Editor’s note: This article originally posted on the San Francisco Examiner. Click here for more culture reporting at sfexaminer.com
It’s easy to lose perspective when you set foot inside the colossal new downtown home of Crustacean, a longtime Vietnamese fine-dining fixture in The City that moved locations in July.
Your eyes can’t help but zig-zag as you try to take in the full breadth of its elegant interior — the cavernous dining halls; colorful lighting piercing through blue, brown and clear liquor bottles lining across the bar; giant floral arrangements sprouting from every corner, including the ceiling; and the scattered obscurely shaped and uniquely patterned furniture and decor.
You would never know from the enormity of it all just how small its origin was.
Crustacean restaurant bar at 195 Pine St. in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
Just a few years ago, the 6,000 square foot property on Polk Street was a pile of rubble and dry walls, all that remained from a demolished Japanese restaurant and 7-Eleven convenience store.
There have only been a few constants during the An family’s up-and-down tenure in America. One is the family’s pioneering garlic noodles, a revered dish that’s become a fundamental staple of Bay Area cuisine and Asian American homes.
The other constant is the family’s propensity to rebuild and persevere.
“My grandparents always said, ‘You could lose everything, but you can’t lose your family, the recipes, the knowledge.” said Monique An, who runs Crustacean alongside her husband, Ken Lew. “My mom always says, ‘Gosh, I’ve lost things so many times. You can lose your material wealth just like that.’”
Monique An’s mother is Helene An, a trailblazing San Francisco food icon, long hailed as the “mother of fusion cuisine.” In 2019, she won the Smithsonian Museum’s Pioneer Award in Culinary Arts for “introducing Vietnamese food to mainstream America.”
Crustacean is one of the family’s six restaurants across the state, including its other Crustacean location, a slightly younger outpost in Beverly Hills. That spot, according to Eater San Francisco, is a favorite among A-list Hollywood stars including Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian.
Despite pleas from her family to retire, Helene An, now 81 years old, still oversees her restaurants, though the day-to-day operations are managed by her five daughters — Elizabeth, Catherine, Hannah, Jacqueline and Monique.
Still, even after all the accolades and successes, Monique An said her mother couldn’t help but fear the worst when the pandemic hit and devastated their bottom line.
“I remember talking to her on the phone, and I could hear the alarm in her voice, like she was flashing back to 50 years ago,” she said. “It was all happening again. Everything she had worked so hard to build wasn’t going to survive.”
Monique An said she and her four older sisters were born to aristocratic privilege in the Imperial City area of Hue, Vietnam.
Even as the Vietnam War raged around them, Monique An said, their day-to-day lives remained the same at their sprawling home, where they were served by chefs and drivers and protected by private security.
“We thought we were going to win the war,” she said. “We thought everything was going well.”
Crustacean restaurant dining room at 195 Pine St. in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
But like so many people across Vietnam, their standard lives in an instant came crashing down on April 30, 1975, when the communist North Vietnamese toppled Saigon, the country’s capital, claimed victory and seized control of the nation.
Monique An, who was 5 years old at the time, said a pilot — likely sent by her father, who was in the air force — knocked on the family’s door that night and told them they had to leave the city immediately.
Helene An and her five young daughters boarded a cargo plane, joining thousands of other Vietnamese at a refugee camp in Guam. Monique An said they only took a few essential belongings with them because her mother assumed they would return home soon.
But the Saigon airport shut down a few days later. The Ans would never return home, leaving behind countless family heirlooms and treasure. Monique An said to this day, she has no pictures of herself as a baby.
RELATED: Photo gallery — Crustacean San Francisco debuts
The family eventually landed in San Francisco to join Monique An’s grandmother, Diana, who had immigrated to the United States a few years before. Diana An had taken over a former Italian deli on 46th Avenue and converted it into the still-active Thanh Long, which the family claims was the first Vietnamese restaurant in The City’s history.
Like many immigrants, the Ans’ wealth, social status and achievements in their homeland did not come with them when they moved across the Pacific Ocean. The family went from living with royal privilege in Vietnam to cramming into in a one-bedroom flat in the Outer Sunset, Monique An said.
Her parents went back to college. Her father worked as a plane mechanic at United Airlines while her mother was an accountant — a job that inadvertently led her to one of the most important culinary inventions in Bay Area history when Helene An noticed her co-workers at the accounting firm frequently ate pasta with tomato sauce.
“She thought that ‘if all these Americans love pasta, then I’m gonna create a pasta dish,’” Monique An said.
She went on to develop her own Asian twist on pasta — garlic noodles, a dish Monique An said was unlike anything else at the time. Now, it’s a favorite at-home lunch or dinner option inside Asian American households.
What’s in it exactly? Other than a hearty helping of butter and garlic, hardly anybody knows — which is by design. To this day, the family has bent over backwards to keep the recipe private, going as far as building secret kitchens within the existing kitchens at each of their restaurants. Only Helene An and a few select chefs are allowed inside the secret kitchen to cook the signature dish.
Soon after introducing the garlic noodles to the menu, Thanh Long’s popularity soared, with the likes of Robin Williams, Danny Glover and Eddie Murphy lining up to chow on whole Dungeness crabs and garlic noodles.
In 1991, the Ans opened their second restaurant — Crustacean, in Nob Hill — offering similar fusion flavors but with a far more upscale experience and environment. An said their goal was for guests to feel like they’re walking into a beautiful home where they can feel warmth of a family while dining in elegance.
Pull Quote
Monique An said her mother couldn’t help but fear the worst when the pandemic hit and devasted their bottom line.
Soon after it opened, San Jose Mercury News food reviewer David Beck wrote a story titled “Garlic noodles worth marrying for.”
“By the third forkful of Helene An’s garlic noodles I had a plan,” Beck wrote. “I would divorce my companion, marry An, get the recipe, divorce her and remarry companion No. 1.”
“That saved our business,” Monique An said of Beck’s review.
Even Michael Bauer, the notoriously grumpy San Francisco Chronicle food critic, eventually championed Crustacean’s novel offerings, the first to bestow Helene An with the moniker “the mother of fusion cuisine.”
In 2019, Monique An and Lew — whom she met working at the restaurant when Lew was a customer — decided to move Crustacean from Nob Hill to the Financial District to be in a larger space and closer to downtown foot traffic.
Crustacean restaurant at 195 Pine St. in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
A 2020 remodel to convert two neighboring structures into one facility cost $4.5 million, doubling the size of their original location. Contractors had just finished demolishing the old interiors when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in March 2020.
Over the next 2½ years, construction stalled, leaving the blocks of cement untouched. Meanwhile, business at Crustacean plummeted, leading Lew — a businessman by trade — to wonder at various points whether the end of Crustacean was near.
“There was just no end in sight, you didn’t know what was happening,” Lew said. “It just destroyed the whole hospitality and commercial real-estate industry.”
Soon after the first shelter-in-place orders went into place, Monique An said, her mother called her, fearing that their history of losing everything was about to repeat itself.
An’s Famous Garlic Roasted Dungeness Crab and An’s Famous Garlic Noodles at Crustacean restaurant at 195 Pine St. in San Francisco on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025.
Craig Lee/The Examiner
But as the economy bounced back and restrictions lifted, Crustacean was able to stay afloat. It resumed construction in 2023 and finished earlier this year. Crustacean’s sparkling new home debuted with a huge grand opening in July, attended by a wealth of prominent local restaurateurs.
Not only did the sheer size of Crustacean’s venue expand, but so did its menu since the chefs were able to do more with a larger kitchen.
Still, even through all the change, two dishes born from secret family recipes remain: “An’s Famous Garlic Roasted Dungeness Crab,” created by Diana An, and “An’s Famous Garlic Noodles,” created by Helene An.
“I am amazed at how resilient my family has been to be able to lose everything in Vietnam and come here and rebuild their life, and still be able to impart their Vietnamese traditions on all of us,” Monique An said.
Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect the total cost of the Crustacean remodel and the ingredients in the restaurant’s noodles.
Dining and Cooking