Mamahuhu Review: Sweet and Sour Chicken on Clement Street

Fast-casual Chinese-American food from a Michelin-starred chef is the kind of sentence that sounds like a press release. Then the sweet and sour chicken shows up. Blistered peppers, grilled pineapple, a pile of sesame cucumbers, and a glaze that actually tastes like something. You stop caring who wrote the sentence.

Mamahuhu is a fast-casual Chinese-American restaurant at 517 Clement Street in San Francisco’s Inner Richmond, and it’s the lunch to build a Clement Street Farmers Market day around. It opened in January 2020 from Brandon Jew, the chef behind Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown, with his friends Ben Moore and Anmao Sun, and the idea is the Chinese-American food the three of them grew up on, cooked with organic produce and humanely raised meat. You order at the counter, take a number, and sit down in a bright little room of wood booths and yellow chairs. My husband Kyle and I walked in at 12:48 on a Sunday (the receipt is very specific) and left impressed enough that I’m writing this the next morning.

What to Order at Mamahuhu

The menu is short. Mostly organic, too, and their phrase for it on the website is “mostly organic, but always yummy first,” which I respect as a life philosophy. Here’s what $47.39 bought the two of us, tip included:

• Sweet & Sour Chicken Rice Plate ($16) — the reason to come. Chunks of fried chicken in a glossy sweet-and-sour glaze with charred red and green peppers, onion and grilled pineapple, a dome of jasmine rice, and crunchy sesame cucumbers on the side that cut through all that sweetness. The menu stamps the sweet and sour chicken “must try,” and for once the menu is right.
• Egg Rolls ($6) — the sleeper hit. Two of them, crackly and blistered, with a sprouts-and-carrot filling that’s savory all the way through instead of the usual watery cabbage situation, plus a sweet-and-sour dipping sauce. They’re marked vegetarian on the menu, which surprised me given how much flavor is packed in there.
• Super Savory ($14) — Kyle’s order, and one of three pineapple-bun chicken sandwiches (the others are Honey Hawthorn and Tingly Spicy). Crispy rice-battered chicken, garlic mayo, spinach and crispy shallots on a pineapple bun with a crackly golden top, dusted with their M.S.G. seasoning, which here stands for mushroom, seaweed and garlic. Kyle loved it. His verdict on the seasoning was “super unique,” which from Kyle is a rave, and his face in the photo below agrees.

One thing to know before you order: the menu prices are not the receipt prices. A 5% SF employee healthcare charge goes on every order (ours was $1.80), and with tax and tip our $36 of food came to $47.39. Standard for this city. Worth knowing before the total surprises you.

Make a Clement Street Day of It

Mamahuhu sits a few blocks west of the Clement Street Farmers Market, my favorite farmers market in San Francisco (Sundays, 9am to 2pm, on Clement between 2nd and 4th Ave). Market first, lunch second. By then you’ll want to sit down. The Richmond keeps turning up places like this, and Clement Street is the densest stretch of them.

From here the afternoon plans itself. Walk north for about ten minutes (Mountain Lake Park is the easy way in) and you’re in the Presidio, where the trail network from my SF hikes post makes a very good post-lunch loop. Keep going and there’s a beach at the end of it: Baker Beach through the park, or Ocean Beach if you point yourself west down the whole length of the Richmond. For the matcha stop, Kiss of Matcha is two blocks further up Clement at 750, pouring the best fruit matcha in the city. And Arsicault is a block east of the market at Arguello, if the croissant line is short (the croissant line is never short).

The Verdict on Mamahuhu

• Best for: A sit-down lunch on Clement Street before or after the Sunday farmers market · sweet and sour chicken that earns the name
• My order: The Sweet & Sour Chicken Rice Plate and the Egg Rolls (Kyle: the Super Savory pineapple-bun sandwich, which he loved)
• Damage: $47.39 for two, with tax, tip, and the 5% healthcare charge included
• Hours: Daily 11:30am to 9pm, counter service, dine-in or takeout
• Where: 517 Clement St, Inner Richmond (Google Maps) · eatmamahuhu.com

Mamahuhu now sits on my best fast casual in San Francisco list right behind Souvla, and my Richmond District guide walks the rest of the Clement Street crawl, Breadbelly’s kaya toast and the fluffy pancakes at Eats included.

For more of where I actually eat, start with the best restaurants in San Francisco — and subscribe to my newsletter if you want the new reviews (plus my writing life) in your inbox. I spent five years rating restaurants around the world in my travel guides — now the fork points at my own city.