[inferiorhuman]

Historically the Chinese diaspora in San Francisco came from the southeast, which is why Cantonese was such a common language. The food largely followed that. If memory serves, NYC Chinese takeout tends to skew more towards Hunan because that's where folks were from.

Off the top of my head, the whole stretch of Taraval has a variety of Chinese restaurants focused on things other than dumplings. There's the Macau cafe, the HK bakery, the pancake place, the noodle place, the ice cream place, the Shandong place that does the pancakes. Old Mandarin (ex-Bib Gourmand) focuses on Islamic food, and their alum spawned a bunch of other restaurants including Beijing. But these are all more homey, neighborhood restaurants than you'd find in the Mission.

Honestly for something easy like mapo tofu I just make it at home. You can get all of the ingredients readily.

If you are willing to go outside the city and go with Chinese adjacent, there are a ton of options. Lion Dance Cafe (Malaysian) and Red Hot Chili Pepper (Indo-Chinese) come to mind.