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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976340\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976340\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe.jpg\" alt=\"Cappuccino in a white cup on a wood table. The view outside the window is of a grassy cliff and, beyond that, a blue sky and sea.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">View from the Cafe at the Sea Ranch Lodge. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003ci>Be sure to check out our full \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/summer-guide-2025\">2025 Summer Arts Guide to live music, movies, art, theater, festivals and more\u003c/a> in the Bay Area.\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like a swanky view of the ocean (or river or mountaintop) with my dinner as much as the next person. The problem is that, more often than not, those top-floor, waterfront restaurants want to charge you an unspoken “view tax” for the privilege of enjoying the scenery. That’s how you end up dropping $200 for a mediocre meal that would cost you less than half as much at a normal restaurant where the main focus is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/food\">food\u003c/a>. And it’s why I’ve pretty much stopped eating anywhere remotely fancy when road-tripping in unfamiliar areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily, the Bay Area is home to plenty of \u003ci>non\u003c/i>-fancy restaurants that still offer million-dollar views, and even a handful of fancy-view restaurants that wind up being worth the price. Here are a few of my favorites.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Cafe at the Sea Ranch Lodge\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>60 Sea Walk Dr., Sea Ranch\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tucked away on the prettiest stretch of the Sonoma coast, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesearanchlodge.com/\">Sea Ranch Lodge\u003c/a> is a marvel of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957530/barbara-stauffacher-solomon-supergraphics-obituary\">colorful supergraphics\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.dwell.com/article/sea-ranch-architecture-7f30ea15\">minimalist architecture\u003c/a> inspired by the local terrain. Even if you can’t afford to plop down $600 or $700 to actually \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesearanchlodge.com/lodging/\">stay the night\u003c/a> at the lodge itself, tromping around the rolling hills and cliffs out back makes for a fantastic day trip. My suggestion? Start the day at the Lodge’s casual cafe, where you can enjoy a picture-perfect cappuccino and a crisp-griddled, Crunchwrap-like “Break-a-dilla,” which comes stuffed with scrambled eggs, queso fresco and (optional) bacon. Whether you sit in front of the big picture windows or on the deck outside, the panoramic views of that coastline can’t be beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976330\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976330\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib.jpg\" alt=\"Prime rib cooked quite pink and rare on a white place with mashed potatoes and creamed spinach.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The prime rib plate at Shadowbrook. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Shadowbrook\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>1750 Wharf Rd., Capitola\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This sprawling, 78-year-old ski chalet–style restaurant serves reasonably tasty American and Italian American classics that feel like a time warp to the 1950s or ’60s — pretty good chicken parm and prime rib (pro tip: ask for extra jus), and a truly excellent appetizer of fried baby artichokes. In truth, Shadowbrook is more famous for everything else \u003ci>besides \u003c/i>the food: the quaint vintage taxicab shuttle for guests staying at nearby hotels; the old-timey service; and, especially, the picturesque funicular (or “hillavator”) ride to the restaurant itself, which sits at the bottom of a hill. That isn’t a bad thing: This is the kind of restaurant where the whole experience adds up to more than the sum of its parts, especially once you factor in the exquisite views — the cypress trees up above, and Soquel Creek and the rest of Capitola down below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976334\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976334\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and chips on a plate with a lemon wedge.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fish and chips at Barbara’s Fishtrap in Half Moon Bay. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Barbara’s Fishtrap\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>281 Capistrano Rd., Half Moon Bay\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe the best of the dozens of little seafood shacks that you’ll find up and down California’s “Slow Coast” region, Barbara’s sits on a quiet, relatively uncrowded beach and serves up some of the tastiest, most impeccably fried fish and chips I’ve had in the Bay. I’ll also recommend ordering yet another version of fried artichoke hearts (a particular specialty of this southern stretch of the Bay). Barbara’s juicy, piping-hot version has the airiest tempura batter and is delicious dipped in ranch dressing — a combination made only more delightful if you time your meal to coincide with a classic California beach sunset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976338\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976338\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq.jpg\" alt=\"Crispy-skinned roast pork belly on a table in front of a window showing views of yachts in the marina.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yacht views and Cantonese-style barbecue at Pacific Lighthouse. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Pacific Lighthouse\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>1051 Pacific Marina, Alameda\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From its vantage point right on the marina in Alameda, Pacific Lighthouse might boast the best waterfront views of any dim sum restaurant in the Bay — certainly among those whose dim sum is actually worth eating. They don’t do cart dim sum here, but the paper checkbox menu offers a surprisingly robust mix of classics and more creative, contemporary dishes. My favorites: the crunchy-skinned barbecue pork belly; the crisp-topped “French”-style baked pork buns; and the wonderfully eggy, sugar-dusted doughnuts. The service and self-seating system are both a bit of a free-for-all, so I’ve found the best approach is to show up right when the restaurant opens at 10:30 a.m. and send the fastest, most decisive walker in your group to snag one of the tables by the back windows, with their view of the yachts on the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976333\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a bloody-centered slab of prime rib and a foil-wrapped baked potato.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Warehouse Cafe’s prime rib plate, served at one of the bar’s outdoor patio tables. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976332\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976332\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view.jpg\" alt=\"View of a sunset over the waterfront, from the other side of a chain link fence.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunset view from the parking lot. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Warehouse Cafe\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>5 Canyon Lake Dr., Port Costa\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warehouse Cafe is a legendary East Bay biker bar, beloved by locals for its taxidermy-themed decor; no-nonsense bartenders; gruff, mammoth beer selection; and occasionally rowdy clientele. Food lovers mostly know the place for its Friday and Saturday night prime rib special — a big ol’ slab of beef served with a baked potato, garlicky mushrooms and all the fixins. The plate used to be one of the \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/10/19/21519931/warehouse-cafe-port-costa-biker-bar-prime-rib-pandemic\">best deals in the entire Bay Area\u003c/a>, and it’s still worth seeking out even now that the price has spiked to a still-fairly-reasonable $45 (cash only). As far as scenery goes, the bar’s patio does overlook the Carquinez Strait shoreline, but the best view comes at the end of a nighttime drive up the long, winding country road that spills out into downtown Port Costa proper: a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002191/for-a-taste-of-the-old-west-head-to-this-tiny-bay-area-town\">ghostly\u003c/a> vision of old-timey saloons and rickety Victorians, all lit up by twinkly string lights. It’s enough to take your breath away. Note: The Warehouse’s prime rib special starts at 6 p.m. on Fridays and 5 p.m. on Saturdays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976331\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976331\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread.jpg\" alt=\"Chalkboard menu for Wild Flour Bread, with a colorful hand-drawn tree. \" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The chalkboard menu at Wild Flour Bread in Sonoma County. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Wild Flour Bread\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>140 Bohemian Hwy., Freestone\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every scenic restaurant roundup (this one included) seems to skew toward waterfront vistas, but sometimes a wild garden view provides most inspiring view — especially when it comes with a side of tasty baked goods. A popular pit stop for daytrippers heading out to the Russian River Valley, Wild Flour Bread has mostly operated as a takeout window since the start of COVID. But the best seats in the house have always been the adirondack chairs in the garden out back, among the daisies, nasturtiums and trellises of fruit-laden tomato plants. It’s the perfect setting to enjoy a coffee, a craggy scone and a dense, crusty loaf of one of Wild Flour’s famous cheese fougasses.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976340\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976340\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe.jpg\" alt=\"Cappuccino in a white cup on a wood table. The view outside the window is of a grassy cliff and, beyond that, a blue sky and sea.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/sea-ranch-cafe-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">View from the Cafe at the Sea Ranch Lodge. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003ci>Be sure to check out our full \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/summer-guide-2025\">2025 Summer Arts Guide to live music, movies, art, theater, festivals and more\u003c/a> in the Bay Area.\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I like a swanky view of the ocean (or river or mountaintop) with my dinner as much as the next person. The problem is that, more often than not, those top-floor, waterfront restaurants want to charge you an unspoken “view tax” for the privilege of enjoying the scenery. That’s how you end up dropping $200 for a mediocre meal that would cost you less than half as much at a normal restaurant where the main focus is the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/food\">food\u003c/a>. And it’s why I’ve pretty much stopped eating anywhere remotely fancy when road-tripping in unfamiliar areas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Luckily, the Bay Area is home to plenty of \u003ci>non\u003c/i>-fancy restaurants that still offer million-dollar views, and even a handful of fancy-view restaurants that wind up being worth the price. Here are a few of my favorites.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Cafe at the Sea Ranch Lodge\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>60 Sea Walk Dr., Sea Ranch\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tucked away on the prettiest stretch of the Sonoma coast, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesearanchlodge.com/\">Sea Ranch Lodge\u003c/a> is a marvel of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957530/barbara-stauffacher-solomon-supergraphics-obituary\">colorful supergraphics\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.dwell.com/article/sea-ranch-architecture-7f30ea15\">minimalist architecture\u003c/a> inspired by the local terrain. Even if you can’t afford to plop down $600 or $700 to actually \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesearanchlodge.com/lodging/\">stay the night\u003c/a> at the lodge itself, tromping around the rolling hills and cliffs out back makes for a fantastic day trip. My suggestion? Start the day at the Lodge’s casual cafe, where you can enjoy a picture-perfect cappuccino and a crisp-griddled, Crunchwrap-like “Break-a-dilla,” which comes stuffed with scrambled eggs, queso fresco and (optional) bacon. Whether you sit in front of the big picture windows or on the deck outside, the panoramic views of that coastline can’t be beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976330\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976330\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib.jpg\" alt=\"Prime rib cooked quite pink and rare on a white place with mashed potatoes and creamed spinach.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/shadowbrook-prime-rib-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The prime rib plate at Shadowbrook. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Shadowbrook\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>1750 Wharf Rd., Capitola\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This sprawling, 78-year-old ski chalet–style restaurant serves reasonably tasty American and Italian American classics that feel like a time warp to the 1950s or ’60s — pretty good chicken parm and prime rib (pro tip: ask for extra jus), and a truly excellent appetizer of fried baby artichokes. In truth, Shadowbrook is more famous for everything else \u003ci>besides \u003c/i>the food: the quaint vintage taxicab shuttle for guests staying at nearby hotels; the old-timey service; and, especially, the picturesque funicular (or “hillavator”) ride to the restaurant itself, which sits at the bottom of a hill. That isn’t a bad thing: This is the kind of restaurant where the whole experience adds up to more than the sum of its parts, especially once you factor in the exquisite views — the cypress trees up above, and Soquel Creek and the rest of Capitola down below.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976334\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976334\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips.jpg\" alt=\"Fish and chips on a plate with a lemon wedge.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/barbaras-fish-and-chips-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fish and chips at Barbara’s Fishtrap in Half Moon Bay. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Barbara’s Fishtrap\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>281 Capistrano Rd., Half Moon Bay\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe the best of the dozens of little seafood shacks that you’ll find up and down California’s “Slow Coast” region, Barbara’s sits on a quiet, relatively uncrowded beach and serves up some of the tastiest, most impeccably fried fish and chips I’ve had in the Bay. I’ll also recommend ordering yet another version of fried artichoke hearts (a particular specialty of this southern stretch of the Bay). Barbara’s juicy, piping-hot version has the airiest tempura batter and is delicious dipped in ranch dressing — a combination made only more delightful if you time your meal to coincide with a classic California beach sunset.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976338\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976338\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq.jpg\" alt=\"Crispy-skinned roast pork belly on a table in front of a window showing views of yachts in the marina.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/pacific-lighthouse-bbq-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yacht views and Cantonese-style barbecue at Pacific Lighthouse. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Pacific Lighthouse\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>1051 Pacific Marina, Alameda\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>From its vantage point right on the marina in Alameda, Pacific Lighthouse might boast the best waterfront views of any dim sum restaurant in the Bay — certainly among those whose dim sum is actually worth eating. They don’t do cart dim sum here, but the paper checkbox menu offers a surprisingly robust mix of classics and more creative, contemporary dishes. My favorites: the crunchy-skinned barbecue pork belly; the crisp-topped “French”-style baked pork buns; and the wonderfully eggy, sugar-dusted doughnuts. The service and self-seating system are both a bit of a free-for-all, so I’ve found the best approach is to show up right when the restaurant opens at 10:30 a.m. and send the fastest, most decisive walker in your group to snag one of the tables by the back windows, with their view of the yachts on the water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976333\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a bloody-centered slab of prime rib and a foil-wrapped baked potato.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-prime-rib-2-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Warehouse Cafe’s prime rib plate, served at one of the bar’s outdoor patio tables. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976332\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976332\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view.jpg\" alt=\"View of a sunset over the waterfront, from the other side of a chain link fence.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/warehouse-cafe-view-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sunset view from the parking lot. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Warehouse Cafe\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>5 Canyon Lake Dr., Port Costa\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Warehouse Cafe is a legendary East Bay biker bar, beloved by locals for its taxidermy-themed decor; no-nonsense bartenders; gruff, mammoth beer selection; and occasionally rowdy clientele. Food lovers mostly know the place for its Friday and Saturday night prime rib special — a big ol’ slab of beef served with a baked potato, garlicky mushrooms and all the fixins. The plate used to be one of the \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/10/19/21519931/warehouse-cafe-port-costa-biker-bar-prime-rib-pandemic\">best deals in the entire Bay Area\u003c/a>, and it’s still worth seeking out even now that the price has spiked to a still-fairly-reasonable $45 (cash only). As far as scenery goes, the bar’s patio does overlook the Carquinez Strait shoreline, but the best view comes at the end of a nighttime drive up the long, winding country road that spills out into downtown Port Costa proper: a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12002191/for-a-taste-of-the-old-west-head-to-this-tiny-bay-area-town\">ghostly\u003c/a> vision of old-timey saloons and rickety Victorians, all lit up by twinkly string lights. It’s enough to take your breath away. Note: The Warehouse’s prime rib special starts at 6 p.m. on Fridays and 5 p.m. on Saturdays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976331\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976331\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread.jpg\" alt=\"Chalkboard menu for Wild Flour Bread, with a colorful hand-drawn tree. \" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/wild-flour-bread-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The chalkboard menu at Wild Flour Bread in Sonoma County. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>Wild Flour Bread\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>140 Bohemian Hwy., Freestone\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Every scenic restaurant roundup (this one included) seems to skew toward waterfront vistas, but sometimes a wild garden view provides most inspiring view — especially when it comes with a side of tasty baked goods. A popular pit stop for daytrippers heading out to the Russian River Valley, Wild Flour Bread has mostly operated as a takeout window since the start of COVID. But the best seats in the house have always been the adirondack chairs in the garden out back, among the daisies, nasturtiums and trellises of fruit-laden tomato plants. It’s the perfect setting to enjoy a coffee, a craggy scone and a dense, crusty loaf of one of Wild Flour’s famous cheese fougasses.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "pho-vy-oakland-vietnamese-restaurant-closing",
"title": "One of Oakland’s Most Popular Phở Restaurants Is Closing",
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"headTitle": "One of Oakland’s Most Popular Phở Restaurants Is Closing | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>For the past nine years, Phở Vy has built a dedicated following for its soul-warming noodle soups and trendy fusion tacos. Many Vietnamese food connoisseurs regard it as the very best phở restaurant in Oakland and possibly the entire East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, the restaurant is closing, Phở Vy’s owners \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DIcsdzkJ_Hq/?hl=en\">announced on Instagram\u003c/a> last month. Its last day of business will be May 18.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tuan Nguyen and his wife, Trang Truong, opened Phở Vy in 2016 after closing the smaller phở shop they used to run in Livermore. The new restaurant’s name and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/BiG9MJaFjQn/?__d=1\">logo\u003c/a> were inspired by the couple’s young niece, Vy, who, as a toddler, was a constant presence in the dining room during those early years. (Now 9, Vy — along with her mom — currently runs a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/laniluvcakes/\">cupcake pop-up\u003c/a> out of the restaurant.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Nguyen recalls, the restaurant got off to a slow start but soon cultivated a loyal, diverse base of customers who appreciated Phở Vy’s family-friendly atmosphere and, of course, the delicious food. The phở alone was light years ahead of the vast majority of Vietnamese spots in Oakland, especially in terms of the richness and clear flavor of the broth. Phở Vy was also one of the only phở restaurants in the East Bay that offered nuoc beo, the scallion-infused rendered beef fat traditionally added to give the soup an extra boost of fattiness, by request.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975960\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975960\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination.jpg\" alt=\"Bowl of pho with accompanying herbs against a black background.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1501\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-1020x766.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-1536x1153.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-1920x1441.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant was known for serving one of the best versions of phở in the East Bay. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Phở Vy)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I’ve often said that Bay Area phở lovers \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904835/san-jose-immigrant-food\">really need to drive down to San Jose\u003c/a> to get their hands on a truly excellent bowl of noodles. Phở Vy has the long been the one exception to that rule — the only phở spot in the East Bay I was willing to make a special trip for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the pandemic, Nguyen also started to experiment with fusion recipes inspired by the burgeoning \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/11/21/20937687/el-garage-quesabirria-birria-taco-richmond-instagram\">quesabirria trend\u003c/a>, as well as his own lifelong love of Mexican food, born out of his childhood in Oakland. Eventually, he started serving \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13895488/pho-vy-oakland-vietnamese-tacos-quesabirria-bo-kho\">a riff on quesabirria\u003c/a> that incorporated the restaurant’s other signature dish: bò kho, or Vietnamese beef stew, made using a family recipe from his mother’s hometown of Mỹ Tho in Vietnam. Garnished with fresh herbs and the kind of sweet pickled vegetables you’d put on bánh mì, those beef stew tacos went on to become one of the restaurant’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/bay-area-quesabirria-17073409.php\">most popular dishes\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are times where people would order party trays of it with 300 to 400 tacos per order,” Nguyen says. “It’s been selling like crazy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13895514\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13895514\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Closeup of a Vietnamese taco, with stewed beef and pickled carrot and daikon.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1536\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-800x480.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-1020x612.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-160x96.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-768x461.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-1536x922.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-2048x1229.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-1920x1152.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A close-up view of the Phở Vy’s bo kho taco. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nguyen describes Phở Vy’s closure as “temporary” and says it was largely motivated by his family’s desire to slow down and take care of their aging parents. Apart from that, the decision was driven by the usual mélange of reasons that have caused other restaurants in Oakland to shut their doors in recent years. A lot of it, Nguyen says, was a growing sense that the stretch of International Boulevard where the restaurant sits might no longer be the best fit: The canopies on their outdoor patio keep getting stolen. The sex work trade on International Boulevard has crept closer to the outside of the restaurant, making some of the young families who dine there uncomfortable. And customers are always telling Nguyen they’re in a rush because they’re worried about car break-ins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13975870,arts_13895488,arts_13905293']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>“Everything adds up,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through it all, Nguyen says the restaurant has continued to do brisk business — but even then, their margins have gotten thinner as ingredient prices have gone up. Meanwhile, the restaurant’s lease expired last month, and Nguyen and Truong haven’t been able to come to an agreement with the landlord on rent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, Nguyen says he feels like they just need to take a break, reset, and then begin looking for a new location — ideally still in Oakland. While the shop is closed, he’ll probably still do some catering and pop-ups (maybe a bò kho taco side business?) to keep himself busy. All told, he imagines the restaurant will stay closed for a year or longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all about timing,” he says. “But I have a really good feeling that there’s going to be a reopening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phovyoakland/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Phở Vy\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 10 a.m.–8 p.m. every day except Thursdays, when the restaurant is closed, at 401 International Blvd. in Oakland. Its final day of business will be Sunday, May 18.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Oakland's Best Pho Restaurant Is Closing | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>For the past nine years, Phở Vy has built a dedicated following for its soul-warming noodle soups and trendy fusion tacos. Many Vietnamese food connoisseurs regard it as the very best phở restaurant in Oakland and possibly the entire East Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But now, the restaurant is closing, Phở Vy’s owners \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DIcsdzkJ_Hq/?hl=en\">announced on Instagram\u003c/a> last month. Its last day of business will be May 18.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tuan Nguyen and his wife, Trang Truong, opened Phở Vy in 2016 after closing the smaller phở shop they used to run in Livermore. The new restaurant’s name and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/BiG9MJaFjQn/?__d=1\">logo\u003c/a> were inspired by the couple’s young niece, Vy, who, as a toddler, was a constant presence in the dining room during those early years. (Now 9, Vy — along with her mom — currently runs a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/laniluvcakes/\">cupcake pop-up\u003c/a> out of the restaurant.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Nguyen recalls, the restaurant got off to a slow start but soon cultivated a loyal, diverse base of customers who appreciated Phở Vy’s family-friendly atmosphere and, of course, the delicious food. The phở alone was light years ahead of the vast majority of Vietnamese spots in Oakland, especially in terms of the richness and clear flavor of the broth. Phở Vy was also one of the only phở restaurants in the East Bay that offered nuoc beo, the scallion-infused rendered beef fat traditionally added to give the soup an extra boost of fattiness, by request.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975960\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975960\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination.jpg\" alt=\"Bowl of pho with accompanying herbs against a black background.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1501\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-1020x766.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-1536x1153.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/PhoVy_SpecialCombination-1920x1441.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant was known for serving one of the best versions of phở in the East Bay. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Phở Vy)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I’ve often said that Bay Area phở lovers \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904835/san-jose-immigrant-food\">really need to drive down to San Jose\u003c/a> to get their hands on a truly excellent bowl of noodles. Phở Vy has the long been the one exception to that rule — the only phở spot in the East Bay I was willing to make a special trip for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the pandemic, Nguyen also started to experiment with fusion recipes inspired by the burgeoning \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/11/21/20937687/el-garage-quesabirria-birria-taco-richmond-instagram\">quesabirria trend\u003c/a>, as well as his own lifelong love of Mexican food, born out of his childhood in Oakland. Eventually, he started serving \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13895488/pho-vy-oakland-vietnamese-tacos-quesabirria-bo-kho\">a riff on quesabirria\u003c/a> that incorporated the restaurant’s other signature dish: bò kho, or Vietnamese beef stew, made using a family recipe from his mother’s hometown of Mỹ Tho in Vietnam. Garnished with fresh herbs and the kind of sweet pickled vegetables you’d put on bánh mì, those beef stew tacos went on to become one of the restaurant’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/bay-area-quesabirria-17073409.php\">most popular dishes\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There are times where people would order party trays of it with 300 to 400 tacos per order,” Nguyen says. “It’s been selling like crazy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13895514\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13895514\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Closeup of a Vietnamese taco, with stewed beef and pickled carrot and daikon.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1536\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-800x480.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-1020x612.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-160x96.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-768x461.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-1536x922.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-2048x1229.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/PhyVyTaco_closeup-1920x1152.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A close-up view of the Phở Vy’s bo kho taco. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Nguyen describes Phở Vy’s closure as “temporary” and says it was largely motivated by his family’s desire to slow down and take care of their aging parents. Apart from that, the decision was driven by the usual mélange of reasons that have caused other restaurants in Oakland to shut their doors in recent years. A lot of it, Nguyen says, was a growing sense that the stretch of International Boulevard where the restaurant sits might no longer be the best fit: The canopies on their outdoor patio keep getting stolen. The sex work trade on International Boulevard has crept closer to the outside of the restaurant, making some of the young families who dine there uncomfortable. And customers are always telling Nguyen they’re in a rush because they’re worried about car break-ins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>“Everything adds up,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Through it all, Nguyen says the restaurant has continued to do brisk business — but even then, their margins have gotten thinner as ingredient prices have gone up. Meanwhile, the restaurant’s lease expired last month, and Nguyen and Truong haven’t been able to come to an agreement with the landlord on rent.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, Nguyen says he feels like they just need to take a break, reset, and then begin looking for a new location — ideally still in Oakland. While the shop is closed, he’ll probably still do some catering and pop-ups (maybe a bò kho taco side business?) to keep himself busy. All told, he imagines the restaurant will stay closed for a year or longer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s all about timing,” he says. “But I have a really good feeling that there’s going to be a reopening.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phovyoakland/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Phở Vy\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 10 a.m.–8 p.m. every day except Thursdays, when the restaurant is closed, at 401 International Blvd. in Oakland. Its final day of business will be Sunday, May 18.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "heyma-yemeni-coffee-shop-berkeley-late-night",
"title": "A Yemeni Coffee Shop Keeps the Masses Well Caffeinated Until Midnight",
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"headTitle": "A Yemeni Coffee Shop Keeps the Masses Well Caffeinated Until Midnight | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975912\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975912\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In Berkeley, Heyma Yemeni Coffee combines both traditional and contemporary aspects of Yemeni coffee culture. \u003ccite>(Wahab Algarmi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. 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. This week they were joined by guest artist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/wahabalg/\">\u003ci>Wahab Algarmi\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, whose debut middle grade graphic novel, \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/almost-sunset-wahab-algarmi?variant=42563431989282\">Almost Sunset\u003c/a>\u003ci>, is available in bookstores now. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a college town like Berkeley, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/coffee-shops\">coffee shop\u003c/a> open past 10 o’clock at night is a precious commodity. These days, night owl students looking for a place to caffeinate and park their laptops for a couple of hours are more than likely to find themselves at one type of cafe in particular: a Yemeni coffee house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when we dropped by \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heymacoffee/\">Heyma Yemeni Coffee\u003c/a> on a late Sunday night shortly before finals week at UC Berkeley, it was both surprising and completely \u003ci>unsurprising\u003c/i> to see how packed the place was, with a throng of undergrads waiting in line to buy blistering-hot cups of coffee infused with cardamom and maybe a honey-soaked pastry for good measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve been paying attention to the local coffee scene, you might know that Heyma is one of the dozen or so \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/yemeni-coffee-shop-cafe-18270887.php\">Yemeni coffee shops\u003c/a> that have opened in the Bay Area, all in the past three years, at a rate that only seems to be accelerating. They all have a similar vibe, with their Arab design elements and menus heavy on spiced coffees and the same handful of Yemeni pastries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Heyma, the design is the first thing you notice — the cozy little alcoves lined with black-and-gold arabesque and, in the center of the room, the traditional U-shaped Majlis sofa, where a couple of college kids were sprawled out with their MacBooks. Still, at first glance, you might mistake the place for any other trendy Gen Z cafe or boba shop. The emphasis of the branding and the menu is skewed toward the kinds of flashy drinks and desserts currently popular on TikTok and Instagram: There are matcha lattes and Redbull mojitos, and we spotted at least three or four variations on \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/dining/dubai-chocolate-cant-get-knafeh-it.html\">Dubai chocolate\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975914\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975914\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: The exterior of a busy coffee shop lit up at night. The sign says, \"Heyma Coffee & Tea\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heyma stays open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Wahab Algarmi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the same time, it’s clear that this is a place of real cultural pride. Just inside the entrance, a large sign summarizes the long history of coffee in Yemen, where 15th century Sufi monks were believed to be the \u003ca href=\"https://www.undp.org/stories/yemeni-coffee-personal-us\">first people to cultivate it\u003c/a> as a beverage. Above the counter, a poem in untranslated Arabic — “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxDY8jIpCE\">Love and Coffee\u003c/a>,” by the Yemeni poet Mutaher Ali Al-Eryani — celebrates the joy of the coffee harvest. At the bottom of the digital menu board, it says simply, “Free Palestine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The demographics of the shop’s clientele reflects this mix of influences. During our visit, about half the customers were the same laptop-toting college kids you’ll find at any late-night cafe in Berkeley. The other half consisted of Arab Americans of all ages just hanging out, including one big family that came in at around 10 o’clock, kids clambering over the sofa, everyone dressed up as though they’d just come from the symphony. They ordered such a big spread of food, the staff brought it out in a wooden crate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Arabic speaker in our group asked one of the shop’s young Yemeni American baristas whether they sell any drinks that are uniquely Yemeni, he was quick to recommend an off-menu limeade — just lime juice, water and sugar (perhaps a little bit of cream?), whirred in a blender until light and frothy. It’s the same drink you’ll find on any street corner in Yemen, we were told. And it was incredibly refreshing, easily the best drink we had all night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13975308,arts_13954597,arts_13966812']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the most striking of the pastries was the honeycomb: dough balls stuffed with cream cheese, arranged into a pleasingly geometric cake-slice shape, drizzled with honey, and then blasted in the oven until everything puffs up golden-brown. It was fun pulling the balls apart at the table, like monkey bread; each bite struck a nice balance between sweet and savory. If you want a toasty carb bomb that’s purely savory, the oniony beef sambusas and boat-shaped cheese manakish both hit the spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heyma also goes straight to the top of the list of places I’ll hit up when I’m in the mood for cake at 11 o’clock at night (which for me is at least two or three nights a week). Among the many Dubai chocolate riffs on the menu, we wound up ordering a slice of green and black Dubai chocolate cheesecake, which was as tasty as it was aesthetically pleasing (if perhaps not as pistachio-y as we would have liked). My favorite, though, was the saffron milk cake — one of the many tres-leches-like cakes that the shop sells. It came soaked through with milk and sweet condensed milk and topped with a layer of whipped cream, and was so impossibly moist and airy-light, I would have happily eaten two more slices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, you can’t talk about a Yemeni coffee shop without trying the coffee itself, even if it is 11 p.m. on a work night. And here’s where I have to admit my own hubris: In my desire to try a swath of the menu, I ordered — and finished — not one but two of Heyma’s coffee drinks. First, I had the cardamom and cinnamon–infused Heyma Latte, whose spiced sweetness reminded me of drinks I’ve had at other second-generation diasporic Yemeni and Palestinian cafes. And then the mufawaar, a more traditional medium-roast coffee brewed with cardamom and cream. It was wonderfully fragrant and, as it turns out, very, very strong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I enjoyed both drinks very much at the time. And I enjoyed reminiscing about them, too, a little while later, when I lay in bed wide awake at 3 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heymacoffee/\">\u003ci>Heyma Yemeni Coffee\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m.–11:30 p.m., Friday 7:30 a.m.–midnight, Saturday 8 a.m.-midnight, and Sunday 8 a.m.–11 p.m. at 1122 University Ave. in Berkeley. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Heyma’s pastries and cardamom-infused lattes are late-night fuel for Berkeley college students and families alike.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975912\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975912\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In Berkeley, Heyma Yemeni Coffee combines both traditional and contemporary aspects of Yemeni coffee culture. \u003ccite>(Wahab Algarmi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. 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. This week they were joined by guest artist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/wahabalg/\">\u003ci>Wahab Algarmi\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, whose debut middle grade graphic novel, \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/almost-sunset-wahab-algarmi?variant=42563431989282\">Almost Sunset\u003c/a>\u003ci>, is available in bookstores now. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a college town like Berkeley, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/coffee-shops\">coffee shop\u003c/a> open past 10 o’clock at night is a precious commodity. These days, night owl students looking for a place to caffeinate and park their laptops for a couple of hours are more than likely to find themselves at one type of cafe in particular: a Yemeni coffee house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when we dropped by \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heymacoffee/\">Heyma Yemeni Coffee\u003c/a> on a late Sunday night shortly before finals week at UC Berkeley, it was both surprising and completely \u003ci>unsurprising\u003c/i> to see how packed the place was, with a throng of undergrads waiting in line to buy blistering-hot cups of coffee infused with cardamom and maybe a honey-soaked pastry for good measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve been paying attention to the local coffee scene, you might know that Heyma is one of the dozen or so \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/yemeni-coffee-shop-cafe-18270887.php\">Yemeni coffee shops\u003c/a> that have opened in the Bay Area, all in the past three years, at a rate that only seems to be accelerating. They all have a similar vibe, with their Arab design elements and menus heavy on spiced coffees and the same handful of Yemeni pastries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Heyma, the design is the first thing you notice — the cozy little alcoves lined with black-and-gold arabesque and, in the center of the room, the traditional U-shaped Majlis sofa, where a couple of college kids were sprawled out with their MacBooks. Still, at first glance, you might mistake the place for any other trendy Gen Z cafe or boba shop. The emphasis of the branding and the menu is skewed toward the kinds of flashy drinks and desserts currently popular on TikTok and Instagram: There are matcha lattes and Redbull mojitos, and we spotted at least three or four variations on \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/dining/dubai-chocolate-cant-get-knafeh-it.html\">Dubai chocolate\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975914\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975914\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: The exterior of a busy coffee shop lit up at night. The sign says, \"Heyma Coffee & Tea\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heyma stays open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Wahab Algarmi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the same time, it’s clear that this is a place of real cultural pride. Just inside the entrance, a large sign summarizes the long history of coffee in Yemen, where 15th century Sufi monks were believed to be the \u003ca href=\"https://www.undp.org/stories/yemeni-coffee-personal-us\">first people to cultivate it\u003c/a> as a beverage. Above the counter, a poem in untranslated Arabic — “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxDY8jIpCE\">Love and Coffee\u003c/a>,” by the Yemeni poet Mutaher Ali Al-Eryani — celebrates the joy of the coffee harvest. At the bottom of the digital menu board, it says simply, “Free Palestine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The demographics of the shop’s clientele reflects this mix of influences. During our visit, about half the customers were the same laptop-toting college kids you’ll find at any late-night cafe in Berkeley. The other half consisted of Arab Americans of all ages just hanging out, including one big family that came in at around 10 o’clock, kids clambering over the sofa, everyone dressed up as though they’d just come from the symphony. They ordered such a big spread of food, the staff brought it out in a wooden crate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Arabic speaker in our group asked one of the shop’s young Yemeni American baristas whether they sell any drinks that are uniquely Yemeni, he was quick to recommend an off-menu limeade — just lime juice, water and sugar (perhaps a little bit of cream?), whirred in a blender until light and frothy. It’s the same drink you’ll find on any street corner in Yemen, we were told. And it was incredibly refreshing, easily the best drink we had all night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the most striking of the pastries was the honeycomb: dough balls stuffed with cream cheese, arranged into a pleasingly geometric cake-slice shape, drizzled with honey, and then blasted in the oven until everything puffs up golden-brown. It was fun pulling the balls apart at the table, like monkey bread; each bite struck a nice balance between sweet and savory. If you want a toasty carb bomb that’s purely savory, the oniony beef sambusas and boat-shaped cheese manakish both hit the spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heyma also goes straight to the top of the list of places I’ll hit up when I’m in the mood for cake at 11 o’clock at night (which for me is at least two or three nights a week). Among the many Dubai chocolate riffs on the menu, we wound up ordering a slice of green and black Dubai chocolate cheesecake, which was as tasty as it was aesthetically pleasing (if perhaps not as pistachio-y as we would have liked). My favorite, though, was the saffron milk cake — one of the many tres-leches-like cakes that the shop sells. It came soaked through with milk and sweet condensed milk and topped with a layer of whipped cream, and was so impossibly moist and airy-light, I would have happily eaten two more slices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, you can’t talk about a Yemeni coffee shop without trying the coffee itself, even if it is 11 p.m. on a work night. And here’s where I have to admit my own hubris: In my desire to try a swath of the menu, I ordered — and finished — not one but two of Heyma’s coffee drinks. First, I had the cardamom and cinnamon–infused Heyma Latte, whose spiced sweetness reminded me of drinks I’ve had at other second-generation diasporic Yemeni and Palestinian cafes. And then the mufawaar, a more traditional medium-roast coffee brewed with cardamom and cream. It was wonderfully fragrant and, as it turns out, very, very strong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I enjoyed both drinks very much at the time. And I enjoyed reminiscing about them, too, a little while later, when I lay in bed wide awake at 3 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heymacoffee/\">\u003ci>Heyma Yemeni Coffee\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m.–11:30 p.m., Friday 7:30 a.m.–midnight, Saturday 8 a.m.-midnight, and Sunday 8 a.m.–11 p.m. at 1122 University Ave. in Berkeley. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "crixa-cakes-bakery-berkeley-closing",
"title": "Crixa Cakes Was My Favorite Bay Area Bakery. Now It's Closing",
"publishDate": 1746666802,
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"headTitle": "Crixa Cakes Was My Favorite Bay Area Bakery. Now It’s Closing | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975876\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975876\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior.jpg\" alt='Exterior of bakery. The sign reads \"Crixa Cakes.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crixa Cakes, a Berkeley institution since 1998, will close on May 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the past 15 years, my family has had exactly three \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/thanksgiving\">Thanksgiving\u003c/a> rituals: a potluck dinner with the Kaye-Hsu family, morning-after turkey jook and, most important of all, a deep-dish pumpkin pie from Crixa Cakes in Berkeley. Two of the Crixa pies, preferably.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a marvel those hefty, thick-crusted beauties were — the filling sweet but not-too-sweet and preternaturally smooth; the tender, buttery crust \u003ci>plentiful \u003c/i>(as the pastry gods intended) and slightly soggy on the inside. It’s as delicious eaten on a stomach completely stuffed full of turkey and green bean casserole as it is nibbled on sneakily, a day or two later, standing in front of the fridge at midnight. I’ve gone so far as to proclaim it the \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CyMZZYOymAU/\">greatest pumpkin pie on earth\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can imagine our collective distress, then, when we got word, via an email newsletter sent out two weeks ago and \u003ca href=\"https://www.crixacakes.com/s/stories/crixa-crossroads-ahead\">posted on the bakery’s website\u003c/a>, that Crixa will be closing its doors for the foreseeable future after \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/crixa-cakes-closing-20310841.php\">27 years in Berkeley\u003c/a>. Its last day of business will be Saturday, May 10.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975877\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975877\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie.jpg\" alt=\"Whole deep-dish style pumpkin pie in the box.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The beloved deep dish style pumpkin pie. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In their note, co-owners Zoltan Der and Elizabeth Kloian said they “no longer want to do business with [their] landlord” and won’t extend their lease when it expires at the end of the month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It marks the end of an era, then, for one of Berkeley’s most classic food institutions. Funnily enough, as much as I love that pumpkin pie, it probably wasn’t even one of the bakery’s most famous items. If anything, the summer pies — a gooey showcase for peak-season berries and stone fruit — are even more spectacular than the pumpkin. Beyond that, Crixa is an Eastern and Central European bakery first and foremost, specializing in hard-to-find, intricately spiced Old World delicacies like poppyseed kifli, plum-and-custard kolaches, saffron buns and kirsch-soaked vanilla chiffon cake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13954342,arts_13958926']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>What I appreciated just as much as the cakes and pastries themselves, however, was Crixa’s utter indifference to any kind of trendiness or ingratiation. Der and Kloaian ran the place with a brand of taciturn stoicism I couldn’t help but admire — always polite but never overfamiliar, even with longtime regulars. On Saturday mornings, I’d show up at around 11:30, when the pies came out of the oven; grab a number; and then wait patiently in the long, orderly line that curved around the outside of the bakery. God help the wayward customer who tried to cut in line for a pickup order, or otherwise subvert their carefully calibrated rules and systems: You’d get a stern talking-to, and you’d almost certainly deserve it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975878\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975878\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake.jpg\" alt=\"Strawberry cream cake inside a display case.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crixa’s strawberry cream cake, one of its many Eastern European–style desserts. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those kinds of idiosyncrasies only made me love the place even more. All told, Crixa has been my favorite bakery in Berkeley, the East Bay and quite possibly the entire Bay Area. And now it simply won’t exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In their farewell message, Der and Kloian did leave open the possibility of reopening in a new location at a future date. For now, however, they say they’ll focus on writing a Crixa Cakes cookbook and wrapping up their last few days of business. One thing’s for certain: The line outside the bakery these final days, full of Crixa superfans — myself included — hoping for one last slice of pie, will be as long as it has ever been.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.crixacakes.com/\">\u003ci>Crixa Cakes\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday to Saturday, 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. The bakery’s final day of business will be Saturday, May 10.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975876\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975876\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior.jpg\" alt='Exterior of bakery. The sign reads \"Crixa Cakes.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-exterior-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crixa Cakes, a Berkeley institution since 1998, will close on May 10, 2025. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>For the past 15 years, my family has had exactly three \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/thanksgiving\">Thanksgiving\u003c/a> rituals: a potluck dinner with the Kaye-Hsu family, morning-after turkey jook and, most important of all, a deep-dish pumpkin pie from Crixa Cakes in Berkeley. Two of the Crixa pies, preferably.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a marvel those hefty, thick-crusted beauties were — the filling sweet but not-too-sweet and preternaturally smooth; the tender, buttery crust \u003ci>plentiful \u003c/i>(as the pastry gods intended) and slightly soggy on the inside. It’s as delicious eaten on a stomach completely stuffed full of turkey and green bean casserole as it is nibbled on sneakily, a day or two later, standing in front of the fridge at midnight. I’ve gone so far as to proclaim it the \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CyMZZYOymAU/\">greatest pumpkin pie on earth\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can imagine our collective distress, then, when we got word, via an email newsletter sent out two weeks ago and \u003ca href=\"https://www.crixacakes.com/s/stories/crixa-crossroads-ahead\">posted on the bakery’s website\u003c/a>, that Crixa will be closing its doors for the foreseeable future after \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/crixa-cakes-closing-20310841.php\">27 years in Berkeley\u003c/a>. Its last day of business will be Saturday, May 10.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975877\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975877\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie.jpg\" alt=\"Whole deep-dish style pumpkin pie in the box.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-pie-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The beloved deep dish style pumpkin pie. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In their note, co-owners Zoltan Der and Elizabeth Kloian said they “no longer want to do business with [their] landlord” and won’t extend their lease when it expires at the end of the month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It marks the end of an era, then, for one of Berkeley’s most classic food institutions. Funnily enough, as much as I love that pumpkin pie, it probably wasn’t even one of the bakery’s most famous items. If anything, the summer pies — a gooey showcase for peak-season berries and stone fruit — are even more spectacular than the pumpkin. Beyond that, Crixa is an Eastern and Central European bakery first and foremost, specializing in hard-to-find, intricately spiced Old World delicacies like poppyseed kifli, plum-and-custard kolaches, saffron buns and kirsch-soaked vanilla chiffon cake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>What I appreciated just as much as the cakes and pastries themselves, however, was Crixa’s utter indifference to any kind of trendiness or ingratiation. Der and Kloaian ran the place with a brand of taciturn stoicism I couldn’t help but admire — always polite but never overfamiliar, even with longtime regulars. On Saturday mornings, I’d show up at around 11:30, when the pies came out of the oven; grab a number; and then wait patiently in the long, orderly line that curved around the outside of the bakery. God help the wayward customer who tried to cut in line for a pickup order, or otherwise subvert their carefully calibrated rules and systems: You’d get a stern talking-to, and you’d almost certainly deserve it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975878\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975878\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake.jpg\" alt=\"Strawberry cream cake inside a display case.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/crixa-cream-cake-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crixa’s strawberry cream cake, one of its many Eastern European–style desserts. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those kinds of idiosyncrasies only made me love the place even more. All told, Crixa has been my favorite bakery in Berkeley, the East Bay and quite possibly the entire Bay Area. And now it simply won’t exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In their farewell message, Der and Kloian did leave open the possibility of reopening in a new location at a future date. For now, however, they say they’ll focus on writing a Crixa Cakes cookbook and wrapping up their last few days of business. One thing’s for certain: The line outside the bakery these final days, full of Crixa superfans — myself included — hoping for one last slice of pie, will be as long as it has ever been.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.crixacakes.com/\">\u003ci>Crixa Cakes\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday to Saturday, 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. The bakery’s final day of business will be Saturday, May 10.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "biggest-taiwanese-american-food-festival-union-square-sf-2025",
"title": "The West Coast’s Biggest Taiwanese Culture Festival Returns to Union Square",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975799\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13975799 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Braised minced pork rice (aka lu rou fan) from Liang’s Village, one of the anchor food vendors at this year’s Taiwanese American Culture Festival. The event returns to San Francisco’s Union Square on Saturday, May 10. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Liang's Village)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The regional cuisines of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/taiwanese-food\">Taiwan\u003c/a> are vast and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959259/taiwanese-cookbook-clarissa-wei-interview-sf-bay-area\">endlessly diverse\u003c/a>, but any Taiwanese food festival worth its salt has to hit all the classics: beef noodle soup, fat-drenched lu rou fan and popcorn chicken bedecked with crispy basil leaves. An ice-cold \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957666/best-boba-shops-bay-area-berkeley-cupertino-sf\">boba\u003c/a> tea to wash it all down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, May 10, San Francisco’s 32nd annual \u003ca href=\"https://www.tap-sf.org/tacf\">Taiwanese American Culture Festival\u003c/a> returns, and Union Square will be awash with all of those foundational dishes and more. The biggest event of its kind on the West Coast, the festival has steadily expanded its food offerings since returning from a pandemic-era pause a couple years ago. These days, the Union Square extravaganza boasts more hot food options, a greater mix of established restaurants and up-and-coming pop-ups and collaborations with national brands like \u003ca href=\"https://yunhai.shop/?srsltid=AfmBOopYianPsDWj8Rd9N-5OjplGot2cVCJSsdQx9ajuG6_FDZM2Jca4\">Yun Hai\u003c/a>. (The Brooklyn-based Taiwanese pantry’s sauces and dried fruit snacks are a staple for countless second-gen Taiwanese food enthusiasts.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13897936,arts_13959259']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>An ideal food tour of this year’s festival offerings might include a stop at the Liang’s Village stall for a hearty bowl of beef noodle soup and some spicy, Pingtung-style \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897684/pandemic-taiwanese-food-liangs-village\">cold peanut noodles\u003c/a>, especially if it’s a hot day. Both Liang’s and the boba shop Mr. Green Bubble will be selling the succulent braised pork belly rice bowls known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897498/mama-liu-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-food-comic\">lu rou fan\u003c/a>, though my personal favorite is Mr. Green Bubble’s take on Taiwanese popcorn chicken — one of the best versions you’ll find at a boba shop. Meanwhile, Hayward cult favorite MITK will offer some of the most nostalgic street food dishes: oyster pancakes, black pepper buns and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area\">fan tuan\u003c/a> (aka “rice burritos”).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975803\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975803\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang.jpg\" alt=\"Taiwanese-style hot dog bun on a plate, against a red backdrop.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-1920x2400.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Taiwanese-style hot dog bun from Little Moon Bakehouse. \u003ccite>(Dana Mariko Chang, courtesy of Little Moon Bakehouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those with a sweet tooth can make a beeline for \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/littlemoonbakehouse/\">Little Moon Bakehouse\u003c/a> (formerly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13908103/lunar-new-year-vegan-mooncake-biscuits-annies-t-cakes\">Annie’s T Cakes\u003c/a>) for Taiwanese-inspired buns and pastries, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/nekosama_ba/\">Nekosama’s\u003c/a> assortment of cute cat-shaped cookies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The festival will include a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DJMzPyuP56A/\">book fair\u003c/a> highlighting Taiwanese American authors, fun merch from local artists and designers, and a robust lineup of both traditional and contemporary cultural performances (headlined by singer-songwriter \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@whoisnikorain/video/7433878639504248110\">Niko Rain\u003c/a>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for many visitors, checking out each year’s food lineup is the most exciting part of the festival. Who knows? Maybe next year \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13940133/stinky-tofu-childrens-book-ra-pu-zel\">stinky tofu\u003c/a> will even make an appearance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975806\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975806\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24.jpg\" alt=\"Food stall at a food festival in Union Square, San Francisco.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">MITK’s stall at the 2024 edition of the festival. This year, the Hayward catering business will be selling oyster pancakes, fan tuan and more. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of MITK)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This year’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tap-sf.org/tacf\">\u003ci>Taiwanese American Cultural Festival\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> will take place on Saturday, May 10, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. at Union Square in San Francisco. Admission is free.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Expect boba, beef noodle soup, popcorn chicken and other classics.",
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"title": "The West Coast’s Biggest Taiwanese Culture Festival Returns to Union Square | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975799\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13975799 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/minced-pork-rice_liangsvillage-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Braised minced pork rice (aka lu rou fan) from Liang’s Village, one of the anchor food vendors at this year’s Taiwanese American Culture Festival. The event returns to San Francisco’s Union Square on Saturday, May 10. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Liang's Village)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The regional cuisines of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/taiwanese-food\">Taiwan\u003c/a> are vast and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959259/taiwanese-cookbook-clarissa-wei-interview-sf-bay-area\">endlessly diverse\u003c/a>, but any Taiwanese food festival worth its salt has to hit all the classics: beef noodle soup, fat-drenched lu rou fan and popcorn chicken bedecked with crispy basil leaves. An ice-cold \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957666/best-boba-shops-bay-area-berkeley-cupertino-sf\">boba\u003c/a> tea to wash it all down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Saturday, May 10, San Francisco’s 32nd annual \u003ca href=\"https://www.tap-sf.org/tacf\">Taiwanese American Culture Festival\u003c/a> returns, and Union Square will be awash with all of those foundational dishes and more. The biggest event of its kind on the West Coast, the festival has steadily expanded its food offerings since returning from a pandemic-era pause a couple years ago. These days, the Union Square extravaganza boasts more hot food options, a greater mix of established restaurants and up-and-coming pop-ups and collaborations with national brands like \u003ca href=\"https://yunhai.shop/?srsltid=AfmBOopYianPsDWj8Rd9N-5OjplGot2cVCJSsdQx9ajuG6_FDZM2Jca4\">Yun Hai\u003c/a>. (The Brooklyn-based Taiwanese pantry’s sauces and dried fruit snacks are a staple for countless second-gen Taiwanese food enthusiasts.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>An ideal food tour of this year’s festival offerings might include a stop at the Liang’s Village stall for a hearty bowl of beef noodle soup and some spicy, Pingtung-style \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897684/pandemic-taiwanese-food-liangs-village\">cold peanut noodles\u003c/a>, especially if it’s a hot day. Both Liang’s and the boba shop Mr. Green Bubble will be selling the succulent braised pork belly rice bowls known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897498/mama-liu-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-food-comic\">lu rou fan\u003c/a>, though my personal favorite is Mr. Green Bubble’s take on Taiwanese popcorn chicken — one of the best versions you’ll find at a boba shop. Meanwhile, Hayward cult favorite MITK will offer some of the most nostalgic street food dishes: oyster pancakes, black pepper buns and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area\">fan tuan\u003c/a> (aka “rice burritos”).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975803\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975803\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang.jpg\" alt=\"Taiwanese-style hot dog bun on a plate, against a red backdrop.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-768x960.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-1229x1536.jpg 1229w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-1638x2048.jpg 1638w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/2024_09_02_HotDogBun_0159-dana-mariko-chang-1920x2400.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Taiwanese-style hot dog bun from Little Moon Bakehouse. \u003ccite>(Dana Mariko Chang, courtesy of Little Moon Bakehouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Those with a sweet tooth can make a beeline for \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/littlemoonbakehouse/\">Little Moon Bakehouse\u003c/a> (formerly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13908103/lunar-new-year-vegan-mooncake-biscuits-annies-t-cakes\">Annie’s T Cakes\u003c/a>) for Taiwanese-inspired buns and pastries, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/nekosama_ba/\">Nekosama’s\u003c/a> assortment of cute cat-shaped cookies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The festival will include a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DJMzPyuP56A/\">book fair\u003c/a> highlighting Taiwanese American authors, fun merch from local artists and designers, and a robust lineup of both traditional and contemporary cultural performances (headlined by singer-songwriter \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@whoisnikorain/video/7433878639504248110\">Niko Rain\u003c/a>).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for many visitors, checking out each year’s food lineup is the most exciting part of the festival. Who knows? Maybe next year \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13940133/stinky-tofu-childrens-book-ra-pu-zel\">stinky tofu\u003c/a> will even make an appearance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975806\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975806\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24.jpg\" alt=\"Food stall at a food festival in Union Square, San Francisco.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/mtk-at-tacf-24-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">MITK’s stall at the 2024 edition of the festival. This year, the Hayward catering business will be selling oyster pancakes, fan tuan and more. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of MITK)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This year’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tap-sf.org/tacf\">\u003ci>Taiwanese American Cultural Festival\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> will take place on Saturday, May 10, 10 a.m.–4 p.m. at Union Square in San Francisco. Admission is free.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "juke-joints-black-cocktail-history-toni-tipton-martin-moad-sf",
"title": "From the Juke Joint to the Museum: A Celebration of Black Cocktail Innovators",
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"headTitle": "From the Juke Joint to the Museum: A Celebration of Black Cocktail Innovators | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975561\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1958px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975561\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Amber-colored cocktail with ice, garnished by a blackberry, in a sherry glass.\" width=\"1958\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-scaled.jpg 1958w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-800x1046.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-1020x1334.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-160x209.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-768x1004.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-1175x1536.jpg 1175w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-1566x2048.jpg 1566w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-1920x2510.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1958px) 100vw, 1958px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toni Tipton-Martin’s take on a sherry cobbler cocktail, from her book ‘Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice.’ \u003ccite>(Brittany Conerly, courtesy of Clarkson Potter)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Years ago, when food journalist Toni Tipton-Martin first started researching the history of African American \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/cocktails\">cocktail\u003c/a> recipes, she was struck by how few books were solely dedicated to that topic. Of course Tipton-Martin, who in the ’90s became the first Black food editor for a major American daily newspaper, is probably \u003ci>best\u003c/i> known for her \u003ca href=\"https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/3404-toni-tipton-martin-cookbook-collection-library\">prodigious collection of African American cookbooks\u003c/a>. Those hundreds of volumes, many of them rare, inspired and informed her two prior James Beard Award–winning books, \u003ci>The Jemima Code \u003c/i>and \u003ci>Jubilee\u003c/i>, which cast a spotlight on the unsung stories of Black cooks in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975566\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13975566\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Woman in coral-colored top poses for author headshot.\" width=\"350\" height=\"525\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-1920x2880.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tipton-Martin was the first Black food editor at a daily newspaper in the U.S. \u003ccite>(Pableaux Johnson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And yet the fact remained: “There are two books published in 1917 and 1919 by male bartenders, and then mixology disappears from the pages of Black cookbooks,” Tipton-Martin explains. “It’s only recently come back with any real gusto.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tipton-Martin’s investigation into this long absence and oversight — which, no surprise, was largely tied to racism — forms the basis for her 2023 book, \u003ca href=\"https://bookshop.org/p/books/juke-joints-jazz-clubs-and-juice-a-cocktail-recipe-book-a-celebration-of-black-mixology-toni-tipton-martin/19782063?ean=9780593233825&next=t\">\u003ci>Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice\u003c/i>\u003c/a>. It is, on the one hand, a wide-spanning cocktail recipe book that features a whole kaleidoscope of juleps, rum punches and home-fermented wines inspired by recipes she found in 200 years’ worth of African American cookbooks, ranging from an \u003ca href=\"https://www.scribd.com/document/114995111/1827-House-Servant-s-Directory-by-Robert-Roberts\">1827 domestic workers’ handbook\u003c/a> to T-Pain’s compulsively readable \u003ci>Can I Mix You a Drink?\u003c/i> (the rapper-turned-singer’s 2021 book of cocktails named after his own hit songs). More than that, it’s a celebration of all the mostly untold stories of how African Americans have helped shape this country’s cocktail culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book is also the focus of “\u003ca href=\"https://www.moadsf.org/event/diaspora-dinner-featuring-toni-tipton-martin\">A Jazzed Up Evening with Toni Tipton-Martin,\u003c/a>” a swanky May 10 dinner event at San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/museum-of-the-african-diaspora\">Museum of the African Diaspora\u003c/a>. Tipton-Martin will be on hand to give a talk. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13953773/in-praise-of-tammy-hall-bay-area-jazz-piano\">Tammy Hall\u003c/a>, the Bay Area’s own Grammy-winning jazz pianist, will perform. And, naturally, there will be an opulent spread of food and drinks inspired by recipes from both \u003ci>Juke Joints \u003c/i>and \u003ci>Jubilee\u003c/i>: a California sherry cobbler cocktail, Savannah-style pickled shrimp, string beans a la Creole and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The event is part of MoAD’s long-running “Diaspora Dinner” series, curated by chef-in-residence \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13923936/moad-new-chef-in-residence-jocelyn-jackson-peoples-kitchen-collective\">Jocelyn Jackson\u003c/a>. It’s the museum’s flagship fundraising event, known for bringing some of the country’s most prominent Black scholars and chefs to San Francisco. (Recent editions have featured food historian \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13956497/moad-diaspora-dinner-high-on-the-hog-jessica-harris-sf\">Jessica B. Harris\u003c/a> and the Bay’s own \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930013/moad-diaspora-dinner-bay-area-black-women-chefs-intergenerational-sf-bayview\">Sarah Kirnon\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Tipton-Martin says what she learned from her research is that there was a fairly simple explanation for why there were no Black cocktail books in the 1920s and ‘30s and on through the peak years of the civil rights movement — and it wasn’t because there weren’t talented, creative Black bartenders. Instead, what stood out to her was the stigma that was associated with alcohol consumption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-13975571\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints.jpg\" alt=\"Book cover featuring a cocktail garnished with lemon peel. The title reads, 'Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice.'\" width=\"350\" height=\"447\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-800x1022.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-1020x1303.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-160x204.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-768x981.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-1203x1536.jpg 1203w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-1604x2048.jpg 1604w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-1920x2452.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\">“Black people were depicted in very negative and stereotyped ways in post-slavery America, in retaliation for freedom,” Tipton-Martin says. “So when Black people are portrayed in relation to spirits, they’re associated with debauchery — violent Black men, wild Black women, people wasting their money.” As a result, Black cookbook writers who wanted to prove their competence and expertise tended to avoid focusing too much on alcohol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the most prominent example of how Black drinking culture was disparaged was the public perception of \u003ca href=\"https://capitalbnews.org/sinners-blues-juke-joints-clarksdale/\">juke joints\u003c/a>, the informal (and often secretive) Black drinking establishments located on the outskirts of rural farming communities in the South. In the ads, newspaper photos, literature and films in the early 20th century, juke joints were invariably portrayed as places where irresponsible drunkards would get into knife fights and gamble away their week’s wages. But as Tipton-Martin read more about juke joints, she found that they were also places where the local Black community might hold ice cream socials or church fundraisers. They were places where you could unwind with a good hot meal and moonshine served in a jar. (One need look no further than \u003ci>Sinners\u003c/i>, Ryan Coogler’s Southern gothic masterpiece of the moment, for a \u003ca href=\"https://andscape.com/features/sinners-movie-brought-us-home-and-refused-to-let-vampires-take-it-from-us/\">vision of a juke joint\u003c/a> as a testament to the power of community, diaspora and transcendent Black art — both before and after the vampires arrive.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975560\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975560\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire.jpg\" alt=\"Guests seated at long tables for a fancy dinner banquet. The neon sign on the wall reads, 'MoAD'.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Guests seated at MoAD’s 2024 Diaspora Dinner, which featured the food historian Jessica B. Harris. The dinner is the museum’s flagship fundraising event. \u003ccite>(Tinashe Chidarikire, courtesy of MoAD)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13972079,arts_13953773']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>And so, as Tipton-Martin writes in her introduction to \u003ci>Juke Joints\u003c/i>: “My ambition is to ensure that African American workers who plied their trade behind the bar are not forgotten.” The MoAD dinner, with its menu chock-full of nods to this long, too-often-ignored history of influential Black mixologists, is just another part of that mission. And when guests go home at the end of the evening, perhaps with a new recipe or two in their repertoire, her hope isn’t that they’ll tell their friends that they made a drink from Toni Tipton-Martin’s \u003ci>Juke Joints\u003c/i>. Instead, she hopes they’ll talk about Malinda’s Russell’s \u003ci>Domestic Cookbook \u003c/i>from 1866, or Julian Anderson’s 1919 compendium, \u003ci>Julian’s Recipes.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s the way we keep the ancestors’ stories alive,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>MoAD’s Toni Tipton-Martin event will be on Saturday, May 10, 6–9 p.m. at the St. Regis Hotel (125 3rd St., San Francisco). As of this posting, a limited number of \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.moadsf.org/event/diaspora-dinner-featuring-toni-tipton-martin\">\u003ci>tickets are still available\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> — $250 for general admission, $500 for VIP tickets.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "MoAD Celebrates 'Juke Joints,' Black Cocktail Innovators | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975561\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1958px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975561\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Amber-colored cocktail with ice, garnished by a blackberry, in a sherry glass.\" width=\"1958\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-scaled.jpg 1958w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-800x1046.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-1020x1334.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-160x209.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-768x1004.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-1175x1536.jpg 1175w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-1566x2048.jpg 1566w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/sherry-cobbler-1920x2510.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1958px) 100vw, 1958px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toni Tipton-Martin’s take on a sherry cobbler cocktail, from her book ‘Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice.’ \u003ccite>(Brittany Conerly, courtesy of Clarkson Potter)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Years ago, when food journalist Toni Tipton-Martin first started researching the history of African American \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/cocktails\">cocktail\u003c/a> recipes, she was struck by how few books were solely dedicated to that topic. Of course Tipton-Martin, who in the ’90s became the first Black food editor for a major American daily newspaper, is probably \u003ci>best\u003c/i> known for her \u003ca href=\"https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/3404-toni-tipton-martin-cookbook-collection-library\">prodigious collection of African American cookbooks\u003c/a>. Those hundreds of volumes, many of them rare, inspired and informed her two prior James Beard Award–winning books, \u003ci>The Jemima Code \u003c/i>and \u003ci>Jubilee\u003c/i>, which cast a spotlight on the unsung stories of Black cooks in America.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975566\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 350px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13975566\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Woman in coral-colored top poses for author headshot.\" width=\"350\" height=\"525\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Toni-Tipton-Martin_Pableaux-Johnson-1-1920x2880.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tipton-Martin was the first Black food editor at a daily newspaper in the U.S. \u003ccite>(Pableaux Johnson)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And yet the fact remained: “There are two books published in 1917 and 1919 by male bartenders, and then mixology disappears from the pages of Black cookbooks,” Tipton-Martin explains. “It’s only recently come back with any real gusto.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tipton-Martin’s investigation into this long absence and oversight — which, no surprise, was largely tied to racism — forms the basis for her 2023 book, \u003ca href=\"https://bookshop.org/p/books/juke-joints-jazz-clubs-and-juice-a-cocktail-recipe-book-a-celebration-of-black-mixology-toni-tipton-martin/19782063?ean=9780593233825&next=t\">\u003ci>Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice\u003c/i>\u003c/a>. It is, on the one hand, a wide-spanning cocktail recipe book that features a whole kaleidoscope of juleps, rum punches and home-fermented wines inspired by recipes she found in 200 years’ worth of African American cookbooks, ranging from an \u003ca href=\"https://www.scribd.com/document/114995111/1827-House-Servant-s-Directory-by-Robert-Roberts\">1827 domestic workers’ handbook\u003c/a> to T-Pain’s compulsively readable \u003ci>Can I Mix You a Drink?\u003c/i> (the rapper-turned-singer’s 2021 book of cocktails named after his own hit songs). More than that, it’s a celebration of all the mostly untold stories of how African Americans have helped shape this country’s cocktail culture.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The book is also the focus of “\u003ca href=\"https://www.moadsf.org/event/diaspora-dinner-featuring-toni-tipton-martin\">A Jazzed Up Evening with Toni Tipton-Martin,\u003c/a>” a swanky May 10 dinner event at San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/museum-of-the-african-diaspora\">Museum of the African Diaspora\u003c/a>. Tipton-Martin will be on hand to give a talk. \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13953773/in-praise-of-tammy-hall-bay-area-jazz-piano\">Tammy Hall\u003c/a>, the Bay Area’s own Grammy-winning jazz pianist, will perform. And, naturally, there will be an opulent spread of food and drinks inspired by recipes from both \u003ci>Juke Joints \u003c/i>and \u003ci>Jubilee\u003c/i>: a California sherry cobbler cocktail, Savannah-style pickled shrimp, string beans a la Creole and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The event is part of MoAD’s long-running “Diaspora Dinner” series, curated by chef-in-residence \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13923936/moad-new-chef-in-residence-jocelyn-jackson-peoples-kitchen-collective\">Jocelyn Jackson\u003c/a>. It’s the museum’s flagship fundraising event, known for bringing some of the country’s most prominent Black scholars and chefs to San Francisco. (Recent editions have featured food historian \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13956497/moad-diaspora-dinner-high-on-the-hog-jessica-harris-sf\">Jessica B. Harris\u003c/a> and the Bay’s own \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13930013/moad-diaspora-dinner-bay-area-black-women-chefs-intergenerational-sf-bayview\">Sarah Kirnon\u003c/a>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Tipton-Martin says what she learned from her research is that there was a fairly simple explanation for why there were no Black cocktail books in the 1920s and ‘30s and on through the peak years of the civil rights movement — and it wasn’t because there weren’t talented, creative Black bartenders. Instead, what stood out to her was the stigma that was associated with alcohol consumption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-13975571\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints.jpg\" alt=\"Book cover featuring a cocktail garnished with lemon peel. The title reads, 'Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice.'\" width=\"350\" height=\"447\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-800x1022.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-1020x1303.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-160x204.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-768x981.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-1203x1536.jpg 1203w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-1604x2048.jpg 1604w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/COVER-Juke-Joints-1920x2452.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\">“Black people were depicted in very negative and stereotyped ways in post-slavery America, in retaliation for freedom,” Tipton-Martin says. “So when Black people are portrayed in relation to spirits, they’re associated with debauchery — violent Black men, wild Black women, people wasting their money.” As a result, Black cookbook writers who wanted to prove their competence and expertise tended to avoid focusing too much on alcohol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps the most prominent example of how Black drinking culture was disparaged was the public perception of \u003ca href=\"https://capitalbnews.org/sinners-blues-juke-joints-clarksdale/\">juke joints\u003c/a>, the informal (and often secretive) Black drinking establishments located on the outskirts of rural farming communities in the South. In the ads, newspaper photos, literature and films in the early 20th century, juke joints were invariably portrayed as places where irresponsible drunkards would get into knife fights and gamble away their week’s wages. But as Tipton-Martin read more about juke joints, she found that they were also places where the local Black community might hold ice cream socials or church fundraisers. They were places where you could unwind with a good hot meal and moonshine served in a jar. (One need look no further than \u003ci>Sinners\u003c/i>, Ryan Coogler’s Southern gothic masterpiece of the moment, for a \u003ca href=\"https://andscape.com/features/sinners-movie-brought-us-home-and-refused-to-let-vampires-take-it-from-us/\">vision of a juke joint\u003c/a> as a testament to the power of community, diaspora and transcendent Black art — both before and after the vampires arrive.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975560\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975560\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire.jpg\" alt=\"Guests seated at long tables for a fancy dinner banquet. The neon sign on the wall reads, 'MoAD'.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/2024-5-4_Diaspora-Dinner_67_tinashe_chidarikire-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Guests seated at MoAD’s 2024 Diaspora Dinner, which featured the food historian Jessica B. Harris. The dinner is the museum’s flagship fundraising event. \u003ccite>(Tinashe Chidarikire, courtesy of MoAD)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>And so, as Tipton-Martin writes in her introduction to \u003ci>Juke Joints\u003c/i>: “My ambition is to ensure that African American workers who plied their trade behind the bar are not forgotten.” The MoAD dinner, with its menu chock-full of nods to this long, too-often-ignored history of influential Black mixologists, is just another part of that mission. And when guests go home at the end of the evening, perhaps with a new recipe or two in their repertoire, her hope isn’t that they’ll tell their friends that they made a drink from Toni Tipton-Martin’s \u003ci>Juke Joints\u003c/i>. Instead, she hopes they’ll talk about Malinda’s Russell’s \u003ci>Domestic Cookbook \u003c/i>from 1866, or Julian Anderson’s 1919 compendium, \u003ci>Julian’s Recipes.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s the way we keep the ancestors’ stories alive,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>MoAD’s Toni Tipton-Martin event will be on Saturday, May 10, 6–9 p.m. at the St. Regis Hotel (125 3rd St., San Francisco). As of this posting, a limited number of \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.moadsf.org/event/diaspora-dinner-featuring-toni-tipton-martin\">\u003ci>tickets are still available\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> — $250 for general admission, $500 for VIP tickets.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Viet Thanh Nguyen on Growing Up at His Parents’ Grocery Store in San José",
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"headTitle": "Viet Thanh Nguyen on Growing Up at His Parents’ Grocery Store in San José | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>Long before Viet Thanh Nguyen became a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, he was one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12037680/san-jose-became-home-betty-duong-vietnamese-americans\">thousands of Vietnamese refugee kids\u003c/a> who grew up in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a> during the 1970s and ’80s. On evenings and weekends, he’d help out at his parents’ grocery store in downtown San José, where his family moved in 1978 when he was seven years old. It was reportedly the second-ever Vietnamese grocery store in the city, and Nguyen’s experiences there helped inform his debut novel, \u003ci>The Sympathizer\u003c/i>, and subsequent works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few weeks before the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, KQED met with Nguyen — who now lives in Southern California — at the site of his parents’ old shop, currently occupied by an upscale apartment building across the street from City Hall. He reflected on the impact of his family’s store, his favorite childhood treats, and his memories of those early years for San José’s burgeoning Vietnamese community — decades before the flashy all-Vietnamese mega-malls and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/sanjosefood\">nationally recognized food scene\u003c/a> the city is known for today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: Can you tell us about a little bit about your parents’ store in San José? \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='news_12037680']\u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Viet Thanh Nguyen:\u003c/b> My parents opened a grocery store on East Santa Clara Street in 1978 or 1979. That whole corner there, underneath [what’s now a] very big apartment complex, was the Sàigòn Mới. It was not much to look at: a single-story grocery store, perhaps the second Vietnamese grocery store in San José, California. My parents ran it for about a decade. It was one of the centers of Vietnamese life because people could go, speak Vietnamese, buy rice, buy all of the kinds of things Vietnamese people needed to cook. I still meet people today, four decades later, who remember coming to my parents’ store.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975437\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s.jpg\" alt=\"Old 1980s photograph of a Vietnamese grocery store with cars parked outside. The sign reads, 'Sàigòn Mới'. \" width=\"2000\" height=\"1358\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-800x543.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-1020x693.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-160x109.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-768x521.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-1536x1043.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-1920x1304.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nguyen’s parents opened the store in the late ’70s and ran it for about a decade. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Eventually, of course, what happened is that San José got so successful that the city forced all these Vietnamese businesses on Santa Clara Street to sell to them under eminent domain. So everything you see there now didn’t exist in the 1970s and 1980s. Now the new San José City Hall [is here], but way back then it was Winchell’s Donuts and the Kragen Auto Parts. On Sundays, we would go to Vietnamese mass down the street at St. Patrick’s, and then I would go help my parents at the store, buy a dozen donuts at Winchell’s and read the \u003ci>San Jose Mercury News\u003c/i>. And that’s how I spent my weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Running a grocery store was not easy. My parents were working 12- to 14-hour days almost every day of the year, except for the Catholic holidays. \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CEuckOVBcgf/\">They were shot in that store on Christmas Eve\u003c/a>. It was a hard life. And so the last thing I wanted to do was to work in a grocery store. And one way that we actually deviated from stereotype is that my parents didn’t make my brother and me work in the store very much. What I did is that after they got home from their long day, after dinner, I would help them do the accounting. I would stamp the checks, count the money, stamp the food stamps and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children coupons. This is how I knew that life was hard for the Vietnamese in San José because I think half my parents’ revenue was from food stamps. Vietnamese people really needed the social welfare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My way of coping with this was to go to the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library, and I just read a lot. That was how I escaped from the pressures of refugee life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975439\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975439\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car.jpg\" alt=\"Asian American teenager leans against a sporty white coupe in a photo taken during the 1980s.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"926\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-800x370.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-1020x472.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-160x74.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-768x356.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-1536x711.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-1920x889.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nguyen as a teenager in the late ’80s, posing in front of his car. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: Do you have any favorite memories of the store from when you were a kid?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nguyen: \u003c/b>The grocery store sold all kinds of things. Obviously it sold nuoc mam. There was a butcher in the back, so there was meat and fish. There were all kinds of canned goods, like canned lychees, and every kind of ingredient you would need to make Vietnamese food. Lots of rice — 20-pound sacks, 50-pound sacks of rice. We also had baked goods, Vietnamese pastries and lots of candy. Being the son of a grocery store owner, what that meant is I could eat all that as much as I wanted. So some of my best memories were ladyfinger cookies, Lu Petit Ecolier chocolate biscuits and, especially, chocolate-covered cherries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: How would you say Vietnamese refugees like your parents change San José and America as a whole?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nguyen: \u003c/b>You can drive through many streets here, see the Vietnamese businesses, and see how the Vietnamese have made themselves into a part of San José. And this is how immigrants and refugees stake their claim to this country: They buy property and they put their name on it, so that people know there are people of a particular group here. My parents, when they opened their store, they had a big sign [that said] “Sàigòn Mới.” But they never translated that, which I never understood. Why didn’t they just call it the New Saigon?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think they called it the Sàigòn Mới because they weren’t trying to appeal to other Americans. They were trying to create a Vietnamese community — but because they and others created that Vietnamese community, they also created a Vietnamese American community. I’m not sure that was their ambition, but that’s what happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975442\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1828px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975442\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of an Asian family — mother, father, and two sons — posing for a portrait.\" width=\"1828\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-scaled.jpg 1828w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-800x1120.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-1020x1429.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-160x224.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-768x1076.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-1097x1536.jpg 1097w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-1462x2048.jpg 1462w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-1920x2689.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1828px) 100vw, 1828px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Nguyen family in 1981. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: During those early years for San José’s Vietnamese community, were there Vietnamese restaurants in the city that you would go to with your family?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was a whole Vietnamese restaurant scene in San José. Every Sunday we would go to Vietnamese Sunday mass at St. Patrick’s Church right down the street on Santa Clara Street, and then we’d go to Phở Hòa. This was a very important part of being Vietnamese. I learned how to use chopsticks and eat phở with both hands and all this kind of stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only later would I hear \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-24-mn-691-story.html\">the rumors\u003c/a> that Phở Hòa was supposedly part of this international phở chain where the profits were being used to support efforts to take Vietnam back through military measures. I have no idea if it was true, but this was the rumor, and I put it into my novel, \u003ci>The Sympathizer\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: Besides the pho, was there a favorite treat that you remember from when you were little that you would crave and that you seek out in the city?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13904913,arts_13930458,arts_13905293']\u003c/span>The sweet treats were the chè and flan. Vietnamese flan is different from Mexican flan or Spanish flan. There’s no butter or cheese or goat’s milk or anything like that — just eggs and sugar. It was really, really sweet. My cousin would make some terrific flan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And my parents would make chè at home. Unfortunately, they made the kinds I didn’t like because \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904913/vietnamese-drinks-boba-che-guide-san-jose\">there are many different varieties\u003c/a>. But going to the restaurants, you could get stuff like sương sa hạt lựu, which was my favorite chè. That was our version of Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors, except we had maybe seven or eight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: What else do you think is important for people to know or remember about your family’s experiences as Vietnamese refugees living in San José?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have a very personal relationship to this area of downtown San José because I grew up here. And so I remember the way it was in the 1970s and the 1980s. Vietnamese Americans today, if they were born after that time period, won’t know that. So you can come here as a Vietnamese American, and you can see City Hall, you see Starbucks, you see this big apartment complex, and that’s just the way things are for you. But I can see what used to be here. And so, for me, there’s a personal sense of loss of what used to be that was where I spent my childhood, where my parents had worked and suffered so much, along with so many other Vietnamese people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975441\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975441\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad.jpg\" alt=\"Black and white photo of an Asian couple.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1423\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-800x569.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-1020x726.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-768x546.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-1536x1093.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-1920x1366.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An early photo of Nguyen’s parents, who came to the United States as refugees in 1975. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Every country, including the United States, goes through historical change, goes through gentrification, and we are all stricken in different ways with amnesia. But for those of us who remember the way things used to be, I think there is an obligation to remember, to tell stories about that, to try to make sure other people know the history. And so that’s not just about the Sàigòn Mới, but it’s a metaphor for our relationship to history in general. If you grew up here as a Vietnamese American in San José, you may not have a sense of what your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents went through to provide you with this opportunity to go shopping in these \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12009871/an-evening-at-san-joses-story-road-night-market\">sleek Vietnamese malls\u003c/a> and to have a good time in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904913/vietnamese-drinks-boba-che-guide-san-jose\">Vietnamese cafes\u003c/a>, but there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of suffering, a lot of angst and melancholy that goes into the making of the Vietnamese community, all of which has faded and is fading away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why it’s so crucial for those of us who were there to hang onto those feelings and to continue telling those stories for future generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqednews/video/7499231197927656750\" data-video-id=\"7499231197927656750\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@kqednews\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqednews?refer=embed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@kqednews\u003c/a>Long before Viet Thanh Nguyen became a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, he was one of thousands of Vietnamese refugee kids who grew up in San Jose during the 1970s and ’80s. On evenings and weekends, he’d help out at his parents’ grocery store in downtown San Jose, the second-ever Vietnamese grocery store in the city. Nguyen’s experiences there helped inform his debut novel, The Sympathizer, and subsequent works.\u003ca title=\"♬ original sound - KQED News\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7499231276847598379?refer=embed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">♬ original sound – KQED News\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[tiktok]\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Viet Thanh Nguyen on His Parents' Vietnamese Grocery Store in San Jose | KQED",
"description": "The Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist was one of thousands of Vietnamese refugee kids who grew up in SJ the ’70s and ’80s.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Long before Viet Thanh Nguyen became a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, he was one of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12037680/san-jose-became-home-betty-duong-vietnamese-americans\">thousands of Vietnamese refugee kids\u003c/a> who grew up in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a> during the 1970s and ’80s. On evenings and weekends, he’d help out at his parents’ grocery store in downtown San José, where his family moved in 1978 when he was seven years old. It was reportedly the second-ever Vietnamese grocery store in the city, and Nguyen’s experiences there helped inform his debut novel, \u003ci>The Sympathizer\u003c/i>, and subsequent works.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few weeks before the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, KQED met with Nguyen — who now lives in Southern California — at the site of his parents’ old shop, currently occupied by an upscale apartment building across the street from City Hall. He reflected on the impact of his family’s store, his favorite childhood treats, and his memories of those early years for San José’s burgeoning Vietnamese community — decades before the flashy all-Vietnamese mega-malls and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/sanjosefood\">nationally recognized food scene\u003c/a> the city is known for today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: Can you tell us about a little bit about your parents’ store in San José? \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Viet Thanh Nguyen:\u003c/b> My parents opened a grocery store on East Santa Clara Street in 1978 or 1979. That whole corner there, underneath [what’s now a] very big apartment complex, was the Sàigòn Mới. It was not much to look at: a single-story grocery store, perhaps the second Vietnamese grocery store in San José, California. My parents ran it for about a decade. It was one of the centers of Vietnamese life because people could go, speak Vietnamese, buy rice, buy all of the kinds of things Vietnamese people needed to cook. I still meet people today, four decades later, who remember coming to my parents’ store.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975437\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s.jpg\" alt=\"Old 1980s photograph of a Vietnamese grocery store with cars parked outside. The sign reads, 'Sàigòn Mới'. \" width=\"2000\" height=\"1358\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-800x543.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-1020x693.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-160x109.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-768x521.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-1536x1043.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/New-Saigon-Market-early-1980s-1920x1304.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nguyen’s parents opened the store in the late ’70s and ran it for about a decade. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Eventually, of course, what happened is that San José got so successful that the city forced all these Vietnamese businesses on Santa Clara Street to sell to them under eminent domain. So everything you see there now didn’t exist in the 1970s and 1980s. Now the new San José City Hall [is here], but way back then it was Winchell’s Donuts and the Kragen Auto Parts. On Sundays, we would go to Vietnamese mass down the street at St. Patrick’s, and then I would go help my parents at the store, buy a dozen donuts at Winchell’s and read the \u003ci>San Jose Mercury News\u003c/i>. And that’s how I spent my weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Running a grocery store was not easy. My parents were working 12- to 14-hour days almost every day of the year, except for the Catholic holidays. \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CEuckOVBcgf/\">They were shot in that store on Christmas Eve\u003c/a>. It was a hard life. And so the last thing I wanted to do was to work in a grocery store. And one way that we actually deviated from stereotype is that my parents didn’t make my brother and me work in the store very much. What I did is that after they got home from their long day, after dinner, I would help them do the accounting. I would stamp the checks, count the money, stamp the food stamps and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children coupons. This is how I knew that life was hard for the Vietnamese in San José because I think half my parents’ revenue was from food stamps. Vietnamese people really needed the social welfare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My way of coping with this was to go to the Martin Luther King Jr. Public Library, and I just read a lot. That was how I escaped from the pressures of refugee life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975439\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975439\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car.jpg\" alt=\"Asian American teenager leans against a sporty white coupe in a photo taken during the 1980s.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"926\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-800x370.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-1020x472.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-160x74.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-768x356.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-1536x711.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/viet-car-1920x889.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nguyen as a teenager in the late ’80s, posing in front of his car. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: Do you have any favorite memories of the store from when you were a kid?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nguyen: \u003c/b>The grocery store sold all kinds of things. Obviously it sold nuoc mam. There was a butcher in the back, so there was meat and fish. There were all kinds of canned goods, like canned lychees, and every kind of ingredient you would need to make Vietnamese food. Lots of rice — 20-pound sacks, 50-pound sacks of rice. We also had baked goods, Vietnamese pastries and lots of candy. Being the son of a grocery store owner, what that meant is I could eat all that as much as I wanted. So some of my best memories were ladyfinger cookies, Lu Petit Ecolier chocolate biscuits and, especially, chocolate-covered cherries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: How would you say Vietnamese refugees like your parents change San José and America as a whole?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Nguyen: \u003c/b>You can drive through many streets here, see the Vietnamese businesses, and see how the Vietnamese have made themselves into a part of San José. And this is how immigrants and refugees stake their claim to this country: They buy property and they put their name on it, so that people know there are people of a particular group here. My parents, when they opened their store, they had a big sign [that said] “Sàigòn Mới.” But they never translated that, which I never understood. Why didn’t they just call it the New Saigon?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I think they called it the Sàigòn Mới because they weren’t trying to appeal to other Americans. They were trying to create a Vietnamese community — but because they and others created that Vietnamese community, they also created a Vietnamese American community. I’m not sure that was their ambition, but that’s what happened.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975442\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1828px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975442\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of an Asian family — mother, father, and two sons — posing for a portrait.\" width=\"1828\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-scaled.jpg 1828w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-800x1120.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-1020x1429.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-160x224.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-768x1076.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-1097x1536.jpg 1097w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-1462x2048.jpg 1462w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Tungs-family-1981-1920x2689.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1828px) 100vw, 1828px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Nguyen family in 1981. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: During those early years for San José’s Vietnamese community, were there Vietnamese restaurants in the city that you would go to with your family?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was a whole Vietnamese restaurant scene in San José. Every Sunday we would go to Vietnamese Sunday mass at St. Patrick’s Church right down the street on Santa Clara Street, and then we’d go to Phở Hòa. This was a very important part of being Vietnamese. I learned how to use chopsticks and eat phở with both hands and all this kind of stuff.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only later would I hear \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-04-24-mn-691-story.html\">the rumors\u003c/a> that Phở Hòa was supposedly part of this international phở chain where the profits were being used to support efforts to take Vietnam back through military measures. I have no idea if it was true, but this was the rumor, and I put it into my novel, \u003ci>The Sympathizer\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: Besides the pho, was there a favorite treat that you remember from when you were little that you would crave and that you seek out in the city?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>The sweet treats were the chè and flan. Vietnamese flan is different from Mexican flan or Spanish flan. There’s no butter or cheese or goat’s milk or anything like that — just eggs and sugar. It was really, really sweet. My cousin would make some terrific flan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And my parents would make chè at home. Unfortunately, they made the kinds I didn’t like because \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904913/vietnamese-drinks-boba-che-guide-san-jose\">there are many different varieties\u003c/a>. But going to the restaurants, you could get stuff like sương sa hạt lựu, which was my favorite chè. That was our version of Baskin-Robbins’ 31 flavors, except we had maybe seven or eight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>KQED: What else do you think is important for people to know or remember about your family’s experiences as Vietnamese refugees living in San José?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have a very personal relationship to this area of downtown San José because I grew up here. And so I remember the way it was in the 1970s and the 1980s. Vietnamese Americans today, if they were born after that time period, won’t know that. So you can come here as a Vietnamese American, and you can see City Hall, you see Starbucks, you see this big apartment complex, and that’s just the way things are for you. But I can see what used to be here. And so, for me, there’s a personal sense of loss of what used to be that was where I spent my childhood, where my parents had worked and suffered so much, along with so many other Vietnamese people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975441\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975441\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad.jpg\" alt=\"Black and white photo of an Asian couple.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1423\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-800x569.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-1020x726.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-768x546.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-1536x1093.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Mom-and-Dad-1920x1366.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An early photo of Nguyen’s parents, who came to the United States as refugees in 1975. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Viet Thanh Nguyen)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Every country, including the United States, goes through historical change, goes through gentrification, and we are all stricken in different ways with amnesia. But for those of us who remember the way things used to be, I think there is an obligation to remember, to tell stories about that, to try to make sure other people know the history. And so that’s not just about the Sàigòn Mới, but it’s a metaphor for our relationship to history in general. If you grew up here as a Vietnamese American in San José, you may not have a sense of what your parents and your grandparents and your great-grandparents went through to provide you with this opportunity to go shopping in these \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12009871/an-evening-at-san-joses-story-road-night-market\">sleek Vietnamese malls\u003c/a> and to have a good time in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13904913/vietnamese-drinks-boba-che-guide-san-jose\">Vietnamese cafes\u003c/a>, but there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of suffering, a lot of angst and melancholy that goes into the making of the Vietnamese community, all of which has faded and is fading away.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s why it’s so crucial for those of us who were there to hang onto those feelings and to continue telling those stories for future generations.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cblockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" style=\"max-width: 605px;min-width: 325px\" cite=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqednews/video/7499231197927656750\" data-video-id=\"7499231197927656750\">\n\u003csection>\u003ca title=\"@kqednews\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@kqednews?refer=embed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@kqednews\u003c/a>Long before Viet Thanh Nguyen became a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist, he was one of thousands of Vietnamese refugee kids who grew up in San Jose during the 1970s and ’80s. On evenings and weekends, he’d help out at his parents’ grocery store in downtown San Jose, the second-ever Vietnamese grocery store in the city. Nguyen’s experiences there helped inform his debut novel, The Sympathizer, and subsequent works.\u003ca title=\"♬ original sound - KQED News\" href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/music/original-sound-7499231276847598379?refer=embed\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">♬ original sound – KQED News\u003c/a>\u003c/section>\n\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "hinodeya-dashi-ramen-late-night-san-francisco-union-square",
"title": "This Union Square Ramen Shop Slings Pure Ocean Umami Until 3:30 a.m.",
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"headTitle": "This Union Square Ramen Shop Slings Pure Ocean Umami Until 3:30 a.m. | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975312\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975312\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men slurp bowls of ramen inside a crowded restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hinodeya Ramen’s Union Square location is known for its late hours and its seafood-based dashi broth. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. 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.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 11 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the busiest restaurant in Union Square wasn’t a pizza joint or all-night diner, but instead a tiny ramen shop specializing in a relatively undersung, niche soup style. That about sums up \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> food culture in a nutshell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The noodle shop in question is \u003ca href=\"https://hinodeyaramen.com/\">Hinodeya Ramen\u003c/a>, which first brought its vaunted dashi ramen to San Francisco from Japan’s \u003ca href=\"https://tabelog.com/en/saitama/A1104/A110402/11030891/\">Saitama prefecture\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2016/11/15/13644518/hinodeya-dashi-ramen-japantown-san-francisco\">2016\u003c/a>. Its owners made the bold move of opening a new late-night Union Square outpost in 2022 — in the thick of the pandemic, when the vibes downtown were perhaps at their \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-union-square-alliance-17321368.php\">lowest point\u003c/a>. It’s one of just a small handful of restaurants in the neighborhood that are open past midnight. In fact, on weekends you can still get a bowl of steaming-hot ramen as late as 3:30 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course thousands of words have been written about downtown San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13939383/downtown-san-francisco-doom-spiral-sucka-flea-market-holiday-spirit\">retail apocalypse\u003c/a> and the slow-simmering \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/union-square-macys-18693950.php?utm_content=hed&sid=616ef88e1a685b526a1e6649&ss=A&st_rid=661447bf-9cf8-473c-87cb-db1dea567b1c&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_morningfix\">demise of Union Square\u003c/a>. But at least within the tight, noisy confines of this pint-sized ramen restaurant, you would never guess any of that. During the entirety of our visit, the dining room was filled to capacity — more than 30 ramen eaters crammed practically shoulder to shoulder — with what looked to be an equal mix of SF locals and tourists. At the table next to us: a smiley college-age Latino couple on a date. A few tables down: a big, multi-generational Asian American family, including an 80-plus-year-old grandma with her face mask pulled down for ease of slurping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our server told us they get one big rush of customers from around 10 p.m. to midnight, and then another at 2 a.m., when the bars let out. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may have heard that in Japan, ramen is considered fast food, which isn’t a statement on quality but a matter of pure speed and accessibility. Hinodeya stays true to that spirit: Even though there were five or six parties ahead of us in line when we first stepped through the restaurant’s curtained doorway at a little past 10 o’clock, we were seated within minutes. The food also came out in a flash, just minutes after I buzzed in our QR code orders on my phone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975314\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975314\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a ramen restaurant at night. The sign reads \"Hinodeya Ramen Bar.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Open since 2022, the Union Square shop is open until 3:30 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In comparison to other top ramen shops, the noodles, chashu, soft-boiled egg and other toppings at Hinodeya are all perfectly adequate. But the shop’s be-all end-all is its dashi broth — especially for ramen enthusiasts tired of the thick, creamy, extra fatty tonkotsu style that’s so pervasive in the Bay Area. Instead of just boiling bones to smithereens, the basis of Hinodeya’s standard house ramen is a relatively light, clear soup that’s all balance and nuance, oriented around the umami of the sea: kombu, bonito flakes and scallop bouillon. The dried scallop, in particular, gives the broth an incredible depth of oceanic flavor, and a touch of pork fat adds just the right amount of luxurious richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dashi broth is low-key one of my favorite ramen broths in the Bay; it’s the kind of soup I could slurp down once or twice a week without ever getting tired of it. It feels frankly preposterous to have access to something this good, served this quickly, at 2 or 3 in the morning — right smack in the middle of Union Square, no less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13974383,arts_13973430,arts_13972197']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Hinodeya also offers a bunch of special ramens, available in limited quantities, like a sukiyaki beef ramen and a ramen topped with fried pork cutlet. And so the other nice thing about the Union Square shop is that, at least during our visit, all of the specials were still available even at 11 p.m. In keeping with the ocean umami theme, we went with the shop’s other signature dish, the hamaguri ramen, which comes topped with a couple dozen sweet littleneck clams in their shells. Here, Hinodeya’s standard dashi soup gets doctored up with a hit of fresh garlic and, of course, all of the clams’ briny juices. This is the ramen for you if you’re a linguine alle vongole lover — if your favorite part of an order of steamed Quahogs is sipping the clam liquor at the bottom of the bowl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The non-ramen dishes at Hinodeya are equally well calibrated for late-night enjoyment, like the juicy, crisp-bottomed gyoza, which come with a side of salty concentrated dashi broth — the ideal dipping sauce, it turns out. If you’re feeling extra hungry, you can finish off the meal with a big ol’ bowl of rice. We opted for the gyudon, a hearty rice bowl that comes topped with thin slices of tender, soy-sauce-simmered beef and a runny-yolked poached egg. But plain white rice would also hit the spot, especially for \u003ca href=\"https://jewidiarta.medium.com/tetsu-kariya-akira-hanasaki-oishinbo-a-la-carte-ramen-gyoza-f69d4bb812e3\">connoisseurs who know the pleasures\u003c/a> of using rice to soak up the last dregs of your leftover ramen broth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We saved just enough room for one last, not-too-sweet bite for dessert: a little square bowl of jello-like matcha pudding topped with a dollop of whipped cream. And just like that, about an hour after we sat down, even having taken our time, we were back out on the street, our bellies full, the taste of the ocean on our tongues. Up above us, the glittering lights of the big Union Square hotels shined just as brightly as they ever did.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Hinodeya Ramen’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hinodeya-unionsquare.square.site/\">\u003ci>Union Square location\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 10 a.m.–3:30 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 10 a.m.–1:30 p.m. the rest of the week at 219 O’Farrell St. in San Francisco. The restaurant also has locations in Japantown, the Financial District, Newark and San Jose.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Hinodeya Serves Rare Late-Night Ramen in SF's Union Square | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975312\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975312\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men slurp bowls of ramen inside a crowded restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hinodeya Ramen’s Union Square location is known for its late hours and its seafood-based dashi broth. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. 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.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At 11 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the busiest restaurant in Union Square wasn’t a pizza joint or all-night diner, but instead a tiny ramen shop specializing in a relatively undersung, niche soup style. That about sums up \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> food culture in a nutshell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The noodle shop in question is \u003ca href=\"https://hinodeyaramen.com/\">Hinodeya Ramen\u003c/a>, which first brought its vaunted dashi ramen to San Francisco from Japan’s \u003ca href=\"https://tabelog.com/en/saitama/A1104/A110402/11030891/\">Saitama prefecture\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2016/11/15/13644518/hinodeya-dashi-ramen-japantown-san-francisco\">2016\u003c/a>. Its owners made the bold move of opening a new late-night Union Square outpost in 2022 — in the thick of the pandemic, when the vibes downtown were perhaps at their \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-union-square-alliance-17321368.php\">lowest point\u003c/a>. It’s one of just a small handful of restaurants in the neighborhood that are open past midnight. In fact, on weekends you can still get a bowl of steaming-hot ramen as late as 3:30 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course thousands of words have been written about downtown San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13939383/downtown-san-francisco-doom-spiral-sucka-flea-market-holiday-spirit\">retail apocalypse\u003c/a> and the slow-simmering \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/union-square-macys-18693950.php?utm_content=hed&sid=616ef88e1a685b526a1e6649&ss=A&st_rid=661447bf-9cf8-473c-87cb-db1dea567b1c&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_morningfix\">demise of Union Square\u003c/a>. But at least within the tight, noisy confines of this pint-sized ramen restaurant, you would never guess any of that. During the entirety of our visit, the dining room was filled to capacity — more than 30 ramen eaters crammed practically shoulder to shoulder — with what looked to be an equal mix of SF locals and tourists. At the table next to us: a smiley college-age Latino couple on a date. A few tables down: a big, multi-generational Asian American family, including an 80-plus-year-old grandma with her face mask pulled down for ease of slurping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our server told us they get one big rush of customers from around 10 p.m. to midnight, and then another at 2 a.m., when the bars let out. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may have heard that in Japan, ramen is considered fast food, which isn’t a statement on quality but a matter of pure speed and accessibility. Hinodeya stays true to that spirit: Even though there were five or six parties ahead of us in line when we first stepped through the restaurant’s curtained doorway at a little past 10 o’clock, we were seated within minutes. The food also came out in a flash, just minutes after I buzzed in our QR code orders on my phone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975314\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975314\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a ramen restaurant at night. The sign reads \"Hinodeya Ramen Bar.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Open since 2022, the Union Square shop is open until 3:30 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In comparison to other top ramen shops, the noodles, chashu, soft-boiled egg and other toppings at Hinodeya are all perfectly adequate. But the shop’s be-all end-all is its dashi broth — especially for ramen enthusiasts tired of the thick, creamy, extra fatty tonkotsu style that’s so pervasive in the Bay Area. Instead of just boiling bones to smithereens, the basis of Hinodeya’s standard house ramen is a relatively light, clear soup that’s all balance and nuance, oriented around the umami of the sea: kombu, bonito flakes and scallop bouillon. The dried scallop, in particular, gives the broth an incredible depth of oceanic flavor, and a touch of pork fat adds just the right amount of luxurious richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dashi broth is low-key one of my favorite ramen broths in the Bay; it’s the kind of soup I could slurp down once or twice a week without ever getting tired of it. It feels frankly preposterous to have access to something this good, served this quickly, at 2 or 3 in the morning — right smack in the middle of Union Square, no less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Hinodeya also offers a bunch of special ramens, available in limited quantities, like a sukiyaki beef ramen and a ramen topped with fried pork cutlet. And so the other nice thing about the Union Square shop is that, at least during our visit, all of the specials were still available even at 11 p.m. In keeping with the ocean umami theme, we went with the shop’s other signature dish, the hamaguri ramen, which comes topped with a couple dozen sweet littleneck clams in their shells. Here, Hinodeya’s standard dashi soup gets doctored up with a hit of fresh garlic and, of course, all of the clams’ briny juices. This is the ramen for you if you’re a linguine alle vongole lover — if your favorite part of an order of steamed Quahogs is sipping the clam liquor at the bottom of the bowl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The non-ramen dishes at Hinodeya are equally well calibrated for late-night enjoyment, like the juicy, crisp-bottomed gyoza, which come with a side of salty concentrated dashi broth — the ideal dipping sauce, it turns out. If you’re feeling extra hungry, you can finish off the meal with a big ol’ bowl of rice. We opted for the gyudon, a hearty rice bowl that comes topped with thin slices of tender, soy-sauce-simmered beef and a runny-yolked poached egg. But plain white rice would also hit the spot, especially for \u003ca href=\"https://jewidiarta.medium.com/tetsu-kariya-akira-hanasaki-oishinbo-a-la-carte-ramen-gyoza-f69d4bb812e3\">connoisseurs who know the pleasures\u003c/a> of using rice to soak up the last dregs of your leftover ramen broth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We saved just enough room for one last, not-too-sweet bite for dessert: a little square bowl of jello-like matcha pudding topped with a dollop of whipped cream. And just like that, about an hour after we sat down, even having taken our time, we were back out on the street, our bellies full, the taste of the ocean on our tongues. Up above us, the glittering lights of the big Union Square hotels shined just as brightly as they ever did.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Hinodeya Ramen’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hinodeya-unionsquare.square.site/\">\u003ci>Union Square location\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 10 a.m.–3:30 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 10 a.m.–1:30 p.m. the rest of the week at 219 O’Farrell St. in San Francisco. The restaurant also has locations in Japantown, the Financial District, Newark and San Jose.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "palestinian-food-bay-area-gaza-activism-manakish-shawarmaji-azukar",
"title": "These Bay Area Chefs Are Preserving Palestinian Culture One Dish at a Time",
"publishDate": 1745438430,
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"headTitle": "These Bay Area Chefs Are Preserving Palestinian Culture One Dish at a Time | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Editor’s note\u003c/strong>: This story is part of KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/youthtakeover\">Youth Takeover\u003c/a>. Throughout the week of April 21–25, we’re publishing content by high school students from all over the Bay Area.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s soon as I step into the Saba Center parking lot in San Jose, I’m hit by the bustling and lively environment of teens rushing towards concession stands with their friends, hand in hand. The traditional drumming of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/islam\">Muslim\u003c/a> nasheeds (spiritual songs) and other Arabic music echoes all around. A line of food trucks sells everything from halal barbecue beef ribs to the trending Dubai chocolate cups. Most of the men all gather in one section of the parking lot, chai in hand, while the women congregate at the colorful hijab and abaya stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a late Saturday night in mid-March during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims observe “suhoor” each day, eating one pre-dawn meal before they begin their day of fasting — usually alone in their own homes. But for one night each year, HalalFest hosts a giant, all-night, communal suhoor called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13972704/suhoor-fest-ramadan-san-jose-halal-food-festival-2025\">Suhoor Fest\u003c/a>,” where the Muslim communities from all over the Bay Area can come together with a spirit of joy and laughter. This year, I’ve come with my family to get a taste of the foods trending among Bay Area Muslims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one of the festival’s most popular food trucks, Manakish, the earthy fragrance of za’atar fills the air. The truck’s vibrant blue and yellow logo pulls the attention of visitors, and the line is so long it extends to the festival parking lot. Named after a kind of flatbread that’s central to Palestinian food culture, Manakish is one of the many Palestinian food businesses at this year’s Suhoor Fest that are proudly owning their cultural identity. Popular items such as Manakish’s za’atar-and-cheese flatbread and shawarma fries quickly begin to sell out — evidence of how much the flavors of Palestine have taken center stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975036\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975036\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A cheesy za'atar flatbread on a pizza peel.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Manakish’s za’atar-and-cheese flatbread is one of its most popular dishes. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In fact, it appeared that around two-thirds of the stands at Suhoor Fest were either Palestinian-owned or at least showed some visible sign of solidarity with Palestine, like flags or stickers, even if the food wasn’t explicitly Palestinian. All of this comes at a time when Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza has brought the Palestinian people into the public eye more than ever. To date, \u003ca href=\"https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162356\">more than 51,000 Palestinians\u003c/a>, mostly women and children, are reported to have been killed in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the heart of this Palestinian food movement is a deeper mission beyond the food itself: protecting Palestine’s cultural legacy. During a time when Palestinian American chefs across the Bay Area feel their people and their culture are under attack, both here and overseas, they’re using the preservation of traditional flavors as a form of resistance, embracing and speaking out about their Palestinian heritage more prominently than before. At Manakish, this resistance is expressed, in part, through its dedication to za’atar seasoning. Oakland’s Shawarmaji shows a similar commitment, using its traditional shawarma cooking techniques to reclaim and revive Palestinian food. And at Asúkar’s Palestinian-Cuban fusion pop-ups in Oakland, the chef is redoubling her efforts to ensure the Palestinian roots of her cooking are never overlooked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceTemp\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975038\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975038\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Kebabs cooking over a smoky charcoal grill.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kebabs cooking over a charcoal grill outside of Manakish. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]A[/dropcap]part from the food truck, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/manakishsanjose/\">Manakish Oven & Grill\u003c/a> is a Levantine-inspired restaurant with locations in San Jose and Walnut Creek. Nabila Salem and her husband Feras AbuGhaben created the business as a way to reconnect with their Palestinian roots and share a piece of home with others. Alongside its traditional Palestinian dishes, the restaurant also offers creative spin-offs like its shawarma fries and pizza-inspired manakish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Salem says she longed for the tastes and smells of Palestine — something to remind her of home and keep the nostalgic smell of her teta’s, or grandmother’s, kitchen alive. At the restaurant, she hopes to preserve her culture by using authentic, Palestinian-sourced ingredients. “The spices we use in the shawarma — we get them from Palestine. Even the za’atar and olive oil, we get them all from there,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Salem, the za’atar is especially important. It isn’t just a spice blend, but a representation of her heritage, a connection to her land, and a symbol of the strength of her culture. The process of making it — by combining thyme, sesame seeds, sumac and other spices — is an important Palestinian tradition dating back to the 12th century. “We show resistance through our food, how we make olive oil, how we make za’atar, how long it takes to make za’atar — it all shows our resistance,” Salem says. “We’re here. We’re strong. We’re not going anywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975039\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1333px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975039\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A mother and child pose for a portrait, seated inside a restaurant with a cheese-topped flatbread in front of them.\" width=\"1333\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED.jpg 1333w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-1024x1536.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1333px) 100vw, 1333px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nabila Salem, founder and owner of Manakish Oven & Grill, and her daughter Layla, 5, pose for a photo. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With what’s happening in Gaza today, Salem says she believes it’s extremely important to be louder than ever — both through their food and on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/manakishsanjose/\">social media\u003c/a>. When she opened the original Manakish in Walnut Creek in 2019, the restaurant was less outspoken about its Palestinian roots, mostly advertising itself as a “Mediterranean” restaurant. Now, she feels an obligation to speak up and be more bold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like our food now is more popular than it was two or even three years ago. People now want to try za’atar. They now want to communicate — they want to learn more about Palestine,” Salem says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most diners probably think of Oakland’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/theshawarmaji/?hl=en\">Shawarmaji\u003c/a> strictly as a Jordanian restaurant, with its focus on serving shawarma like it’s made on the streets of Amman, Jordan: layers of marinated meat stacked on a tall rotating spit, cooked slowly until tender, then sliced off and wrapped in warm pita with garlic sauce and pickles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975217\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975217\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A chef slices meat off of a shawarma spit.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-scaled.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-1536x2048.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shawarmaji chef Mohammad Abutaha slices shawarma off the vertical spit at his Oakland restaurant. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Shawarmaji)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But chef-owner Mohammad Abutaha explains that he’s actually of Palestinian descent. His grandparents were born in Yaffa, while he was raised in Amman, where his dad was born. And in the past year and a half, in particular, Abutaha has put his Palestinian identity front and center at both Shawarmaji locations, in Oakland and Santa Clara, and Teta Nalah, his new “Arab soul food” restaurant, as well as on social media, where he shares \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DHZp0SfSpWZ/?hl=en&img_index=1\">traditional Palestinian recipes\u003c/a> and information about \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DHd8QX_JpTL/?hl=en\">fundraisers\u003c/a> and protests related to Gaza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13972704,arts_13962355,arts_13894684']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>For Abutaha, keeping his food “authentic” isn’t just about holding on to traditions, but also using them as a way to spark conversation about each dish’s Palestinian origins. On the surface, Shawarmaji has a typical shawarma spot menu: falafel, chicken and beef shawarma, and a range of Levantine salads. “My path is more about recreating the food I grew up eating, preserving the culture and the original food,” Abutaha explains. His food reclaims the flavors of Palestine and Jordan, even if it’s just by simply preserving the original spices and cooking methods, resisting the need for it to be “whitewashed” or “catered to a certain audience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, this approach isn’t always met with positive reviews. He acknowledges, “You know, people aren’t gonna like the garlic sauce — ‘\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894684/toum-shawarmaji-jordanian-restaurant-oakland-garlic-sauce\">it’s too garlicky\u003c/a>, blah, blah, blah,’ — but that’s something I didn’t wanna compromise on because that’s how I ate it.” By keeping the garlic sauce authentic to how it’s served in Jordan, Abutaha hopes to preserve all the hard work that went into creating shawarma — the years of his ancestors’ labor that ought to be remembered. His refusal to compromise on those flavors is his way of standing up for his Palestinian heritage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, chef Nicole Garcia blends both her husband’s Cuban roots and her own Palestinian heritage at her Oakland-based Palestinian-Cuban fusion pop-up \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/palestinian_cuban_fusion/?hl=en\">Asúkar\u003c/a>. The name is a combination of the Spanish word “azúcar” and the Arabic “sukkar.” She uses the term “mezze tapas” to describe the dining experience, which includes a combination of hybrid dishes — such as ropa vieja (a Cuban shredded meat dish) served over hummus — and more traditional Palestinian dishes like mujadara, which is made with lentils, rice and caramelized onions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963734\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963734\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion.jpg\" alt=\"A tostone slider on a plate.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tostones sliders — one of Asúkar’s Palestian-Cuban fusion dishes. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Oakland Bloom)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Through her cooking, Garcia aims to advocate for the struggles of both the Cuban \u003ci>and\u003c/i> Palestinian cultures. “Food brings people together to recognize there are more similarities amongst all of us than differences,” she says. Since the events of October 7, Garcia says she has felt an even stronger responsibility to represent the Palestinian side of her identity. “When I’m at pop-ups, a lot of people will just overlook the Palestinian part and say, ‘Oh look, it’s a Cuban fusion,’” she says. “They’ll just totally overlook the Palestinian part.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of her standing up for the Palestinian struggle has been through direct activism, like a screening of the documentary \u003ci>Israelism\u003c/i>, where attendees ate Asúkar’s mezze tapas and discussed the rise in Jewish solidarity with the Palestinian people, and the pro-Palestine tags on all of Garcia’s food posts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garcia also recognizes that, especially in the Bay Area’s crowded Arab food scene, it’s important to offer something distinct — to show the richness of Palestinian culture through every dish. By sourcing ingredients such as her somak and olive oil \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CUcpiSylLtL/?hl=en\">directly from Palestine\u003c/a>, she actively resists the overlooking of her heritage. But Garcia stresses that she’s \u003ci>always\u003c/i> made sure to represent her Palestinian identity — it isn’t just something she’s doing now because people are talking about it on social media: “This is not a trend. This is humanity,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Food is culture, food is identity. It’s a celebration,” Garcia continues. “And my people’s culture and identity is … beautiful and has every right to exist and thrive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975042\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975042\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Bright, casual restaurant dining room decorated with Palestinian artwork.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Manakish’s bright, airy San Jose dining room is decorated with Palestinian-inspired artwork and light fixtures. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975040\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975040\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a kefta kebab plate with rice and flatbread.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A kefta kebab plate at Manakish. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen I finally visit Manakish’s new location in San Jose, I’m greeted by the soft glow of the colorful Moroccan lamps and the gentle hum of conversation amongst families looking at the menus. The za’atar flatbread comes fresh out of the oven, hot and crispy. As I tear off a piece, still steaming, the combination of cheese, earthiness and slight bitterness fills my mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At that moment, I feel like I’m not just tasting any regular flatbread. I’m tasting the history behind it — the farmers who harvested the spices, the people who ground the spices by hand, and the families who passed the recipes down, maintaining the true flavors of the dish. And I’m overcome with admiration for the history and resilience these Palestinian dishes carry, and for the people who continue to keep it alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I take one more bite of the hot, soul-warming bread and think to myself, this is what resistance tastes like. And it tastes delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Khadijah Ismail is a freshman at Notre Dame San Jose, a food enthusiast and a member of KQED’s Youth Advisory Board.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Editor’s note\u003c/strong>: This story is part of KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/youthtakeover\">Youth Takeover\u003c/a>. Throughout the week of April 21–25, we’re publishing content by high school students from all over the Bay Area.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">A\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>s soon as I step into the Saba Center parking lot in San Jose, I’m hit by the bustling and lively environment of teens rushing towards concession stands with their friends, hand in hand. The traditional drumming of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/islam\">Muslim\u003c/a> nasheeds (spiritual songs) and other Arabic music echoes all around. A line of food trucks sells everything from halal barbecue beef ribs to the trending Dubai chocolate cups. Most of the men all gather in one section of the parking lot, chai in hand, while the women congregate at the colorful hijab and abaya stands.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a late Saturday night in mid-March during the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims observe “suhoor” each day, eating one pre-dawn meal before they begin their day of fasting — usually alone in their own homes. But for one night each year, HalalFest hosts a giant, all-night, communal suhoor called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13972704/suhoor-fest-ramadan-san-jose-halal-food-festival-2025\">Suhoor Fest\u003c/a>,” where the Muslim communities from all over the Bay Area can come together with a spirit of joy and laughter. This year, I’ve come with my family to get a taste of the foods trending among Bay Area Muslims.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At one of the festival’s most popular food trucks, Manakish, the earthy fragrance of za’atar fills the air. The truck’s vibrant blue and yellow logo pulls the attention of visitors, and the line is so long it extends to the festival parking lot. Named after a kind of flatbread that’s central to Palestinian food culture, Manakish is one of the many Palestinian food businesses at this year’s Suhoor Fest that are proudly owning their cultural identity. Popular items such as Manakish’s za’atar-and-cheese flatbread and shawarma fries quickly begin to sell out — evidence of how much the flavors of Palestine have taken center stage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975036\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975036\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A cheesy za'atar flatbread on a pizza peel.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-11-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Manakish’s za’atar-and-cheese flatbread is one of its most popular dishes. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In fact, it appeared that around two-thirds of the stands at Suhoor Fest were either Palestinian-owned or at least showed some visible sign of solidarity with Palestine, like flags or stickers, even if the food wasn’t explicitly Palestinian. All of this comes at a time when Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza has brought the Palestinian people into the public eye more than ever. To date, \u003ca href=\"https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/04/1162356\">more than 51,000 Palestinians\u003c/a>, mostly women and children, are reported to have been killed in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the heart of this Palestinian food movement is a deeper mission beyond the food itself: protecting Palestine’s cultural legacy. During a time when Palestinian American chefs across the Bay Area feel their people and their culture are under attack, both here and overseas, they’re using the preservation of traditional flavors as a form of resistance, embracing and speaking out about their Palestinian heritage more prominently than before. At Manakish, this resistance is expressed, in part, through its dedication to za’atar seasoning. Oakland’s Shawarmaji shows a similar commitment, using its traditional shawarma cooking techniques to reclaim and revive Palestinian food. And at Asúkar’s Palestinian-Cuban fusion pop-ups in Oakland, the chef is redoubling her efforts to ensure the Palestinian roots of her cooking are never overlooked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceTemp\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975038\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975038\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Kebabs cooking over a smoky charcoal grill.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-17-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kebabs cooking over a charcoal grill outside of Manakish. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">A\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>part from the food truck, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/manakishsanjose/\">Manakish Oven & Grill\u003c/a> is a Levantine-inspired restaurant with locations in San Jose and Walnut Creek. Nabila Salem and her husband Feras AbuGhaben created the business as a way to reconnect with their Palestinian roots and share a piece of home with others. Alongside its traditional Palestinian dishes, the restaurant also offers creative spin-offs like its shawarma fries and pizza-inspired manakish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Salem says she longed for the tastes and smells of Palestine — something to remind her of home and keep the nostalgic smell of her teta’s, or grandmother’s, kitchen alive. At the restaurant, she hopes to preserve her culture by using authentic, Palestinian-sourced ingredients. “The spices we use in the shawarma — we get them from Palestine. Even the za’atar and olive oil, we get them all from there,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For Salem, the za’atar is especially important. It isn’t just a spice blend, but a representation of her heritage, a connection to her land, and a symbol of the strength of her culture. The process of making it — by combining thyme, sesame seeds, sumac and other spices — is an important Palestinian tradition dating back to the 12th century. “We show resistance through our food, how we make olive oil, how we make za’atar, how long it takes to make za’atar — it all shows our resistance,” Salem says. “We’re here. We’re strong. We’re not going anywhere.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975039\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1333px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975039\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A mother and child pose for a portrait, seated inside a restaurant with a cheese-topped flatbread in front of them.\" width=\"1333\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED.jpg 1333w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-22-KQED-1024x1536.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1333px) 100vw, 1333px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nabila Salem, founder and owner of Manakish Oven & Grill, and her daughter Layla, 5, pose for a photo. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>With what’s happening in Gaza today, Salem says she believes it’s extremely important to be louder than ever — both through their food and on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/manakishsanjose/\">social media\u003c/a>. When she opened the original Manakish in Walnut Creek in 2019, the restaurant was less outspoken about its Palestinian roots, mostly advertising itself as a “Mediterranean” restaurant. Now, she feels an obligation to speak up and be more bold.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like our food now is more popular than it was two or even three years ago. People now want to try za’atar. They now want to communicate — they want to learn more about Palestine,” Salem says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most diners probably think of Oakland’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/theshawarmaji/?hl=en\">Shawarmaji\u003c/a> strictly as a Jordanian restaurant, with its focus on serving shawarma like it’s made on the streets of Amman, Jordan: layers of marinated meat stacked on a tall rotating spit, cooked slowly until tender, then sliced off and wrapped in warm pita with garlic sauce and pickles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975217\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975217\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A chef slices meat off of a shawarma spit.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-scaled.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-1020x1360.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Copy-of-IMG_8835-1536x2048.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shawarmaji chef Mohammad Abutaha slices shawarma off the vertical spit at his Oakland restaurant. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Shawarmaji)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But chef-owner Mohammad Abutaha explains that he’s actually of Palestinian descent. His grandparents were born in Yaffa, while he was raised in Amman, where his dad was born. And in the past year and a half, in particular, Abutaha has put his Palestinian identity front and center at both Shawarmaji locations, in Oakland and Santa Clara, and Teta Nalah, his new “Arab soul food” restaurant, as well as on social media, where he shares \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DHZp0SfSpWZ/?hl=en&img_index=1\">traditional Palestinian recipes\u003c/a> and information about \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DHd8QX_JpTL/?hl=en\">fundraisers\u003c/a> and protests related to Gaza.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>For Abutaha, keeping his food “authentic” isn’t just about holding on to traditions, but also using them as a way to spark conversation about each dish’s Palestinian origins. On the surface, Shawarmaji has a typical shawarma spot menu: falafel, chicken and beef shawarma, and a range of Levantine salads. “My path is more about recreating the food I grew up eating, preserving the culture and the original food,” Abutaha explains. His food reclaims the flavors of Palestine and Jordan, even if it’s just by simply preserving the original spices and cooking methods, resisting the need for it to be “whitewashed” or “catered to a certain audience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, this approach isn’t always met with positive reviews. He acknowledges, “You know, people aren’t gonna like the garlic sauce — ‘\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894684/toum-shawarmaji-jordanian-restaurant-oakland-garlic-sauce\">it’s too garlicky\u003c/a>, blah, blah, blah,’ — but that’s something I didn’t wanna compromise on because that’s how I ate it.” By keeping the garlic sauce authentic to how it’s served in Jordan, Abutaha hopes to preserve all the hard work that went into creating shawarma — the years of his ancestors’ labor that ought to be remembered. His refusal to compromise on those flavors is his way of standing up for his Palestinian heritage.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, chef Nicole Garcia blends both her husband’s Cuban roots and her own Palestinian heritage at her Oakland-based Palestinian-Cuban fusion pop-up \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/palestinian_cuban_fusion/?hl=en\">Asúkar\u003c/a>. The name is a combination of the Spanish word “azúcar” and the Arabic “sukkar.” She uses the term “mezze tapas” to describe the dining experience, which includes a combination of hybrid dishes — such as ropa vieja (a Cuban shredded meat dish) served over hummus — and more traditional Palestinian dishes like mujadara, which is made with lentils, rice and caramelized onions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963734\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963734\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion.jpg\" alt=\"A tostone slider on a plate.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/azucar-fusion-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Tostones sliders — one of Asúkar’s Palestian-Cuban fusion dishes. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Oakland Bloom)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Through her cooking, Garcia aims to advocate for the struggles of both the Cuban \u003ci>and\u003c/i> Palestinian cultures. “Food brings people together to recognize there are more similarities amongst all of us than differences,” she says. Since the events of October 7, Garcia says she has felt an even stronger responsibility to represent the Palestinian side of her identity. “When I’m at pop-ups, a lot of people will just overlook the Palestinian part and say, ‘Oh look, it’s a Cuban fusion,’” she says. “They’ll just totally overlook the Palestinian part.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Part of her standing up for the Palestinian struggle has been through direct activism, like a screening of the documentary \u003ci>Israelism\u003c/i>, where attendees ate Asúkar’s mezze tapas and discussed the rise in Jewish solidarity with the Palestinian people, and the pro-Palestine tags on all of Garcia’s food posts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Garcia also recognizes that, especially in the Bay Area’s crowded Arab food scene, it’s important to offer something distinct — to show the richness of Palestinian culture through every dish. By sourcing ingredients such as her somak and olive oil \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CUcpiSylLtL/?hl=en\">directly from Palestine\u003c/a>, she actively resists the overlooking of her heritage. But Garcia stresses that she’s \u003ci>always\u003c/i> made sure to represent her Palestinian identity — it isn’t just something she’s doing now because people are talking about it on social media: “This is not a trend. This is humanity,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Food is culture, food is identity. It’s a celebration,” Garcia continues. “And my people’s culture and identity is … beautiful and has every right to exist and thrive.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975042\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975042\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Bright, casual restaurant dining room decorated with Palestinian artwork.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-25-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Manakish’s bright, airy San Jose dining room is decorated with Palestinian-inspired artwork and light fixtures. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975040\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975040\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a kefta kebab plate with rice and flatbread.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250420_YTPALESTINIANFOOD_GC-23-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A kefta kebab plate at Manakish. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">W\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>hen I finally visit Manakish’s new location in San Jose, I’m greeted by the soft glow of the colorful Moroccan lamps and the gentle hum of conversation amongst families looking at the menus. The za’atar flatbread comes fresh out of the oven, hot and crispy. As I tear off a piece, still steaming, the combination of cheese, earthiness and slight bitterness fills my mouth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At that moment, I feel like I’m not just tasting any regular flatbread. I’m tasting the history behind it — the farmers who harvested the spices, the people who ground the spices by hand, and the families who passed the recipes down, maintaining the true flavors of the dish. And I’m overcome with admiration for the history and resilience these Palestinian dishes carry, and for the people who continue to keep it alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I take one more bite of the hot, soul-warming bread and think to myself, this is what resistance tastes like. And it tastes delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Khadijah Ismail is a freshman at Notre Dame San Jose, a food enthusiast and a member of KQED’s Youth Advisory Board.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>I was driving by a strip mall in South \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-jose\">San Jose\u003c/a> when a window portrait of a cartoon chicken in a Hawaiian shirt and Comme des Garçons shoes caught my eye. What I assumed would be a fried chicken spot turned out to be a Malaysian restaurant, a rarity in the South Bay. Inside \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/chickenliciousyummy/\">Chicken Licious\u003c/a>’ homey dining room, you’ll find a vibrant menu featuring curry puffs, nasi lemak and asam laksa. While you wait for your order, you can sip on a cup of chicken broth and prepare for your feast by loading up on sambal anchovies, pickled chiles and chili garlic sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin and Shen Yong opened Chicken Licious in 2022. But it isn’t the first time they’ve shared a kitchen — 15 years ago, the brothers worked together at Langkawi Malaysian Island Restaurant, their parents’ restaurant in San Mateo. After the restaurant closed down during the 2009 economic crisis, Kevin owned a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13911062/hawaiian-barbecue-bay-area-multicultural-oakland-ilava\">Hawaiian barbecue\u003c/a> restaurant in Sacramento for five years. He returned to the Bay because he wanted his son to grow up around his family. Shen proposed they partner up for a bento box catering business, which they started by selling cartons of silky, slow-poached Hainan chicken, exclusively. The success of that venture encouraged them to open Chicken Licious, a restaurant where they could share more of their favorite Malaysian dishes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opening a restaurant seems to be a family tradition. “I have five uncles in Malaysia,” says Shen. “They all opened restaurants. My mom’s older brother owns a restaurant in Milpitas — Lyang Lyang.” The approach at Chicken Licious differs from other popular Malaysian restaurants in the Bay in the sense that it’s focused on street food and based on the flavors of their hometown, Cameron Highlands, which is known for its fresh produce. They’ve expanded their bento box concept to include ayam penyet (smashed fried chicken), ayam bakar (grilled chicken), chicken redang and pork stir-fry. Each dish comes with a side of peanuts, nyonya acar (a pickled vegetable mixture), and rice infused with pandan and coconut milk or chicken stock. The meals are fun to eat because each element hits you with a bold dose of acidity, sweetness or heat, and harmonizes into something unique. There’s always some element of freshness and textural contrast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975025\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975025\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken.jpg\" alt=\"A fried chicken bento box with pickled vegetables, rice and sambal.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1126\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-1920x1081.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ayam penyet (smashed friend chicken) bento comes with pickles, peanuts, chili garlic sauce and rice. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13953078,arts_13969923,arts_13967902']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The Yongs say they wanted to replicate the food they grew up eating in Malaysia as closely as possible. “Most of our recipes are family recipes,” says Shen, “They came from my grandma.” (The word “family” is literally written on the dining room wall.) The brothers are against toning down or compromising any of the flavors, going as far as not allowing the heat level to be adjusted on any dish. They also have high standards. Shen poaches each batch of Hainan chicken for two and a half hours, meticulously maintaining the temperature the whole time. They say they’ll simply close the restaurant on days that they can’t find quality ingredients or when their chicken doesn’t meet expectations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On my first visit, I slurped through an entire plate of char kway teow, a stir-fried flat rice noodle dish with shrimp, lap cheong, eggs, bean sprouts and pork cracklings that’s heavy on the wok hei. I loved the side of funky, spicy shrimp paste that cuts through the richness of the dish while amplifying its shrimpiness. The ayam bakar is another hit — it’s marinated in a mixture of bay leaves, galangal, palm sugar and a variety of sweet soy sauce traditionally used for grilled chicken. Here, the chicken is fried to produce a light, crisp exterior that gives way to a juicy, subtly aromatic interior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975029\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975029\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of pork rib soup.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1126\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-1920x1081.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bah kuh teh, a pork soup made with the ribs, belly and intestine. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The brothers were concerned about opening a Malaysian restaurant in an area of San Jose that is predominantly Vietnamese because they thought it would be hard to establish a customer base with people who don’t know the cuisine. But the \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/ClCmw-RvfiF/\">Hainan chicken\u003c/a>, which remains the most popular item on their menu, is a familiar dish throughout Southeast Asia that gets people through the door. Once inside, they might be enticed by the aromas of that smoky char kway teow, or the fragrant herbiness of the bah kuh teh, a pork soup made with the ribs, belly and intestines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For most people, it’s their first try,” says Kevin, “If they come back, it means they like it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It appears that a lot of people do. Already, Chicken Licious has gained a cult following, with customers from as far as Walnut Creek, Marin and San Francisco, who make the trip to San Jose at least once a month when they feel homesick. “A lot of our customers are Malaysian,” says Shen. “Once they eat it, they say, ‘It brings me back to my hometown.’” The Yongs take pride in their ability to replicate these flavors and love to share the history and techniques behind dishes with customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975027\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975027\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt.jpg\" alt=\"Two brothers, one in a red t-shirt and the other in red, pose for a portrait inside their restaurant.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brothers Kevin (left) and Shen Yong started Chicken Licious as a bento catering business. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As well as they’ve done in introducing more people to the cuisine, the two brothers have opposing ideas on what lies ahead for the restaurant. “I’m a businessman,” says Kevin. “If we can handle it, I hope we can expand to Sunnyvale.” He acknowledges the importance of quality control when growing a business, but wants each of them to have their own restaurant. Shen, on the other hand, says he’d like to grow more slowly. “People want to make big money right away — I want to do it too, but once you want that your quality will go down,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, though, the brothers both want the same thing — to hook people on the sour, funky, herbal flavors of their family’s recipes. And they’re already well on their way.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.chickenliciousbento.com/\">Chicken Licious\u003c/a> is open 11 a.m.–7 p.m. daily except for Sundays, when it closes at 3 p.m. The restaurant is located at 2863 Senter Rd. in San Jose.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>I was driving by a strip mall in South \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-jose\">San Jose\u003c/a> when a window portrait of a cartoon chicken in a Hawaiian shirt and Comme des Garçons shoes caught my eye. What I assumed would be a fried chicken spot turned out to be a Malaysian restaurant, a rarity in the South Bay. Inside \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/chickenliciousyummy/\">Chicken Licious\u003c/a>’ homey dining room, you’ll find a vibrant menu featuring curry puffs, nasi lemak and asam laksa. While you wait for your order, you can sip on a cup of chicken broth and prepare for your feast by loading up on sambal anchovies, pickled chiles and chili garlic sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kevin and Shen Yong opened Chicken Licious in 2022. But it isn’t the first time they’ve shared a kitchen — 15 years ago, the brothers worked together at Langkawi Malaysian Island Restaurant, their parents’ restaurant in San Mateo. After the restaurant closed down during the 2009 economic crisis, Kevin owned a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13911062/hawaiian-barbecue-bay-area-multicultural-oakland-ilava\">Hawaiian barbecue\u003c/a> restaurant in Sacramento for five years. He returned to the Bay because he wanted his son to grow up around his family. Shen proposed they partner up for a bento box catering business, which they started by selling cartons of silky, slow-poached Hainan chicken, exclusively. The success of that venture encouraged them to open Chicken Licious, a restaurant where they could share more of their favorite Malaysian dishes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Opening a restaurant seems to be a family tradition. “I have five uncles in Malaysia,” says Shen. “They all opened restaurants. My mom’s older brother owns a restaurant in Milpitas — Lyang Lyang.” The approach at Chicken Licious differs from other popular Malaysian restaurants in the Bay in the sense that it’s focused on street food and based on the flavors of their hometown, Cameron Highlands, which is known for its fresh produce. They’ve expanded their bento box concept to include ayam penyet (smashed fried chicken), ayam bakar (grilled chicken), chicken redang and pork stir-fry. Each dish comes with a side of peanuts, nyonya acar (a pickled vegetable mixture), and rice infused with pandan and coconut milk or chicken stock. The meals are fun to eat because each element hits you with a bold dose of acidity, sweetness or heat, and harmonizes into something unique. There’s always some element of freshness and textural contrast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975025\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975025\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken.jpg\" alt=\"A fried chicken bento box with pickled vegetables, rice and sambal.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1126\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Ayam-Penyet-Indonesian-smashed-fried-chicken-1920x1081.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ayam penyet (smashed friend chicken) bento comes with pickles, peanuts, chili garlic sauce and rice. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The Yongs say they wanted to replicate the food they grew up eating in Malaysia as closely as possible. “Most of our recipes are family recipes,” says Shen, “They came from my grandma.” (The word “family” is literally written on the dining room wall.) The brothers are against toning down or compromising any of the flavors, going as far as not allowing the heat level to be adjusted on any dish. They also have high standards. Shen poaches each batch of Hainan chicken for two and a half hours, meticulously maintaining the temperature the whole time. They say they’ll simply close the restaurant on days that they can’t find quality ingredients or when their chicken doesn’t meet expectations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On my first visit, I slurped through an entire plate of char kway teow, a stir-fried flat rice noodle dish with shrimp, lap cheong, eggs, bean sprouts and pork cracklings that’s heavy on the wok hei. I loved the side of funky, spicy shrimp paste that cuts through the richness of the dish while amplifying its shrimpiness. The ayam bakar is another hit — it’s marinated in a mixture of bay leaves, galangal, palm sugar and a variety of sweet soy sauce traditionally used for grilled chicken. Here, the chicken is fried to produce a light, crisp exterior that gives way to a juicy, subtly aromatic interior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975029\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975029\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of pork rib soup.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1126\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-1536x865.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Bah-kuh-teh-1920x1081.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bah kuh teh, a pork soup made with the ribs, belly and intestine. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The brothers were concerned about opening a Malaysian restaurant in an area of San Jose that is predominantly Vietnamese because they thought it would be hard to establish a customer base with people who don’t know the cuisine. But the \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/ClCmw-RvfiF/\">Hainan chicken\u003c/a>, which remains the most popular item on their menu, is a familiar dish throughout Southeast Asia that gets people through the door. Once inside, they might be enticed by the aromas of that smoky char kway teow, or the fragrant herbiness of the bah kuh teh, a pork soup made with the ribs, belly and intestines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“For most people, it’s their first try,” says Kevin, “If they come back, it means they like it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It appears that a lot of people do. Already, Chicken Licious has gained a cult following, with customers from as far as Walnut Creek, Marin and San Francisco, who make the trip to San Jose at least once a month when they feel homesick. “A lot of our customers are Malaysian,” says Shen. “Once they eat it, they say, ‘It brings me back to my hometown.’” The Yongs take pride in their ability to replicate these flavors and love to share the history and techniques behind dishes with customers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975027\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975027\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt.jpg\" alt=\"Two brothers, one in a red t-shirt and the other in red, pose for a portrait inside their restaurant.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Kevin-Long-red-shirt-and-Shen-Long-blue-shirt-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brothers Kevin (left) and Shen Yong started Chicken Licious as a bento catering business. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As well as they’ve done in introducing more people to the cuisine, the two brothers have opposing ideas on what lies ahead for the restaurant. “I’m a businessman,” says Kevin. “If we can handle it, I hope we can expand to Sunnyvale.” He acknowledges the importance of quality control when growing a business, but wants each of them to have their own restaurant. Shen, on the other hand, says he’d like to grow more slowly. “People want to make big money right away — I want to do it too, but once you want that your quality will go down,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, though, the brothers both want the same thing — to hook people on the sour, funky, herbal flavors of their family’s recipes. And they’re already well on their way.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.chickenliciousbento.com/\">Chicken Licious\u003c/a> is open 11 a.m.–7 p.m. daily except for Sundays, when it closes at 3 p.m. The restaurant is located at 2863 Senter Rd. in San Jose.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Batcat Is the Nonbinary Comic Book Hero Kids Need",
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"content": "\u003cp>Batcat is a pink and spherical creature who’s vaguely \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-61240325\">Kirby\u003c/a>-like in both appetite and appearance, with a bat’s wings and a cat’s whiskers and pointy ears. In the first book of Meggie Ramm’s kids’ \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/graphic-novels\">graphic novel\u003c/a> series by that name, Batcat (they/them) floats around Spooky Isle gathering ingredients to cast a spell when they’re besieged by criticism on all sides: First, they run into some bats who say Batcat isn’t “bat enough,” Ramm explains. Then there’s a group of cats who don’t find them “cat enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-13974794\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-800x1100.jpg\" alt=\"The cover of 'Batcat Cooking Contest!' shows a spherical pink creature with cat ears and bat wings, alongside a ghost in a white chef's toque.\" width=\"300\" height=\"412\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-800x1100.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-1020x1402.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-160x220.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-768x1056.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-1118x1536.jpg 1118w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-1490x2048.jpg 1490w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-scaled.jpg 1863w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the Michigan-based cartoonist, the story felt like the perfect metaphor for their own experience growing up as a nonbinary kid. “There were people who were like, ‘You’re not girly enough,’ or ‘You’re too much of a tomboy,’” they say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Ramm, the first two books of the \u003ci>Batcat\u003c/i> series were about pushing back on labels and being proud of one’s true self. The \u003ca href=\"https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/sink-or-swim-batcat-book-2\">second book\u003c/a> also lays out what it \u003ci>means\u003c/i> to be nonbinary, for young readers (or their parents) who might not know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Ramm is celebrating the third installment, \u003ci>Batcat Cooking Contest!\u003c/i>, with a book launch event at indie comics shop \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/education/538146/silver-sprocket-comics\">Silver Sprocket\u003c/a> in San Francisco’s Mission District on Sunday, April 20. Ramm, who lived in Oakland in their twenties, at the start of their comics career, will be on hand to sign books and lead a drawing activity for kids — and, since it will be Easter Sunday, there’ll also be an Easter egg hunt featuring assorted comics-related stickers and merch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the new book, Batcat and their best friend Al — a friendly, also-nonbinary ghost who loves to cook— enter an eating contest and a cooking contest, respectively, at Spooky Isle’s annual fall festival. At its heart, it’s a story about community and what it means to be there to support your friends, as Al reconciles their desire to win the competition with the very real possibility that they won’t. And while the book’s pie-hoovering protagonist uses they/them pronouns throughout, their nonbinary-ness is otherwise completely unremarked upon — which almost feels even more radical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13972135,arts_13873050']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Ramm says this third book was born out of their time in the Bay Area — quite literally, since the earliest \u003ci>Batcat \u003c/i>stories were mini comics the artist made to exchange with their students when they taught at an after-school program in Oakland. But also, Ramm says, \u003ci>Batcat Cooking Contest!\u003c/i> is “100% just an ode to the Bay Area food scene.” In Oakland, Ramm had lived in the Temescal neighborhood, and they still wax nostalgic about how they could get every imaginable kind of food delivered to their doorstep. Their favorites included Cholita Linda, Ramen Shop and the since-closed tiki bar Kon-Tiki — “I was a vegetarian until I smelled one of their burgers,” they recall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, there’s a scene in the book when the reader sees the range of different food vendors who’ve set up stalls at the festival — a taco truck run by skeleton mermaids, a mooncake cave operated by bats — that was directly inspired by Bay Area food truck events like Off the Grid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974792\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1805px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974792\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A page from a comic book shows food stalls and food trucks run by various fantastical creatures: a taco truck run by sea mermaids, a pumpkin curry stand run by possums, a mooncake cave operated by bats, and so forth.\" width=\"1805\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-scaled.jpg 1805w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-800x1135.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-1020x1447.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-160x227.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-768x1089.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-1083x1536.jpg 1083w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-1444x2048.jpg 1444w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1805px) 100vw, 1805px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The plot of the third ‘Batcat’ book was inspired by author Meggie Ramm’s love of Oakland’s food scene. \u003ccite>(Abrams Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The book is, among other things, about the “enjoyment of cooking a meal for someone and having a meal cooked for you by someone you love,” Ramm says. “I’m hoping that there’s a kid in the Midwest who hasn’t experienced curry or mooncakes who will see that in the book, and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re gonna have to give that a shot.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974801\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13974801\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait of a comics artist holding up a fold-out comic book.\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-1365x2048.jpg 1365w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ramm wrote the first Batcat comics when they were teaching a kids’ comics class in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Kelsey Diane)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What isn’t lost on Ramm is the significance of releasing a book about a nonbinary character — even one as cute and pink and entirely fictional as Batcat — during this particular moment in American politics. After the presidential inauguration in January, the first thing Ramm saw when they turned on their phone was the Trump administration claiming that trans and nonbinary people don’t exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m still here. I’m still existing,” Ramm says. “I feel like Trump wanted to say that and then I was going to do a Marty McFly disappearance in the photo from \u003ci>Back to the Future\u003c/i>. But no matter what the administration says, nonbinary and trans people are going to exist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And even though they’ve already gotten hate mail from there’s-only-two-genders types, Ramm says they’re just happy to reinforce the existence of nonbinary people so that kids who read the book can know they’re not alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, Ramm says, the best part of writing the \u003ci>Batcat \u003c/i>books is how many nonbinary kids all over the country it has allowed them to meet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re so amazing, and they’re so brave,” Ramm says. “And they just come right out and say what their pronouns are when they first meet me, which is something that I have a hard time with as an adult. I’m just really grateful to the book for that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/cooking-contest-batcat-book-3\">Batcat Cooking Contest!\u003c/a>\u003ci> will be available at booksellers everywhere on April 22. The book’s kid-friendly Bay Area launch event takes place Sunday, April 20, from 3–4 p.m., at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/silversprocketshop/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Silver Sprocket\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> (1018 Valencia St., San Francisco).\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Batcat is a pink and spherical creature who’s vaguely \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-61240325\">Kirby\u003c/a>-like in both appetite and appearance, with a bat’s wings and a cat’s whiskers and pointy ears. In the first book of Meggie Ramm’s kids’ \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/graphic-novels\">graphic novel\u003c/a> series by that name, Batcat (they/them) floats around Spooky Isle gathering ingredients to cast a spell when they’re besieged by criticism on all sides: First, they run into some bats who say Batcat isn’t “bat enough,” Ramm explains. Then there’s a group of cats who don’t find them “cat enough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-13974794\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-800x1100.jpg\" alt=\"The cover of 'Batcat Cooking Contest!' shows a spherical pink creature with cat ears and bat wings, alongside a ghost in a white chef's toque.\" width=\"300\" height=\"412\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-800x1100.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-1020x1402.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-160x220.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-768x1056.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-1118x1536.jpg 1118w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-1490x2048.jpg 1490w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_cover-scaled.jpg 1863w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the Michigan-based cartoonist, the story felt like the perfect metaphor for their own experience growing up as a nonbinary kid. “There were people who were like, ‘You’re not girly enough,’ or ‘You’re too much of a tomboy,’” they say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to Ramm, the first two books of the \u003ci>Batcat\u003c/i> series were about pushing back on labels and being proud of one’s true self. The \u003ca href=\"https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/sink-or-swim-batcat-book-2\">second book\u003c/a> also lays out what it \u003ci>means\u003c/i> to be nonbinary, for young readers (or their parents) who might not know.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Ramm is celebrating the third installment, \u003ci>Batcat Cooking Contest!\u003c/i>, with a book launch event at indie comics shop \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/education/538146/silver-sprocket-comics\">Silver Sprocket\u003c/a> in San Francisco’s Mission District on Sunday, April 20. Ramm, who lived in Oakland in their twenties, at the start of their comics career, will be on hand to sign books and lead a drawing activity for kids — and, since it will be Easter Sunday, there’ll also be an Easter egg hunt featuring assorted comics-related stickers and merch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the new book, Batcat and their best friend Al — a friendly, also-nonbinary ghost who loves to cook— enter an eating contest and a cooking contest, respectively, at Spooky Isle’s annual fall festival. At its heart, it’s a story about community and what it means to be there to support your friends, as Al reconciles their desire to win the competition with the very real possibility that they won’t. And while the book’s pie-hoovering protagonist uses they/them pronouns throughout, their nonbinary-ness is otherwise completely unremarked upon — which almost feels even more radical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Ramm says this third book was born out of their time in the Bay Area — quite literally, since the earliest \u003ci>Batcat \u003c/i>stories were mini comics the artist made to exchange with their students when they taught at an after-school program in Oakland. But also, Ramm says, \u003ci>Batcat Cooking Contest!\u003c/i> is “100% just an ode to the Bay Area food scene.” In Oakland, Ramm had lived in the Temescal neighborhood, and they still wax nostalgic about how they could get every imaginable kind of food delivered to their doorstep. Their favorites included Cholita Linda, Ramen Shop and the since-closed tiki bar Kon-Tiki — “I was a vegetarian until I smelled one of their burgers,” they recall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, there’s a scene in the book when the reader sees the range of different food vendors who’ve set up stalls at the festival — a taco truck run by skeleton mermaids, a mooncake cave operated by bats — that was directly inspired by Bay Area food truck events like Off the Grid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974792\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1805px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974792\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A page from a comic book shows food stalls and food trucks run by various fantastical creatures: a taco truck run by sea mermaids, a pumpkin curry stand run by possums, a mooncake cave operated by bats, and so forth.\" width=\"1805\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-scaled.jpg 1805w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-800x1135.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-1020x1447.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-160x227.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-768x1089.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-1083x1536.jpg 1083w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_57-1444x2048.jpg 1444w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1805px) 100vw, 1805px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The plot of the third ‘Batcat’ book was inspired by author Meggie Ramm’s love of Oakland’s food scene. \u003ccite>(Abrams Books)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The book is, among other things, about the “enjoyment of cooking a meal for someone and having a meal cooked for you by someone you love,” Ramm says. “I’m hoping that there’s a kid in the Midwest who hasn’t experienced curry or mooncakes who will see that in the book, and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re gonna have to give that a shot.’”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974801\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13974801\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait of a comics artist holding up a fold-out comic book.\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/Batcat_author-photo-1365x2048.jpg 1365w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ramm wrote the first Batcat comics when they were teaching a kids’ comics class in Oakland. \u003ccite>(Kelsey Diane)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What isn’t lost on Ramm is the significance of releasing a book about a nonbinary character — even one as cute and pink and entirely fictional as Batcat — during this particular moment in American politics. After the presidential inauguration in January, the first thing Ramm saw when they turned on their phone was the Trump administration claiming that trans and nonbinary people don’t exist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m still here. I’m still existing,” Ramm says. “I feel like Trump wanted to say that and then I was going to do a Marty McFly disappearance in the photo from \u003ci>Back to the Future\u003c/i>. But no matter what the administration says, nonbinary and trans people are going to exist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And even though they’ve already gotten hate mail from there’s-only-two-genders types, Ramm says they’re just happy to reinforce the existence of nonbinary people so that kids who read the book can know they’re not alone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, Ramm says, the best part of writing the \u003ci>Batcat \u003c/i>books is how many nonbinary kids all over the country it has allowed them to meet.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re so amazing, and they’re so brave,” Ramm says. “And they just come right out and say what their pronouns are when they first meet me, which is something that I have a hard time with as an adult. I’m just really grateful to the book for that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://store.abramsbooks.com/products/cooking-contest-batcat-book-3\">Batcat Cooking Contest!\u003c/a>\u003ci> will be available at booksellers everywhere on April 22. The book’s kid-friendly Bay Area launch event takes place Sunday, April 20, from 3–4 p.m., at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/silversprocketshop/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Silver Sprocket\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> (1018 Valencia St., San Francisco).\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Stroll through the Stonestown \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/farmers-market\">Farmers Market\u003c/a> on a sunny spring morning, and you might spot a stall smothered in chocolate. Behold, an array of bars, bonbons, chocolate caramels, dipped figs and — a particular treat for this time of year — a matching pair of remarkably detailed chocolate bunnies. The male bunny sports a waistcoat and walking stick; the female bunny swishes her skirt and carries a parasol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re in their Easter Sunday best,” says the maker, David Upchurch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upchurch was originally an architect before he fell in love with pastry in Paris and career-changed into chocolate. During the recession, starting in 2009, he trained at City College of San Francisco and San Francisco Baking Institute. For the next five years, he worked at Recchiuti Confections, the craft chocolate tastemaker with a reputation for pulling fresh flavors from the farmers market. Upchurch started his own super-small-batch business during lockdown in 2020. Today, he shares a tiny production kitchen in SoMa while applying for a cottage license to work out of his home in Noe Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974476\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974476\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A man in pink shirt and glasses shows chocolates to a small boy at his farmers market stand.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Upchurch, right, shows Lorenzo Paniagua, age 6, different types of chocolate at his farmers market stand. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He found the first male bunny while online shopping. As one does, Upchurch was doing a deep dive on eBay, shopping for antique chocolate molds. He scrolled across a dealer based in Brussels, who had a wide selection of molds from the early 20th century. He ordered a dozen, and the one of a male rabbit quickly became a favorite. It was made by Anton Reiche in Dresden, Germany, around 1920, Upchurch believes, according to its catalog number. “He’s extremely dapper,” Upchurch says. Many molds are designed to be perfectly symmetrical, but this rabbit has movement. “For lack of a better reference, he’s posed like a Neoclassical figure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He found the exact mate while browsing \u003ca href=\"https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com\">Omnivore Books\u003c/a>. Like any good resident of Noe Valley, Upchurch likes chatting with bookmonger Celia Sack, owner of the only cookbook shop in San Francisco, which also carries vintage menus and assorted antiques. When he spotted the female bunny on her website, he scurried over. “It was total kismet,” Upchurch says. They’re a matching pair, from the exact same maker and time period. If anything, the female bunny was in even better shape. “She aged more gracefully.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974477\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974477\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A man smiles at the elaborate chocolate bunny that he holds in the palm of his hand.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Upchurch gazes lovingly at one of the chocolate bunnies he says reminds him of Mary Poppins. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Upchurch affectionately calls his rabbits Bert and Mary, after the chimney sweep and nanny in \u003cem>Mary Poppins\u003c/em>. Let’s call it loose inspiration because of course we’re hopping countries and years a smidge: \u003cem>Mary Poppins\u003c/em> is set in London in 1910 during the Edwardian era — King Edward ruled from 1901 to 1910, and the era continued until 1914. So technically these molds were made just after, but the bunnies do wear old-fashioned clothes. “The lady bunny reminds me of Mary Poppins with her flowing skirt, parasol and boots,” Upchurch says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may buy one of these bunnies in either milk or dark chocolate. Upchurch has a passion for sourcing more interesting and nuanced chocolate from \u003ca href=\"https://www.conexionchocolate.com/\">Conexión\u003c/a> in Ecuador, instead of the ubiquitous Valrhona from France or Callebaut from Belgium. The milk chocolate is 40 percent cacao, with a pretty caramel color and flavor, and rich mouthfeel thanks to milk from grass-fed cows in the Andes. The dark chocolate is 64 percent cacao, with light bitterness and nutty and citrusy notes of pecan and lemon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974641\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974641\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed.jpg\" alt='A display of chocolate Easter bunnies wrapped in plastic. A chalkboard sign reads, \"Bunnies for Easter. Antique molds.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Upchurch’s farmers market stand, where he sells his Edwardian-style chocolate bunnies during Easter season.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13939223,arts_13956809,arts_13925984']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The molds are made of tin, and it’s tricky working with antiques. Upchurch tempers the chocolate and starts brushing each mold by hand to hit every nook and cranny. He pours in a light layer, clamps the halves shut and turns to coat. Then he pours in a thick layer, lets the chocolate set for several minutes and turns out the excess, ultimately leaving a sturdy shell to set for several hours. The molds aren’t symmetrical, and they don’t always want to close tidily. Does it get messy? Of course. Upchurch has also invested in new plastic molds, available in the same pattern. They don’t have the same depth of detail, but they’re so much faster and easier to use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He only makes a few dozen bunnies every year, so catch them if you can. Upchurch sells at the Stonestown Farmers Market on Sundays and Marin Farmers Market on Thursdays, as well as through a couple of shops like \u003ca href=\"https://www.chocolatecoveredsf.com\">Chocolate Covered\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/collagesf/\">Collage Gallery\u003c/a>. The rabbits are priced at $29 each, and yes of course, that’s more than your everyday drugstore bunny. Consider the quality and freshness of the chocolate, responsibly sourced from a farming cooperative and all shaped by hand. They stand about 7 inches tall and 3 inches around, so you’re holding between 5 to 7 ounces of good chocolate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974478\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1333px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974478\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An ornate chocolate bunny held in front of a colorful spring bouquet.\" width=\"1333\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED.jpg 1333w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-1024x1536.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1333px) 100vw, 1333px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A close-up of “Mary,” who stands about 7 inches tall. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When the bunnies surely sell out, do not despair. Upchurch has a few other Easter treats, including smash eggs, caramel eggs and peanut butter bunny bars. Of course, there are also many talented confectioners in the Bay Area, happy to help fill baskets — \u003ca href=\"https://www.dandelionchocolate.com/products/easter-egg\">Dandelion\u003c/a> has marshmallow eggs, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.recchiuti.com/products/easter-eggs\">Recchiuti\u003c/a> offers ganache eggs, along with \u003ca href=\"https://www.elbowchocolates.com/easter-8-piece-chocolates.html\">Christopher Elbow\u003c/a>’s spaceship bunnies, \u003ca href=\"https://www.socolachocolates.com/collections/all/products/easter-egg-hunt-bars\">Socola\u003c/a>’s egg hunt bars, \u003ca href=\"https://www.formosachocolates.com/products/spring-2025-bonbon-collection\">Formosa\u003c/a>’s bonbon chicks and many more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet there’s something so enchanting about an early 20th century chocolate bunny, hopping between our elegant Edwardian homes painted in pastel colors in misty San Francisco. “Oh absolutely,” Upchurch agrees. “They’re very much at home here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>David Upchurch Chocolatier sells at the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.agriculturalinstitute.org/stonestown\">\u003ci>Stonestown Farmers Market\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> in San Francisco on Sundays from 9 a.m.–1 p.m. and at the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.agriculturalinstitute.org/thursday-marin\">\u003ci>Marin Farmers Market\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> in San Rafael on Thursdays from 8 a.m.–1 p.m. A limited number of chocolate bunnies are available until sold out.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Stroll through the Stonestown \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/farmers-market\">Farmers Market\u003c/a> on a sunny spring morning, and you might spot a stall smothered in chocolate. Behold, an array of bars, bonbons, chocolate caramels, dipped figs and — a particular treat for this time of year — a matching pair of remarkably detailed chocolate bunnies. The male bunny sports a waistcoat and walking stick; the female bunny swishes her skirt and carries a parasol.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re in their Easter Sunday best,” says the maker, David Upchurch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Upchurch was originally an architect before he fell in love with pastry in Paris and career-changed into chocolate. During the recession, starting in 2009, he trained at City College of San Francisco and San Francisco Baking Institute. For the next five years, he worked at Recchiuti Confections, the craft chocolate tastemaker with a reputation for pulling fresh flavors from the farmers market. Upchurch started his own super-small-batch business during lockdown in 2020. Today, he shares a tiny production kitchen in SoMa while applying for a cottage license to work out of his home in Noe Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974476\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974476\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A man in pink shirt and glasses shows chocolates to a small boy at his farmers market stand.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-7-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Upchurch, right, shows Lorenzo Paniagua, age 6, different types of chocolate at his farmers market stand. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He found the first male bunny while online shopping. As one does, Upchurch was doing a deep dive on eBay, shopping for antique chocolate molds. He scrolled across a dealer based in Brussels, who had a wide selection of molds from the early 20th century. He ordered a dozen, and the one of a male rabbit quickly became a favorite. It was made by Anton Reiche in Dresden, Germany, around 1920, Upchurch believes, according to its catalog number. “He’s extremely dapper,” Upchurch says. Many molds are designed to be perfectly symmetrical, but this rabbit has movement. “For lack of a better reference, he’s posed like a Neoclassical figure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He found the exact mate while browsing \u003ca href=\"https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com\">Omnivore Books\u003c/a>. Like any good resident of Noe Valley, Upchurch likes chatting with bookmonger Celia Sack, owner of the only cookbook shop in San Francisco, which also carries vintage menus and assorted antiques. When he spotted the female bunny on her website, he scurried over. “It was total kismet,” Upchurch says. They’re a matching pair, from the exact same maker and time period. If anything, the female bunny was in even better shape. “She aged more gracefully.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974477\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974477\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A man smiles at the elaborate chocolate bunny that he holds in the palm of his hand.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-13-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Upchurch gazes lovingly at one of the chocolate bunnies he says reminds him of Mary Poppins. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Upchurch affectionately calls his rabbits Bert and Mary, after the chimney sweep and nanny in \u003cem>Mary Poppins\u003c/em>. Let’s call it loose inspiration because of course we’re hopping countries and years a smidge: \u003cem>Mary Poppins\u003c/em> is set in London in 1910 during the Edwardian era — King Edward ruled from 1901 to 1910, and the era continued until 1914. So technically these molds were made just after, but the bunnies do wear old-fashioned clothes. “The lady bunny reminds me of Mary Poppins with her flowing skirt, parasol and boots,” Upchurch says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may buy one of these bunnies in either milk or dark chocolate. Upchurch has a passion for sourcing more interesting and nuanced chocolate from \u003ca href=\"https://www.conexionchocolate.com/\">Conexión\u003c/a> in Ecuador, instead of the ubiquitous Valrhona from France or Callebaut from Belgium. The milk chocolate is 40 percent cacao, with a pretty caramel color and flavor, and rich mouthfeel thanks to milk from grass-fed cows in the Andes. The dark chocolate is 64 percent cacao, with light bitterness and nutty and citrusy notes of pecan and lemon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974641\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974641\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed.jpg\" alt='A display of chocolate Easter bunnies wrapped in plastic. A chalkboard sign reads, \"Bunnies for Easter. Antique molds.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EdwardianChocolateBunnies_GC-25_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Upchurch’s farmers market stand, where he sells his Edwardian-style chocolate bunnies during Easter season.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The molds are made of tin, and it’s tricky working with antiques. Upchurch tempers the chocolate and starts brushing each mold by hand to hit every nook and cranny. He pours in a light layer, clamps the halves shut and turns to coat. Then he pours in a thick layer, lets the chocolate set for several minutes and turns out the excess, ultimately leaving a sturdy shell to set for several hours. The molds aren’t symmetrical, and they don’t always want to close tidily. Does it get messy? Of course. Upchurch has also invested in new plastic molds, available in the same pattern. They don’t have the same depth of detail, but they’re so much faster and easier to use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He only makes a few dozen bunnies every year, so catch them if you can. Upchurch sells at the Stonestown Farmers Market on Sundays and Marin Farmers Market on Thursdays, as well as through a couple of shops like \u003ca href=\"https://www.chocolatecoveredsf.com\">Chocolate Covered\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/collagesf/\">Collage Gallery\u003c/a>. The rabbits are priced at $29 each, and yes of course, that’s more than your everyday drugstore bunny. Consider the quality and freshness of the chocolate, responsibly sourced from a farming cooperative and all shaped by hand. They stand about 7 inches tall and 3 inches around, so you’re holding between 5 to 7 ounces of good chocolate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974478\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1333px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974478\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An ornate chocolate bunny held in front of a colorful spring bouquet.\" width=\"1333\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED.jpg 1333w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/20250410_EDWARDIANCHOCOLATEBUNNIES_GC-17-KQED-1024x1536.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1333px) 100vw, 1333px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A close-up of “Mary,” who stands about 7 inches tall. \u003ccite>(Gina Castro/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When the bunnies surely sell out, do not despair. Upchurch has a few other Easter treats, including smash eggs, caramel eggs and peanut butter bunny bars. Of course, there are also many talented confectioners in the Bay Area, happy to help fill baskets — \u003ca href=\"https://www.dandelionchocolate.com/products/easter-egg\">Dandelion\u003c/a> has marshmallow eggs, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.recchiuti.com/products/easter-eggs\">Recchiuti\u003c/a> offers ganache eggs, along with \u003ca href=\"https://www.elbowchocolates.com/easter-8-piece-chocolates.html\">Christopher Elbow\u003c/a>’s spaceship bunnies, \u003ca href=\"https://www.socolachocolates.com/collections/all/products/easter-egg-hunt-bars\">Socola\u003c/a>’s egg hunt bars, \u003ca href=\"https://www.formosachocolates.com/products/spring-2025-bonbon-collection\">Formosa\u003c/a>’s bonbon chicks and many more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yet there’s something so enchanting about an early 20th century chocolate bunny, hopping between our elegant Edwardian homes painted in pastel colors in misty San Francisco. “Oh absolutely,” Upchurch agrees. “They’re very much at home here.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>David Upchurch Chocolatier sells at the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.agriculturalinstitute.org/stonestown\">\u003ci>Stonestown Farmers Market\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> in San Francisco on Sundays from 9 a.m.–1 p.m. and at the \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.agriculturalinstitute.org/thursday-marin\">\u003ci>Marin Farmers Market\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> in San Rafael on Thursdays from 8 a.m.–1 p.m. A limited number of chocolate bunnies are available until sold out.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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},
"radiolab": {
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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},
"science-friday": {
"id": "science-friday",
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"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
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