ON A RECENT Friday night, China Live, the new food and drink complex on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown, throbbed with diners. “We have eight different cooking stations, four distinct cooking types,” said founder George Chen, leading a tour past open kitchens surrounding a dining room sparkling with luxurious materials—river rock, marble, a cityscape mural in blue and white tile.
In the adjoining room, shoppers browsed a marketplace stocked with fancy cookware and gourmet ingredients (extra virgin tea oil, housemade...