After a three-year break, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy creator Lisa Geduldig is glad to be bringing her show to San Francisco’s Chinatown.
“We’re back home,” says Geduldig, adding that a veteran will oversee food service at the 31st annual Jewish-comedy-on-Christmas-in-a-Chinese restaurant extravaganza on Dec. 23-25 with standup by Wendy Liebman, Rich Aronovitch, Talia Reese, Geduldig, and her mother Arline.
Geduldig, who had the 2022 pop-up Kosher Comedy in a synagogue catered due to the pandemic, and streamed the event in 2020-21, is pleased that Simon Ma is handling meal delivery this year, the first time the dinner and cocktail performances will be at Imperial Palace. (On an upper floor, with elevator access, Geduldig emphasizes.)
“I never realized just how much the restaurant workers do,” says Geduldig, who, since 1997, hosted Kung Pao at New Asia, which closed during COVID. With Ma among the several banquet managers she worked with at New Asia about 20 years ago, she says, “I didn’t have to explain Kung Pao Kosher Comedy to him.”
Having done a tasting, Geduldig is equally excited about this year’s dinner menu, which includes Kung Pao chicken, sweet and sour flounder, eggplant in black bean sauce, mixed vegetables, vegetarian noodles, rice, fortune cookies with Yiddish sayings, and, yes, kosher walnut prawns.
“All right, so it’s shrimp again. I couldn’t have shrimp at the synagogue,” says Geduldig, who counts herself among the Jewish heathens who enjoy shellfish.
In keeping with the pre-pandemic format, this year’s Kosher Comedy features a familiar headliner, Liebman, a Southern California comic who has appeared multiple times and has “become family” to Geduldig, who says, “She’s the nicest human on the planet. Such a doll.”
The bill also includes Aronovitch, who grew up in New Orleans and does “zany stuff like getting dressed up in wild Spandex outfits” and dancing in public. Like Geduldig, he performed at last year’s Borscht Belt Fest in the Catskills.
Reese, a former bankruptcy attorney who lives on Long Island, is the first orthodox comic to play Kung Pao, says Geduldig, who’s also in the lineup. And, as in recent years, Geduldig’s 92-year-old mother Arline, a longtime Florida resident, will join by video.
Even though Kosher Comedy has returned to in-person status, it will continue to be offered online for nonlocals new to the event and others.
“I feel pretty strongly about keeping the livestream element for people who don’t want to gather because of COVID or health issues,” says Geduldig, noting that the number of guests in breakout rooms on Zoom has mirrored that of tables in restaurants.
Traditionally, partial proceeds from Kung Pao are donated to charity, and this year’s beneficiaries include Hebrew Free Loan, which since 1897 has offered interest-free loans to Jews in Northern California.
And to celebrate Kung Pao’s historic association with Chinatown, the other notable beneficiary is the Chinatown YMCA Food Pantry, which serves 245 neighborhood households each week.
“I don’t know why I didn’t do this 30 years ago,” says Geduldig, nicely repeating, at the request of the interviewer, “We have a new home in Chinatown.”
Kung Pao Kosher Comedy is at 5 and 8:30 p.m. Dec. 23-25 at Imperial Palace, 818 Washington St., San Francisco, with live streams at 6 and 8:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. Tickets are $30-$100 at www.CityBoxOffice.com/KungPao. For more information, visit www.KosherComedy.com.