with beef.

For downtown denizens, the eatery will offer curbside pickup and eventually, delivery service.

The restaurant will open seven days a week, and feature weekend dim sum service. Its kitchen, visible from the street, will wok toss Mongolian beef and wok-charred lamb, roast pork and Peking ducks, and cook up seafood specialities including tea-marinated seabass, seafood clay pots and honey walnut shrimp.
· Lucky Liu's [Official Site]
· All Plywood Reports [~ESD~]