MY OLDEST NEPHEW is 25 years old. He lives in southern California, in either Oceanside, Riverside, Lakeside, Creekside, Crickside, Puddleside, or Dogbowlside. Suffice it to say that the town he lives in abuts a body of water.

I've never been there, but I'm going – as soon as I get a couple of days and a car. In the meantime, this nephew, Jimb (the b is symbolic; his real name is Jimbomb) brings his sunny disposition, his grillfriend, and a couple of my sisses up to brighten an otherwise foggy Friday-Saturday for me. Sunday the sun comes out, and Jimb goes home.

It was his first time in San Francisco, and he absolutely loved the place, loved everything he did, including the Golden Gate Bridge, driving past Lombard Street and down the real crookedest street in the world, in Potrero Hill. He loved going to Alice Shaw's art opening. He loved building a bonfire on Ocean Beach, and then getting kicked off the beach because you're not allowed to have fun at Ocean Beach anymore (except between Lincoln and Fulton and without alcohol, yeah right). He loved hiking around in the Oakland hills and watching his favorite movie ever, The Princess Bride, outside at the Pyramid Brewery in Berkeley. And, for our purposes, he loved eating Chinese food in Chinatown, at the Utopia Café.

He did not love the jellyfish and gizzard appetizer ($5.95), but the important point is that he tried it. I don't think there's a Cheap Eats Guy in the world who could be prouder of a nephew than I was of mine for trying jellyfish and gizzards. It reminded me of 15 years ago or so at Joyce's Kitchen in Newmarket, N.H., when this same kid, then 10, out-ate me (then 26, and still in my pancake-packing-in prime) and I thought I would burst ... for so many different reasons.

What a kid! What a guy!

Dude? I don't know, I learned a lot of language too, like "home slice" – which has nothing to do with pizza, as previously suspected. But how did I get here? You can't eat pizza in Chinese restaurants. You can eat jellyfish and gizzards. You can eat salt-and-pepper calamari ($5.95), broccoli with oyster sauce ($5), mu shu pork ($5.95), Mongolian beef ($5.95), curry chicken clay pot ($5.95), seafood with vegetables over rice ($6.25). All very fairly cheap, as you can see.

And as there were all-out vegetarians in our company, I can say a word about the five-course vegetarian dinner ($8.95 a person, minimum two people). Word.

The calamari was very good. Pale-fried, salted and peppered with thin little slices of hot peppers and sprigs of cool cilantro, this was a kick-ass kickoff to the meal.

The mu shu pork and the Mongolian beef were main-course highlights. The beef was tender and juicy and came with slightly crunchy green peppers over some crispy noodles, in a nice, dark sauce. The curry chicken clay pot was pretty good too, but it would have been better without the bones. I know, normally I like the bones. I like having them, I like holding them, working the meat off, and I like sucking them. But these were like neck bones, or something. Maybe they were just cut funny and I unlucked out. Ones I got hardly had any meat at all.

The fishy dish rice plate was kind of boring: just fishes and bok choy with a clear, goopy sauce. Whereas the Chinese broccoli, in a dark and delicious oyster sauce, was a big hit with the whole table. Except the vegetarians, who were afraid to try it in spite of its obvious vegetability, because nobody (not even me) could say for certain whether oyster sauce has actual oysters or other meat products in it.

You gotta figure.

But then again.

Well ...

The Examiner named Utopia Café a "top-10 Chinese restaurant," according to a quote on the take-out menu. There were highly favorable reviews in the window from San Francisco magazine and somewhere else too.

My impression: not bad, but not great either. The service was erratic. They hurried us to order, then were slow with drinks, and charged us for a dish we'd ordered but never got. No one was none too friendly, which doesn't usually bother me, personally. But my supergame and enthusiastic nephew Jimb, the famous tryer of jellyfish and gizzards and onetime eater of more pancakes than me and Neno put together ... he deserves better, don't you think?

Utopia Café. 139 Waverly Pl. (at Washington), S.F. (415) 956-2902. Tues.-Sun., 11 a.m.-10 p.m. MasterCard, Visa. Takeout available. Beer and wine. Wheelchair accessible.

Email Dan Leone

Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).