Dinnertime at Mister Jiu’s and there’s bound to be a group of friends celebrating a birthday or a family toasting some milestone anniversary at one of the big round tables by the window. Grandparents and little children with glittering barrettes and bow ties marvel over an enormous, gleaming, cartoonishly perfect roast duck and all of its accouterments before someone breaks the spell and the lazy susan starts to spin.

The bird is carved into slices, the drumsticks kept on the bones. The duck carries the softest flavor of smoke, the warmth of white pepper, the faintly numbing sweetness of star anise and fennel seeds. But the first thing that really strikes me is the melting, buttery quality of the rosy meat from the breast.

The meat itself can be almost superfluous in more traditional Peking duck presentations, which tend to be all about the skin, though the skin here is worth talking about, too: delicately crisp, darkly lacquered with maltose, not overly sweetened.

And while there are plenty of excellent roast ducks in this city, the one at Mister Jiu’s is something of a technical flex, finished over the course of two laborious weeks that meld a number of cooking styles. Served with satiny pancakes, peanut butter hoisin, herbs and a mousse made from the livers, the dish is an occasion, and one with special resonance in Chinatown.

In the late 1800s, Mister Jiu’s was a boardinghouse with a glamorous restaurant for high rollers called Hang Far Low, wrecked in the 1906 earthquake then rebuilt. Later, as the Four Seas, it became a banquet hall for weddings and local fund-raisers, a place for celebrations with views of Chinatown and the city beyond it.

Brandon Jew, the chef and owner, grew up going there, grocery shopping in the neighborhood with his grandmother, carrying their bags home on the bus back to the Richmond. He later worked for Judy Rodgers at Zuni Café — home of the chicken — and Michael Tusk at Quince, and cooked in Bologna, Piedmont and Shanghai.

Mr. Jew opened Mister Jiu’s after about two years renovating the building with an eye toward its original details and former swankiness. His menu drew from the Chinese canon, along with his grandmother’s cooking and the formalities of Cantonese banquet dining. But Mr. Jew brought a distinctly Californian point of view to that source material, referencing the work of earlier farm-to-table restaurants in Chinatown, like Johnny Kan’s, while developing his own modern Chinese American fine-dining style.

This was 2016, the year so many (millennials, in particular) have been looking back to these past few weeks on social media with a bleary-eyed nostalgia. It was the year that Instagram introduced the algorithmic feed that now rules the echo chambers of food trends on social media. Is it too soon to look back at the younger version of yourself? Not for Mister Jiu’s, which already has a small section of “classics” on the menu — 10 years can be a lifetime for a restaurant.

Checking in on the hot, sweet-scented layers of freshly steamed cheong fun with sea urchin, I see a wholesome pair that still knows how to bring out the very best in each other. And it’s hard to resist the silken mapo tofu when the custard-soft tofu is just as opulent as the intricate rib-eye mapo that covers it, pooling with chile-stained beef tallow.

The chilled beef tendon is actually braised shank and tendon suspended together in a smooth, gelatinous terrazzo, garnished with neon celery leaves and a puddle of red pepper purée. I feel protective of the plate even when those slices are gone and just a luminous, messy pool of chile sauce remains — practically drinkable.

The chef William Lim Do developed the chile oil for that dish after a research trip to Lanzhou, then went on to start his own pop-up, Lao Wai Noodles. So many alums of Mister Jiu’s have started their own projects, including the co-chefs at nearby Four Kings, where lines start before the doors open.

Mister Jiu’s is a magnet for ambitious cooks from across culinary backgrounds to practice California cuisine through the technical finesse of Chinese cooking.

Cooks at Mister Jiu’s simmer velvety stocks and train on woks and steamers. They cure pork to make lap cheong. They brine and dry fresh scallops and shrimp to shred for an xo sauce that heightens a dizzyingly savory bowl of fresh chee cheong fun dressed with Hama Hama clams and kale.

It’s one of those dishes where the flavors are thumping, turned all the way up, and one of the rare dishes that calls on the pleasures of butter. But Mister Jiu’s has more moves than that, and some of my favorites on a recent visit were quiet and gentle, like the floaty tofu skin salad with persimmons and jujubes, twinkling with yuzu, and a plate of winter citrus with fresh, raw chrysanthemum leaves, each teeny, pudgy kishu mandarin segment a jewel.

Mister Jiu’s vision has been clear over the years, though it has pivoted again and again, squeezing it into various formats, from a tasting menu (now abandoned) to a family-style banquet and an à la carte menu. I love the idea of the banquet, a way to simultaneously celebrate the roots and ambitions of the restaurant, though it can be a little awkward, particularly if you’re a smaller group. Both times I’ve had it, the food didn’t flow or find a rhythm, and the truth is it didn’t feel like a party — until that duck arrived.

When you have something to celebrate, Mister Jiu’s excels at a showstopper, like the pristinely steamed and sizzled whole fish, or a more rowdy dish of spiny lobster on a plush bed of curried noodles with crisp, seared edges. But I always go back to the duck — the duck! — a dish now as fundamental to its city as Zuni’s chicken.

Cinematography by Skyler Norton Bocciolatt.

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