The Midnight Diners is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist 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.
At a little past 9 on a recent Friday night, we pulled up to what mostly looked like an ordinary house in the Outer Sunset, a few blocks from Ocean Beach. An angry cartoon chicken, lit up like a beacon next to the unmarked garage door, was the only real indication that this was a restaurant — let alone the most famous late-night dining spot in the neighborhood.
As soon as we stepped inside the converted garage restaurant, it was easy to see the charm. The dim, cramped dining room was vaguely reminiscent of the hold of an old-timey ship — ropes coiled around wooden beams, half-enebriated diners wobbling their way to the restroom, like they hadn’t quite gotten their sea legs yet. Every table had a big pitcher of Korean lager or a bottle of soju, and a mountainous spread of steaming hot dishes: fiery, gochujang-stained rice cakes; crispy chicken wings; and burbling stone cauldrons of kimchi and soybean paste soup — the kind of simple, satisfying meal you’d expect to find at a classic Korean soju pub.
Even though it was our first time at Toyose, I’d been hearing about the place for years, sometimes by name, or just as often as “the Korean chicken garage” or simply The Garage. Over the years, no other Korean restaurant in the city had been recommended to me more frequently or more enthusiastically — and almost always by non-Koreans. That sounds like shade, though I don’t mean it that way: As far as I can tell, Toyose and Dan Sung Sa (aka Porno Palace, in Oakland) were two of the first restaurants to bring the spicy, soju-and-OB-fueled pleasures of Korean pub life to the Bay Area mainstream in the early aughts. And if the diverse, jam-packed and extremely happy dining room we encountered during our meal at Toyose was any indication, the restaurant’s popularity has simply extended far beyond its original niche audience.
Which is to say, Toyose belongs to all of San Francisco now. Or maybe it always has. And even after all these years, the restaurant is still cranking out huge portions of hot comfort food until 2 a.m. on the weekend.
The restaurant doesn’t really have a signature dish, though popular standards like its kimchi fried rice and seafood pancakes each have their legion of loyalists, quick to proclaim Toyose’s version the best in the city. My personal list of must-order items starts with the whole fried chicken, or tongdak — an entire bird cut up into big, bone-in pieces and then deep-fried. This is the OG style of Korean fried chicken, predating today’s more ubiquitous sweet and spicy sauce-slathered versions (though it’s still a staple at traditional markets in Korea). Toyose’s tongdak is a sight to behold — a mountain of fried chicken! — and comes to the table scorchingly hot, with a thin, extra-crispy batter that shatters when you take a bite. It’s especially delicious dipped into the little dish of pepper salt that comes on the side.
