SF’s Famous Chicken Garage Is a Late-Night Korean Classic

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.

Toyose’s menu isn’t so different from what you’ll find at other soju bangs around the Bay, but the food comes out fast and it’s all solidly prepared — the stretchy, golden-brown cheese corn; the puffed-up steamed egg that tastes so juicy and savory spooned over white rice. We were especially fond of a spicy-sweet calamari stir-fry noodle dish, wherein the squid tentacle segments mirrored the thickness and bouncy chew of the accompanying udon noodles. And we were surprised by how rustic and homey the vegetable and seafood–laden doenjang (fermented soybean paste) stew was — a soothing counterpoint when everything else you’ve ordered is spicy or deep-fried.

Really, though, where Toyose shines is in its atmosphere, which only gets more raucous and high-energy later into the night. If you want to have a quiet chat, you can grab one of the partitioned-off booths in front, which even have roll-down bamboo blinds for extra privacy. But the whole back of the restaurant feels like you’re packed inside a friend’s crowded basement or garage, all the tables jammed right next to each other, the volume of everyone’s collective conversations loud enough that you need to raise your voice to be heard.

By the time we left, at around 11, every table was filled. And while it’s true that the diners at the table nearest to us didn’t appear to be Korean, or even Asian American, they’d done admirable work on a big pot of budae jjigae and a plate of spicy stir-fried pork. They, too, were having a good night.

Toyose is open Sunday through Thursday, 6 p.m.–midnight, and Fridays and Saturdays 6 p.m.–2 a.m., at 3814 Noriega St. in San Francisco.