Chinese Skewers Are the Last Bastion of Late-Night Dining in the Bay

The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and artist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.

The Bay Area has always been a tough place to be an incorrigible late-night snacker — and the triple whammy of the pandemic, a brittle economy and the prevailing “doom loop” narrative have winnowed down the options even further. (Did you know, for example, that even the 24-hour Starbread in Daly City now closes at 9 p.m.?)

We live in the epicenter of the 8 or 9 o’clock last call.

The one notable exception, apparently? Chinese skewers. Even now, if you search online for what’s still open, say, past 10 p.m. on any given day, you’ll find a preponderance of Chinese restaurants with the word “BBQ” in their name, scattered in suburbs like Dublin, Fremont and San Mateo. All of them specialize in the heavily spiced, cumin-forward grilled meat sticks that you’ll find sold on the street in northwestern China.

That’s what we were craving on a recent Friday night when we drove to a Newark strip mall in search of Dynasty BBQ, which was a bit tricky to find if only because the place just recently changed its signage, having merged with a San Mateo skewer spot of the same name. Online, it’s still listed as “Oyama BBQ.”

Dynasty has this particular kind of high-low vibe that immediately charmed me: On the one hand, there was the traditional guzheng music and elegant decor, down to the paper lanterns and the dozens of faux cherry blossoms hanging from the ceiling, like you’re dining in some Ming Dynasty temple courtyard. On the other hand, we were eating and drinking off the same kind of paper plates and plastic cups you would get at a child’s birthday party.

The food hit the spot. More often than not, this is exactly what I want to be eating when I get hungry late at night — something salty and fatty that goes down expeditiously well with cold beer. The skewers all have the same standard spice coating that’s ubiquitous at this type of Chinese barbecue spot: a lot of cumin, ground chiles and Sichuan peppercorn.