In today's era of frou-frou, overpriced, not that tasty restaurants, the uncommercially named Economy Cafe made fabulous food, right in front of you, with fresh ingredients, and one of two true master chefs+with "Wok Hei"--infusing the taste of the wok.
The place had absolutely no ambiance--It let the food speak for itself, and because no money was spent on ambiance, the price was, yes, economical. It was a monument to integrity in a world now being rapidly taken over by restaurant consultants designed to milk every dollar per hour and square inch.
Patronize the declining number of such restaurants. Alas, I have a hard time thinking of any. Even the many hole-in-the-walls in Oakland Chinatown lack one or more of the attributes above. But I'd certainly rather go to one of them than, for example, the ridiculous restaurants on College Ave, where professed uber-liberals act like the worst of the bourgeosie--overspending and preening on image, not substance.
One non-Chinese such restaurant comes to mind: Old Weang Ping, a Thai restaurant in a tough neighborhood in East Oakland.
If you know of such restaurants, I encourage you to write Yelp and Google reviews of them.
As I get older and as the Bay Area gets ever angrier and intolerant, often reflecting merely a transient zeitgeist inflamed by a so-short-sighted media, I feel the need to write such things.
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