window.__IS_SSR__=true
window.__INITIAL_STATE__={
"attachmentsReducer": {
"audio_0": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_0",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background0.jpg"
}
}
},
"audio_1": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_1",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background1.jpg"
}
}
},
"audio_2": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_2",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background2.jpg"
}
}
},
"audio_3": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_3",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background3.jpg"
}
}
},
"audio_4": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "audio_4",
"imgSizes": {
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/themes/KQED-unified/img/audio_bgs/background4.jpg"
}
}
},
"placeholder": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "placeholder",
"imgSizes": {
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"height": 107,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"height": 533,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-768x512.jpg",
"width": 768,
"height": 512,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"large": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"height": 680,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1536x1024.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"height": 1024,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"fd-lrg": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1536x1024.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"height": 1024,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"fd-med": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"height": 680,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"fd-sm": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-800x533.jpg",
"width": 800,
"height": 533,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"height": 372,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"height": 576,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"xxsmall": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-160x107.jpg",
"width": 160,
"height": 107,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"xsmall": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"height": 372,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"small": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"height": 372,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"xlarge": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1020x680.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"height": 680,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1-1920x1280.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1280,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-32": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 32,
"height": 32,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-50": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 50,
"height": 50,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-64": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 64,
"height": 64,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-96": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 96,
"height": 96,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"guest-author-128": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 128,
"height": 128,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"detail": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-1333x1333-1-160x160.jpg",
"width": 160,
"height": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/KQED-Default-Image-816638274-2000x1333-1.jpg",
"width": 2000,
"height": 1333
}
}
},
"arts_13898943": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13898943",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13898943",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13898909,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-160x120.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 120
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-scaled.jpg",
"width": 2560,
"height": 1920
},
"2048x2048": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-2048x1536.jpg",
"width": 2048,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1536
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-1020x765.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 765
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-1536x1152.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1152
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-1920x1440.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1440
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-800x600.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 600
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/collard-crispy-onion-768x576.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
}
},
"publishDate": 1623956567,
"modified": 1623956676,
"caption": "A Soul Slice biscuit crust pizza topped with crispy onions and collard greens.",
"description": "A Soul Slice biscuit crust pizza topped with crispy onions and collard greens.",
"title": "collard crispy onion",
"credit": "Soul Slice",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A biscuit crust pizza topped with crispy onions and collard greens.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13898744": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13898744",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13898744",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13898743,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped.jpg",
"width": 2049,
"height": 1152
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped-1020x573.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 573
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped-1920x1079.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1079
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1623428226,
"modified": 1623428406,
"caption": "Wagyu beef ramen at one of Noodle in a Haystack's pop-ups.",
"description": "Wagyu beef ramen at one of Noodle in a Haystack's pop-ups.",
"title": "NoodleHaystack_wagyu-cropped",
"credit": "Wendy Lin",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Bowl of ramen topped with slices of pink wagyu beef and a tangle of herbs.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13898454": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13898454",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13898454",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13898436,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-scaled.jpg",
"width": 2560,
"height": 1440
},
"2048x2048": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-2048x1152.jpg",
"width": 2048,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1152
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-1920x1080.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1080
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_lechon-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1623177776,
"modified": 1623177950,
"caption": "The cripsy lechon kawali is one of the fan favorites at Uncle Tito.",
"description": "The cripsy lechon kawali is one of the fan favorites at Uncle Tito.",
"title": "UncleTito_lechon",
"credit": "Alan Chazaro",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Crispy pork belly (lechon kawali) in a black skillet, topped with lime and pickled onions and jalapeños.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13898188": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13898188",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13898188",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13898185,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-scaled.jpg",
"width": 2560,
"height": 1440
},
"2048x2048": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-2048x1152.jpg",
"width": 2048,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1152
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-1920x1080.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1080
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_main-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1622662920,
"modified": 1622663669,
"caption": "The bento-themed cover of the \"Lunchbox Moments\" zine, flanked by two of the featured illustrations.",
"description": "The bento-themed cover of the \"Lunchbox Moments\" zine, flanked by two of the featured illustrations.",
"title": "LunchboxMoments_main",
"credit": "Left to right: Shizue Seigel, Haylie Chan and Jeffrey Liu, Kingston Xu",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Three side by side illustrations: a pink, old-fashioned stove with a Chinese takeout carton on top and a scroll of text coming out of the oven; a bento box with simple shapes representing an egg, a fish, a mound of rice; a ancient Terra Cotta Warrior statue holding a gigantic fork.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13897982": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13897982",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897982",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13897936,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1622138388,
"modified": 1622138491,
"caption": null,
"description": null,
"title": "TaiwanMap_FinalFeatureImage",
"credit": "Illustration by Felicia Liang; design by Rebecca Kao",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": null,
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13896599": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13896599",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13896599",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13927417,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Image-from-iOS-31-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Image-from-iOS-31-160x120.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 120
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Image-from-iOS-31-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Image-from-iOS-31.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1440
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Image-from-iOS-31-1020x765.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 765
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Image-from-iOS-31-1536x1152.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 1152
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Image-from-iOS-31-800x600.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 600
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/04/Image-from-iOS-31-768x576.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
}
},
"publishDate": 1619802616,
"modified": 1680742095,
"caption": "Crystal Martin of Flint's Barbecue.",
"description": "Crystal Martin of Flint's Barbecue at DeFremery Park in West Oakland.",
"title": "Image-from-iOS-(31)",
"credit": "Gabe Meline/KQED",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Crystal Martin of Flint's Barbecue at DeFremery Park in West Oakland.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13897869": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13897869",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897869",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13897868,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1622018334,
"modified": 1622018444,
"caption": null,
"description": null,
"title": "TaiwanBreakfast_FinalFeatureImage",
"credit": "Photo courtesy of Chef Wu; design by Rebecca Kao",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A bowl of savory soy milk, with pieces of fried cruller floating in the soy milk, pictured inside a red and blue frame that reads \"Eating Taiwanese in the Bay.\"",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13897833": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13897833",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897833",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13897830,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1621968373,
"modified": 1621968437,
"caption": null,
"description": null,
"title": "SVTaiwanese_FinalFeatureImage",
"credit": "Photo by Beth LaBerge; design by Rebecca Kao",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A pair of gua bao, or Taiwanese pork belly buns, on a white plate, surrounded by a red-and-blue frame that reads, \"Eating Taiwanese in the Bay.\"",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13897762": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13897762",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897762",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13897752,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1621891552,
"modified": 1621891688,
"caption": null,
"description": null,
"title": "RadicalFamilyFarm_Feature",
"credit": "Photo by Sarah Deragon; design by Rebecca Kao",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Leslie Wiser pushes a plow; the image is inside a red-and-blue frame patterned after the Taiwanese flag.",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13897687": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13897687",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897687",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13897684,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese_featured-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese_featured-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese_featured-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese_featured.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese_featured-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese_featured-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese_featured-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese_featured-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1621634919,
"modified": 1621635072,
"caption": null,
"description": null,
"title": "PandemicTaiwanese_featured",
"credit": "Photo by Esmé Weijun Wang; design by Rebecca Kao",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A plate of cold noodles with peanut sauce inside of a red-and-blue frame that reads \"Eating Taiwanese in the Bay.\"",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13897506": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13897506",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897506",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13897498,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/luroufan_feature-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/luroufan_feature-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/luroufan_feature-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/luroufan_feature.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/luroufan_feature-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/luroufan_feature-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/luroufan_feature-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/luroufan_feature-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1621470064,
"modified": 1621470219,
"caption": null,
"description": null,
"title": "luroufan_feature",
"credit": "Illustration by Thien Pham; design by Rebecca Kao",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "Illustration of a bowl of lu rou fan, or braised pork over rice, inside a blue and red frame that reads \"Eating Taiwanese in the Bay.\"",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
},
"arts_13897431": {
"type": "attachments",
"id": "arts_13897431",
"meta": {
"index": "attachments_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897431",
"found": true
},
"parent": 13897410,
"imgSizes": {
"twentyfourteen-full-width": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_featured-1038x576.jpg",
"width": 1038,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 576
},
"thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_featured-160x90.jpg",
"width": 160,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 90
},
"post-thumbnail": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_featured-672x372.jpg",
"width": 672,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 372
},
"kqedFullSize": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_featured.jpg",
"width": 1920,
"height": 1080
},
"large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_featured-1020x574.jpg",
"width": 1020,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 574
},
"1536x1536": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_featured-1536x864.jpg",
"width": 1536,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 864
},
"medium": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_featured-800x450.jpg",
"width": 800,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 450
},
"medium_large": {
"file": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_featured-768x432.jpg",
"width": 768,
"mimeType": "image/jpeg",
"height": 432
}
},
"publishDate": 1621446375,
"modified": 1621447221,
"caption": null,
"description": null,
"title": "QQ_featured",
"credit": "Photos by ugurv/insjoy/bonchan/iStock, design by Rebecca Kao",
"status": "inherit",
"altTag": "A collage of Taiwanese foods, including boba milk tea, ba-wan, and beef noodle soup, all placed inside a red-and-blue frame that reads \"Eating Taiwanese in the Bay.\"",
"isLoading": false,
"fetchFailed": false
}
},
"audioPlayerReducer": {
"postId": "stream_live",
"isPaused": true,
"isPlaying": false,
"pfsActive": false,
"pledgeModalIsOpen": true,
"playerDrawerIsOpen": false,
"liveAudioPlayStartedAt": 0,
"liveAudioPlayContext": ""
},
"authorsReducer": {
"byline_arts_13897684": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_arts_13897684",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_arts_13897684",
"name": "Esmé Weijun Wang",
"isLoading": false
},
"byline_arts_13897410": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "byline_arts_13897410",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"slug": "byline_arts_13897410",
"name": "Vanessa Hua",
"isLoading": false
},
"gracehwanglynch": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "11713",
"meta": {
"index": "authors_1716337520",
"id": "11713",
"found": true
},
"name": "Grace Hwang Lynch",
"firstName": "Grace Hwang",
"lastName": "Lynch",
"slug": "gracehwanglynch",
"email": "gracehwanglynch@gmail.com",
"display_author_email": false,
"staff_mastheads": [],
"title": "KQED Contributor",
"bio": null,
"avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/38dcd6e42a6261e8ebe2bcbb96e58f63?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twitter": null,
"facebook": null,
"instagram": null,
"linkedin": null,
"sites": [
{
"site": "arts",
"roles": [
"contributor"
]
},
{
"site": "bayareabites",
"roles": [
"contributor"
]
}
],
"headData": {
"title": "Grace Hwang Lynch | KQED",
"description": "KQED Contributor",
"ogImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/38dcd6e42a6261e8ebe2bcbb96e58f63?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/38dcd6e42a6261e8ebe2bcbb96e58f63?s=600&d=blank&r=g"
},
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/author/gracehwanglynch"
},
"ltsai": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "11743",
"meta": {
"index": "authors_1716337520",
"id": "11743",
"found": true
},
"name": "Luke Tsai",
"firstName": "Luke",
"lastName": "Tsai",
"slug": "ltsai",
"email": "ltsai@kqed.org",
"display_author_email": true,
"staff_mastheads": [
"arts"
],
"title": "Food Editor",
"bio": "Luke Tsai is KQED's food editor and resident stinky tofu connoisseur. Prior to KQED, he was an editor at Eater SF, \u003cem>San Francisco \u003c/em>magazine, and the \u003cem>East Bay Express\u003c/em>, and his work has also appeared in TASTE, the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em>, and the \u003cem>Best Food Writing\u003c/em> anthology. When he isn't writing or editing, you'll find him eating most everything he can get his hands on.",
"avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e59b45bf191526e7339d6ba46e33a57b2030d25c27660ecc64ea3cb863e34f7?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twitter": "theluketsai",
"bluesky": null,
"facebook": null,
"instagram": null,
"linkedin": null,
"sites": [
{
"site": "",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "arts",
"roles": [
"administrator"
]
},
{
"site": "news",
"roles": [
"editor",
"contributor"
]
},
{
"site": "bayareabites",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
},
{
"site": "food",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
}
],
"headData": {
"title": "Luke Tsai | KQED",
"description": "Food Editor",
"ogImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e59b45bf191526e7339d6ba46e33a57b2030d25c27660ecc64ea3cb863e34f7?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/1e59b45bf191526e7339d6ba46e33a57b2030d25c27660ecc64ea3cb863e34f7?s=600&d=blank&r=g"
},
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/author/ltsai"
},
"achazaro": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "11748",
"meta": {
"index": "authors_1716337520",
"id": "11748",
"found": true
},
"name": "Alan Chazaro",
"firstName": "Alan",
"lastName": "Chazaro",
"slug": "achazaro",
"email": "agchazaro@gmail.com",
"display_author_email": true,
"staff_mastheads": [],
"title": "Food Writer and Reporter",
"bio": "Alan Chazaro is the author of \u003cem>This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album\u003c/em> (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), \u003cem>Piñata Theory\u003c/em> (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), and \u003cem>Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge\u003c/em> (Ghost City Press, 2021). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco. He writes about sports, food, art, music, education, and culture while repping the Bay on \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/alan_chazaro\">Twitter\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/alan_chazaro/?hl=en\">Instagram\u003c/a> at @alan_chazaro.",
"avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ea8b6dd970fc5c29e7a188e7d5861df7?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twitter": "alan_chazaro",
"facebook": null,
"instagram": null,
"linkedin": null,
"sites": [
{
"site": "arts",
"roles": [
"contributor"
]
},
{
"site": "news",
"roles": [
"editor"
]
}
],
"headData": {
"title": "Alan Chazaro | KQED",
"description": "Food Writer and Reporter",
"ogImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ea8b6dd970fc5c29e7a188e7d5861df7?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/ea8b6dd970fc5c29e7a188e7d5861df7?s=600&d=blank&r=g"
},
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/author/achazaro"
},
"tpham": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "11753",
"meta": {
"index": "authors_1716337520",
"id": "11753",
"found": true
},
"name": "Thien Pham",
"firstName": "Thien",
"lastName": "Pham",
"slug": "tpham",
"email": "thiendog@gmail.com",
"display_author_email": false,
"staff_mastheads": [],
"title": "KQED Contributor",
"bio": null,
"avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fa68ed7d6a785e5294a7bb79a3f409c3?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twitter": null,
"facebook": null,
"instagram": null,
"linkedin": null,
"sites": [
{
"site": "arts",
"roles": [
"contributor"
]
}
],
"headData": {
"title": "Thien Pham | KQED",
"description": "KQED Contributor",
"ogImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fa68ed7d6a785e5294a7bb79a3f409c3?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/fa68ed7d6a785e5294a7bb79a3f409c3?s=600&d=blank&r=g"
},
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/author/tpham"
},
"mchang": {
"type": "authors",
"id": "11754",
"meta": {
"index": "authors_1716337520",
"id": "11754",
"found": true
},
"name": "Momo Chang",
"firstName": "Momo",
"lastName": "Chang",
"slug": "mchang",
"email": "momo.y.chang@gmail.com",
"display_author_email": false,
"staff_mastheads": [],
"title": "KQED Contributor",
"bio": null,
"avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/97d239ae67c3d897c07cb6813dcda359?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twitter": null,
"facebook": null,
"instagram": null,
"linkedin": null,
"sites": [
{
"site": "arts",
"roles": [
"contributor"
]
}
],
"headData": {
"title": "Momo Chang | KQED",
"description": "KQED Contributor",
"ogImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/97d239ae67c3d897c07cb6813dcda359?s=600&d=blank&r=g",
"twImgSrc": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/97d239ae67c3d897c07cb6813dcda359?s=600&d=blank&r=g"
},
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/author/mchang"
}
},
"pagesReducer": {
"arts_category_food": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_12276",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "12276",
"score": 11.424022
},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Food",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": "Explore the Bay Area culinary scene through KQED's food stories, recipes, dining experiences, and stories from the diverse tastemakers that define the Bay's cuisines.",
"title": "Bay Area Food Archives, Articles, News, and Reviews | KQED",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 12288,
"slug": "food",
"isLoading": false,
"title": "Food",
"pageMeta": {
"site": "arts",
"WpPageTemplate": "page-topic-editorial",
"currentPage": 44
},
"blocks": [
{
"blockName": "kqed/post-list",
"attrs": {
"layout": "cardArticle2",
"query": "posts/arts?category=food",
"seeMore": false,
"paginated": true,
"page": 44
}
},
{
"blockName": "kqed/ad"
}
]
}
},
"pfsSessionReducer": {},
"postsReducer": {
"stream_live": {
"type": "live",
"id": "stream_live",
"audioUrl": "https://streams.kqed.org/kqedradio",
"title": "Live Stream",
"excerpt": "Live Stream information currently unavailable.",
"link": "/radio",
"featImg": "",
"label": {
"name": "KQED Live",
"link": "/"
}
},
"stream_kqedNewscast": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "stream_kqedNewscast",
"audioUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/RDnews/newscast.mp3?_=1",
"title": "KQED Newscast",
"featImg": "",
"label": {
"name": "88.5 FM",
"link": "/"
}
},
"arts_13898909": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13898909",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13898909",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1623963607000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1623963607,
"format": "standard",
"title": "Oakland’s New Soul Food Restaurant Wants to Make Biscuit-Crust Pizza a Thing",
"headTitle": "Oakland’s New Soul Food Restaurant Wants to Make Biscuit-Crust Pizza a Thing | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Karter Louis couldn’t afford to go out for pizza when was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, so he and his brother would improvise: They took biscuit dough, straight out of the tube, and loaded it up with whatever toppings they had on hand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, Louis is turning that simple idea into a bona fide restaurant. Located at the former Noodle Theory Provisions space in North Oakland, at 5849 San Pablo Ave., \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://soulslicepizza.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Soul Slice\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> will be a soul food restaurant first and foremost—a place for customers to enjoy collard greens and black-eyed peas, fried oysters and lemon pepper catfish. But Soul Slice’s main point of distinction is that it serves all those dishes and more on top of its proprietary biscuit crust. As a pizza, in other words. To Louis’s knowledge, it’s the first dedicated biscuit pizza restaurant anywhere in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The restaurant will open on Saturday, June 19, or Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States— a “dream day” to open, Louis says, because he sees the restaurant as a celebration of Black culture.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The goal,” he says, “is to glorify and bring more focus on the origins of African American cuisine.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13895209,bayareabites_136360' label='More Soul Food']Louis, a self-described serial restaurateur, was an operating partner at San Francisco’s Samovar Tea Lounge in the mid to late aughts, after which he ran a chain of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cuisinenoirmag.com/hillbilly-tea-louisville-kentucky/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Appalachia-themed restaurants called Hillbilly Tea\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> based in Louisville. His dream, however, was to open a soul food restaurant, especially as he learned more about this history of the cuisine over the years—about how \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://madfeed.co/2015/a-peoples-history-of-carolina-rice/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Carolina Gold rice was brought over to the U.S. in the pockets of enslaved West Africans\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2019/07/22/today-even-fancy-restaurants-serve-biscuits-and-gravy-but-the-dish-comes-from-modest-beginnings/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the way that biscuits themselves evolved\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from hard, cracker-like objects eaten by British sailors to a staple of the American South. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For years, Louis had assumed that biscuit-crust pizza was just an odd thing that he had done as a child, but when he started talking to people about it as an adult, he realized that many Southern folks, in particular, had done the same thing growing up. Google “biscuit pizza,” and you’ll find several dozen recipes, though very few that incorporate any soul food ingredients. For Louis, however, the combination struck him as being “as American as you can get.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the end of the day, Louis says, Soul Slice is a pizza restaurant. The chef’s biscuit creations \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">look\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like pizza; you cut it into slices and eat it like a pizza. The main difference is that the pizzas don’t draw on Italian or Italian American flavors. “We don’t have mozzarella in our profile whatsoever,” Louis says. “I don’t even think we have oregano.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead, the \u003ca href=\"https://soulslicepizza.com/menu\">pizzas are mostly made up of the kinds of things you’ll find in the American South\u003c/a>. One pizza features okra, smashed potatoes, crispy black-eyed peas, mustard greens, collards and tomatoes. You can get hot links or cornmeal-crusted fried oysters on your pizza. You can get Alpine cheese, cheddar or a vegan cheese. And while there is a house tomato sauce, customers might instead choose the hot sauce or the “mac cheese” sauce, which Louis says captures the “gooey, cheesy essence” of his mac and cheese recipe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898946\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2016px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898946\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up of a pizza topped with okra and tomatoes.\" width=\"2016\" height=\"1512\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra.jpg 2016w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2016px) 100vw, 2016px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Okra and Tomato pizza. \u003ccite>(Soul Slice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Louis says when he moved back to the Bay Area in 2017 after living abroad in China and Taiwan for several years, he wasn’t necessarily looking to open another restaurant. But then the pandemic hit, and Louis says he saw the ways the restaurant industry was ravaged—the way so many cooks and servers lost their jobs, or felt compelled to keep showing up to work at risk of their own health and safety: “I just asked myself, what can I do?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The same week he came up with the idea for Soul Slice, protests broke out all over the country in response to George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white police officer, and Louis took that as a sign that focusing his efforts on celebrating Black food culture was the right thing to do.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People don’t take into consideration the contributions that Black and brown people have made to this country,” he says. “This is an important cuisine to engage in.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898944\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 373px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898944\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_Karter.jpg\" alt=\"Headshot of Karter Louis smiling in glasses and a white collared shirt.\" width=\"373\" height=\"483\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_Karter.jpg 747w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_Karter-160x207.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 373px) 100vw, 373px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Karter Louis is a self-described serial entrepreneur. \u003ccite>(Soul Slice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With all of the cracks in the restaurant industry’s existing business model that were exposed by the pandemic, Louis says he realized that he wanted to create a restaurant that would be more equitable and humane—no more nickel-and-diming employees for an hour here or there; no more elitist, fine-dining hierarchies where a server might make $100,000 a year while the dishwasher scrapes by on $30,000. “I’ve been a restaurant consultant, and I’ve trained people on how to cut costs—how to keep people in poverty, basically,” he says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At Soul Slice, Louis says, every worker—a staff of seven to start out—will be a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://soulslicepizza.com/opportunities\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">full-time salaried employee\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with health benefits, paid vacation and a 401(k). Everyone will work in both the front and back of the house, and they’ll all be paid according to their training level. It’ll be a five-step scale, with the goal of getting everyone to at least the fourth level. As Louis puts it, “Everyone gets the same pay at the same level. Everyone shares the tips; everyone works a full day; everyone takes two days off. It’s like a real company. That was the dream.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once the restaurant opens, Louis says he’ll begin the process of applying to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/133593/why-some-wineries-are-becoming-certified-b-corp-and-what-that-means\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">have it certified\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> as a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://bcorporation.net/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">B Corp\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—a business legally required to have a positive impact on both its workers and on the world at large. Eventually, he wants to open 20 outposts of Soul Slice all around the country in the next three to five years. But Oakland seemed like the perfect place to start.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I want to hang my hat on Oakland,” Louis says. “Oakland is the beacon to me in terms of being able to prove the model and having a community of people who understand what we’re trying to do.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12904247\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-160x16.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-240x23.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-375x37.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Soul Slice will open for both takeout and indoor dining on June 19 at 5849 San Pablo Ave. in Oakland. A back patio with outdoor seating will open later this summer. See the opening menu below:\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13898978\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"The first page of the Soul Slice menu.\" width=\"1978\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-scaled.jpg 1978w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-800x1035.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-1020x1320.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-160x207.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-768x994.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-1187x1536.jpg 1187w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-1583x2048.jpg 1583w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-1920x2485.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1978px) 100vw, 1978px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13898979\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"The second page of the Soul Slice menu.\" width=\"2130\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-scaled.jpg 2130w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-800x962.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-1020x1226.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-160x192.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-768x923.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-1278x1536.jpg 1278w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-1704x2048.jpg 1704w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-1920x2308.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2130px) 100vw, 2130px\">\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1168,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 21
},
"modified": 1705008201,
"excerpt": "At Soul Slice, pizza topping options will include hot links, fried chicken and collard greens.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "At Soul Slice, pizza topping options will include hot links, fried chicken and collard greens.",
"title": "Oakland’s New Soul Food Restaurant Wants to Make Biscuit-Crust Pizza a Thing | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Oakland’s New Soul Food Restaurant Wants to Make Biscuit-Crust Pizza a Thing",
"datePublished": "2021-06-17T14:00:07-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:23:21-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "soul-slice-biscuit-pizza-oakland-restaurant-opening",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "/food/",
"templateType": "standard",
"featuredImageType": "standard",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"path": "/arts/13898909/soul-slice-biscuit-pizza-oakland-restaurant-opening",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Karter Louis couldn’t afford to go out for pizza when was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, so he and his brother would improvise: They took biscuit dough, straight out of the tube, and loaded it up with whatever toppings they had on hand. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, Louis is turning that simple idea into a bona fide restaurant. Located at the former Noodle Theory Provisions space in North Oakland, at 5849 San Pablo Ave., \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://soulslicepizza.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Soul Slice\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> will be a soul food restaurant first and foremost—a place for customers to enjoy collard greens and black-eyed peas, fried oysters and lemon pepper catfish. But Soul Slice’s main point of distinction is that it serves all those dishes and more on top of its proprietary biscuit crust. As a pizza, in other words. To Louis’s knowledge, it’s the first dedicated biscuit pizza restaurant anywhere in the country. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The restaurant will open on Saturday, June 19, or Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States— a “dream day” to open, Louis says, because he sees the restaurant as a celebration of Black culture.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The goal,” he says, “is to glorify and bring more focus on the origins of African American cuisine.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"postid": "arts_13895209,bayareabites_136360",
"label": "More Soul Food "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Louis, a self-described serial restaurateur, was an operating partner at San Francisco’s Samovar Tea Lounge in the mid to late aughts, after which he ran a chain of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cuisinenoirmag.com/hillbilly-tea-louisville-kentucky/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Appalachia-themed restaurants called Hillbilly Tea\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> based in Louisville. His dream, however, was to open a soul food restaurant, especially as he learned more about this history of the cuisine over the years—about how \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://madfeed.co/2015/a-peoples-history-of-carolina-rice/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Carolina Gold rice was brought over to the U.S. in the pockets of enslaved West Africans\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/voraciously/wp/2019/07/22/today-even-fancy-restaurants-serve-biscuits-and-gravy-but-the-dish-comes-from-modest-beginnings/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">the way that biscuits themselves evolved\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> from hard, cracker-like objects eaten by British sailors to a staple of the American South. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For years, Louis had assumed that biscuit-crust pizza was just an odd thing that he had done as a child, but when he started talking to people about it as an adult, he realized that many Southern folks, in particular, had done the same thing growing up. Google “biscuit pizza,” and you’ll find several dozen recipes, though very few that incorporate any soul food ingredients. For Louis, however, the combination struck him as being “as American as you can get.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the end of the day, Louis says, Soul Slice is a pizza restaurant. The chef’s biscuit creations \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">look\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like pizza; you cut it into slices and eat it like a pizza. The main difference is that the pizzas don’t draw on Italian or Italian American flavors. “We don’t have mozzarella in our profile whatsoever,” Louis says. “I don’t even think we have oregano.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead, the \u003ca href=\"https://soulslicepizza.com/menu\">pizzas are mostly made up of the kinds of things you’ll find in the American South\u003c/a>. One pizza features okra, smashed potatoes, crispy black-eyed peas, mustard greens, collards and tomatoes. You can get hot links or cornmeal-crusted fried oysters on your pizza. You can get Alpine cheese, cheddar or a vegan cheese. And while there is a house tomato sauce, customers might instead choose the hot sauce or the “mac cheese” sauce, which Louis says captures the “gooey, cheesy essence” of his mac and cheese recipe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898946\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2016px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898946\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up of a pizza topped with okra and tomatoes.\" width=\"2016\" height=\"1512\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra.jpg 2016w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_okra-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2016px) 100vw, 2016px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Okra and Tomato pizza. \u003ccite>(Soul Slice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Louis says when he moved back to the Bay Area in 2017 after living abroad in China and Taiwan for several years, he wasn’t necessarily looking to open another restaurant. But then the pandemic hit, and Louis says he saw the ways the restaurant industry was ravaged—the way so many cooks and servers lost their jobs, or felt compelled to keep showing up to work at risk of their own health and safety: “I just asked myself, what can I do?”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The same week he came up with the idea for Soul Slice, protests broke out all over the country in response to George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white police officer, and Louis took that as a sign that focusing his efforts on celebrating Black food culture was the right thing to do.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People don’t take into consideration the contributions that Black and brown people have made to this country,” he says. “This is an important cuisine to engage in.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898944\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 373px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898944\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_Karter.jpg\" alt=\"Headshot of Karter Louis smiling in glasses and a white collared shirt.\" width=\"373\" height=\"483\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_Karter.jpg 747w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/SoulSlice_Karter-160x207.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 373px) 100vw, 373px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Karter Louis is a self-described serial entrepreneur. \u003ccite>(Soul Slice)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With all of the cracks in the restaurant industry’s existing business model that were exposed by the pandemic, Louis says he realized that he wanted to create a restaurant that would be more equitable and humane—no more nickel-and-diming employees for an hour here or there; no more elitist, fine-dining hierarchies where a server might make $100,000 a year while the dishwasher scrapes by on $30,000. “I’ve been a restaurant consultant, and I’ve trained people on how to cut costs—how to keep people in poverty, basically,” he says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At Soul Slice, Louis says, every worker—a staff of seven to start out—will be a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://soulslicepizza.com/opportunities\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">full-time salaried employee\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> with health benefits, paid vacation and a 401(k). Everyone will work in both the front and back of the house, and they’ll all be paid according to their training level. It’ll be a five-step scale, with the goal of getting everyone to at least the fourth level. As Louis puts it, “Everyone gets the same pay at the same level. Everyone shares the tips; everyone works a full day; everyone takes two days off. It’s like a real company. That was the dream.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once the restaurant opens, Louis says he’ll begin the process of applying to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/133593/why-some-wineries-are-becoming-certified-b-corp-and-what-that-means\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">have it certified\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> as a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://bcorporation.net/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">B Corp\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—a business legally required to have a positive impact on both its workers and on the world at large. Eventually, he wants to open 20 outposts of Soul Slice all around the country in the next three to five years. But Oakland seemed like the perfect place to start.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“I want to hang my hat on Oakland,” Louis says. “Oakland is the beacon to me in terms of being able to prove the model and having a community of people who understand what we’re trying to do.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12904247\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-160x16.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-240x23.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-375x37.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Soul Slice will open for both takeout and indoor dining on June 19 at 5849 San Pablo Ave. in Oakland. A back patio with outdoor seating will open later this summer. See the opening menu below:\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13898978\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"The first page of the Soul Slice menu.\" width=\"1978\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-scaled.jpg 1978w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-800x1035.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-1020x1320.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-160x207.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-768x994.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-1187x1536.jpg 1187w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-1583x2048.jpg 1583w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-1920x2485.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1978px) 100vw, 1978px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-13898979\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"The second page of the Soul Slice menu.\" width=\"2130\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-scaled.jpg 2130w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-800x962.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-1020x1226.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-160x192.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-768x923.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-1278x1536.jpg 1278w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-1704x2048.jpg 1704w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Soul-Slice-Menu-2-1920x2308.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2130px) 100vw, 2130px\">\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13898909/soul-slice-biscuit-pizza-oakland-restaurant-opening",
"authors": [
"11743"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_10278",
"arts_14730",
"arts_14729"
],
"featImg": "arts_13898943",
"label": "source_arts_13898909"
},
"arts_13898743": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13898743",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13898743",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1623443678000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1623443678,
"format": "standard",
"title": "SF’s Most Exciting New Ramen Restaurant Is Moving Out of the Living Room",
"headTitle": "SF’s Most Exciting New Ramen Restaurant Is Moving Out of the Living Room | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or the better part of the past six years, Clint and Yoko Tan have welcomed customers into their Daly City home for a blowout, multi-course ramen dinner. The pop-up, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.noodleinhaystack.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Noodle in a Haystack\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, started out small: six guests seated around the dining room table a couple of nights each month. Tickets started selling out so quickly, though, that the Tans soon expanded. They squeezed two more guests on either side of a little folding table—then three more in their living room, on a snug Ikea sofa they dubbed the “VIP couch,” where the Tans’ dog, Toto, often joined the fray. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Legalities aside,” Clint says, “the whole atmosphere of it felt more akin to eating at our favorite restaurants in Japan.” Or, perhaps more apt, like a rollicking dinner party that they might host for a group of friends. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Noodle in a Haystack quickly became an underground favorite, both for its atmosphere and for what many ramen connoisseurs considered to be some of the finest bowls of ramen in the Bay—labor-intensive dishes like their brothless wagyu beef abura soba, their duck shoyu ramen or the bright yuzu shio ramen that earned the couple a finalist’s spot at one of Japan’s biggest ramen competitions, the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/1576692412647548/videos/1902941763355943\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2017 World Ramen Grand Prix held in Osaka\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then COVID happened, and, with no viable way to continue serving guests at home, the pop-up went into an extended hibernation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, as the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Noodle-in-a-Haystack-is-bringing-its-mind-blowing-16217062.php\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">first reported\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Noodle in a Haystack will open as a standalone restaurant in the Inner Richmond, in the space recently vacated by the Japanese curry shop Konomama. The Tans hope to open as early as August or September of this year—though given the amount of renovation work they need to do, they say the end of 2021 might be a more realistic target.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Tans plan for the restaurant to be different from any other ramen spot in the city: It will be a tiny, intimate operation, likely serving no more than 20 customers a night. Instead of cranking out hundreds of bowls a night at $12 or $15 a pop, the restaurant will serve one of the Bay Area’s most unique tasting menus: $100 for six to eight courses, with a bowl of ramen—a different style each month, laboriously prepared over the course of three or four days—as the main event. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898768\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2049px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898768\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth.jpg\" alt=\"Yuzu shio ramen topped with thin slices of chicken in a white bowl.\" width=\"2049\" height=\"1537\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth.jpg 2049w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2049px) 100vw, 2049px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A version of the pop-up’s internationally recognized yuzu shio ramen. \u003ccite>(Noodle in a Haystack)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Clint, who was born and raised in San Francisco, first met Yoko, a Tokyo native, in 2008, shortly after he’d moved to Tokyo, where he worked as a salaryman for six years before returning to the Bay Area. The self-taught chefs started their at-home pop-up as a way to recapture the local ramen culture they’d both fallen in love with in Japan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Watching people take a slurp of the ramen, they give you that look,” Clint says. “There’s nothing better in the world than seeing that reaction. That was a drug to us.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o much of the pandemic hinged on the luck of timing. There were splashy new restaurants that opened, with a sad trombone sound, just days before the first shelter-in-place order shut them down right away. For others, permitting snafus and construction delays proved to be their saving grace—they wound up sitting out the worst of the ordeal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the case of Noodle in a Haystack, the timing could scarcely have been worse: A couple of months before the pandemic hit the Bay Area, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chron \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">food critic Soleil Ho shouted out the at-home pop-up as the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/12/30/21039826/best-restaurant-meals-sf-2019\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">best meal she ate all year\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, saying what she ate there “destroys every bowl of ramen in the Bay.” A couple of weeks later, Ho included the pop-up’s deep-fried pork belly in her list of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/25-must-eats/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“must-eat” dishes for 2020\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Already a hot ticket, a seat at one of Noodle in a Haystack’s ramen dinners became nearly impossible to snag, often selling out some five minutes after they were posted each month. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898770\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898770\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly.jpg\" alt=\"Cubes of deep-fried pork belly and salad greens on a blue plate.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The pork belly kakuni karaage was one of the pop-up’s signature dishes. \u003ccite>(Jason Wang and Grace Chen, @cityfoodsters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We were on the highest of highs,” Clint recalls. “We were going to come out from that rock that we were hiding under.” The Tans started looking for a space where they could turn Noodle in a Haystack into a real restaurant. Then, right at the peak of the pop-up’s popularity, everything got shut down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It was a tough pill to swallow. We didn’t know if we were ever going to cook again,” Clint recalls. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13894844' label='More Ramen']The Tans never stopped looking for a restaurant space, but they couldn’t ever quite \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bring themselves to pull the trigger on signing a lease, especially as COVID numbers around the Bay looked worse and worse. “You would expect there to be fire sales with all these empty properties, all these businesses that closed down,” Clint says. “The crazy thing is the prices never really changed.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They thought about moving back to Japan, where, even at the height of the pandemic, friends of theirs were able to open a new bar or restaurant in a matter of months. (Perhaps the only thing that stopped them, Yoko notes, was the fact that their aging dog wouldn’t have been able to make the trip.) \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then, rather quickly and unexpectedly, the space at 4601 Geary Boulevard fell into their laps. It isn’t necessarily the ideal space; it has a kitchen that, as it’s currently set up, isn’t equipped to cook anything much more complicated than “curry in a bag,” Clint says. Already, the Tans are expecting many months of permitting headaches. The good thing about having done pop-ups for so many years, they say, is that they’re used to bootstrapping together a kitchen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898772\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1080px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898772\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans.jpg\" alt=\"Yoko and Clint Tan wearing Noodle in a Haystack t-shirts.\" width=\"1080\" height=\"1350\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans.jpg 1080w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans-768x960.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yoko and Clint Tan at a fundraiser event in 2017. \u003ccite>(Noodle in a Haystack)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Perhaps the even bigger challenge, then, will be maintaining the intimacy of Noodle in a Haystack’s pop-up incarnation. After all, Clint says, “eating in America, even at the best meals, feels transactional at best. There’s this invisible, tangible wall that you can’t get past with the way food is made here.” That wall by and large didn’t exist at Noodle in a Haystack’s home pop-ups—not when customers sat inches away from the kitchen and could poke their heads in at any time to watch the Tans prepping the meal.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How, then, to translate that experience? The Tans’ solution, counterintuitively, is to make the restaurant even smaller in scale, serving their tasting menu to just eight to 10 customers at a time, with two seatings a night, three or four nights a week. “To people in the industry here, it’s ludicrous,” Clint says. “In America, businesses like that just don’t work.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s worth noting, too, that dinner at Noodle in a Haystack will be a more expensive meal than what you’d find at your typical a la carte ramen shop—again, probably about $100 a person for the six- to eight-course tasting menu. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898773\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2049px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898773\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of Thai-inspired tom yum paitan ramen in a red bowl, topped with a large shrimp and a lime wedge.\" width=\"2049\" height=\"2049\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014.jpg 2049w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2049px) 100vw, 2049px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The tom yum paitan ramen is one of the pop-up’s original creations. \u003ccite>(Colin Ma @eatfreakz)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There isn’t, at this point, much to add to the ramen pricing discourse, wherein the Yelp review–writing masses collectively lose their minds anytime a ramen shop charges more than $15 or $16 for a bowl. There’s something to be said for ramen’s origins as an affordable working-class staple in Japan, but in the United States, the arguments in favor of paying \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">for the kind of highly labor-intensive ramen made by Noodle in a Haystack are hard to refute—especially when the dining public seems perfectly content spending $20 or $30 for a simple plate of pasta. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“That’s really the running joke in our pop-up: Maybe we should be selling carbonara instead,” Clint says. “If I put those same noodles in bacon and eggs, someone will be fine spending $30; I don’t need to be spending three days making [ramen].”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s part of the reason why the Tans have no intention of opening a conventional ramen shop: They just don’t think it’s a viable business model in the Bay Area—not with rent being as expensive as it is, and not, as Clint says, considering “what it costs to make a properly, legitimately, thoughtfully made bowl of ramen here.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re not for everybody,” he says. “And that’s fine.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The meals won’t be strictly Japanese either—though “living in the Bay Area, missing Japanese food” will be the driving aesthetic. Certain staples of the pop-up will probably be part of every meal: a deviled ramen egg that starts each meal, for instance, and seasonal dorayaki (stuffed pancakes) that Yoko makes for dessert. Mostly, Clint says, they’ll just cook whatever they’re into at the moment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898775\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2049px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898775\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki.jpg\" alt=\"Many dorayaki (Japanese pancakes) on a wooden board.\" width=\"2049\" height=\"1537\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki.jpg 2049w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2049px) 100vw, 2049px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cheesecake dorayaki with salted brown butter crumble. \u003ccite>(Noodle in a Haystack)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Given all of the hoops they expect they’ll need to jump through, the Tans admit the August–September opening \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Noodle-in-a-Haystack-is-bringing-its-mind-blowing-16217062.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">they were originally shooting for\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is probably unrealistic, though they hope to be able to open in some form during that time frame, even if it’s only to sell the take-home ramen kits they offered periodically during lockdown. It’s likely that the restaurant will fully open closer to December.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fortunately, Noodle in a Haystack’s fan base appears to be unwavering in its enthusiasm. Earlier this month, the Tans launched a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/noodleinhaystack/noodle-in-a-haystack\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kickstarter campaign\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to help mitigate the expense of those likely delays—and to pay for expensive equipment like the kind of special Pi water filter that’s used by Japan’s top ramen restaurants. At publication time, they’ve already raised nearly $100,000, more than tripling their target.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12904247\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-160x16.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-240x23.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-375x37.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Noodle in a Haystack will open at \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">4601 Geary Blvd. in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1830,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 29
},
"modified": 1705008218,
"excerpt": "Noodle in a Haystack will bring its critically acclaimed, internationally recognized ramen to the Inner Richmond.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "Noodle in a Haystack will bring its critically acclaimed, internationally recognized ramen to the Inner Richmond.",
"title": "SF’s Most Exciting New Ramen Restaurant Is Moving Out of the Living Room | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "SF’s Most Exciting New Ramen Restaurant Is Moving Out of the Living Room",
"datePublished": "2021-06-11T13:34:38-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:23:38-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "noodle-in-a-haystack-ramen-pop-up-sf-richmond",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"templateType": "standard",
"excludeFromSiteSearch": "Include",
"featuredImageType": "standard",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"articleAge": "0",
"path": "/arts/13898743/noodle-in-a-haystack-ramen-pop-up-sf-richmond",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">F\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>or the better part of the past six years, Clint and Yoko Tan have welcomed customers into their Daly City home for a blowout, multi-course ramen dinner. The pop-up, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.noodleinhaystack.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Noodle in a Haystack\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, started out small: six guests seated around the dining room table a couple of nights each month. Tickets started selling out so quickly, though, that the Tans soon expanded. They squeezed two more guests on either side of a little folding table—then three more in their living room, on a snug Ikea sofa they dubbed the “VIP couch,” where the Tans’ dog, Toto, often joined the fray. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Legalities aside,” Clint says, “the whole atmosphere of it felt more akin to eating at our favorite restaurants in Japan.” Or, perhaps more apt, like a rollicking dinner party that they might host for a group of friends. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Noodle in a Haystack quickly became an underground favorite, both for its atmosphere and for what many ramen connoisseurs considered to be some of the finest bowls of ramen in the Bay—labor-intensive dishes like their brothless wagyu beef abura soba, their duck shoyu ramen or the bright yuzu shio ramen that earned the couple a finalist’s spot at one of Japan’s biggest ramen competitions, the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/1576692412647548/videos/1902941763355943\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">2017 World Ramen Grand Prix held in Osaka\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then COVID happened, and, with no viable way to continue serving guests at home, the pop-up went into an extended hibernation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, as the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Noodle-in-a-Haystack-is-bringing-its-mind-blowing-16217062.php\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Chronicle \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">first reported\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Noodle in a Haystack will open as a standalone restaurant in the Inner Richmond, in the space recently vacated by the Japanese curry shop Konomama. The Tans hope to open as early as August or September of this year—though given the amount of renovation work they need to do, they say the end of 2021 might be a more realistic target.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Tans plan for the restaurant to be different from any other ramen spot in the city: It will be a tiny, intimate operation, likely serving no more than 20 customers a night. Instead of cranking out hundreds of bowls a night at $12 or $15 a pop, the restaurant will serve one of the Bay Area’s most unique tasting menus: $100 for six to eight courses, with a bowl of ramen—a different style each month, laboriously prepared over the course of three or four days—as the main event. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898768\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2049px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898768\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth.jpg\" alt=\"Yuzu shio ramen topped with thin slices of chicken in a white bowl.\" width=\"2049\" height=\"1537\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth.jpg 2049w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_clearbroth-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2049px) 100vw, 2049px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A version of the pop-up’s internationally recognized yuzu shio ramen. \u003ccite>(Noodle in a Haystack)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Clint, who was born and raised in San Francisco, first met Yoko, a Tokyo native, in 2008, shortly after he’d moved to Tokyo, where he worked as a salaryman for six years before returning to the Bay Area. The self-taught chefs started their at-home pop-up as a way to recapture the local ramen culture they’d both fallen in love with in Japan. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Watching people take a slurp of the ramen, they give you that look,” Clint says. “There’s nothing better in the world than seeing that reaction. That was a drug to us.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">S\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>o much of the pandemic hinged on the luck of timing. There were splashy new restaurants that opened, with a sad trombone sound, just days before the first shelter-in-place order shut them down right away. For others, permitting snafus and construction delays proved to be their saving grace—they wound up sitting out the worst of the ordeal. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the case of Noodle in a Haystack, the timing could scarcely have been worse: A couple of months before the pandemic hit the Bay Area, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chron \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">food critic Soleil Ho shouted out the at-home pop-up as the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/12/30/21039826/best-restaurant-meals-sf-2019\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">best meal she ate all year\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, saying what she ate there “destroys every bowl of ramen in the Bay.” A couple of weeks later, Ho included the pop-up’s deep-fried pork belly in her list of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2020/25-must-eats/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“must-eat” dishes for 2020\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Already a hot ticket, a seat at one of Noodle in a Haystack’s ramen dinners became nearly impossible to snag, often selling out some five minutes after they were posted each month. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898770\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2048px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898770\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly.jpg\" alt=\"Cubes of deep-fried pork belly and salad greens on a blue plate.\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/Noodle_Haystack_belly-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The pork belly kakuni karaage was one of the pop-up’s signature dishes. \u003ccite>(Jason Wang and Grace Chen, @cityfoodsters)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We were on the highest of highs,” Clint recalls. “We were going to come out from that rock that we were hiding under.” The Tans started looking for a space where they could turn Noodle in a Haystack into a real restaurant. Then, right at the peak of the pop-up’s popularity, everything got shut down. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It was a tough pill to swallow. We didn’t know if we were ever going to cook again,” Clint recalls. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"postid": "arts_13894844",
"label": "More Ramen "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The Tans never stopped looking for a restaurant space, but they couldn’t ever quite \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bring themselves to pull the trigger on signing a lease, especially as COVID numbers around the Bay looked worse and worse. “You would expect there to be fire sales with all these empty properties, all these businesses that closed down,” Clint says. “The crazy thing is the prices never really changed.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They thought about moving back to Japan, where, even at the height of the pandemic, friends of theirs were able to open a new bar or restaurant in a matter of months. (Perhaps the only thing that stopped them, Yoko notes, was the fact that their aging dog wouldn’t have been able to make the trip.) \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then, rather quickly and unexpectedly, the space at 4601 Geary Boulevard fell into their laps. It isn’t necessarily the ideal space; it has a kitchen that, as it’s currently set up, isn’t equipped to cook anything much more complicated than “curry in a bag,” Clint says. Already, the Tans are expecting many months of permitting headaches. The good thing about having done pop-ups for so many years, they say, is that they’re used to bootstrapping together a kitchen.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898772\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1080px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898772\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans.jpg\" alt=\"Yoko and Clint Tan wearing Noodle in a Haystack t-shirts.\" width=\"1080\" height=\"1350\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans.jpg 1080w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans-800x1000.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans-1020x1275.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans-160x200.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_tans-768x960.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1080px) 100vw, 1080px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yoko and Clint Tan at a fundraiser event in 2017. \u003ccite>(Noodle in a Haystack)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Perhaps the even bigger challenge, then, will be maintaining the intimacy of Noodle in a Haystack’s pop-up incarnation. After all, Clint says, “eating in America, even at the best meals, feels transactional at best. There’s this invisible, tangible wall that you can’t get past with the way food is made here.” That wall by and large didn’t exist at Noodle in a Haystack’s home pop-ups—not when customers sat inches away from the kitchen and could poke their heads in at any time to watch the Tans prepping the meal.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How, then, to translate that experience? The Tans’ solution, counterintuitively, is to make the restaurant even smaller in scale, serving their tasting menu to just eight to 10 customers at a time, with two seatings a night, three or four nights a week. “To people in the industry here, it’s ludicrous,” Clint says. “In America, businesses like that just don’t work.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s worth noting, too, that dinner at Noodle in a Haystack will be a more expensive meal than what you’d find at your typical a la carte ramen shop—again, probably about $100 a person for the six- to eight-course tasting menu. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898773\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2049px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898773\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of Thai-inspired tom yum paitan ramen in a red bowl, topped with a large shrimp and a lime wedge.\" width=\"2049\" height=\"2049\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014.jpg 2049w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/IMG_0014-1920x1920.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2049px) 100vw, 2049px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The tom yum paitan ramen is one of the pop-up’s original creations. \u003ccite>(Colin Ma @eatfreakz)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There isn’t, at this point, much to add to the ramen pricing discourse, wherein the Yelp review–writing masses collectively lose their minds anytime a ramen shop charges more than $15 or $16 for a bowl. There’s something to be said for ramen’s origins as an affordable working-class staple in Japan, but in the United States, the arguments in favor of paying \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">more \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">for the kind of highly labor-intensive ramen made by Noodle in a Haystack are hard to refute—especially when the dining public seems perfectly content spending $20 or $30 for a simple plate of pasta. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“That’s really the running joke in our pop-up: Maybe we should be selling carbonara instead,” Clint says. “If I put those same noodles in bacon and eggs, someone will be fine spending $30; I don’t need to be spending three days making [ramen].”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s part of the reason why the Tans have no intention of opening a conventional ramen shop: They just don’t think it’s a viable business model in the Bay Area—not with rent being as expensive as it is, and not, as Clint says, considering “what it costs to make a properly, legitimately, thoughtfully made bowl of ramen here.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We’re not for everybody,” he says. “And that’s fine.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The meals won’t be strictly Japanese either—though “living in the Bay Area, missing Japanese food” will be the driving aesthetic. Certain staples of the pop-up will probably be part of every meal: a deviled ramen egg that starts each meal, for instance, and seasonal dorayaki (stuffed pancakes) that Yoko makes for dessert. Mostly, Clint says, they’ll just cook whatever they’re into at the moment.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898775\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2049px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898775\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki.jpg\" alt=\"Many dorayaki (Japanese pancakes) on a wooden board.\" width=\"2049\" height=\"1537\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki.jpg 2049w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/NoodleHaystack_dorayaki-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2049px) 100vw, 2049px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cheesecake dorayaki with salted brown butter crumble. \u003ccite>(Noodle in a Haystack)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Given all of the hoops they expect they’ll need to jump through, the Tans admit the August–September opening \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Noodle-in-a-Haystack-is-bringing-its-mind-blowing-16217062.php\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">they were originally shooting for\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is probably unrealistic, though they hope to be able to open in some form during that time frame, even if it’s only to sell the take-home ramen kits they offered periodically during lockdown. It’s likely that the restaurant will fully open closer to December.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fortunately, Noodle in a Haystack’s fan base appears to be unwavering in its enthusiasm. Earlier this month, the Tans launched a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/noodleinhaystack/noodle-in-a-haystack\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kickstarter campaign\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to help mitigate the expense of those likely delays—and to pay for expensive equipment like the kind of special Pi water filter that’s used by Japan’s top ramen restaurants. At publication time, they’ve already raised nearly $100,000, more than tripling their target.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-12904247\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"39\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-160x16.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-240x23.jpg 240w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/03/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39-375x37.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Noodle in a Haystack will open at \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">4601 Geary Blvd. in San Francisco.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13898743/noodle-in-a-haystack-ramen-pop-up-sf-richmond",
"authors": [
"11743"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_10342",
"arts_10278",
"arts_1297",
"arts_21732",
"arts_14089",
"arts_13915",
"arts_1146"
],
"featImg": "arts_13898744",
"label": "source_arts_13898743"
},
"arts_13898436": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13898436",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13898436",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1623181297000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1623181297,
"format": "standard",
"title": "Uncle Tito Is a Remix of Filipino Comfort Food—with Hella Bay Area Flavor",
"headTitle": "Uncle Tito Is a Remix of Filipino Comfort Food—with Hella Bay Area Flavor | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 1993, San Francisco rapper JT the Bigga Figga famously said, “Game recognize game in the Bay, mayne.” And though JT wasn’t talking about Filipino food, the lyricist unknowingly helped to instill the hustle behind \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.uncletito.bar/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uncle Tito\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the newest Filipino-American restaurant to open in SoMa’s burgeoning Filipino cultural district.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For owners Joseph Alcasabas, Paolo Dayao and Vincent Dayao, listening to underground rappers like JT and his frequent collaborators, Mob Figaz, provided a necessary blueprint for taking entrepreneurial risks and representing their communities. The two brothers and their childhood friend were raised by immigrant parents in Concord and Pittsburg, and Alcasabas spent his adolescent years in the Philippines. The three grew up thinking of ways to “embrace heritage while pushing the needle forward,” as Alcasabas puts it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eventually, these lifetime homies recognized they had plenty of Pinoy game to share.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whether it’s the restaurant’s homemade rendition of Mang Tomas all-purpose sauce (which is deliciously reminiscent of In-N-Out dressing), its bottles of tangy Mango Chili-Mansi juice, or its Pulutan Party baon box stuffed with laing wontons, lechon kawali, garlic adobo butter wings and salt and vinegar shrimp chips, Uncle Tito is going all out with their love for mixing traditional ingredients in untraditional ways to serve a diverse and modern palette of Bay \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Area folks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We really just took the Filipino-American concept and ran with it,” Alcasabas says. “It was seamless and easy because we were being authentic.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With social distancing protocols on the verge of easing up, the restaurant will finally open its doors for its first full dine-in experience on June 15.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The trio—consisting of a graphic designer (Alcasabas), a bartender (Paolo), and a chef (Vincent)—created Uncle Tito to be a forward-thinking venue for food and culture that reflects their niche interests. Alcasabas’s art and in-house designs give the restaurant a sophisticated b-boy vibe, while the drinks and culinary concoctions are similar to what you might expect to find at a high-end restaurant, but grounded within the community.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898457\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1242px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898457\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio.jpg\" alt=\"Paolo Dayao, Vincent Dayao and Joseph Alcasabas pose in front of a mural inside their restaurant.\" width=\"1242\" height=\"1870\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio.jpg 1242w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio-800x1205.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio-1020x1536.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio-160x241.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio-768x1156.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1242px) 100vw, 1242px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left: Uncle Tito owners Paolo Dayao, Vincent Dayao and Joseph Alcasabas. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Though the restaurant is undoubtedly the group’s magnum opus, it isn’t their first attempt in the local food industry. In 2016, Alcasabas and Paolo Dayao started out as a mobile catering service known as STRAIGHT UP, after working as bartenders throughout the Peninsula. Their original idea centered on serving classic alcoholic drinks in rotating spaces, but, as the two friends explain, the business lacked an essential ingredient: a culinary spin on their heritage. It wasn’t until they joined forces with Paolo’s younger brother, Vince, who was the sous chef at Namu Gaji in San Francisco’s Mission District at the time, that the business pivoted towards a more intentional curation of Filipino flavors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eating at Uncle Tito reminds me of what it was like to hang out at your best friend’s house as a kid—after playing a few hours of Nintendo 64 and listening to E-40 on 106 KMEL—before you got to grub at a table full of cool relatives you wanted to hang around because they would pass down knowledge with each inviting bite.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898463\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898463\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Kalye street fries, topped with onions, pickled jalapeños, pork sisig and Cheese Whiz\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Kalye street fries are a cross between an island-style pork dish and something you might get at an American baseball game. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You might split an order of Kalye street fries—a massive heap of house-cut potatoes piled with Tito’s sauce, caramelized onions, pickled jalapenos, pork sisig and Cheez Whiz. Imagine eating an island-style pork dish, but tossed with the thickly cut wedges you might get at an American baseball game, then topped off with a generous dose of creamy and cheesy goodness stolen from your favorite uncle’s kitchen cabinet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or, you could smash on a baon box, which Alcasabas tells me is a nod to the traditional style of to-go food that Filipino families often give away after large gatherings. Uncle Tito has down-sized the familiar concept into a casual sampler platter that can be shared with a group of friends or on a date night.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For dessert, you can sweeten up with a dish of Milo banana creme and graham cracker-filled lumpia, or—my personal favorite—the cinnamon-sugar pandesal ube buns, which are ordered specially from Valerio’s Tropical Bakeshop, a Filipino chain that the three have frequented since they were kids. The treat is filled with white chocolate ube ganache whose deep, glazed lavender color comes from mashing a purple yam. It reminds me of a Cinnabon from the mall, but stickier and tastier—and handmade by a young, gamed-up Filipino chef with soul.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898461\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1707px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898461\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Ube buns and Milo banana creme lumpia on a white plate, dusted with powdered sugar.\" width=\"1707\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-1920x2880.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1707px) 100vw, 1707px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ube buns are a collaboration with Valerio’s Tropical Bakeshop, a staple of the local Filipino community. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uncle Tito’s food is reminiscent of something that came straight from the bold, imaginative mind of a Filipino-American kid who got to pick and choose their favorite flavors to combine once their parents weren’t looking. But there is an unmistakable hint of tradition as well. “It’s comfort food. We’re playing with nostalgia,” Alcasabas says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Their “old school meets new age” approach is apparent in everything they do: The laing wontons take the traditional dish of stewed taro leaves and repackage it in a crunchy, salty and buttery wrapper, turning it into a perfect snack after a night out drinking. The Ube Cha-Cha drink—a cereal-infused almond milk—literally tastes like Fruity Pebbles because, well, they put Fruity Pebbles in it. The goal, the partners say, is to not only feed stomachs, but to feed memories, too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898464\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898464\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Crispy, triangular-shaped laing wontons on a plate with a side of dipping sauce. \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The laing wontons are one of the restaurant’s new-school mash-ups. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898462\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898462\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Joseph Alcasabas holds two of Uncle Tito's housemade beverages in his outstretched arm.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alcasabas shows off two of Uncle Tito’s signature drinks. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We want our food to be a gateway into learning more about our culture,” Alcasabas says. “For our kids, we want them to eat the kind of foods our parents would make us and ask questions about where it comes from, but present it in a way that is more interesting and familiar to them.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alcasabas and the Dayao brothers also strive to be intentional about the businesses they choose to collaborate with. It’s about keeping their parents’ culture alive by giving back to those OG influences—like the aforementioned Valerio’s Tropical Bakeshop—while also being a part of a bigger movement for the future of Pinoy cuisine alongside places like \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.senorsisig.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Señor Sisig\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.loskuyas.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Los Kuyas\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fobkitchen.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">FOB Kitchen\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, whom they credit as being at the forefront of the Bay Area scene. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID=arts_13896138,news_11815455,bayareabites_133626 label='More Filipino Eats']The restaurant is part of a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sanfran.com/finally-the-bay-areas-filipino-food-scene-takes-star-turn\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">growing wave of new Filipino food businesses\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that have emerged in the past five years in the Bay Area, where the cuisine has achieved a new level of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/133626/how-has-the-bays-filipino-food-scene-changed-just-ask-daly-citys-chel-gilla\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">mainstream popularity\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Uncle Tito is just one of several new restaurants located in SoMa Pilipinas, the city’s five-year-old Filipino Heritage District—a self-described “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.somapilipinas.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">celebration of the love, pride and people power of generations of Filipinos in San Francisco and beyond.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” A recent \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CPXQFqgFVlX/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mercedes-Benz commercial\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> even featured Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors racing through the streets of San Francisco to snag a Señor Sisig burrito. But the cuisine—and the Filipino-American community it reflects—isn’t a trend. It’s a true staple of our region. And each new purveyor has something dope to offer—from pop-ups to events like the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.undiscoveredsf.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Undiscovered night market\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which highlights emerging Filipino businesses in the area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uncle Tito seems to be building on this exposure. The team is also applying its streetwear aesthetic and rap influences—alongside its fresh take on the cuisine—in a way that has major crossover appeal. From their specialty dishes and business label designs to the merchandise they offer, like a ’90s-era snapback cap with a modified Wu Tang Clan logo written in Tagalog, the Uncle Tito crew really does it all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Our goal is much bigger than food, because it pertains to preserving what was taught to us and pushing it forward to be taught to the next generation,” Alcasabas says. “There is a bigger mission in what we are doing. We want to leave a legacy and an imprint in our culture as first-generation Filipino Americans in the Bay Area.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It reminds me of how hip hop DJs, especially back in the day, would sample older sounds from soul and funk albums, then scratch them up, repackage them in newly updated formats and spin that noise for an emcee to lace his or her poetry over. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Uncle Tito is doing feels just as radically creative to me. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But instead of taking the sounds of the past, they’ve taken the aromas and textures and flavors of what their moms and uncles cooked up, and they’ve cut and remixed them for us all to nod our heads in unison to.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Uncle Tito is located at 59 9th Street in San Francisco; it’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.uncletito.bar/order\">open for takeout\u003c/a> Thursday through Sunday, 4–8 p.m., with in-person dining set to debut on June 15.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1634,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 24
},
"modified": 1705008250,
"excerpt": "The SoMa restaurant plays with nostalgia, serving traditional Filipino dishes in untraditional formats.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"socialTitle": "Uncle Tito in SoMa Is a Remix of Filipino Comfort Food %%page%% %%sep%% KQED",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "The SoMa restaurant plays with nostalgia, serving traditional Filipino dishes in untraditional formats.",
"title": "Uncle Tito in SoMa Is a Remix of Filipino Comfort Food | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Uncle Tito Is a Remix of Filipino Comfort Food—with Hella Bay Area Flavor",
"datePublished": "2021-06-08T12:41:37-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:24:10-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "uncle-tito-filipino-comfort-food-soma-opening",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"path": "/arts/13898436/uncle-tito-filipino-comfort-food-soma-opening",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n 1993, San Francisco rapper JT the Bigga Figga famously said, “Game recognize game in the Bay, mayne.” And though JT wasn’t talking about Filipino food, the lyricist unknowingly helped to instill the hustle behind \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.uncletito.bar/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uncle Tito\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the newest Filipino-American restaurant to open in SoMa’s burgeoning Filipino cultural district.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For owners Joseph Alcasabas, Paolo Dayao and Vincent Dayao, listening to underground rappers like JT and his frequent collaborators, Mob Figaz, provided a necessary blueprint for taking entrepreneurial risks and representing their communities. The two brothers and their childhood friend were raised by immigrant parents in Concord and Pittsburg, and Alcasabas spent his adolescent years in the Philippines. The three grew up thinking of ways to “embrace heritage while pushing the needle forward,” as Alcasabas puts it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eventually, these lifetime homies recognized they had plenty of Pinoy game to share.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whether it’s the restaurant’s homemade rendition of Mang Tomas all-purpose sauce (which is deliciously reminiscent of In-N-Out dressing), its bottles of tangy Mango Chili-Mansi juice, or its Pulutan Party baon box stuffed with laing wontons, lechon kawali, garlic adobo butter wings and salt and vinegar shrimp chips, Uncle Tito is going all out with their love for mixing traditional ingredients in untraditional ways to serve a diverse and modern palette of Bay \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Area folks. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We really just took the Filipino-American concept and ran with it,” Alcasabas says. “It was seamless and easy because we were being authentic.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">With social distancing protocols on the verge of easing up, the restaurant will finally open its doors for its first full dine-in experience on June 15.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The trio—consisting of a graphic designer (Alcasabas), a bartender (Paolo), and a chef (Vincent)—created Uncle Tito to be a forward-thinking venue for food and culture that reflects their niche interests. Alcasabas’s art and in-house designs give the restaurant a sophisticated b-boy vibe, while the drinks and culinary concoctions are similar to what you might expect to find at a high-end restaurant, but grounded within the community.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898457\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1242px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898457\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio.jpg\" alt=\"Paolo Dayao, Vincent Dayao and Joseph Alcasabas pose in front of a mural inside their restaurant.\" width=\"1242\" height=\"1870\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio.jpg 1242w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio-800x1205.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio-1020x1536.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio-160x241.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_trio-768x1156.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1242px) 100vw, 1242px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">From left: Uncle Tito owners Paolo Dayao, Vincent Dayao and Joseph Alcasabas. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Though the restaurant is undoubtedly the group’s magnum opus, it isn’t their first attempt in the local food industry. In 2016, Alcasabas and Paolo Dayao started out as a mobile catering service known as STRAIGHT UP, after working as bartenders throughout the Peninsula. Their original idea centered on serving classic alcoholic drinks in rotating spaces, but, as the two friends explain, the business lacked an essential ingredient: a culinary spin on their heritage. It wasn’t until they joined forces with Paolo’s younger brother, Vince, who was the sous chef at Namu Gaji in San Francisco’s Mission District at the time, that the business pivoted towards a more intentional curation of Filipino flavors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eating at Uncle Tito reminds me of what it was like to hang out at your best friend’s house as a kid—after playing a few hours of Nintendo 64 and listening to E-40 on 106 KMEL—before you got to grub at a table full of cool relatives you wanted to hang around because they would pass down knowledge with each inviting bite.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898463\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898463\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Kalye street fries, topped with onions, pickled jalapeños, pork sisig and Cheese Whiz\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_friesfull-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Kalye street fries are a cross between an island-style pork dish and something you might get at an American baseball game. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You might split an order of Kalye street fries—a massive heap of house-cut potatoes piled with Tito’s sauce, caramelized onions, pickled jalapenos, pork sisig and Cheez Whiz. Imagine eating an island-style pork dish, but tossed with the thickly cut wedges you might get at an American baseball game, then topped off with a generous dose of creamy and cheesy goodness stolen from your favorite uncle’s kitchen cabinet. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or, you could smash on a baon box, which Alcasabas tells me is a nod to the traditional style of to-go food that Filipino families often give away after large gatherings. Uncle Tito has down-sized the familiar concept into a casual sampler platter that can be shared with a group of friends or on a date night.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For dessert, you can sweeten up with a dish of Milo banana creme and graham cracker-filled lumpia, or—my personal favorite—the cinnamon-sugar pandesal ube buns, which are ordered specially from Valerio’s Tropical Bakeshop, a Filipino chain that the three have frequented since they were kids. The treat is filled with white chocolate ube ganache whose deep, glazed lavender color comes from mashing a purple yam. It reminds me of a Cinnabon from the mall, but stickier and tastier—and handmade by a young, gamed-up Filipino chef with soul.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898461\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1707px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898461\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Ube buns and Milo banana creme lumpia on a white plate, dusted with powdered sugar.\" width=\"1707\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-scaled.jpg 1707w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-800x1200.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-1020x1530.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_Valerios-1920x2880.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1707px) 100vw, 1707px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ube buns are a collaboration with Valerio’s Tropical Bakeshop, a staple of the local Filipino community. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uncle Tito’s food is reminiscent of something that came straight from the bold, imaginative mind of a Filipino-American kid who got to pick and choose their favorite flavors to combine once their parents weren’t looking. But there is an unmistakable hint of tradition as well. “It’s comfort food. We’re playing with nostalgia,” Alcasabas says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Their “old school meets new age” approach is apparent in everything they do: The laing wontons take the traditional dish of stewed taro leaves and repackage it in a crunchy, salty and buttery wrapper, turning it into a perfect snack after a night out drinking. The Ube Cha-Cha drink—a cereal-infused almond milk—literally tastes like Fruity Pebbles because, well, they put Fruity Pebbles in it. The goal, the partners say, is to not only feed stomachs, but to feed memories, too.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898464\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898464\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Crispy, triangular-shaped laing wontons on a plate with a side of dipping sauce. \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_wonton-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The laing wontons are one of the restaurant’s new-school mash-ups. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898462\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898462\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Joseph Alcasabas holds two of Uncle Tito's housemade beverages in his outstretched arm.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/UncleTito_juices-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alcasabas shows off two of Uncle Tito’s signature drinks. \u003ccite>(Alan Chazaro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“We want our food to be a gateway into learning more about our culture,” Alcasabas says. “For our kids, we want them to eat the kind of foods our parents would make us and ask questions about where it comes from, but present it in a way that is more interesting and familiar to them.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Alcasabas and the Dayao brothers also strive to be intentional about the businesses they choose to collaborate with. It’s about keeping their parents’ culture alive by giving back to those OG influences—like the aforementioned Valerio’s Tropical Bakeshop—while also being a part of a bigger movement for the future of Pinoy cuisine alongside places like \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.senorsisig.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Señor Sisig\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.loskuyas.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Los Kuyas\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fobkitchen.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">FOB Kitchen\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, whom they credit as being at the forefront of the Bay Area scene. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"postid": "arts_13896138,news_11815455,bayareabites_133626",
"label": "More Filipino Eats "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The restaurant is part of a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sanfran.com/finally-the-bay-areas-filipino-food-scene-takes-star-turn\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">growing wave of new Filipino food businesses\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that have emerged in the past five years in the Bay Area, where the cuisine has achieved a new level of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/133626/how-has-the-bays-filipino-food-scene-changed-just-ask-daly-citys-chel-gilla\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">mainstream popularity\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Uncle Tito is just one of several new restaurants located in SoMa Pilipinas, the city’s five-year-old Filipino Heritage District—a self-described “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.somapilipinas.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">celebration of the love, pride and people power of generations of Filipinos in San Francisco and beyond.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">” A recent \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CPXQFqgFVlX/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mercedes-Benz commercial\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> even featured Klay Thompson of the Golden State Warriors racing through the streets of San Francisco to snag a Señor Sisig burrito. But the cuisine—and the Filipino-American community it reflects—isn’t a trend. It’s a true staple of our region. And each new purveyor has something dope to offer—from pop-ups to events like the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.undiscoveredsf.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Undiscovered night market\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which highlights emerging Filipino businesses in the area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uncle Tito seems to be building on this exposure. The team is also applying its streetwear aesthetic and rap influences—alongside its fresh take on the cuisine—in a way that has major crossover appeal. From their specialty dishes and business label designs to the merchandise they offer, like a ’90s-era snapback cap with a modified Wu Tang Clan logo written in Tagalog, the Uncle Tito crew really does it all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Our goal is much bigger than food, because it pertains to preserving what was taught to us and pushing it forward to be taught to the next generation,” Alcasabas says. “There is a bigger mission in what we are doing. We want to leave a legacy and an imprint in our culture as first-generation Filipino Americans in the Bay Area.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It reminds me of how hip hop DJs, especially back in the day, would sample older sounds from soul and funk albums, then scratch them up, repackage them in newly updated formats and spin that noise for an emcee to lace his or her poetry over. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Uncle Tito is doing feels just as radically creative to me. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But instead of taking the sounds of the past, they’ve taken the aromas and textures and flavors of what their moms and uncles cooked up, and they’ve cut and remixed them for us all to nod our heads in unison to.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-12127869\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"78\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-400x39.jpg 400w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/09/Q.Logo_.Break_-768x75.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Uncle Tito is located at 59 9th Street in San Francisco; it’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.uncletito.bar/order\">open for takeout\u003c/a> Thursday through Sunday, 4–8 p.m., with in-person dining set to debut on June 15.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13898436/uncle-tito-filipino-comfort-food-soma-opening",
"authors": [
"11748"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_10278",
"arts_2855",
"arts_14183",
"arts_1297",
"arts_8836"
],
"featImg": "arts_13898454",
"label": "source_arts_13898436"
},
"arts_13898185": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13898185",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13898185",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1622736331000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1622736331,
"format": "standard",
"title": "New ‘Lunchbox Moments’ Zine Offers One Antidote to Anti-Asian Racism",
"headTitle": "New ‘Lunchbox Moments’ Zine Offers One Antidote to Anti-Asian Racism | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you run in first- and second-generation immigrant circles, you’ve probably heard your share of “stinky lunchbox” stories—about the time someone’s mother packed them dumplings or curry, and the other elementary school kids acted like it was the grossest thing ever. Deep shame ensues, followed eventually by acceptance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or so the narrative goes.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For many Asian Americans, in particular, the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/22239499/lunchbox-moment-pop-culture-tropes\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“lunchbox moment” anecdote\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> has become a stand-in for the broad range of microaggressions they suffer in this country. It’s fitting, then, that a new Bay Area-based zine called \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://lunchboxmoments.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lunchbox Moments\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> would use these types of memories as a vehicle for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to share personal stories about food and identity on the heels of AAPI Heritage Month—and to do so during a time when \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13896306/public-safety-for-asian-americans-starts-with-nurturing-our-communities\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">violent attacks against Asian Americans\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have dominated the headlines.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Starting on Monday, June 7, the zine will be \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://lunchboxmoments.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">available for purchase online\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for $30 a copy. All proceeds will benefit San Francisco’s Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC), which has run two iterations of its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.chinatowncdc.org/feed-fuel-chinatown-2\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Feed + Fuel Chinatown Fund\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a COVID relief program that pays Chinatown restaurants to provide free meals for the low-income residents of the neighborhood’s Single Resident Occupancy hotels (SROs). \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The zine is the brainchild of Shirley Huey, Diann Leo-Omine and Anthony Shu, Bay Area food writers who met at the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thefoodmedialab.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Food Media Lab\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> workshop in San Francisco in 2019. The three had been talking about collaborating on some kind of project when the double whammy of 2020 hit—the pandemic, of course, but also the wave of anti-Chinese, anti-Asian sentiment that accompanied its arrival in the U.S.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Even before the government shutdowns, we all saw that restaurants in Chinatowns were completely deserted of customers,” Huey says. “And we saw, also, the rhetoric that was happening all around. We wanted to do something that would respond to what we were seeing.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13896306']Despite an initial blitz of media coverage on some of the most egregious attacks on Asian elders, Shu says he felt there weren’t a lot of platforms for stories about the racism that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders experience in this country. A collection of stories about these often fraught lunchbox memories seemed like one way to respond to the current wave of hatred.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It was a project that satisfied our passion for food but also storytelling,” Shu says. “We didn’t want to do a pure fundraiser or a bake sale.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The lunchbox moment theme seemed apt. For many Asian Americans, memories of those so-called “stinky lunchbox” moments became the impetus, years later, for their own political awakening: They saw that Asian food had suddenly become trendy—that the same type of person who may have bullied them for their dumpling/curry/kimchi lunch as a kid might now own the hip, $40-an-entree Asian-inspired restaurant that just got a photo spread in \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bon Appetit\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fact, this type of story is now so commonplace that it has become something of a cliche. “Being bullied for your lunch only to grow up and find white people putting chile crisp on everything is a trajectory that’s easy to understand—and easy to sell to a white editor,” Eater’s Jaya Saxena writes in “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/22239499/lunchbox-moment-pop-culture-tropes\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Limits of the Lunchbox Moment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.” Among the trope’s other shortcomings, including the fact that not \u003cem>all\u003c/em> immigrants experience it, Saxena argues that these lunchbox stories let white readers off the hook too easily—as though they couldn’t possibly be racist if they’re willing to try new foods.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The creators of the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lunchbox Moments \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">zine say they’re well aware of the pitfalls of leaning too heavily into the trope. “We realized we didn’t want 30 pieces on how ashamed people were of their food,” Shu says. “It’s not just this simple narrative: I brought food, I was ashamed, and now I’m proud.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead, Shu says, they aimed to collect a wide variety of different lunchbox stories. Yes, there is a story about a Chinese American girl who secretly threw away her mother’s oxtail stew, or the Taiwanese American whose long string of white boyfriends treated the food she grew up eating as either unpalatable or exotic. But there’s also an essay about the way the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Betty Crocker Cookbook\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the sitcom \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Father Knows Best\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> complicated a Japanese American girl’s relationship with her own mother during the 1950s. The Bay Area writer Grace Hwang Lynch writes about her love of picture menus, as an Asian American who can’t read the Chinese characters on the menus of her favorite restaurants. There are stories by Asian Americans who were \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">always\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> proud of their food. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Often, [the lunchbox moment is] in relation to white supremacy and white culture,” Leo-Omine explains. “But in many of these stories, it’s actually not—it’s in relation to our families and to ourselves.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898199\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 528px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898199\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_LeeDaisy.jpg\" alt=\"A comic strip: 1st panel - "House Special! Braised chicken with mushroom," the dish is pictured in a black clay pot. Second panel: "A server approaches the table. "So! How are you enjoying the special?" "Well, for starters..." 3rd panel: Tears running down the diner's cheeks - "Way too much MSG! And oily! Please bring back a different dish." 4th panel: server walks away holding the clay pot. "Alright I will bring back something that will fit your taste." Fifth panel: "15 minutes later" Customer says, "This tastes heavenly! What is this dish called?" 6th panel: Server's enraged face. "Orange chicken. It's the same dish you had, but we took out the herbs, deep-fried it, added dangerous levels of high fructose corn syrup. We stripped all the cultural aspects of our food JUST FOR YOU."\" width=\"528\" height=\"792\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_LeeDaisy.jpg 528w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_LeeDaisy-160x240.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 528px) 100vw, 528px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">“American Chinese Restaurant” by Daisy Lee.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All told, the zine collects essays and artwork from 28 contributors from around the country, with colorful illustrations—like from a children’s picture book—by designers Haylie Chan and Jeffrey Liu interspersed throughout. On the heels of this very, very difficult year for Asian Americans, the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lunchbox Moments\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> curators say they hope the zine will help show the broad diversity of the AAPI experience.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There’s a kind of stereotype about silence or lack of voice or lack of presence of Asians that isn’t true,” Huey says. “People have been telling their stories and speaking their stories for a long time. It’s just this larger world has started paying attention.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1024,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 16
},
"modified": 1705008277,
"excerpt": "The charity zine riffs on the “stinky lunchbox” trope to raise money for SF Chinatown restaurants.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "The charity zine riffs on the “stinky lunchbox” trope to raise money for SF Chinatown restaurants.",
"title": "New ‘Lunchbox Moments’ Zine Offers One Antidote to Anti-Asian Racism | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "New ‘Lunchbox Moments’ Zine Offers One Antidote to Anti-Asian Racism",
"datePublished": "2021-06-03T09:05:31-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:24:37-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "lunchbox-moments-zine-anti-asian-racism-aapi-sf-chinatown",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"path": "/arts/13898185/lunchbox-moments-zine-anti-asian-racism-aapi-sf-chinatown",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you run in first- and second-generation immigrant circles, you’ve probably heard your share of “stinky lunchbox” stories—about the time someone’s mother packed them dumplings or curry, and the other elementary school kids acted like it was the grossest thing ever. Deep shame ensues, followed eventually by acceptance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or so the narrative goes.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For many Asian Americans, in particular, the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/22239499/lunchbox-moment-pop-culture-tropes\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“lunchbox moment” anecdote\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> has become a stand-in for the broad range of microaggressions they suffer in this country. It’s fitting, then, that a new Bay Area-based zine called \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://lunchboxmoments.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lunchbox Moments\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> would use these types of memories as a vehicle for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to share personal stories about food and identity on the heels of AAPI Heritage Month—and to do so during a time when \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13896306/public-safety-for-asian-americans-starts-with-nurturing-our-communities\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">violent attacks against Asian Americans\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> have dominated the headlines.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Starting on Monday, June 7, the zine will be \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://lunchboxmoments.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">available for purchase online\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for $30 a copy. All proceeds will benefit San Francisco’s Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC), which has run two iterations of its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.chinatowncdc.org/feed-fuel-chinatown-2\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Feed + Fuel Chinatown Fund\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a COVID relief program that pays Chinatown restaurants to provide free meals for the low-income residents of the neighborhood’s Single Resident Occupancy hotels (SROs). \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The zine is the brainchild of Shirley Huey, Diann Leo-Omine and Anthony Shu, Bay Area food writers who met at the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thefoodmedialab.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Food Media Lab\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> workshop in San Francisco in 2019. The three had been talking about collaborating on some kind of project when the double whammy of 2020 hit—the pandemic, of course, but also the wave of anti-Chinese, anti-Asian sentiment that accompanied its arrival in the U.S.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Even before the government shutdowns, we all saw that restaurants in Chinatowns were completely deserted of customers,” Huey says. “And we saw, also, the rhetoric that was happening all around. We wanted to do something that would respond to what we were seeing.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"postid": "arts_13896306",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Despite an initial blitz of media coverage on some of the most egregious attacks on Asian elders, Shu says he felt there weren’t a lot of platforms for stories about the racism that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders experience in this country. A collection of stories about these often fraught lunchbox memories seemed like one way to respond to the current wave of hatred.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It was a project that satisfied our passion for food but also storytelling,” Shu says. “We didn’t want to do a pure fundraiser or a bake sale.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The lunchbox moment theme seemed apt. For many Asian Americans, memories of those so-called “stinky lunchbox” moments became the impetus, years later, for their own political awakening: They saw that Asian food had suddenly become trendy—that the same type of person who may have bullied them for their dumpling/curry/kimchi lunch as a kid might now own the hip, $40-an-entree Asian-inspired restaurant that just got a photo spread in \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bon Appetit\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In fact, this type of story is now so commonplace that it has become something of a cliche. “Being bullied for your lunch only to grow up and find white people putting chile crisp on everything is a trajectory that’s easy to understand—and easy to sell to a white editor,” Eater’s Jaya Saxena writes in “\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/22239499/lunchbox-moment-pop-culture-tropes\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Limits of the Lunchbox Moment\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.” Among the trope’s other shortcomings, including the fact that not \u003cem>all\u003c/em> immigrants experience it, Saxena argues that these lunchbox stories let white readers off the hook too easily—as though they couldn’t possibly be racist if they’re willing to try new foods.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The creators of the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lunchbox Moments \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">zine say they’re well aware of the pitfalls of leaning too heavily into the trope. “We realized we didn’t want 30 pieces on how ashamed people were of their food,” Shu says. “It’s not just this simple narrative: I brought food, I was ashamed, and now I’m proud.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead, Shu says, they aimed to collect a wide variety of different lunchbox stories. Yes, there is a story about a Chinese American girl who secretly threw away her mother’s oxtail stew, or the Taiwanese American whose long string of white boyfriends treated the food she grew up eating as either unpalatable or exotic. But there’s also an essay about the way the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Betty Crocker Cookbook\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the sitcom \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Father Knows Best\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> complicated a Japanese American girl’s relationship with her own mother during the 1950s. The Bay Area writer Grace Hwang Lynch writes about her love of picture menus, as an Asian American who can’t read the Chinese characters on the menus of her favorite restaurants. There are stories by Asian Americans who were \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">always\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> proud of their food. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Often, [the lunchbox moment is] in relation to white supremacy and white culture,” Leo-Omine explains. “But in many of these stories, it’s actually not—it’s in relation to our families and to ourselves.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898199\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 528px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898199\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_LeeDaisy.jpg\" alt=\"A comic strip: 1st panel - "House Special! Braised chicken with mushroom," the dish is pictured in a black clay pot. Second panel: "A server approaches the table. "So! How are you enjoying the special?" "Well, for starters..." 3rd panel: Tears running down the diner's cheeks - "Way too much MSG! And oily! Please bring back a different dish." 4th panel: server walks away holding the clay pot. "Alright I will bring back something that will fit your taste." Fifth panel: "15 minutes later" Customer says, "This tastes heavenly! What is this dish called?" 6th panel: Server's enraged face. "Orange chicken. It's the same dish you had, but we took out the herbs, deep-fried it, added dangerous levels of high fructose corn syrup. We stripped all the cultural aspects of our food JUST FOR YOU."\" width=\"528\" height=\"792\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_LeeDaisy.jpg 528w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/06/LunchboxMoments_LeeDaisy-160x240.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 528px) 100vw, 528px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">“American Chinese Restaurant” by Daisy Lee.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">All told, the zine collects essays and artwork from 28 contributors from around the country, with colorful illustrations—like from a children’s picture book—by designers Haylie Chan and Jeffrey Liu interspersed throughout. On the heels of this very, very difficult year for Asian Americans, the \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lunchbox Moments\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> curators say they hope the zine will help show the broad diversity of the AAPI experience.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“There’s a kind of stereotype about silence or lack of voice or lack of presence of Asians that isn’t true,” Huey says. “People have been telling their stories and speaking their stories for a long time. It’s just this larger world has started paying attention.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13898185/lunchbox-moments-zine-anti-asian-racism-aapi-sf-chinatown",
"authors": [
"11743"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_4672",
"arts_2654",
"arts_10278",
"arts_914"
],
"featImg": "arts_13898188",
"label": "source_arts_13898185"
},
"arts_13897936": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13897936",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897936",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1622217624000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1622217624,
"format": "aside",
"title": "KQED’s Ultimate Guide to Taiwanese Restaurants in the Bay",
"headTitle": "KQED’s Ultimate Guide to Taiwanese Restaurants in the Bay | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897983\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897983\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg\" alt=\"An illustrated map of the Bay Area with drawings of various Taiwanese foods at different locations on the map—gua bao near San Francisco, stinky tofu near San Mateo, pork chop bento near Oakland, fan tuan near Fremont, and lu rou fan near Milpitas.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1536\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-800x640.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-1020x816.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-768x614.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-1536x1229.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Illustration by \u003ca href=\"https://www.felicia-liang.com/\">Felicia Liang\u003c/a>; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you ask a Taiwanese American about the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food scene, chances are they’ll complain about how hard it is to find stinky tofu or savory soy milk or a decent bowl of beef noodle soup. And it’s true: This isn’t exactly the San Gabriel Valley. But it’s also true that anyone who knocks the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food community probably hasn’t spent a lot of time in suburban enclaves like Fremont and Cupertino, where there’s big enough of a Taiwanese market that even niche restaurants—specializing in sweet potato congee or Taiwanese breakfast sandwiches—can survive and thrive. They also probably haven’t paid attention to the new wave of pop-ups that are bringing Taiwanese food into the mainstream in Oakland and San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here, then, are 26 of the Bay Area’s most delicious Taiwanese dining destinations, from the UC Berkeley campus down to the strip malls of Cupertino. Eating your way through the list will help cure any expat’s culinary homesickness. For newcomers to the cuisine, it also serves as an excellent introduction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Note: These entries aren’t ranked; instead, they’re listed in rough geographical order from north to south.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>1. Shihlin Taiwan Street Snacks\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>2431 Durant Ave. Suite B, Berkeley\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.shihlinca.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This local chain\u003c/a> specializes in the kinds of quick bites you’d find at Taiwan’s night markets and street stalls, including a surprisingly homey version of orh ah mee sua, aka oyster vermicelli. But the headliner is the “XXL” crispy chicken, a solid rendition of the oversized fried cutlets that are one of the signatures of the actual Shilin night market in Taipei. In addition to this Cal campus-adjacent storefront, which has been a hit with students from day one, and its original Milpitas shop, Shihlin has also expanded to Pleasanton, San Mateo and the Stonestown Galleria mall. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>2. Yilan Foods\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Previously at 4066 Piedmont Ave. in Oakland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://yilan-foods.square.site/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This popular pop-up restaurant\u003c/a> that started during the pandemic has been a welcome addition to the local Taiwanese food scene. Offering Sunday-only pickup for preorder customers in San Francisco and Oakland, the pop-up quickly amassed a following through social media and word-of-mouth. Yilan’s collagen-rich niu rou mian is truly a standout among the Bay Area’s beef noodle soup options, and its chunky, fatty pork over rice (lu rou fan) is hearty and satisfying. Yilan Foods is on temporary hiatus while its owners search for a permanent brick-and-mortar location; in the meantime, they’re also seeking a new home for the pop-up incarnation. Follow their \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/yilanfoods/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Instagram page\u003c/a> for the latest updates. —M.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897876\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1761px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897876\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a takeout box with sticky rice rolls, scallion egg pancake, and other Taiwanese breakfast items from Taiwan Bento.\" width=\"1761\" height=\"1174\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg 1761w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1761px) 100vw, 1761px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Taiwan Bento is now hosting occasional Taiwanese breakfast pop-ups. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>3. Taiwan Bento\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>412 22nd St., Oakland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nOpen since 2014, \u003ca href=\"http://www.taiwanbento.us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taiwan Bento\u003c/a> is one of the mainstays of Oakland’s Taiwanese restaurant community. As its name suggests, the restaurant is best known for its biandang, or Taiwanese lunch boxes—set meals that might come with a fried pork chop or braised minced pork, some pickled vegetables, a half a tea egg and a scoop of rice.The beef noodle soup is a hearty, belly-warming option; the basil-topped popcorn chicken is impeccably fried. Recently, the restaurant has also been dabbling in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area\">Taiwanese breakfast\u003c/a>—fan tuan (rice rolls) and dan bing (scallion egg pancakes)—during occasional weekend pop-ups. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>4. HoDaLa\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>5801 Geary Blvd., San Francisco\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThe most \u003ca href=\"https://www.hodalausa.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">prominent new Taiwanese restaurant\u003c/a> to open in S.F. proper in many years, this Outer Richmond restaurant rocks a vintage aesthetic, with a display of old Taiwanese post office memorabilia and toys front and center. The menu leans toward Taiwan Beer–friendly bar snacks, with plenty of fried foods in the mix. The gua bao (or steamed bun “sandwich”) section alone runs five options deep and includes fusion-y versions stuffed with fried fish or barbecue pulled pork. HoDaLa is also one of the few spots in the city that serves tsua bing, or Taiwanese-style shaved ice, available with a host of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897410/taiwanese-food-texture-q-boba-love-boat\">different QQ toppings\u003c/a>. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>5. Dragon Gate Bar and Grille\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>300 Broadway, Oakland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThis moody, neon-backlit cocktail bar has private karaoke rooms and one of the most extensive Taiwanese food menus in the entire East Bay—a win-win for devotees of these two cornerstones of Taiwanese culture. \u003ca href=\"https://www.dragongate300.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dragon Gate\u003c/a> has long been one of the only restaurants in Oakland where you can get stinky tofu, but the highlights of the menu are actually the more rustic, homestyle dishes: dried radish omelet, a variety of three-cup dishes (traditionally made with an entire cup each of soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine) and one of the East Bay’s better bowls of beef noodle soup. After staying closed for the bulk of the pandemic, the karaoke rooms are now back open for small gatherings as well. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898040\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2015px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898040\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers.jpg\" alt=\"A plate of long potstickers next to a takeout carton of noodles.\" width=\"2015\" height=\"2048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers.jpg 2015w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-800x813.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-1020x1037.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-160x163.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-768x781.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-1511x1536.jpg 1511w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-1920x1951.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2015px) 100vw, 2015px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The potstickers are Good-to-Eat Dumplings’ signature dish. \u003ccite>(Good-to-Eat Dumplings)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>6. Good-to-Eat Dumplings\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>292 4th St., Oakland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nRun by founders Tony Tung and Angie Lin, \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodtoeatdumplings.com\">this casual restaurant\u003c/a> specializes in Taiwan-style potstickers—elongated pan-fried dumplings with a thin wrapper and crunchy bottom. These are notable for their fillings, which include a popular version that’s filled with chicken and basil. While dumplings are the focus, the flavorful gua baos and wontons are also just like what you’d find in Taiwan. And during the pandemic, the pop-up has expanded its repertoire of locally-sourced Taiwanese dishes even further outside the realm of dumplings, serving things like noodles with minced pork sauce and \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/9/16/21439018/good-to-eat-dumplings-taiwanese-caprese-tomatoes-soy-sauce-pop-up-oakland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taiwanese\u003c/a> “\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/9/16/21439018/good-to-eat-dumplings-taiwanese-caprese-tomatoes-soy-sauce-pop-up-oakland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Caprese\u003c/a>.” Good-to-Eat is located at Original Pattern Brewing in Oakland’s Jack London neighborhood, and has plenty of outdoor seating. —M.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>7. Bentolicious\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>4833 Hopyard Rd. E3, Pleasanton\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nMarvel at the efficiency of this strip mall \u003ca href=\"https://bentolicious.us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">bento shop’s\u003c/a> assembly line setup, as bandanna-clad workers load up your lunchbox, scooping home-style dishes from a steam table that gets replenished so frequently, the food never has a chance to lose its freshness. Main course options run the gamut from railroad (i.e., fried pork chop) bentos to lion’s head meatballs and saucy Chiayi chicken rice, and the rotating selection of sides, like fried pumpkin and Taiwanese-style mapo tofu, is just as compelling. Come on the early side, as the most popular dishes tend to sell out well before the end of the lunch rush. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898053\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 971px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898053\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco.jpg\" alt='A view of the \"Taiwan taco,\" a scallion pancake stuffed with eggs, slaw, and edible flowers.' width=\"971\" height=\"1295\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco.jpg 971w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 971px) 100vw, 971px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">El Chino Grande’s “Taiwan Taco.” \u003ccite>(El Chino Grande)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>8. El Chino Grande / Hén-zhi\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>1195 Evans Ave., San Francisco; various other locations\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nBefore he started these pop-ups with his partner Marcelle Gonzales Yang, Christopher Yang made a name for himself cooking at celebrated Bay Area restaurants like the now-shuttered ’Aina in S.F. \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/el_chino_grande/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">El Chino Grande\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.henzhisf.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hén-zhí\u003c/a> are the chef’s tribute to his Taiwanese heritage—and to Taiwanese night markets, specifically. At El Chino Grande, for instance, he mixes Taiwanese flavors with California ingredients to create dishes like his “Taiwan Taco,” a take on a scallion pancake roll, or dan bing, that incorporates kabayaki tare, mayo, crispy nori furikake, cabbage slaw and pickled daikon. Hén-zhí, which takes more of a fine dining approach, has been doing mostly private events during the pandemic, but El Chino Grande makes regular appearances at Hunters Point Brewery on Sundays and at a Lafayette commissary kitchen every other Saturday. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>9. China Bee\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>31 S. B St., San Mateo\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside tag='eating-taiwanese' label='Eating Taiwanese']\u003c/span>Mixed in among Chinese American standards like chow mein and General’s chicken, Taiwanese dishes are the real star and focal point at \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/chinabeerestaurant/\">China Bee\u003c/a>—even more so during the pandemic, when the downtown San Mateo restaurant has served an abbreviated (and almost entirely Taiwanese) takeout menu. It’s one of a handful of spots on the Peninsula that serves Taiwanese breakfast on the weekend, and the impeccably fried stinky tofu is one of the best versions around. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>10. Joy Restaurant\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>1489 Beach Park Blvd., Foster City\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nLocated near the Foster City waterfront, \u003ca href=\"http://joystw.com/\">Joy Restaurant\u003c/a> spans a wide range of regional Chinese cuisines, from Sichuan to Shanghainese, in addition to its explicitly Taiwanese dishes. At its core, however, the kitchen is cooking to suit Taiwanese tastes. The oversized Chunghua Road potstickers have a fantastically lacy, crunchy crust; the stinky tofu is genuinely pungent and delicious; and the claypot lion’s head meatball is just spectacular. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>11. Mary’s Bakery\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>34370 Fremont Blvd., Fremont\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://marys-bakery.square.site\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mary’s Bakery\u003c/a> is the kind of small bakery you would wander into while walking around a local neighborhood in Taipei. It specializes in Taiwanese-style cakes such as fresh mango cake, covered in thinly sliced mangoes shaped like flowers, as well as Taiwanese-style baked goods, and it’s a little bit more homey and idiosyncratic than what you’d find at big bakery chains. The concise menu includes popular staples such as green onion buns and several different varieties of pineapple bun (buo luo bao). Call ahead if you’ve got your heart set on a particular cake. —M.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898027\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898027\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of savory soy milk in a bowl, with pieces of fried cruller floating on top.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1778\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-800x556.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-1020x708.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-160x111.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-768x533.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-1536x1067.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-2048x1422.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-1920x1333.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Wu is one of the only local restaurants that serves Taiwanese breakfast dishes like savory soy milk five days a week. \u003ccite>(Chef Wu)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>12. Chef Wu\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>36926 Sycamore St., Newark\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"http://chefwuchineserestaurant.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This Newark mainstay\u003c/a> is one of the Bay Area’s only restaurants (perhaps \u003ci>the\u003c/i> only restaurant) that’s primarily known for serving \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area\">Taiwanese breakfast\u003c/a>—the kind that includes fresh soy milk, shaobing (sesame flatbread), you tiao (fried crullers) and fan tuan (Taiwanese rice rolls). All of the dough-based specialties are made in-house, and, unlike most of the local Taiwanese restaurants dabbling in breakfast, Chef Wu doesn’t relegate those items to weekend service only. The restaurant has been closed for the duration of the pandemic, but it’s planning to reopen in mid-June. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>13. Cafe Mei\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>43761 Boscell Rd. #5125, Fremont\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nAccording to owner Kandy Wang, this new Fremont strip mall spot is the first restaurant to bring the recipes of Mei Er Mei, Taiwan’s most popular Western-style breakfast chain, to the U.S. When \u003ca href=\"http://www.cafemeiusa.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cafe Mei\u003c/a> officially opens, probably in mid-June, the restaurant will serve crustless ham-and-egg breakfast sandwiches, dan bing (egg crepe rolls) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area\">Taiwanese-style breakfast burgers\u003c/a> featuring a proprietary marinated pork patty, sliced cucumbers, a fried egg and sweet mayonnaise. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898033\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898033\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a red yeast pork bento box: slices of red-tinged crispy pork, corn kernels, a braised egg and tofu over white rice. \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Du Xiao Yue’s lunchbox game is topnotch: The red yeast pork over rice is a thing of beauty. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>14. Du Xiao Yue\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>4161 Cushing Pkwy., Fremont\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThough it has nothing to do with the famous \u003ca href=\"https://hungryintaipei.blogspot.com/2018/10/taiwaneserevisited-i-still-strongly.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tainan-style noodle chain\u003c/a> in Taiwan that shares its name, the Fremont incarnation of Du Xiao Yue nevertheless serves some of the tastiest Taiwanese food in the area, with a particular emphasis on the kinds of snacky foods you might find at a night market—your pork blood rice cakes and oyster vermicellis. The restaurant’s lunchtime bento game is especially strong: The slightly tangy, immaculately crispy red yeast pork rice is a thing of beauty. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>15. Old Taro\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>46825 Warm Springs Blvd., Fremont\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nNewly moved across town to a different Fremont strip mall, \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/laoyuzai/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Old Taro\u003c/a> has a fairly extensive menu of Taiwanese rice plates and noodle soups, but the restaurant’s main point of attraction is its seven—count them!—different varieties of gloriously overstuffed fan tuan, including one version that features sweet Taiwanese sausage and another that’s spicy and includes an entire braised egg. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>16. Taiwan Cafe\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>568 N. Abel St., Milpitas\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nDuring the pandemic, \u003ca href=\"https://www.taiwancafemilpitas.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this country-style restaurant\u003c/a> has been delivering frozen Taiwanese and Hakka specialities to 24 states. Wan Luan pork hock with bamboo shoots is the speciality here, but the southern-style bah ûan (Taiwanese meatball) and five-spice rolls taste just like they do on the island. Hot bentos, oyster omelets and other ready-to-eat dishes can be ordered through the \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/taiwancafemilpitas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taiwan Cafe Facebook group\u003c/a> for weekend pickup. The dining room is currently closed. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898034\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898034\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A takeout container of fried stinky tofu, with pickled cabbage and a tub of sauce on the side.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mama Liu’s stinky tofu is one of the Bay Area’s most potent versions. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>17. Mama Liu\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>550 Barber Ln., Milpitas and other locations\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nDuring pre-pandemic times, \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Mama-Liu-Taiwanese-Street-Food-424857264260232/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mama Liu\u003c/a> made its money on the lunchtime office park circuit, following a set route that included several Silicon Valley tech campuses. But with in-person working still largely on hold, the food truck, which specializes in Taiwanese street food, has only been selling once a week, at a different location each week (Milpitas, Fremont, Cupertino and so forth), to customers who pre-order via its \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Mama-Liu-Taiwanese-Street-Food-424857264260232/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chinese-language online form\u003c/a>. One the truck’s showstoppers is one of the Bay Area’s best versions of fried stinky tofu—extra juicy and pungent because they fry larger cubes of the tofu first before cutting them into smaller pieces. Another is an incredibly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897498/mama-liu-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-food-comic\">tender, well balanced lu rou fan\u003c/a> (braised pork belly rice), made with hand-cut pork belly. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>18. Queen House\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>273 Castro Street, Mountain View\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nOne of the oldest restaurants on Castro Street in Mountain View, \u003ca href=\"http://www.queenhouserestaurant.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Queen House\u003c/a> offers an array of Taiwanese dishes hidden on the back side of its American Chinese menu. The restaurant is best known for its beef noodle soup, which boasts generous cuts of meat. Other items to check out are the squid soup, which will appeal to fans of hot and sour, and the Taiwanese breakfast foods, which include beef rolls and crispy you tiao to dip into fresh soybean milk—all available on weekend mornings only. Outdoor dining, takeout and delivery are available. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>19. Chick & Tea\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>587 E. El Camino Real, Sunnyvale\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nOriginally located in \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/where-to-get-taiwanese-fried-chicken-in-the-east-bay-2-1/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oakland\u003c/a>, this \u003ca href=\"https://www.chick-tea.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">standout boba drink and bento shop\u003c/a> now has storefronts in Sunnyvale and Milpitas. The cafe sells a variety of lunch boxes and five-spice-dusted fried appetizers, but the main reason to visit is the house special “GPIE.” That’s what the shop calls its wonderfully crunchy and well seasoned version of ji pai, the oversized fried chicken cutlets that are a staple of Taiwanese night markets. For the full experience, order your GPIE whole, not sliced, and eat it standing up, straight out of the paper bag. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898037\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898037\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Side dishes to be eaten with Taiwan Porridge Kingdom's sweet potato congee: pork ribs, pig's tongue, a dried radish omelet, fried peanuts and more.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The congee at Taiwan Porridge Kingdom is meant to be a blank canvas for the restaurant’s many delicious side dishes. \u003ccite>(Taiwan Porridge Kingdom)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>20. Taiwan Porridge Kingdom\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>20956 Homestead Rd. Ste. A1, Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThere’s a stretch of Fuxing S. Road in Taipei that’s made up almost entirely of 24-hour restaurants that specialize in congee, or rice porridge, served on an all-you-can-eat basis. What you pay for are the dozens of little side dishes that you eat with it, pulling what you like off the cafeteria-style buffet. The South Bay might not have a whole street dedicated to the genre, but it is lucky enough to have at least one truly great restaurant in this style: Cupertino’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.taiwanporridge.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taiwan Porridge Kingdom\u003c/a>. The restaurant’s velvety, comfortingly bland sweet potato congee is a soothing blank canvas for a huge array of tasty side dishes—everything from tangy marinated bamboo shoots to tender slices of spicy pig tongue. For takeout orders, the rice porridge isn’t all-you-can-eat, but it does come in big, absurdly inexpensive tubs. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>21. Liang’s Village\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19772 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://liangsvillage.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This restaurant\u003c/a> in Cupertino’s Merlion Center features Chinese-Taiwanese military village cooking. The beef tendon noodle soup, with its many bite-size chunks of beef and rich but not oily broth, is one of the best versions in the South Bay. The pigs’ feet with peanut noodle soup is another classic, made succulent by long braising. Currently offering takeout and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897684/pandemic-taiwanese-food-liangs-village\">Bay Area–wide delivery\u003c/a> (with free pickup available at several designated locations)—but no in-person dining—Liang’s also gives the option of providing uncooked noodles that can be boiled at home. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>22. L’Epi D’Or\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19675 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nAt \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Lepi-Dor-Bakery-291550974196298/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this independent bakery\u003c/a>, cloud-like milk bread is shaped into buns with traditional fillings (red bean, taro, mustard greens) and unexpected fusion pastries like conchas or jalapeño buns. Don’t pass up on the refrigerated case, which is packed with fried egg or potato salad sandwiches, as well as a rainbow of konjac desserts flavored with osmanthus, lychee or matcha. Or if you want shaved ice or boba, the shop still has you covered. During non-pandemic times, the bakery often turned out fresh waffle-like wheel cakes on the weekend. Everything’s baked in small batches, so visit in the morning for best selection. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>23. Tiger Sugar\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19620 Stevens Creek Blvd. Ste. 180, Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThis Cupertino shop is the Bay Area’s first location of \u003ca href=\"https://www.toasttab.com/tigersugarcupertino/v3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tiger Sugar\u003c/a>, a wildly popular boba chain from Taiwan that’s widely credited with kicking off the whole brown sugar boba milk craze on Instagram and TikTok. It’s one of those rare viral food products that lives up to the hype—not \u003ci>just\u003c/i> aesthetically pleasing, with the tiger stripe-shaped streaks of syrup running down the length of the cup, but also satisfyingly creamy and refreshing. On a hot day, you’ll want to make sure to grab a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897410/taiwanese-food-texture-q-boba-love-boat\">brown sugar boba ice cream\u003c/a> pop out of the freezer while you’re there. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>24. Red Hot Wok\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>10074 E. Estates Dr., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.redhotwokcupertino.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Red Hot Wok\u003c/a> is a Taiwanese restaurant-pub that makes for a great hangout spot where friends can share bar bites and popular Taiwanese dishes and enjoy a Taiwan Beer. Standout dishes include the san bei ji (three-cup chicken)—a clay pot of aromatic, caramelized goodness—or the stir-fried clam and basil dish. Don’t miss the shaved ice; their version of the popular Taiwanese summer treat is a fluffy snow ice, which comes in flavors such as green tea or taro, and gets topped with fresh mango. The cozy restaurant has reopened indoor dining; it also offers one table outside for dining al fresco, as well as delivery and takeout. —M.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898038\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1432px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898038\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg\" alt=\"A traditional pork belly gua bao on a plate, on a white countertop.\" width=\"1432\" height=\"955\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg 1432w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1432px) 100vw, 1432px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A traditional pork belly gua bao at Mama Chen’s Kitchen. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>25. Mama Chen’s Kitchen\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19052 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThe vast menu at \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Mama-Chens-Kitchen-292054490826\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this South Bay institution\u003c/a>, which is named after a local matriarch, includes nearly 200 items. Many of the best choices are listed under the snacks and “Ma Ma Chen’s Special” categories, including the oyster pancake, bah ûan (a kind of Taiwanese steamed meatball) and gua bao, i.e. braised pork belly folded inside a fluffy steamed bun, all made with family recipes. Order small plates to share, and round out the meal with an order of stir-fried rice noodles. The restaurant currently offers both takeout and dine-in service. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>26. O2 Valley\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19058 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nNext door to Mama Chen’s Kitchen, \u003ca href=\"https://order.o2-valley.com\">O2 Valley\u003c/a> is a small boba and bento shop that offers classic Taiwanese flavors in its excellent, takeout-friendly rice plates, whose main entree options include pork chop (fried, braised, or grilled), fried squid and several vegetarian dishes like three-cup oyster mushrooms or dried tofu. Appetizers include street food favorites such as pig’s blood cake, grilled squid and fried mantou. It’s all great drinking food—though at O2 Valley, what you’ll want to wash everything down with is the shop’s wide variety of boba drinks, including many tea-forward options. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 3486,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 34
},
"modified": 1705008297,
"excerpt": "Where to find the tastiest beef noodle soup, the crispiest pork chop bento and the most pungent stinky tofu.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"socialTitle": "26 Outstanding Taiwanese Restaurants in the Bay Area %%page%% %%sep%% KQED",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "Where to find the tastiest beef noodle soup, the crispiest pork chop bento and the most pungent stinky tofu.",
"title": "26 Outstanding Taiwanese Restaurants in the Bay Area | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "KQED’s Ultimate Guide to Taiwanese Restaurants in the Bay",
"datePublished": "2021-05-28T09:00:24-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:24:57-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "best-taiwanese-restaurants-sf-oakland-cupertino-bay-area",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"templateType": "standard",
"featuredImageType": "standard",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"path": "/arts/13897936/best-taiwanese-restaurants-sf-oakland-cupertino-bay-area",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897983\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897983\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg\" alt=\"An illustrated map of the Bay Area with drawings of various Taiwanese foods at different locations on the map—gua bao near San Francisco, stinky tofu near San Mateo, pork chop bento near Oakland, fan tuan near Fremont, and lu rou fan near Milpitas.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1536\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-800x640.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-1020x816.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-160x128.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-768x614.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanMap_FinalInArticlePhoto-1536x1229.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Illustration by \u003ca href=\"https://www.felicia-liang.com/\">Felicia Liang\u003c/a>; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you ask a Taiwanese American about the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food scene, chances are they’ll complain about how hard it is to find stinky tofu or savory soy milk or a decent bowl of beef noodle soup. And it’s true: This isn’t exactly the San Gabriel Valley. But it’s also true that anyone who knocks the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food community probably hasn’t spent a lot of time in suburban enclaves like Fremont and Cupertino, where there’s big enough of a Taiwanese market that even niche restaurants—specializing in sweet potato congee or Taiwanese breakfast sandwiches—can survive and thrive. They also probably haven’t paid attention to the new wave of pop-ups that are bringing Taiwanese food into the mainstream in Oakland and San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here, then, are 26 of the Bay Area’s most delicious Taiwanese dining destinations, from the UC Berkeley campus down to the strip malls of Cupertino. Eating your way through the list will help cure any expat’s culinary homesickness. For newcomers to the cuisine, it also serves as an excellent introduction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Note: These entries aren’t ranked; instead, they’re listed in rough geographical order from north to south.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>1. Shihlin Taiwan Street Snacks\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>2431 Durant Ave. Suite B, Berkeley\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://www.shihlinca.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This local chain\u003c/a> specializes in the kinds of quick bites you’d find at Taiwan’s night markets and street stalls, including a surprisingly homey version of orh ah mee sua, aka oyster vermicelli. But the headliner is the “XXL” crispy chicken, a solid rendition of the oversized fried cutlets that are one of the signatures of the actual Shilin night market in Taipei. In addition to this Cal campus-adjacent storefront, which has been a hit with students from day one, and its original Milpitas shop, Shihlin has also expanded to Pleasanton, San Mateo and the Stonestown Galleria mall. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>2. Yilan Foods\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Previously at 4066 Piedmont Ave. in Oakland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://yilan-foods.square.site/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This popular pop-up restaurant\u003c/a> that started during the pandemic has been a welcome addition to the local Taiwanese food scene. Offering Sunday-only pickup for preorder customers in San Francisco and Oakland, the pop-up quickly amassed a following through social media and word-of-mouth. Yilan’s collagen-rich niu rou mian is truly a standout among the Bay Area’s beef noodle soup options, and its chunky, fatty pork over rice (lu rou fan) is hearty and satisfying. Yilan Foods is on temporary hiatus while its owners search for a permanent brick-and-mortar location; in the meantime, they’re also seeking a new home for the pop-up incarnation. Follow their \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/yilanfoods/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Instagram page\u003c/a> for the latest updates. —M.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897876\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1761px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897876\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a takeout box with sticky rice rolls, scallion egg pancake, and other Taiwanese breakfast items from Taiwan Bento.\" width=\"1761\" height=\"1174\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg 1761w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/005_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1761px) 100vw, 1761px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Taiwan Bento is now hosting occasional Taiwanese breakfast pop-ups. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>3. Taiwan Bento\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>412 22nd St., Oakland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nOpen since 2014, \u003ca href=\"http://www.taiwanbento.us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taiwan Bento\u003c/a> is one of the mainstays of Oakland’s Taiwanese restaurant community. As its name suggests, the restaurant is best known for its biandang, or Taiwanese lunch boxes—set meals that might come with a fried pork chop or braised minced pork, some pickled vegetables, a half a tea egg and a scoop of rice.The beef noodle soup is a hearty, belly-warming option; the basil-topped popcorn chicken is impeccably fried. Recently, the restaurant has also been dabbling in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area\">Taiwanese breakfast\u003c/a>—fan tuan (rice rolls) and dan bing (scallion egg pancakes)—during occasional weekend pop-ups. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>4. HoDaLa\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>5801 Geary Blvd., San Francisco\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThe most \u003ca href=\"https://www.hodalausa.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">prominent new Taiwanese restaurant\u003c/a> to open in S.F. proper in many years, this Outer Richmond restaurant rocks a vintage aesthetic, with a display of old Taiwanese post office memorabilia and toys front and center. The menu leans toward Taiwan Beer–friendly bar snacks, with plenty of fried foods in the mix. The gua bao (or steamed bun “sandwich”) section alone runs five options deep and includes fusion-y versions stuffed with fried fish or barbecue pulled pork. HoDaLa is also one of the few spots in the city that serves tsua bing, or Taiwanese-style shaved ice, available with a host of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897410/taiwanese-food-texture-q-boba-love-boat\">different QQ toppings\u003c/a>. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>5. Dragon Gate Bar and Grille\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>300 Broadway, Oakland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThis moody, neon-backlit cocktail bar has private karaoke rooms and one of the most extensive Taiwanese food menus in the entire East Bay—a win-win for devotees of these two cornerstones of Taiwanese culture. \u003ca href=\"https://www.dragongate300.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dragon Gate\u003c/a> has long been one of the only restaurants in Oakland where you can get stinky tofu, but the highlights of the menu are actually the more rustic, homestyle dishes: dried radish omelet, a variety of three-cup dishes (traditionally made with an entire cup each of soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine) and one of the East Bay’s better bowls of beef noodle soup. After staying closed for the bulk of the pandemic, the karaoke rooms are now back open for small gatherings as well. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898040\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2015px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898040\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers.jpg\" alt=\"A plate of long potstickers next to a takeout carton of noodles.\" width=\"2015\" height=\"2048\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers.jpg 2015w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-800x813.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-1020x1037.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-160x163.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-768x781.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-1511x1536.jpg 1511w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/GoodToEat_potstickers-1920x1951.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2015px) 100vw, 2015px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The potstickers are Good-to-Eat Dumplings’ signature dish. \u003ccite>(Good-to-Eat Dumplings)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>6. Good-to-Eat Dumplings\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>292 4th St., Oakland\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nRun by founders Tony Tung and Angie Lin, \u003ca href=\"https://www.goodtoeatdumplings.com\">this casual restaurant\u003c/a> specializes in Taiwan-style potstickers—elongated pan-fried dumplings with a thin wrapper and crunchy bottom. These are notable for their fillings, which include a popular version that’s filled with chicken and basil. While dumplings are the focus, the flavorful gua baos and wontons are also just like what you’d find in Taiwan. And during the pandemic, the pop-up has expanded its repertoire of locally-sourced Taiwanese dishes even further outside the realm of dumplings, serving things like noodles with minced pork sauce and \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/9/16/21439018/good-to-eat-dumplings-taiwanese-caprese-tomatoes-soy-sauce-pop-up-oakland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taiwanese\u003c/a> “\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/9/16/21439018/good-to-eat-dumplings-taiwanese-caprese-tomatoes-soy-sauce-pop-up-oakland\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Caprese\u003c/a>.” Good-to-Eat is located at Original Pattern Brewing in Oakland’s Jack London neighborhood, and has plenty of outdoor seating. —M.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>7. Bentolicious\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>4833 Hopyard Rd. E3, Pleasanton\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nMarvel at the efficiency of this strip mall \u003ca href=\"https://bentolicious.us/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">bento shop’s\u003c/a> assembly line setup, as bandanna-clad workers load up your lunchbox, scooping home-style dishes from a steam table that gets replenished so frequently, the food never has a chance to lose its freshness. Main course options run the gamut from railroad (i.e., fried pork chop) bentos to lion’s head meatballs and saucy Chiayi chicken rice, and the rotating selection of sides, like fried pumpkin and Taiwanese-style mapo tofu, is just as compelling. Come on the early side, as the most popular dishes tend to sell out well before the end of the lunch rush. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898053\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 971px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898053\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco.jpg\" alt='A view of the \"Taiwan taco,\" a scallion pancake stuffed with eggs, slaw, and edible flowers.' width=\"971\" height=\"1295\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco.jpg 971w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco-800x1067.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco-160x213.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ElChinoGrande_TaiwanTaco-768x1024.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 971px) 100vw, 971px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">El Chino Grande’s “Taiwan Taco.” \u003ccite>(El Chino Grande)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>8. El Chino Grande / Hén-zhi\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>1195 Evans Ave., San Francisco; various other locations\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nBefore he started these pop-ups with his partner Marcelle Gonzales Yang, Christopher Yang made a name for himself cooking at celebrated Bay Area restaurants like the now-shuttered ’Aina in S.F. \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/el_chino_grande/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">El Chino Grande\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.henzhisf.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Hén-zhí\u003c/a> are the chef’s tribute to his Taiwanese heritage—and to Taiwanese night markets, specifically. At El Chino Grande, for instance, he mixes Taiwanese flavors with California ingredients to create dishes like his “Taiwan Taco,” a take on a scallion pancake roll, or dan bing, that incorporates kabayaki tare, mayo, crispy nori furikake, cabbage slaw and pickled daikon. Hén-zhí, which takes more of a fine dining approach, has been doing mostly private events during the pandemic, but El Chino Grande makes regular appearances at Hunters Point Brewery on Sundays and at a Lafayette commissary kitchen every other Saturday. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>9. China Bee\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>31 S. B St., San Mateo\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"tag": "eating-taiwanese",
"label": "Eating Taiwanese "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>Mixed in among Chinese American standards like chow mein and General’s chicken, Taiwanese dishes are the real star and focal point at \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/chinabeerestaurant/\">China Bee\u003c/a>—even more so during the pandemic, when the downtown San Mateo restaurant has served an abbreviated (and almost entirely Taiwanese) takeout menu. It’s one of a handful of spots on the Peninsula that serves Taiwanese breakfast on the weekend, and the impeccably fried stinky tofu is one of the best versions around. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>10. Joy Restaurant\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>1489 Beach Park Blvd., Foster City\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nLocated near the Foster City waterfront, \u003ca href=\"http://joystw.com/\">Joy Restaurant\u003c/a> spans a wide range of regional Chinese cuisines, from Sichuan to Shanghainese, in addition to its explicitly Taiwanese dishes. At its core, however, the kitchen is cooking to suit Taiwanese tastes. The oversized Chunghua Road potstickers have a fantastically lacy, crunchy crust; the stinky tofu is genuinely pungent and delicious; and the claypot lion’s head meatball is just spectacular. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>11. Mary’s Bakery\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>34370 Fremont Blvd., Fremont\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://marys-bakery.square.site\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mary’s Bakery\u003c/a> is the kind of small bakery you would wander into while walking around a local neighborhood in Taipei. It specializes in Taiwanese-style cakes such as fresh mango cake, covered in thinly sliced mangoes shaped like flowers, as well as Taiwanese-style baked goods, and it’s a little bit more homey and idiosyncratic than what you’d find at big bakery chains. The concise menu includes popular staples such as green onion buns and several different varieties of pineapple bun (buo luo bao). Call ahead if you’ve got your heart set on a particular cake. —M.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898027\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898027\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of savory soy milk in a bowl, with pieces of fried cruller floating on top.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1778\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-800x556.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-1020x708.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-160x111.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-768x533.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-1536x1067.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-2048x1422.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/chefwu_soymilk-1920x1333.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Wu is one of the only local restaurants that serves Taiwanese breakfast dishes like savory soy milk five days a week. \u003ccite>(Chef Wu)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>12. Chef Wu\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>36926 Sycamore St., Newark\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"http://chefwuchineserestaurant.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This Newark mainstay\u003c/a> is one of the Bay Area’s only restaurants (perhaps \u003ci>the\u003c/i> only restaurant) that’s primarily known for serving \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area\">Taiwanese breakfast\u003c/a>—the kind that includes fresh soy milk, shaobing (sesame flatbread), you tiao (fried crullers) and fan tuan (Taiwanese rice rolls). All of the dough-based specialties are made in-house, and, unlike most of the local Taiwanese restaurants dabbling in breakfast, Chef Wu doesn’t relegate those items to weekend service only. The restaurant has been closed for the duration of the pandemic, but it’s planning to reopen in mid-June. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>13. Cafe Mei\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>43761 Boscell Rd. #5125, Fremont\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nAccording to owner Kandy Wang, this new Fremont strip mall spot is the first restaurant to bring the recipes of Mei Er Mei, Taiwan’s most popular Western-style breakfast chain, to the U.S. When \u003ca href=\"http://www.cafemeiusa.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cafe Mei\u003c/a> officially opens, probably in mid-June, the restaurant will serve crustless ham-and-egg breakfast sandwiches, dan bing (egg crepe rolls) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area\">Taiwanese-style breakfast burgers\u003c/a> featuring a proprietary marinated pork patty, sliced cucumbers, a fried egg and sweet mayonnaise. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898033\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898033\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a red yeast pork bento box: slices of red-tinged crispy pork, corn kernels, a braised egg and tofu over white rice. \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/DuXiaoYue_redporkrice-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Du Xiao Yue’s lunchbox game is topnotch: The red yeast pork over rice is a thing of beauty. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>14. Du Xiao Yue\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>4161 Cushing Pkwy., Fremont\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThough it has nothing to do with the famous \u003ca href=\"https://hungryintaipei.blogspot.com/2018/10/taiwaneserevisited-i-still-strongly.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tainan-style noodle chain\u003c/a> in Taiwan that shares its name, the Fremont incarnation of Du Xiao Yue nevertheless serves some of the tastiest Taiwanese food in the area, with a particular emphasis on the kinds of snacky foods you might find at a night market—your pork blood rice cakes and oyster vermicellis. The restaurant’s lunchtime bento game is especially strong: The slightly tangy, immaculately crispy red yeast pork rice is a thing of beauty. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>15. Old Taro\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>46825 Warm Springs Blvd., Fremont\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nNewly moved across town to a different Fremont strip mall, \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/laoyuzai/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Old Taro\u003c/a> has a fairly extensive menu of Taiwanese rice plates and noodle soups, but the restaurant’s main point of attraction is its seven—count them!—different varieties of gloriously overstuffed fan tuan, including one version that features sweet Taiwanese sausage and another that’s spicy and includes an entire braised egg. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>16. Taiwan Cafe\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>568 N. Abel St., Milpitas\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nDuring the pandemic, \u003ca href=\"https://www.taiwancafemilpitas.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this country-style restaurant\u003c/a> has been delivering frozen Taiwanese and Hakka specialities to 24 states. Wan Luan pork hock with bamboo shoots is the speciality here, but the southern-style bah ûan (Taiwanese meatball) and five-spice rolls taste just like they do on the island. Hot bentos, oyster omelets and other ready-to-eat dishes can be ordered through the \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/taiwancafemilpitas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taiwan Cafe Facebook group\u003c/a> for weekend pickup. The dining room is currently closed. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898034\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898034\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A takeout container of fried stinky tofu, with pickled cabbage and a tub of sauce on the side.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/MamaLiu_stinkytofu-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mama Liu’s stinky tofu is one of the Bay Area’s most potent versions. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>17. Mama Liu\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>550 Barber Ln., Milpitas and other locations\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nDuring pre-pandemic times, \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Mama-Liu-Taiwanese-Street-Food-424857264260232/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mama Liu\u003c/a> made its money on the lunchtime office park circuit, following a set route that included several Silicon Valley tech campuses. But with in-person working still largely on hold, the food truck, which specializes in Taiwanese street food, has only been selling once a week, at a different location each week (Milpitas, Fremont, Cupertino and so forth), to customers who pre-order via its \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Mama-Liu-Taiwanese-Street-Food-424857264260232/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Chinese-language online form\u003c/a>. One the truck’s showstoppers is one of the Bay Area’s best versions of fried stinky tofu—extra juicy and pungent because they fry larger cubes of the tofu first before cutting them into smaller pieces. Another is an incredibly \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897498/mama-liu-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-food-comic\">tender, well balanced lu rou fan\u003c/a> (braised pork belly rice), made with hand-cut pork belly. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>18. Queen House\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>273 Castro Street, Mountain View\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nOne of the oldest restaurants on Castro Street in Mountain View, \u003ca href=\"http://www.queenhouserestaurant.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Queen House\u003c/a> offers an array of Taiwanese dishes hidden on the back side of its American Chinese menu. The restaurant is best known for its beef noodle soup, which boasts generous cuts of meat. Other items to check out are the squid soup, which will appeal to fans of hot and sour, and the Taiwanese breakfast foods, which include beef rolls and crispy you tiao to dip into fresh soybean milk—all available on weekend mornings only. Outdoor dining, takeout and delivery are available. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>19. Chick & Tea\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>587 E. El Camino Real, Sunnyvale\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nOriginally located in \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/where-to-get-taiwanese-fried-chicken-in-the-east-bay-2-1/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Oakland\u003c/a>, this \u003ca href=\"https://www.chick-tea.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">standout boba drink and bento shop\u003c/a> now has storefronts in Sunnyvale and Milpitas. The cafe sells a variety of lunch boxes and five-spice-dusted fried appetizers, but the main reason to visit is the house special “GPIE.” That’s what the shop calls its wonderfully crunchy and well seasoned version of ji pai, the oversized fried chicken cutlets that are a staple of Taiwanese night markets. For the full experience, order your GPIE whole, not sliced, and eat it standing up, straight out of the paper bag. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898037\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898037\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Side dishes to be eaten with Taiwan Porridge Kingdom's sweet potato congee: pork ribs, pig's tongue, a dried radish omelet, fried peanuts and more.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanPorridge_sides-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The congee at Taiwan Porridge Kingdom is meant to be a blank canvas for the restaurant’s many delicious side dishes. \u003ccite>(Taiwan Porridge Kingdom)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>20. Taiwan Porridge Kingdom\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>20956 Homestead Rd. Ste. A1, Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThere’s a stretch of Fuxing S. Road in Taipei that’s made up almost entirely of 24-hour restaurants that specialize in congee, or rice porridge, served on an all-you-can-eat basis. What you pay for are the dozens of little side dishes that you eat with it, pulling what you like off the cafeteria-style buffet. The South Bay might not have a whole street dedicated to the genre, but it is lucky enough to have at least one truly great restaurant in this style: Cupertino’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.taiwanporridge.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Taiwan Porridge Kingdom\u003c/a>. The restaurant’s velvety, comfortingly bland sweet potato congee is a soothing blank canvas for a huge array of tasty side dishes—everything from tangy marinated bamboo shoots to tender slices of spicy pig tongue. For takeout orders, the rice porridge isn’t all-you-can-eat, but it does come in big, absurdly inexpensive tubs. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>21. Liang’s Village\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19772 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"https://liangsvillage.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">This restaurant\u003c/a> in Cupertino’s Merlion Center features Chinese-Taiwanese military village cooking. The beef tendon noodle soup, with its many bite-size chunks of beef and rich but not oily broth, is one of the best versions in the South Bay. The pigs’ feet with peanut noodle soup is another classic, made succulent by long braising. Currently offering takeout and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897684/pandemic-taiwanese-food-liangs-village\">Bay Area–wide delivery\u003c/a> (with free pickup available at several designated locations)—but no in-person dining—Liang’s also gives the option of providing uncooked noodles that can be boiled at home. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>22. L’Epi D’Or\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19675 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nAt \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Lepi-Dor-Bakery-291550974196298/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this independent bakery\u003c/a>, cloud-like milk bread is shaped into buns with traditional fillings (red bean, taro, mustard greens) and unexpected fusion pastries like conchas or jalapeño buns. Don’t pass up on the refrigerated case, which is packed with fried egg or potato salad sandwiches, as well as a rainbow of konjac desserts flavored with osmanthus, lychee or matcha. Or if you want shaved ice or boba, the shop still has you covered. During non-pandemic times, the bakery often turned out fresh waffle-like wheel cakes on the weekend. Everything’s baked in small batches, so visit in the morning for best selection. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>23. Tiger Sugar\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19620 Stevens Creek Blvd. Ste. 180, Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThis Cupertino shop is the Bay Area’s first location of \u003ca href=\"https://www.toasttab.com/tigersugarcupertino/v3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tiger Sugar\u003c/a>, a wildly popular boba chain from Taiwan that’s widely credited with kicking off the whole brown sugar boba milk craze on Instagram and TikTok. It’s one of those rare viral food products that lives up to the hype—not \u003ci>just\u003c/i> aesthetically pleasing, with the tiger stripe-shaped streaks of syrup running down the length of the cup, but also satisfyingly creamy and refreshing. On a hot day, you’ll want to make sure to grab a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897410/taiwanese-food-texture-q-boba-love-boat\">brown sugar boba ice cream\u003c/a> pop out of the freezer while you’re there. —L.T.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>24. Red Hot Wok\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>10074 E. Estates Dr., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\n\u003ca href=\"http://www.redhotwokcupertino.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Red Hot Wok\u003c/a> is a Taiwanese restaurant-pub that makes for a great hangout spot where friends can share bar bites and popular Taiwanese dishes and enjoy a Taiwan Beer. Standout dishes include the san bei ji (three-cup chicken)—a clay pot of aromatic, caramelized goodness—or the stir-fried clam and basil dish. Don’t miss the shaved ice; their version of the popular Taiwanese summer treat is a fluffy snow ice, which comes in flavors such as green tea or taro, and gets topped with fresh mango. The cozy restaurant has reopened indoor dining; it also offers one table outside for dining al fresco, as well as delivery and takeout. —M.C.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13898038\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1432px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13898038\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg\" alt=\"A traditional pork belly gua bao on a plate, on a white countertop.\" width=\"1432\" height=\"955\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg 1432w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-800x534.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/016_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-768x512.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1432px) 100vw, 1432px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A traditional pork belly gua bao at Mama Chen’s Kitchen. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch4>25. Mama Chen’s Kitchen\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19052 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nThe vast menu at \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Mama-Chens-Kitchen-292054490826\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">this South Bay institution\u003c/a>, which is named after a local matriarch, includes nearly 200 items. Many of the best choices are listed under the snacks and “Ma Ma Chen’s Special” categories, including the oyster pancake, bah ûan (a kind of Taiwanese steamed meatball) and gua bao, i.e. braised pork belly folded inside a fluffy steamed bun, all made with family recipes. Order small plates to share, and round out the meal with an order of stir-fried rice noodles. The restaurant currently offers both takeout and dine-in service. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch4>26. O2 Valley\u003c/h4>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>19058 Stevens Creek Blvd., Cupertino\u003c/i>\u003cbr>\nNext door to Mama Chen’s Kitchen, \u003ca href=\"https://order.o2-valley.com\">O2 Valley\u003c/a> is a small boba and bento shop that offers classic Taiwanese flavors in its excellent, takeout-friendly rice plates, whose main entree options include pork chop (fried, braised, or grilled), fried squid and several vegetarian dishes like three-cup oyster mushrooms or dried tofu. Appetizers include street food favorites such as pig’s blood cake, grilled squid and fried mantou. It’s all great drinking food—though at O2 Valley, what you’ll want to wash everything down with is the shop’s wide variety of boba drinks, including many tea-forward options. —G.H.L.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13897936/best-taiwanese-restaurants-sf-oakland-cupertino-bay-area",
"authors": [
"11743",
"11754",
"11713"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_14125",
"arts_14406",
"arts_14375",
"arts_10342",
"arts_10278",
"arts_11460",
"arts_14396"
],
"featImg": "arts_13897982",
"label": "source_arts_13897936"
},
"arts_13897987": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13897987",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897987",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1622149743000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1622149743,
"format": "standard",
"title": "Legendary Oakland Barbecue Spot Flint's Will Open for Takeout This Summer",
"headTitle": "Legendary Oakland Barbecue Spot Flint’s Will Open for Takeout This Summer | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the past few months, Crystal Martin was on the verge of achieving a long-held dream. The granddaughter of the founder of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/flintsbarbecue/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flint’s Barbecue\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894423/flints-an-icon-of-oakland-barbecue-plots-return-to-original-location\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">iconic restaurant in the annals of Oakland barbecue\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, had been working to resurrect the family business—in one of the original Flint’s locations, on San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland, no less.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, Martin says she’s one step closer to achieving her goal, though perhaps not in the way she expected: This summer, Martin will open Flint’s as a takeout- and delivery-only restaurant that will be part of a new \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cloudkitchens.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CloudKitchens\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> ghost kitchen facility located in a big warehouse at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.loopnet.com/portfolio-property/5325-5333-Adeline-St-Emeryville-CA/5971289/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">5325 Adeline Street\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, at the border of North Oakland and Emeryville. She just signed the lease this week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The upshot is that, for the first time in more than a decade, customers both old and new will be able to get a hold of Flint’s Barbecue’s famous coarse-ground links, ribs and barbecue sauce on a regular basis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>https://www.instagram.com/p/CPUOjEcsNSJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The decision comes, in part, because Martin wasn’t able to secure the old San Pablo Avenue space after all. Her original plan was an ambitious one: The original Flint’s building has sat empty since the late ’90s, and its prospective buyer had told Martin that it needed upwards of $40,000 in construction work before she’d be able to move in. But then it seems the buyer had a change of heart, and now, Martin says, someone \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">else\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is buying the building—someone who has other plans for the space. [aside postID='arts_13894423' \u003ci>label=\u003c/i>'More on Flint’s']\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a disappointment, Martin concedes. But she’d also already started looking into alternatives. “Something told me to prepare a plan B,” she says. “The dream was to go back to that San Pablo location, but you know, maybe that wasn’t meant for us.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, opening in a ghost kitchen isn’t necessarily the ideal. According to Martin, the yet-unnamed Adeline Street facility will be home to 40 different businesses, each of them with their own little kitchen space in the warehouse. There won’t be any seating for customers; there won’t even be any signage for Flint’s outside of the building—the number of other restaurants sharing the space makes that unfeasible. Customers will be able to order takeout in person, but a lot of the business will be filtered through delivery apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats. CloudKitchens, a company backed by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, is one of a number of so-called \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/135793/delivery-only-the-rise-of-restaurants-with-no-diners-as-apps-take-orders\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ghost kitchen, or virtual kitchen, companies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that have expanded their operations during the pandemic—companies whose long-term impact on the restaurant industry remains \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/21540765/ghost-kitchens-virtual-restaurants-covid-19-industry-impact\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">very much an open question\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13894445\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13894445\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/flints_crystalmartin.crop_.jpg\" alt=\"Crystal Martin stands inside her Alameda commercial kitchen space during one of her Flint's pop-ups.\" width=\"640\" height=\"908\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/flints_crystalmartin.crop_.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/flints_crystalmartin.crop_-160x227.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crystal Martin at her Alameda commercial kitchen space during one of her Flint’s pop-ups. \u003ccite>(HMTWNHERO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Oakland, CloudKitchens already runs one big ghost kitchen facility, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandfoodhall.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oakland Food Hall\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, in East Oakland. It has yet to formally announce the North Oakland/Emeryville project, though Martin says her understanding is that construction is well under way. (KQED reached out to CloudKitchens to confirm the details of the new ghost kitchen, but had not received a response at time of publication.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nevertheless, Martin is excited about the prospect of being able to finally turn the new Flint’s into a full-fledged business after spending the past year only selling her barbecue once every few months. When she opens in the ghost kitchen space—tentatively around July 15, Martin says—she plans to be open Thursday through Sunday to start out, and then eventually six days a week. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13894446\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13894446\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/FlintSlinks.Crop_.jpg\" alt=\"Two trays full of Flint's house-made links.\" width=\"800\" height=\"646\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/FlintSlinks.Crop_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/FlintSlinks.Crop_-160x129.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/FlintSlinks.Crop_-768x620.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The coarse-ground links were one of Flint’s signature items. \u003ccite>(Flint's Barbecue)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s a good starting place,” Martin says. She won’t have to take on the risk of signing a five- or 10-year lease right out of the gate, and she’ll be able to make sure the business is profitable and sustainable before making a larger commitment. “We do hope to someday have our own brick and mortar,” she says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meanwhile, Martin has raised a little over $7,000 toward opening her restaurant via a \u003ca href=\"https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-move-back-to-san-pablo\">GoFundMe campaign\u003c/a>—money she says she wound up using for the down payment on her \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CloudKitchens spot\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. She’s hoping supporters of the restaurant will still consider chipping in: She still needs to buy about $15,000 worth of equipment, including a new indoor smoker, before she can open for business.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 805,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 12
},
"modified": 1705008302,
"excerpt": "The iconic barbecue restaurant will be part of a new ghost kitchen facility on the Oakland-Emeryville border.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "The iconic barbecue restaurant will be part of a new ghost kitchen facility on the Oakland-Emeryville border.",
"title": "Legendary Oakland Barbecue Spot Flint's Will Open for Takeout This Summer | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Legendary Oakland Barbecue Spot Flint's Will Open for Takeout This Summer",
"datePublished": "2021-05-27T14:09:03-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:25:02-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "flints-barbecue-oakland-emeryville-open-takeout-cloudkitchens",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"templateType": "standard",
"featuredImageType": "standard",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"WpOldSlug": "legendary-oakland-barbecue-spot-flints-will-open-for-takeout-this-summer",
"path": "/arts/13897987/flints-barbecue-oakland-emeryville-open-takeout-cloudkitchens",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the past few months, Crystal Martin was on the verge of achieving a long-held dream. The granddaughter of the founder of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/flintsbarbecue/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Flint’s Barbecue\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, an \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894423/flints-an-icon-of-oakland-barbecue-plots-return-to-original-location\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">iconic restaurant in the annals of Oakland barbecue\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, had been working to resurrect the family business—in one of the original Flint’s locations, on San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland, no less.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, Martin says she’s one step closer to achieving her goal, though perhaps not in the way she expected: This summer, Martin will open Flint’s as a takeout- and delivery-only restaurant that will be part of a new \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.cloudkitchens.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CloudKitchens\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> ghost kitchen facility located in a big warehouse at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.loopnet.com/portfolio-property/5325-5333-Adeline-St-Emeryville-CA/5971289/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">5325 Adeline Street\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, at the border of North Oakland and Emeryville. She just signed the lease this week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The upshot is that, for the first time in more than a decade, customers both old and new will be able to get a hold of Flint’s Barbecue’s famous coarse-ground links, ribs and barbecue sauce on a regular basis. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "instagramLink",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"instagramUrl": "https://www.instagram.com/p/CPUOjEcsNSJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link"
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The decision comes, in part, because Martin wasn’t able to secure the old San Pablo Avenue space after all. Her original plan was an ambitious one: The original Flint’s building has sat empty since the late ’90s, and its prospective buyer had told Martin that it needed upwards of $40,000 in construction work before she’d be able to move in. But then it seems the buyer had a change of heart, and now, Martin says, someone \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">else\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is buying the building—someone who has other plans for the space. \u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"postid": "arts_13894423",
"label": "\u003ci>label=\u003c/i>'More on Flint’s'"
},
"numeric": [
"\u003ci>label=\u003c/i>'More",
"on",
"Flint’s'"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was a disappointment, Martin concedes. But she’d also already started looking into alternatives. “Something told me to prepare a plan B,” she says. “The dream was to go back to that San Pablo location, but you know, maybe that wasn’t meant for us.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, opening in a ghost kitchen isn’t necessarily the ideal. According to Martin, the yet-unnamed Adeline Street facility will be home to 40 different businesses, each of them with their own little kitchen space in the warehouse. There won’t be any seating for customers; there won’t even be any signage for Flint’s outside of the building—the number of other restaurants sharing the space makes that unfeasible. Customers will be able to order takeout in person, but a lot of the business will be filtered through delivery apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats. CloudKitchens, a company backed by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, is one of a number of so-called \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/135793/delivery-only-the-rise-of-restaurants-with-no-diners-as-apps-take-orders\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ghost kitchen, or virtual kitchen, companies\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that have expanded their operations during the pandemic—companies whose long-term impact on the restaurant industry remains \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/21540765/ghost-kitchens-virtual-restaurants-covid-19-industry-impact\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">very much an open question\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13894445\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13894445\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/flints_crystalmartin.crop_.jpg\" alt=\"Crystal Martin stands inside her Alameda commercial kitchen space during one of her Flint's pop-ups.\" width=\"640\" height=\"908\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/flints_crystalmartin.crop_.jpg 640w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/flints_crystalmartin.crop_-160x227.jpg 160w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Crystal Martin at her Alameda commercial kitchen space during one of her Flint’s pop-ups. \u003ccite>(HMTWNHERO)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Oakland, CloudKitchens already runs one big ghost kitchen facility, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandfoodhall.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oakland Food Hall\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, in East Oakland. It has yet to formally announce the North Oakland/Emeryville project, though Martin says her understanding is that construction is well under way. (KQED reached out to CloudKitchens to confirm the details of the new ghost kitchen, but had not received a response at time of publication.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Nevertheless, Martin is excited about the prospect of being able to finally turn the new Flint’s into a full-fledged business after spending the past year only selling her barbecue once every few months. When she opens in the ghost kitchen space—tentatively around July 15, Martin says—she plans to be open Thursday through Sunday to start out, and then eventually six days a week. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13894446\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13894446\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/FlintSlinks.Crop_.jpg\" alt=\"Two trays full of Flint's house-made links.\" width=\"800\" height=\"646\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/FlintSlinks.Crop_.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/FlintSlinks.Crop_-160x129.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/03/FlintSlinks.Crop_-768x620.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The coarse-ground links were one of Flint’s signature items. \u003ccite>(Flint's Barbecue)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It’s a good starting place,” Martin says. She won’t have to take on the risk of signing a five- or 10-year lease right out of the gate, and she’ll be able to make sure the business is profitable and sustainable before making a larger commitment. “We do hope to someday have our own brick and mortar,” she says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meanwhile, Martin has raised a little over $7,000 toward opening her restaurant via a \u003ca href=\"https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-move-back-to-san-pablo\">GoFundMe campaign\u003c/a>—money she says she wound up using for the down payment on her \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CloudKitchens spot\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. She’s hoping supporters of the restaurant will still consider chipping in: She still needs to buy about $15,000 worth of equipment, including a new indoor smoker, before she can open for business.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13897987/flints-barbecue-oakland-emeryville-open-takeout-cloudkitchens",
"authors": [
"11743"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_13831",
"arts_10278",
"arts_1143"
],
"featImg": "arts_13896599",
"label": "source_arts_13897987"
},
"arts_13897868": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13897868",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897868",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1622131241000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1622131241,
"format": "aside",
"title": "Taiwanese Breakfast: One of the Bay Area’s Rarest, Most Coveted Meals",
"headTitle": "Taiwanese Breakfast: One of the Bay Area’s Rarest, Most Coveted Meals | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897870\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897870\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of savory soy milk and a sesame flatbread wrapped around a fried cruller, both against a blue background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photos courtesy of Chef Wu; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n a Sunday morning in late March, the line outside \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.taiwanbento.us/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwan Bento\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> snaked all the way around the corner on both sides of the downtown Oakland restaurant, down to Grand Avenue on one end and Webster Street on the other—an entire city block’s worth of customers, face masks on, small children and elderly in tow. They’d all made the pilgrimage to worship at the altar of this rarest and most coveted of Bay Area meals: Taiwanese breakfast.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was one of the larger crowds I’d been a part of since the start of the pandemic. People kept pulling up to ask what the deal was, then driving off just as confused: “Taiwanese breakfast? What’s that?” After waiting as long as four hours, customers were rewarded for their patience. Taiwan Bento’s takeout box included the sticky rice roll known as fan tuan, which came stuffed with pork floss, a fried cruller (a.k.a. you tiao), preserved vegetables and a tea egg split in half. It included a couple of steamed pork buns. And, maybe most exciting, there was what the restaurant called a “scallion egg pancake,” cut into bite-size pieces—Taiwan Bento’s take on the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/2/19/22290174/taiwan-bento-dan-bing-scallion-egg-pancake-taiwanese-breakfast\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">savory rolled egg crepes known as dan bing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897878\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1981px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897878\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg\" alt=\"A takeout box with sticky rice rolls, scallion egg pancake, and other Taiwanese breakfast items from Taiwan Bento.\" width=\"1981\" height=\"1321\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg 1981w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1981px) 100vw, 1981px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The takeout box for a subsequent Taiwan Bento breakfast pop-up, which also included a mochi muffin. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Owners Stacy Tang and Willy Wang say they were floored by the response, as the turnout “definitely surpassed our expectations,” Wang says. They point out that the event—the first of what they hope will be an ongoing breakfast pop-up series—was also a fundraiser to support the movement to Stop Asian Hate (and wound up \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CM_qImUBSR8/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">raising $2,000 for the cause\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">), and so maybe that contributed to some of the buzz. Right now, Tang says, Taiwanese people living in America “want their comfort food, and they also want to support their community.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the truth is, the turnout was always going to be huge: Of all the foods that Taiwanese Americans miss the most, Taiwanese breakfast is probably right at the top of the list—all the more so because it’s practically nonexistent in the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I can speak personally to that sense of desperate craving. Many, many times I’ve told friends that if I were ever to do something as foolhardy as try to open my own restaurant, it would be a Taiwanese breakfast shop—never mind that I’ve never even attempted to make dan bing at home. After all, if I miss Taiwanese breakfast so much that I’m willing, at the first whisper of savory soy milk, to drive an hour for these dishes, how many other homesick Taiwanese Americans must feel the same way?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897877\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1900px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897877\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg\" alt=\"A customer leans in to peeks inside Taiwan Bento as she waits her turn during the restaurant's Taiwanese breakfast pop-up. \" width=\"1900\" height=\"1267\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg 1900w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1900px) 100vw, 1900px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A customer patiently waits her turn. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Is Taiwanese Breakfast, Exactly?\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The thing that many Taiwanese Americans miss the most is shaobing doujiang (燒餅豆漿), a meal genre centered on fresh soy milk, either sweet or savory, and the flaky sesame flatbreads known as shaobing, which are typically stuffed with fried crullers or scallion-laced eggs. Dan bing and fan tuan are also staples on this type of menu—mostly adaptations of dishes \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/taiwan-breakfast-baseball\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">brought over to Taiwan by transplants from northern China\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. (My standard order always included a dan bing stuffed \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">inside \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">of a shaobing.) \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When people wax nostalgic about “Taiwanese breakfast,” this is the style of meal they’re usually talking about. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Taipei, the best known and most ubiquitous doujiang dian, or “soy milk shop,” is Yonghe Doujiang, many of whose locations aren’t much more elaborate than a street stall. There were at least three outposts of the chain within a 10-minute walk of my grandma’s apartment in Taipei; one of them was open 24 hours, which meant it was often my first stop after I got off a late-night flight. The first bite into the shaobing’s crackly, sesame seed–coated exterior was the surest sign that I was really and truly home. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside tag='eating-taiwanese' label='Eating Taiwanese']After years of fruitless searching, I concluded that there isn’t really anything close to a Yonghe Doujiang equivalent in the Bay Area. You can find versions of shaobing, for instance, on the wheat-based menus of northern Chinese restaurants, but they’re rarely offered as a breakfast item—and even more rarely served with all of the other items you’d find at any basic street stall in Taipei. In most parts of the Bay, dan bing, fan tuan and savory soy milk—served hot in a bowl, lightly curdled with vinegar and streaked with chili oil—are even harder to come by.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> why the line at Taiwan Bento’s pop-up was four hours long—why there was so much palpable excitement for a three-item takeout box. (It didn’t hurt either that the fan tuan and dan bing were both truly excellent.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People haven’t seen fan tuan for ages, and they’re also not able to travel back to Taiwan right now,” Tang says. “They’re so happy that they’re able to get the thing.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Uniquely Taiwanese Taste\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It makes sense, however, that if you broaden the definition of Taiwanese breakfast, you might have better luck finding it. After all, in Taiwan, as in the U.S., people eat all kinds of different things for breakfast. For instance, in a few weeks, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/cafemeiusa/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cafe Mei\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a new restaurant in Fremont, will introduce Bay Area diners to another morning favorite: the Taiwanese breakfast burger. Sold at little short-order, Western-style breakfast stalls throughout Taiwan, these burgers feature a heavily marinated pork patty and a fried egg, and are garnished with slices of raw cucumber (instead of, say, lettuce) and a swipe of special mayonnaise. Up until now, I’d never seen them in the Bay.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897879\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897879\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A Taiwanese breakfast burger, with fried egg, tomato, and cucumber garnish visible, on top of a checker-patterned sheet of wax paper. \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toppings for the Cafe Mei breakfast burger include tomato, fried egg, and thinly sliced cucumber. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Owner Kandy Wang says her first job as an 18-year-old kid in Taipei was at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.mam.com.tw/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mei Er Mei\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the most famous of Taiwan’s Western-style breakfast chains, known for its tidy ham-and-egg sandwiches as well as those breakfast burgers. Her family immigrated to the U.S. shortly after that, and in the decades since, Wang says, she kept trying to fill the Mei Er Mei void in her life to no avail. “You can only duplicate so much,” she says. “You just miss the taste of home.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, this past summer, Wang finally opened \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/cafemeiusa/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">her own spinoff of the chain\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—the first she’s aware of in the United States—initially just on a limited weekly pre-order basis, with the pandemic still raging. Located in a Fremont strip mall, the cafe isn’t officially connected to the Mei Er Mei in Taiwan, but Wang says she secured the official recipes for the chain’s burger patties and mayonnaise from one of its suppliers. (She’s also trademarked the name Mei Er Mei for use in the U.S.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897881\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897881\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Dan bing cut into bite-size pieces with a small container of soy sauce-based dipping sauce.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cafe Mei’s dan bing is also expected to be a top seller. \u003ccite>(Cafe Mei)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Cafe Mei officially opens to the public, probably in mid-June, it’ll also serve dan bing—a thinner, more crepe-like version than Taiwan Bento’s—and assorted grab-and-go breakfast sandwiches. For many customers, however, those breakfast burgers will be the blast of nostalgia they won’t be able to resist. True to my memory of them from so many bleary-eyed mornings in Taipei, the patties are uncommonly juicy and flavorful, and the cool, crunchy cucumber slices make for a refreshing addition. They’re part of what makes the burgers taste so uniquely Taiwanese.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Bona Fide Doujiang Dian\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s also not quite accurate to say that the much pined after doujiang dian format is entirely\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">non-existent in the Bay Area. A handful of restaurants in the South Bay and on the Peninsula, like Joy Restaurant in Foster City and China Bee in San Mateo, have long sold fresh soy milk and a handful of other breakfast specials on the weekend. The owners of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/yilanfoods/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yilan Foods\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, probably the most widely acclaimed of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897272/bay-area-taiwanese-food-scene-nostalgia\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">new Taiwanese pop-ups\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, say they’re determined to eventually offer fan tuan, fried crullers and perhaps fresh, house-made soy milk when they open as a standalone restaurant, probably in San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And Tang of Taiwan Bento plans to continue her restaurant’s occasional Taiwanese breakfast pop-ups, with the hope of eventually making the breakfast items a permanent addition to the menu. Already, the scallion egg pancakes are available all week long.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897880\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1981px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897880\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg\" alt=\"Stacy Tang (right), wearing a face mask, prepares scallion egg pancakes, or dan bing, during one of her restaurant's breakfast pop-ups.\" width=\"1981\" height=\"1321\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg 1981w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1981px) 100vw, 1981px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stacy Tang prepares scallion egg pancake, or dan bing, during a recent breakfast pop-up. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even now, Tang says, it isn’t strictly accurate to say that there isn’t \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">anyone \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">selling shaobing and doujiang in the Bay Area; it’s just that all of that is happening in the more informal economy within the Taiwanese immigrant community—again, mostly in the South Bay and on the Peninsula. If you know where to look, you can find folks selling all of those dishes from their homes via WeChat and private, Chinese-language-only Facebook groups. “It’s not that accessible,” Tang says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s also one bona fide doujiang dian that’s largely eluded the attention of the shaobing- and fan tuan–loving masses, though it’s well known within the South Bay’s Taiwanese immigrant community. (I’d somehow never come across it in all my years of searching.) Open in Newark since 1996, with a decade-plus stint in Cupertino in between, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/chefwuchineserestaurant/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chef Wu\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> specializes in all of the Taiwanese breakfast dishes I’ve been craving: The restaurant makes its own shaobing, you tiao and doujiang in-house, and it’s done so for \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">years\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, though it has stayed closed during the pandemic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897884\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897884\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A woman preps the you tiao, or fried crullers, in the kitchen at Chef Wu \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kuo’s mother preps the you tiao in the kitchen at Chef Wu. \u003ccite>(Peter Wu)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lih Chuen Kuo, who owns the restaurant along with husband Kun Dou Wu, comes from a doujiang dian family; her mother’s family ran a popular shop in Taipei’s Shilin district. When Chef Wu was located in Cupertino, from 1997 to 2010, the restaurant started serving breakfast on the weekends, and Kuo says it was very busy, with long lines, from the get-go. In fact, there used to be a running joke in the community: “If you live in Cupertino and never went to Huan Xi Lou (the restaurant’s Chinese name), can you really say that you live in the South Bay?” Kuo says in Mandarin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ever since the restaurant moved back to the East Bay in 2012, Chef Wu has served its full lineup of Taiwanese breakfast dishes all day long every day that it was open, Wednesday through Sunday—so, customers can score beef shaobing sandwiches, savory soy milk and even rarer offerings like sweet rice milk (mi jiang) five days a week. To Kuo’s knowledge, it’s the only local Taiwanese restaurant serving breakfast that often. And it’s almost certainly the only Bay Area restaurant that’s known \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">primarily\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for Taiwanese breakfast. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As such, Kuo says, she was used to having customers travel long distances to get their fix, driving down from Livermore or Sacramento. One customer would fly in from Texas every summer, buy 100 shaobing and freeze them to bring home. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897886\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897886\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1.jpg\" alt=\"Shaobing you tiao (fried cruller wrapped in sesame flat bread) on a white ceramic plate against a white background. \" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Wu’s shaobing youtiao. \u003ccite>(Chef Wu)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kuo and her husband closed the restaurant down last March at the start of the pandemic, and ever since then, Kuo has been peppered with questions from long-time customers asking when they’ll reopen. That’s no surprise, Kuo says, given that she went through the same thing during the two-year hiatus after she closed Chef Wu’s Cupertino location. Everywhere she went, it seemed—when visiting Reno, or at the airport in Taiwan—she would run into old customers. “Why don’t you hurry up and open?” they’d say. “We’ve missed it so much!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the many Taiwanese Americans who’ve been waiting for years for a reliable Taiwanese breakfast spot, as well as for those outside of the community who haven’t yet had the pleasure, there’s good news: According to Kuo, the restaurant will likely reopen in mid-June. You’ll find me there, at the front of the line, saying a little prayer of thanks that I don’t need to open my own restaurant just to eat the breakfast I’ve been craving for the past 30 years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 2283,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 27
},
"modified": 1705008310,
"excerpt": "Of all the meals that Taiwanese Americans miss most, a shaobing doujiang breakfast might top the list.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "Of all the meals that Taiwanese Americans miss most, a shaobing doujiang breakfast might top the list.",
"title": "Taiwanese Breakfast: One of the Bay Area’s Rarest, Most Coveted Meals | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Taiwanese Breakfast: One of the Bay Area’s Rarest, Most Coveted Meals",
"datePublished": "2021-05-27T09:00:41-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:25:10-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"templateType": "standard",
"featuredImageType": "standard",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"path": "/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897870\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897870\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of savory soy milk and a sesame flatbread wrapped around a fried cruller, both against a blue background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/TaiwanBreakfast_FinalInArticlePhoto-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photos courtesy of Chef Wu; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">O\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n a Sunday morning in late March, the line outside \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.taiwanbento.us/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwan Bento\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> snaked all the way around the corner on both sides of the downtown Oakland restaurant, down to Grand Avenue on one end and Webster Street on the other—an entire city block’s worth of customers, face masks on, small children and elderly in tow. They’d all made the pilgrimage to worship at the altar of this rarest and most coveted of Bay Area meals: Taiwanese breakfast.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It was one of the larger crowds I’d been a part of since the start of the pandemic. People kept pulling up to ask what the deal was, then driving off just as confused: “Taiwanese breakfast? What’s that?” After waiting as long as four hours, customers were rewarded for their patience. Taiwan Bento’s takeout box included the sticky rice roll known as fan tuan, which came stuffed with pork floss, a fried cruller (a.k.a. you tiao), preserved vegetables and a tea egg split in half. It included a couple of steamed pork buns. And, maybe most exciting, there was what the restaurant called a “scallion egg pancake,” cut into bite-size pieces—Taiwan Bento’s take on the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/2/19/22290174/taiwan-bento-dan-bing-scallion-egg-pancake-taiwanese-breakfast\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">savory rolled egg crepes known as dan bing\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897878\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1981px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897878\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg\" alt=\"A takeout box with sticky rice rolls, scallion egg pancake, and other Taiwanese breakfast items from Taiwan Bento.\" width=\"1981\" height=\"1321\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg 1981w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/004_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1981px) 100vw, 1981px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The takeout box for a subsequent Taiwan Bento breakfast pop-up, which also included a mochi muffin. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Owners Stacy Tang and Willy Wang say they were floored by the response, as the turnout “definitely surpassed our expectations,” Wang says. They point out that the event—the first of what they hope will be an ongoing breakfast pop-up series—was also a fundraiser to support the movement to Stop Asian Hate (and wound up \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/CM_qImUBSR8/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">raising $2,000 for the cause\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">), and so maybe that contributed to some of the buzz. Right now, Tang says, Taiwanese people living in America “want their comfort food, and they also want to support their community.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the truth is, the turnout was always going to be huge: Of all the foods that Taiwanese Americans miss the most, Taiwanese breakfast is probably right at the top of the list—all the more so because it’s practically nonexistent in the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I can speak personally to that sense of desperate craving. Many, many times I’ve told friends that if I were ever to do something as foolhardy as try to open my own restaurant, it would be a Taiwanese breakfast shop—never mind that I’ve never even attempted to make dan bing at home. After all, if I miss Taiwanese breakfast so much that I’m willing, at the first whisper of savory soy milk, to drive an hour for these dishes, how many other homesick Taiwanese Americans must feel the same way?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897877\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1900px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897877\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg\" alt=\"A customer leans in to peeks inside Taiwan Bento as she waits her turn during the restaurant's Taiwanese breakfast pop-up. \" width=\"1900\" height=\"1267\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg 1900w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1900px) 100vw, 1900px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A customer patiently waits her turn. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Is Taiwanese Breakfast, Exactly?\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The thing that many Taiwanese Americans miss the most is shaobing doujiang (燒餅豆漿), a meal genre centered on fresh soy milk, either sweet or savory, and the flaky sesame flatbreads known as shaobing, which are typically stuffed with fried crullers or scallion-laced eggs. Dan bing and fan tuan are also staples on this type of menu—mostly adaptations of dishes \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.myrecipes.com/extracrispy/taiwan-breakfast-baseball\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">brought over to Taiwan by transplants from northern China\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. (My standard order always included a dan bing stuffed \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">inside \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">of a shaobing.) \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When people wax nostalgic about “Taiwanese breakfast,” this is the style of meal they’re usually talking about. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Taipei, the best known and most ubiquitous doujiang dian, or “soy milk shop,” is Yonghe Doujiang, many of whose locations aren’t much more elaborate than a street stall. There were at least three outposts of the chain within a 10-minute walk of my grandma’s apartment in Taipei; one of them was open 24 hours, which meant it was often my first stop after I got off a late-night flight. The first bite into the shaobing’s crackly, sesame seed–coated exterior was the surest sign that I was really and truly home. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"tag": "eating-taiwanese",
"label": "Eating Taiwanese "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>After years of fruitless searching, I concluded that there isn’t really anything close to a Yonghe Doujiang equivalent in the Bay Area. You can find versions of shaobing, for instance, on the wheat-based menus of northern Chinese restaurants, but they’re rarely offered as a breakfast item—and even more rarely served with all of the other items you’d find at any basic street stall in Taipei. In most parts of the Bay, dan bing, fan tuan and savory soy milk—served hot in a bowl, lightly curdled with vinegar and streaked with chili oil—are even harder to come by.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> why the line at Taiwan Bento’s pop-up was four hours long—why there was so much palpable excitement for a three-item takeout box. (It didn’t hurt either that the fan tuan and dan bing were both truly excellent.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“People haven’t seen fan tuan for ages, and they’re also not able to travel back to Taiwan right now,” Tang says. “They’re so happy that they’re able to get the thing.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Uniquely Taiwanese Taste\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It makes sense, however, that if you broaden the definition of Taiwanese breakfast, you might have better luck finding it. After all, in Taiwan, as in the U.S., people eat all kinds of different things for breakfast. For instance, in a few weeks, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/cafemeiusa/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Cafe Mei\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a new restaurant in Fremont, will introduce Bay Area diners to another morning favorite: the Taiwanese breakfast burger. Sold at little short-order, Western-style breakfast stalls throughout Taiwan, these burgers feature a heavily marinated pork patty and a fried egg, and are garnished with slices of raw cucumber (instead of, say, lettuce) and a swipe of special mayonnaise. Up until now, I’d never seen them in the Bay.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897879\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897879\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A Taiwanese breakfast burger, with fried egg, tomato, and cucumber garnish visible, on top of a checker-patterned sheet of wax paper. \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/CafeMei_burger-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toppings for the Cafe Mei breakfast burger include tomato, fried egg, and thinly sliced cucumber. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Owner Kandy Wang says her first job as an 18-year-old kid in Taipei was at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.mam.com.tw/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mei Er Mei\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the most famous of Taiwan’s Western-style breakfast chains, known for its tidy ham-and-egg sandwiches as well as those breakfast burgers. Her family immigrated to the U.S. shortly after that, and in the decades since, Wang says, she kept trying to fill the Mei Er Mei void in her life to no avail. “You can only duplicate so much,” she says. “You just miss the taste of home.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, this past summer, Wang finally opened \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/cafemeiusa/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">her own spinoff of the chain\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—the first she’s aware of in the United States—initially just on a limited weekly pre-order basis, with the pandemic still raging. Located in a Fremont strip mall, the cafe isn’t officially connected to the Mei Er Mei in Taiwan, but Wang says she secured the official recipes for the chain’s burger patties and mayonnaise from one of its suppliers. (She’s also trademarked the name Mei Er Mei for use in the U.S.)\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897881\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897881\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Dan bing cut into bite-size pieces with a small container of soy sauce-based dipping sauce.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1440\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-2048x1152.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/cafe-mei_to-go-11-original-pancake-with-egg-9-1920x1080.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cafe Mei’s dan bing is also expected to be a top seller. \u003ccite>(Cafe Mei)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When Cafe Mei officially opens to the public, probably in mid-June, it’ll also serve dan bing—a thinner, more crepe-like version than Taiwan Bento’s—and assorted grab-and-go breakfast sandwiches. For many customers, however, those breakfast burgers will be the blast of nostalgia they won’t be able to resist. True to my memory of them from so many bleary-eyed mornings in Taipei, the patties are uncommonly juicy and flavorful, and the cool, crunchy cucumber slices make for a refreshing addition. They’re part of what makes the burgers taste so uniquely Taiwanese.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Bona Fide Doujiang Dian\u003c/span>\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s also not quite accurate to say that the much pined after doujiang dian format is entirely\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">non-existent in the Bay Area. A handful of restaurants in the South Bay and on the Peninsula, like Joy Restaurant in Foster City and China Bee in San Mateo, have long sold fresh soy milk and a handful of other breakfast specials on the weekend. The owners of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/yilanfoods/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yilan Foods\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, probably the most widely acclaimed of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13897272/bay-area-taiwanese-food-scene-nostalgia\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">new Taiwanese pop-ups\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, say they’re determined to eventually offer fan tuan, fried crullers and perhaps fresh, house-made soy milk when they open as a standalone restaurant, probably in San Francisco. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And Tang of Taiwan Bento plans to continue her restaurant’s occasional Taiwanese breakfast pop-ups, with the hope of eventually making the breakfast items a permanent addition to the menu. Already, the scallion egg pancakes are available all week long.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897880\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1981px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897880\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg\" alt=\"Stacy Tang (right), wearing a face mask, prepares scallion egg pancakes, or dan bing, during one of her restaurant's breakfast pop-ups.\" width=\"1981\" height=\"1321\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021.jpg 1981w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/015_KQEDArts_TaiwanBento_05082021-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1981px) 100vw, 1981px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stacy Tang prepares scallion egg pancake, or dan bing, during a recent breakfast pop-up. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even now, Tang says, it isn’t strictly accurate to say that there isn’t \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">anyone \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">selling shaobing and doujiang in the Bay Area; it’s just that all of that is happening in the more informal economy within the Taiwanese immigrant community—again, mostly in the South Bay and on the Peninsula. If you know where to look, you can find folks selling all of those dishes from their homes via WeChat and private, Chinese-language-only Facebook groups. “It’s not that accessible,” Tang says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s also one bona fide doujiang dian that’s largely eluded the attention of the shaobing- and fan tuan–loving masses, though it’s well known within the South Bay’s Taiwanese immigrant community. (I’d somehow never come across it in all my years of searching.) Open in Newark since 1996, with a decade-plus stint in Cupertino in between, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/chefwuchineserestaurant/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chef Wu\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> specializes in all of the Taiwanese breakfast dishes I’ve been craving: The restaurant makes its own shaobing, you tiao and doujiang in-house, and it’s done so for \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">years\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, though it has stayed closed during the pandemic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897884\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897884\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A woman preps the you tiao, or fried crullers, in the kitchen at Chef Wu \" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/ChefWu_youtiao-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Kuo’s mother preps the you tiao in the kitchen at Chef Wu. \u003ccite>(Peter Wu)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lih Chuen Kuo, who owns the restaurant along with husband Kun Dou Wu, comes from a doujiang dian family; her mother’s family ran a popular shop in Taipei’s Shilin district. When Chef Wu was located in Cupertino, from 1997 to 2010, the restaurant started serving breakfast on the weekends, and Kuo says it was very busy, with long lines, from the get-go. In fact, there used to be a running joke in the community: “If you live in Cupertino and never went to Huan Xi Lou (the restaurant’s Chinese name), can you really say that you live in the South Bay?” Kuo says in Mandarin.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ever since the restaurant moved back to the East Bay in 2012, Chef Wu has served its full lineup of Taiwanese breakfast dishes all day long every day that it was open, Wednesday through Sunday—so, customers can score beef shaobing sandwiches, savory soy milk and even rarer offerings like sweet rice milk (mi jiang) five days a week. To Kuo’s knowledge, it’s the only local Taiwanese restaurant serving breakfast that often. And it’s almost certainly the only Bay Area restaurant that’s known \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">primarily\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> for Taiwanese breakfast. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As such, Kuo says, she was used to having customers travel long distances to get their fix, driving down from Livermore or Sacramento. One customer would fly in from Texas every summer, buy 100 shaobing and freeze them to bring home. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897886\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897886\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1.jpg\" alt=\"Shaobing you tiao (fried cruller wrapped in sesame flat bread) on a white ceramic plate against a white background. \" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/IMG_1413-1-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Wu’s shaobing youtiao. \u003ccite>(Chef Wu)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kuo and her husband closed the restaurant down last March at the start of the pandemic, and ever since then, Kuo has been peppered with questions from long-time customers asking when they’ll reopen. That’s no surprise, Kuo says, given that she went through the same thing during the two-year hiatus after she closed Chef Wu’s Cupertino location. Everywhere she went, it seemed—when visiting Reno, or at the airport in Taiwan—she would run into old customers. “Why don’t you hurry up and open?” they’d say. “We’ve missed it so much!”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For the many Taiwanese Americans who’ve been waiting for years for a reliable Taiwanese breakfast spot, as well as for those outside of the community who haven’t yet had the pleasure, there’s good news: According to Kuo, the restaurant will likely reopen in mid-June. You’ll find me there, at the front of the line, saying a little prayer of thanks that I don’t need to open my own restaurant just to eat the breakfast I’ve been craving for the past 30 years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13897868/taiwanese-breakfast-bay-area",
"authors": [
"11743"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_14406",
"arts_14375",
"arts_10278",
"arts_1297",
"arts_11460",
"arts_14396"
],
"featImg": "arts_13897869",
"label": "source_arts_13897868"
},
"arts_13897830": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13897830",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897830",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1622044822000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1622044822,
"format": "aside",
"title": "Why Silicon Valley is Still the Heart of the Bay Area’s Taiwanese Restaurant Scene",
"headTitle": "Why Silicon Valley is Still the Heart of the Bay Area’s Taiwanese Restaurant Scene | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897834\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897834\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg\" alt=\"A pair of gua bao, or Taiwanese pork belly buns, on a white plate, against a stylized blue backdrop.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photo by Beth LaBerge; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]D[/dropcap]riving down Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino, it’s easier to find a boba drink than a Frappuccino. Hungry teenagers roam shopping centers looking for hot dogs wrapped in milk bread. And “bento,” more often than not, means a multi-compartmented Taiwanese feast of pork chop, rice, vegetables and braised egg. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not by chance that Silicon Valley became ground zero for the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food scene. Santa Clara County’s Taiwanese population is second in the U.S. only to Los Angeles County. Mom-and-pop Taiwanese eateries proliferated along with the rise of personal computers and the internet. Before long, Taiwanese Americans throughout Northern California knew that if they wanted a decent oyster omelet or beef noodle soup, chances were they’d have to trek out to a strip mall in Milpitas or Cupertino.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But just as new start-ups have forced the legacy tech companies to evolve, many of Silicon Valley’s most beloved Taiwanese restaurants now face a turning point as their founders age and the pandemic continues to hamstring their business. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Mama-Chens-Kitchen-292054490826/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mama Chen’s Kitchen\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is a sunny Cupertino restaurant known for its Taiwanese small bites, including gua bao and stinky tofu—foods best enjoyed fresh out of the steamer or wok and shared with friends. Like Apple’s new offices across the street, however, the dining room’s glossy tables mostly sat empty during a recent lunch hour. “You can imagine how many people work there, I think more than 20,000 people,” owner Bobby Chan says of his depleted customer base. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897843\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1805px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897843\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg\" alt=\"A plate of fried stinky tofu with a side of pickled cabbage on a white countertop.\" width=\"1805\" height=\"1203\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg 1805w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1805px) 100vw, 1805px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fried stinky tofu: a classic Taiwanese street food dish. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chan started the restaurant in 2012 with his mother-in-law, affectionately known in the Taiwanese American community as “Mama Chen.” These days, it’s one of the many Taiwanese spots across the Valley that are struggling to reinvent themselves during the pandemic. But there’s good news too. A second generation of Taiwanese American restaurant owners have taken the reins from their parents, using social media to sell traditional foods in ways no one could have imagined when they first opened their doors. Their restaurants’ continued success speaks to an underlying truth that hasn’t changed in 20 or 30 years: If you want to understand the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food community, you have to spend time in Silicon Valley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Taiwan’s Brain Drain and the Rise of High Tech\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I first moved to San Jose as a kid in the early 1980s. My family was part of a wave of Taiwanese Americans lured by growing companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Apple. Like many immigrants from Taiwan in the 1960s and ’70s, my parents came to the United States to pursue advanced degrees in science and engineering, part of the “brain drain” of the island’s most highly educated citizens who were newly eligible to go to America under the Immigration Act of 1965. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You had a larger number of immigrants that could come from China, from Taiwan,” explains Franklin Ng, professor of anthropology at Fresno State and author of \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Taiwanese Americans\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “A very, very fortuitously historic fact was that the United States was beginning to move into what you might call the computer age. And micro-conductors were very important at this time. And it just happened that UC Berkeley, Stanford, Stanford Industrial Park, Santa Clara, this area was important as a sort of petri dish for innovation.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But engineers weren’t necessarily good cooks. While there were restaurants serving American Chinese and Cantonese food, there weren’t many that could dish up the sweet and savory flavors, the oysters and squid, or the chewy rice and tapioca confections typical of my family’s Fujianese (or Hoklo) ancestors, who settled in Taiwan beginning in the 1600s. Nor was it easy to find the wheat-based noodles and pancakes popularized by the post-1949 transplants who arrived from China after the Chinese Civil War—the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://ketagalanmedia.com/2018/12/08/history-taiwanese-identity/?fbclid=IwAR0DS4diOwKtO0AC855hk5V0x4BwonqRnmrdNIUAH5e58QfAnWd1PLo92yw\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">self-described waishengren\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (literally, “people born outside the province” or “foreign-born people” in Mandarin).\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My parents drove us all over the Valley searching for the madeleines of their youth: stretchy oyster omelets drizzled with sweet red chili-miso sauce, squid soup zingy with black vinegar or the warm goodness of fresh-pressed soy milk. Eventually, we found these foods and more, ordering xiaolongbao off the menu at a lunch-special joint and slurping pork chop noodles in the back of an ice cream parlor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897840\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1702px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897840\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg\" alt=\"A Taiwanese oyster omelette on a square plate, on a white countertop.\" width=\"1702\" height=\"1135\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg 1702w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1702px) 100vw, 1702px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mama Chen’s elegant version of an oyster omelet, a popular Taiwanese street food. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Luckily, changes in U.S. immigration policies also allowed for family reunification, which proved to be a further boon for the burgeoning Taiwanese restaurant scene. Chin-Shin Yang, known by her married last name “Mama Chen,” was one of the many Taiwanese immigrants who arrived in the United States in the 1980s. At first, she started selling \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-09/savory-treat-dragon-boat-festival-and-aunties-who-make-them\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bah tsàng\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, homemade leaf-wrapped rice dumplings stuffed with pork and other goodies, directly to the Taiwanese American community. By 1997 she developed enough of a following that she and her son-in-law opened their first restaurant in Milpitas, named Southland (“Tainan” in Chinese) after her hometown in Southern Taiwan. A year later, they opened another outpost in the Cupertino Village shopping center, anchored by a Ranch 99 supermarket. Those restaurants have since closed or been sold, but Mama Chen became well known in the community, often donating meals for church events or the annual Taiwanese American Cultural Festival. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897839\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1762px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897839\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg\" alt=\"Taiwanese bah tsang (or leaf-wrapped rice dumpling) in a white bowl on a white countertop.\" width=\"1762\" height=\"1175\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg 1762w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1762px) 100vw, 1762px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mama Chen started off just selling bah tsang within the local Taiwanese community. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2012, Chen and her son-in-law opened Mama Chen’s Kitchen at its current location on Stevens Creek Boulevard. Sitting down to a meal there reminds me of the area’s earliest Taiwanese restaurants—tidy family businesses that served small plates to be shared. After Chen herself passed away several years ago, Chan, her son-in-law, has continued to run the restaurant. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of Silicon Valley’s oldest Taiwanese restaurants opened in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In addition to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.southlandcafe.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Southland Cafe\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in Cupertino, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.queenhouserestaurant.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Queen House\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> opened on Castro Street in Mountain View and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.taiwancafe.me/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwan Cafe\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> set up shop in Milpitas. In 2000, I came back to my hometown after being away for most of the 1990s for college and work, and the changes were unmistakable. Computer chip manufacturers were moving overseas, and internet start-ups employed a steady stream of new immigrants from places like Taiwan. Boba shops had sprung up, selling deep-fried fish balls and five spice–scented popcorn chicken to go along with sweet milk teas, all to a Mandopop soundtrack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the Valley today, you can eat Taiwanese food from dawn until dusk, beginning with a bowl of sweet potato congee at Taiwan Porridge Kingdom and moving on to Southland’s savory rice pudding steamed in a bowl. You can snack on pillowy baked buns stuffed with taro or pork floss at one of the local bakeries and then finish the day with an icy lager and three-cup squid at a beer house like Red Hot Wok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside tag='eating-taiwanese' label='Eating Taiwanese']Many of the Taiwanese restaurants which have risen to national prominence in recent years (Baohaus and Win Son in New York, Pine & Crane in Los Angeles) feature mostly “waisheng” menus. These dishes—like rich beef noodle soup and brothy xiaolongbao—often reflect the cattle and wheat of northern China. But Taiwan’s food is as complex and multilayered as its identity. Silicon Valley’s Taiwanese restaurants go beyond the most widely known corners of the cuisine, often emphasizing the foodways of the Hoklo, who make up an estimated 70% of the island’s population. The impact of 50 years of Japanese colonization is also writ large in the current proliferation of bentos, super-sized versions of the pork chop and rice \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://topics.amcham.com.tw/2019/01/the-biandang-from-japanese-days-to-the-present/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">lunch boxes sold on Taiwan’s railways\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Another popular dish, Chiayi chicken rice, reflects the legacy of U.S. military presence in Taiwan, spurring locals to create a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.chiayi.gov.tw/en/cp.aspx?n=530\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">meal using surplus poultry\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. It’s still hard, however, to find the flavors of the island’s numerous indigenous tribes, though a charming restaurant called Cambowan in San Mateo used to serve black rice steamed in bamboo before it closed its doors for good during the pandemic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most beloved niche restaurants is less than three miles from Cisco headquarters. Stepping through the doors of Taiwan Cafe, with its brick walls and vintage neon signs, is like entering a village in the island’s rural south. “We like that country flavor, xiāng xià de wèi dào,” says owner Sue Chang, whose mother Lin Lan Chih opened the cafe in 2006. Some menu items are very specific to the family’s Hakka heritage. This Chinese minority group has been in Taiwan for hundreds of years; their culinary traditions, such as preserved daikon and bamboo shoots, often reflect scarcity and agricultural work. Taiwan Cafe’s specialty is Wan Luan pork, a mahogany braised hock served on a bed of tangy bamboo shoots, named after Chih’s hometown in tropical Pingtung County. Although Chang came to America at age ten, she speaks fondly and at length about traditional Hakka foods, including thick handmade ban tiao rice noodles and pork intestines stir-fried with ginger and vinegar. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Can Tech Save Taiwanese Restaurants? Third Generation and Beyond\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of these legacy Taiwanese restaurants were already in the midst of handing over the reins to the next generation when the pandemic sped up that process. The need to develop new revenue streams, such as deliveries or selling groceries, requires tech skills that the aging founders might not have. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On a recent Saturday morning, a steady stream of customers arrived at Taiwan Cafe to pick up to-go orders which can be ordered once a week. These dishes include ready-to-eat bentos of sliced Wan Luan pork fanned over a bed of white rice topped with bamboo shoots in minced pork sauce, Hakka Delight featuring pressed tofu and pork strips stir-fried with celery and leeks, and Hoklo classics such as oyster omelet. Since March 2020, the nostalgic dining room has been closed, and it’s now filled with three industrial freezers holding vacuum-packed pork hocks, translucent pork-stuffed bah ûan and five-spice rolls waiting to be deep-fried. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These days, the restaurant is mostly focused on selling frozen specialties, which can be picked up locally or shipped to destinations as far-flung as Minnesota and New Jersey. Three generations are now in the business: Chang’s 23-year old daughter Stephanie Tseng handles the online orders and the Facebook page while her mother and brother run Cafe Taiwan in Pleasanton.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even more dramatic are the changes that have taken place at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://liangsvillage.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Liang’s Village\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in Cupertino, best known for its beef noodle soup. The family business was first started in 1981 in the San Gabriel Valley as Mama’s Kitchen, a cafeteria featuring braised meats and tofu. The Cupertino outpost was opened by the original Mama Liang’s grandson Austin in 2010, after graduating from U.C. Berkeley. Today, Austin and his siblings Jessica and Erica run the company. In 2018, they raised $26,500 on Kickstarter to start a line of frozen foods inspired by the dishes their father sent with them to college. “Our dad had a restaurant, so we always took sauces home and froze it at school,” says Erica Liang. “Then you boil some noodles and pop it in, and it was just like the best home cooked meal.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897841\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897841\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A spread of takeout dishes from Liang's Village in white takeout cartons.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A spread of takeout dishes from Liang’s Village. \u003ccite>(Grace Hwang Lynch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the beginning of the pandemic, they sold only two items: beef noodle soup and red oil wontons. Now, the newly minted \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.mamaliangs.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mama Liang’s\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> brand has a sleek, English-language website selling 19 products. Customers can get frozen meals like minced pork sauce, stewed pig’s feet and caramelized scallion noodles shipped nationwide. They’ve even dabbled in cooking videos: Earlier in May, Jessica did a demonstration of their beef noodle kit for this year’s online version of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tafestival.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwanese American Cultural Festival\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which is normally held in San Francisco’s Union Square. Meanwhile, the dining room remains closed, and Mama Liang’s grandchildren don’t know exactly what the future holds. “It’s a little bit hard to kind of decide on which way we’re going,” says Jessica Liang, who is waiting to see if conditions are ripe to allow restaurants to fully open this summer. “It’s really hard to justify opening a restaurant if it’s not 100% capacity.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meanwhile, just a few blocks down Stevens Creek Boulevard, Bobby Chan is holding out hope of filling Mama Chen’s dining room soon. “People love to dine in instead of to-go,” he says. And he has a point. Takeout bentos and meal kits, like Zoom and FaceTime, have helped many people get through this year. But there’s something inherently un-Taiwanese about eating alone in front of a screen. Taiwanese people love to eat together. The sensory experience of trying restaurants with friends, or strolling through a crowded night market together, is as much part of the culture as the food itself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And while it’s hard to know when these restaurants will return to some sense of normalcy, or how much more this next generation of small business owners will shake up the status quo, one thing’s for certain: Taiwanese restaurants in Silicon Valley are here to stay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Grace Hwang Lynch is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist and essayist, with an eye for Asian American culture and food. Her work can be found at PRI, NPR, Tin House and Catapult. She’s at work on a memoir about Taiwanese food and family. Follow her on Twitter \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/GraceHwangLynch\">@GraceHwangLynch\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 2479,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 26
},
"modified": 1705008315,
"excerpt": "Taiwanese restaurants proliferated along with the rise of personal computers and the internet. And they're still innovating today.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "Taiwanese restaurants proliferated along with the rise of personal computers and the internet. And they're still innovating today.",
"title": "Why Silicon Valley is Still the Heart of the Bay Area’s Taiwanese Restaurant Scene | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Why Silicon Valley is Still the Heart of the Bay Area’s Taiwanese Restaurant Scene",
"datePublished": "2021-05-26T09:00:22-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:25:15-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "taiwanese-restaurants-silicon-valley-cupertino-tech",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"templateType": "standard",
"featuredImageType": "standard",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"path": "/arts/13897830/taiwanese-restaurants-silicon-valley-cupertino-tech",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897834\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897834\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg\" alt=\"A pair of gua bao, or Taiwanese pork belly buns, on a white plate, against a stylized blue backdrop.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/SVTaiwanese_FinalInArticlePhoto-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photo by Beth LaBerge; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">D\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>riving down Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino, it’s easier to find a boba drink than a Frappuccino. Hungry teenagers roam shopping centers looking for hot dogs wrapped in milk bread. And “bento,” more often than not, means a multi-compartmented Taiwanese feast of pork chop, rice, vegetables and braised egg. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s not by chance that Silicon Valley became ground zero for the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food scene. Santa Clara County’s Taiwanese population is second in the U.S. only to Los Angeles County. Mom-and-pop Taiwanese eateries proliferated along with the rise of personal computers and the internet. Before long, Taiwanese Americans throughout Northern California knew that if they wanted a decent oyster omelet or beef noodle soup, chances were they’d have to trek out to a strip mall in Milpitas or Cupertino.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But just as new start-ups have forced the legacy tech companies to evolve, many of Silicon Valley’s most beloved Taiwanese restaurants now face a turning point as their founders age and the pandemic continues to hamstring their business. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Mama-Chens-Kitchen-292054490826/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mama Chen’s Kitchen\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is a sunny Cupertino restaurant known for its Taiwanese small bites, including gua bao and stinky tofu—foods best enjoyed fresh out of the steamer or wok and shared with friends. Like Apple’s new offices across the street, however, the dining room’s glossy tables mostly sat empty during a recent lunch hour. “You can imagine how many people work there, I think more than 20,000 people,” owner Bobby Chan says of his depleted customer base. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897843\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1805px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897843\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg\" alt=\"A plate of fried stinky tofu with a side of pickled cabbage on a white countertop.\" width=\"1805\" height=\"1203\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg 1805w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/025_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1805px) 100vw, 1805px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fried stinky tofu: a classic Taiwanese street food dish. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chan started the restaurant in 2012 with his mother-in-law, affectionately known in the Taiwanese American community as “Mama Chen.” These days, it’s one of the many Taiwanese spots across the Valley that are struggling to reinvent themselves during the pandemic. But there’s good news too. A second generation of Taiwanese American restaurant owners have taken the reins from their parents, using social media to sell traditional foods in ways no one could have imagined when they first opened their doors. Their restaurants’ continued success speaks to an underlying truth that hasn’t changed in 20 or 30 years: If you want to understand the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food community, you have to spend time in Silicon Valley.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Taiwan’s Brain Drain and the Rise of High Tech\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I first moved to San Jose as a kid in the early 1980s. My family was part of a wave of Taiwanese Americans lured by growing companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Apple. Like many immigrants from Taiwan in the 1960s and ’70s, my parents came to the United States to pursue advanced degrees in science and engineering, part of the “brain drain” of the island’s most highly educated citizens who were newly eligible to go to America under the Immigration Act of 1965. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“You had a larger number of immigrants that could come from China, from Taiwan,” explains Franklin Ng, professor of anthropology at Fresno State and author of \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Taiwanese Americans\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. “A very, very fortuitously historic fact was that the United States was beginning to move into what you might call the computer age. And micro-conductors were very important at this time. And it just happened that UC Berkeley, Stanford, Stanford Industrial Park, Santa Clara, this area was important as a sort of petri dish for innovation.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But engineers weren’t necessarily good cooks. While there were restaurants serving American Chinese and Cantonese food, there weren’t many that could dish up the sweet and savory flavors, the oysters and squid, or the chewy rice and tapioca confections typical of my family’s Fujianese (or Hoklo) ancestors, who settled in Taiwan beginning in the 1600s. Nor was it easy to find the wheat-based noodles and pancakes popularized by the post-1949 transplants who arrived from China after the Chinese Civil War—the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://ketagalanmedia.com/2018/12/08/history-taiwanese-identity/?fbclid=IwAR0DS4diOwKtO0AC855hk5V0x4BwonqRnmrdNIUAH5e58QfAnWd1PLo92yw\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">self-described waishengren\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (literally, “people born outside the province” or “foreign-born people” in Mandarin).\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My parents drove us all over the Valley searching for the madeleines of their youth: stretchy oyster omelets drizzled with sweet red chili-miso sauce, squid soup zingy with black vinegar or the warm goodness of fresh-pressed soy milk. Eventually, we found these foods and more, ordering xiaolongbao off the menu at a lunch-special joint and slurping pork chop noodles in the back of an ice cream parlor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897840\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1702px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897840\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg\" alt=\"A Taiwanese oyster omelette on a square plate, on a white countertop.\" width=\"1702\" height=\"1135\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg 1702w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/001_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1702px) 100vw, 1702px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mama Chen’s elegant version of an oyster omelet, a popular Taiwanese street food. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Luckily, changes in U.S. immigration policies also allowed for family reunification, which proved to be a further boon for the burgeoning Taiwanese restaurant scene. Chin-Shin Yang, known by her married last name “Mama Chen,” was one of the many Taiwanese immigrants who arrived in the United States in the 1980s. At first, she started selling \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-09/savory-treat-dragon-boat-festival-and-aunties-who-make-them\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">bah tsàng\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, homemade leaf-wrapped rice dumplings stuffed with pork and other goodies, directly to the Taiwanese American community. By 1997 she developed enough of a following that she and her son-in-law opened their first restaurant in Milpitas, named Southland (“Tainan” in Chinese) after her hometown in Southern Taiwan. A year later, they opened another outpost in the Cupertino Village shopping center, anchored by a Ranch 99 supermarket. Those restaurants have since closed or been sold, but Mama Chen became well known in the community, often donating meals for church events or the annual Taiwanese American Cultural Festival. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897839\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1762px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897839\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg\" alt=\"Taiwanese bah tsang (or leaf-wrapped rice dumpling) in a white bowl on a white countertop.\" width=\"1762\" height=\"1175\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021.jpg 1762w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/006_Cupertino_MamaChensKitchen_05172021-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1762px) 100vw, 1762px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mama Chen started off just selling bah tsang within the local Taiwanese community. \u003ccite>(Beth LaBerge)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In 2012, Chen and her son-in-law opened Mama Chen’s Kitchen at its current location on Stevens Creek Boulevard. Sitting down to a meal there reminds me of the area’s earliest Taiwanese restaurants—tidy family businesses that served small plates to be shared. After Chen herself passed away several years ago, Chan, her son-in-law, has continued to run the restaurant. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of Silicon Valley’s oldest Taiwanese restaurants opened in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In addition to \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.southlandcafe.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Southland Cafe\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in Cupertino, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.queenhouserestaurant.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Queen House\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> opened on Castro Street in Mountain View and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.taiwancafe.me/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwan Cafe\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> set up shop in Milpitas. In 2000, I came back to my hometown after being away for most of the 1990s for college and work, and the changes were unmistakable. Computer chip manufacturers were moving overseas, and internet start-ups employed a steady stream of new immigrants from places like Taiwan. Boba shops had sprung up, selling deep-fried fish balls and five spice–scented popcorn chicken to go along with sweet milk teas, all to a Mandopop soundtrack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the Valley today, you can eat Taiwanese food from dawn until dusk, beginning with a bowl of sweet potato congee at Taiwan Porridge Kingdom and moving on to Southland’s savory rice pudding steamed in a bowl. You can snack on pillowy baked buns stuffed with taro or pork floss at one of the local bakeries and then finish the day with an icy lager and three-cup squid at a beer house like Red Hot Wok. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"tag": "eating-taiwanese",
"label": "Eating Taiwanese "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Many of the Taiwanese restaurants which have risen to national prominence in recent years (Baohaus and Win Son in New York, Pine & Crane in Los Angeles) feature mostly “waisheng” menus. These dishes—like rich beef noodle soup and brothy xiaolongbao—often reflect the cattle and wheat of northern China. But Taiwan’s food is as complex and multilayered as its identity. Silicon Valley’s Taiwanese restaurants go beyond the most widely known corners of the cuisine, often emphasizing the foodways of the Hoklo, who make up an estimated 70% of the island’s population. The impact of 50 years of Japanese colonization is also writ large in the current proliferation of bentos, super-sized versions of the pork chop and rice \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://topics.amcham.com.tw/2019/01/the-biandang-from-japanese-days-to-the-present/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">lunch boxes sold on Taiwan’s railways\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Another popular dish, Chiayi chicken rice, reflects the legacy of U.S. military presence in Taiwan, spurring locals to create a \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.chiayi.gov.tw/en/cp.aspx?n=530\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">meal using surplus poultry\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. It’s still hard, however, to find the flavors of the island’s numerous indigenous tribes, though a charming restaurant called Cambowan in San Mateo used to serve black rice steamed in bamboo before it closed its doors for good during the pandemic.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most beloved niche restaurants is less than three miles from Cisco headquarters. Stepping through the doors of Taiwan Cafe, with its brick walls and vintage neon signs, is like entering a village in the island’s rural south. “We like that country flavor, xiāng xià de wèi dào,” says owner Sue Chang, whose mother Lin Lan Chih opened the cafe in 2006. Some menu items are very specific to the family’s Hakka heritage. This Chinese minority group has been in Taiwan for hundreds of years; their culinary traditions, such as preserved daikon and bamboo shoots, often reflect scarcity and agricultural work. Taiwan Cafe’s specialty is Wan Luan pork, a mahogany braised hock served on a bed of tangy bamboo shoots, named after Chih’s hometown in tropical Pingtung County. Although Chang came to America at age ten, she speaks fondly and at length about traditional Hakka foods, including thick handmade ban tiao rice noodles and pork intestines stir-fried with ginger and vinegar. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Can Tech Save Taiwanese Restaurants? Third Generation and Beyond\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of these legacy Taiwanese restaurants were already in the midst of handing over the reins to the next generation when the pandemic sped up that process. The need to develop new revenue streams, such as deliveries or selling groceries, requires tech skills that the aging founders might not have. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On a recent Saturday morning, a steady stream of customers arrived at Taiwan Cafe to pick up to-go orders which can be ordered once a week. These dishes include ready-to-eat bentos of sliced Wan Luan pork fanned over a bed of white rice topped with bamboo shoots in minced pork sauce, Hakka Delight featuring pressed tofu and pork strips stir-fried with celery and leeks, and Hoklo classics such as oyster omelet. Since March 2020, the nostalgic dining room has been closed, and it’s now filled with three industrial freezers holding vacuum-packed pork hocks, translucent pork-stuffed bah ûan and five-spice rolls waiting to be deep-fried. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These days, the restaurant is mostly focused on selling frozen specialties, which can be picked up locally or shipped to destinations as far-flung as Minnesota and New Jersey. Three generations are now in the business: Chang’s 23-year old daughter Stephanie Tseng handles the online orders and the Facebook page while her mother and brother run Cafe Taiwan in Pleasanton.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even more dramatic are the changes that have taken place at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://liangsvillage.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Liang’s Village\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> in Cupertino, best known for its beef noodle soup. The family business was first started in 1981 in the San Gabriel Valley as Mama’s Kitchen, a cafeteria featuring braised meats and tofu. The Cupertino outpost was opened by the original Mama Liang’s grandson Austin in 2010, after graduating from U.C. Berkeley. Today, Austin and his siblings Jessica and Erica run the company. In 2018, they raised $26,500 on Kickstarter to start a line of frozen foods inspired by the dishes their father sent with them to college. “Our dad had a restaurant, so we always took sauces home and froze it at school,” says Erica Liang. “Then you boil some noodles and pop it in, and it was just like the best home cooked meal.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897841\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897841\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A spread of takeout dishes from Liang's Village in white takeout cartons.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-768x576.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-2048x1536.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTakeout_GHL-1920x1440.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A spread of takeout dishes from Liang’s Village. \u003ccite>(Grace Hwang Lynch)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the beginning of the pandemic, they sold only two items: beef noodle soup and red oil wontons. Now, the newly minted \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.mamaliangs.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mama Liang’s\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> brand has a sleek, English-language website selling 19 products. Customers can get frozen meals like minced pork sauce, stewed pig’s feet and caramelized scallion noodles shipped nationwide. They’ve even dabbled in cooking videos: Earlier in May, Jessica did a demonstration of their beef noodle kit for this year’s online version of the \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tafestival.org/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwanese American Cultural Festival\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which is normally held in San Francisco’s Union Square. Meanwhile, the dining room remains closed, and Mama Liang’s grandchildren don’t know exactly what the future holds. “It’s a little bit hard to kind of decide on which way we’re going,” says Jessica Liang, who is waiting to see if conditions are ripe to allow restaurants to fully open this summer. “It’s really hard to justify opening a restaurant if it’s not 100% capacity.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Meanwhile, just a few blocks down Stevens Creek Boulevard, Bobby Chan is holding out hope of filling Mama Chen’s dining room soon. “People love to dine in instead of to-go,” he says. And he has a point. Takeout bentos and meal kits, like Zoom and FaceTime, have helped many people get through this year. But there’s something inherently un-Taiwanese about eating alone in front of a screen. Taiwanese people love to eat together. The sensory experience of trying restaurants with friends, or strolling through a crowded night market together, is as much part of the culture as the food itself.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And while it’s hard to know when these restaurants will return to some sense of normalcy, or how much more this next generation of small business owners will shake up the status quo, one thing’s for certain: Taiwanese restaurants in Silicon Valley are here to stay. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Grace Hwang Lynch is a San Francisco Bay Area journalist and essayist, with an eye for Asian American culture and food. Her work can be found at PRI, NPR, Tin House and Catapult. She’s at work on a memoir about Taiwanese food and family. Follow her on Twitter \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/GraceHwangLynch\">@GraceHwangLynch\u003c/a>.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13897830/taiwanese-restaurants-silicon-valley-cupertino-tech",
"authors": [
"11713"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_6902",
"arts_14406",
"arts_14375",
"arts_10278",
"arts_3001",
"arts_11460",
"arts_14396"
],
"featImg": "arts_13897833",
"label": "source_arts_13897830"
},
"arts_13897752": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13897752",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897752",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1621958445000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1621958445,
"format": "aside",
"title": "Growing Asian Produce Helped This Sonoma Farmer Connect With Her Taiwanese Heritage",
"headTitle": "Growing Asian Produce Helped This Sonoma Farmer Connect With Her Taiwanese Heritage | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897763\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897763\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle.jpg\" alt=\"Leslie Wiser pushes a plow in a field; the backdrop of the field is shaded blue.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photo by Sarah Deragon; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]A[/dropcap]cross from a few sheep bleating and baaing behind a fence, rainbow pride and Black Lives Matter flags softly wave in the wind. A “Stop Asian Hate” poster is propped against a wall. Around the corner, the property opens up to a 1.5-acre farm filled with trellises of bitter melon, rows of napa cabbage, and hoophouses holding dozens of other Asian herbs and vegetables. All signs, perhaps, that this is a farm with a strong sense of its own identity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when Leslie Wiser founded Sebastopol’s Radical Family Farms in 2018, she didn’t necessarily feel very connected to her Taiwanese and Chinese heritage. Over the course of the past three years, however, she has become one of the go-to local farmers for Asian produce—and she’s learned a lot about her roots in the process. Wiser runs the farm, and her partner, Sarah Deragon, grows flowers there. It is, as Wiser describes it, a chemical-free, low-till small farm specializing in Asian heritage vegetables and herbs. Wiser says her Chinese-Taiwanese background informs her choices, and in turn, she is also giving back to the culture here in the Bay Area through farming, food and education.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The farm has been great in terms of personal exploration of this side of me that I didn’t know about,” Wiser, who is in her early 40s, says. Her mom grew up in Taiwan as part of the generation of people who left mainland China during the Communist war (a group known, collectively, as “waishengren” or the “1949’ers”); her father’s side of the family is German and Polish-Jewish.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Growing up in the Midwest—in Chicago, Cleveland, Minnesota and Indiana—Wiser says she never celebrated Chinese or Taiwanese holidays such as Lunar New Year. Her family did hold on to a few aspects of Taiwanese culture, including ordering a thousand copies of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/11/17/21570459/radical-family-farms-fu-pei-mei-chinese-cookbook-taiwan-cook-off\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fu Pei Mei’s popular cookbook from Taiwan in the early ’80s\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and her mom sometimes cooked Chinese dishes. By and large, though, Wiser didn’t have much contact with the Chinese and Taiwanese sides of her identity in her day-to-day life. Before growing them herself, she had never even tried some of the vegetables on the farm, such as bitter melon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“[The farm is]…a way for me and my kids to hold on to our Asian heritage that has, for the most part, been assimilated,” notes Wiser, whose children have Chinese, Korean, Scandanavian, German and Polish-Jewish ancestry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As for the “radical” in the farm’s name, Wiser says that’s a nod to her family story: Her parents married shortly after the Loving Act of 1967, during a time when interracial marriages in the Midwest were not the norm. Wiser, who is queer, is mixed race, as are her children, and the farm takes an intersectional stance on social justice issues—hence all of the flags waving proudly out front.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897804\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1613px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897804\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen.jpg\" alt=\"A family portrait of Leslie Wiser, her wife Sarah Deragon and their two children, standing in front of the lush green backdrop of their farm.\" width=\"1613\" height=\"1075\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen.jpg 1613w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1613px) 100vw, 1613px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wiser (back right) started Radical Family Farms in part because she wanted to give her kids the experience of growing up on a farm. \u003ccite>(Paige Green)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">None of Wiser’s family members in Taiwan have been farmers, but there is a rich history of agriculture in Taiwan, from its tea farms to its lush fields of sweet potatoes, pineapples and rice. Her own path to farming was somewhat circuitous: The summer after her sophomore year in college, after taking a class on food and farming, Wiser worked on a farm in Alaska for one season, staying with a family with young children who also helped out on the farm. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Though Wiser enjoyed the experience, she never envisioned that she would pursue farming as a career. “I never thought I could…have the land access,” she says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead, she finished college, then graduate school, and started working in digital media, marketing, animation and project management. After having children, though, she started to dream of raising her kids on a farm the way she’d seen that family in Alaska do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It took years of thinking about it and wanting to do it,” Wiser says. She looked for land in the Midwest, but eventually moved to Sonoma, completing a master gardeners program there, and eventually found the three-acre farm in Sebastopol.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the Bay Area, more small-scale, Asian American-run farms specializing in Asian vegetables have cropped up in recent years: Namu Farm led by Kristyn Leach in Winters, CA; Shao Shan Farm in Bolinas; and Mai Nguyen in Sonoma, who also founded the Asian American Farmers Alliance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wiser’s farm grows as many as 50 different crop varieties on the 1.5 acres that she currently uses: Japanese eggplants, Thai and Italian basil, si gua (aka sponge gourd or loofah), rau ram (Vietnamese coriander), kabocha squash, bitter melon, winter melon, sweet corn, Chinese broccoli, perilla leaves—and a lot more. Wiser is even experimenting with planting things that likely have never been farmed commercially in the Bay Area—red quinoa, a grain eaten by indigenous Taiwanese people, for instance. Most of the seeds are from Oakland-based Kitazawa Seed Company, which was started more than 100 years ago by a Japanese American man named Gijiu Kitazawa and specializes in Asian vegetable seeds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The farm reminds me of my wai po’s—my maternal grandmother’s—backyard trees in Southern California, as well as my parents’ backyard, where they planted Asian fruits and vegetables that were hard to find in markets here in the United States. For immigrants from Taiwan, these fruits—persimmons, guavas, longans and Taiwanese mountain apples shaped like bells—are reminders of home.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Radical Family Farms isn’t \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">just \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a tribute to the farmer’s family ancestry—it’s also a business. It mostly operates under a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model during its May-through-November growing season. The every-other-week \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.radicalfamilyfarms.com/farmstore\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CSA produce and herb box\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is delivered throughout the Bay Area, with pickup points at many popular, Asian American–run restaurants. (There’s currently a waiting list to join.) Wiser’s partner, Sarah Deragon, manages a flower CSA box, which can be delivered together or separately with the produce.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Harvesting began this month, and Wiser and her small staff are busy checking on the seedlings, chasing away gophers and admiring some of the produce that’s already flourishing. In a matter of a few days, the gophers have eaten more than a dozen cabbage heads. “You can do your best to plan ahead but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way,” she says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897806\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897806\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Two hands cupped together holding a large quantity of tiny quinoa seeds.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quinoa seeds from Taiwan are among the Asian varietals grown on the farm. \u003ccite>(Momo Chang)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n many ways, Radical Family Farms’ exploration of Taiwanese identity has extended far beyond the borders of the farm itself. While the farm is only starting its third season, Wiser has already established working relationships with a number of Taiwanese and other Asian American restaurants in the Bay Area such as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.liondancecafe.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lion Dance Cafe\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.taiwanbento.us/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwan Bento\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.goodtoeatdumplings.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good-to-Eat Dumplings\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which all source from the farm and have become collaborators of sorts. (They are also CSA pickup points.) \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oakland’s Good-to-Eat Dumplings specializes in handmade Taiwanese potstickers. Co-founded by Tony Tung and Angie Lin, the restaurant, based at Original Pattern Brewing in Oakland’s Jack London neighborhood, had been looking for locally grown, Asian produce to use for their Taiwanese-style pan-fried dumplings and gua bao. Instead of buying packaged fermented mustard greens, which are readily available at most Chinese markets, Good-to-Eat Dumplings ferments their own version using mustard greens grown on Radical Family Farms. The fermented greens are used in their pork belly gua bao, “one of the most famous Taiwanese street food staples,” Lin notes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside tag='eating-taiwanese' label='Eating Taiwanese']Starting this year, the farm will sun-dry the mustard greens for the restaurant on new drying racks, an idea inspired by a Radical Family Farms CSA member, Henry Hsu.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Through the partnership with Leslie, we learned a lot too,” Lin, an immigrant from Taiwan, says about figuring out which Taiwanese fruits and vegetables can grow in the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Christopher Yang, whose parents were born in Taiwan, began sourcing produce from the farm for his two Taiwanese-inspired pop-ups, Hén-zhi and El Chino Grande, in 2019. Yang turns the farm’s wax gourd, or winter melon, into a syrup by cooking it with sugar, then strains it into black tea. Or he’ll braise the winter melon with smoked shoyu dashi broth, serving it with a shrimp coconut leche de tigre. The relationship between restaurant and farm is “symbiotic,” Yang says. “I love to develop menu items with products [Leslie] is excited about.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even the farm’s CSA members get more than just a box of produce; they, too, have an opportunity to learn more about Taiwanese food culture. And here’s where the farm really puts “radical” front and center—where farming and activism intersect. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Two years ago, for instance, members gathered for a reading of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://gracelin.com/the-ugly-vegetables/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ugly Vegetables\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a children’s book by Grace Lin. The family-friendly event started with a land acknowledgment by Christine Su, a CSA member and one of the farm’s first customers, honoring the coastal Miwok and Pomo people, who still live in the area. “We are grateful to be settlers on this land, and also are responsible for stewarding it carefully while sharing our own cultural traditions,” Su told the audience. The book reading was bilingual in Mandarin—by Su, whose family is from Taiwan—and in English, by Adrian Chang of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mykitsunecafe/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My Kitsune Cafe\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. After the reading, children had the opportunity to look at and eat some of the vegetables from the book. Many of the plants were labeled, so that kids could see how a bitter melon, for instance, grows on the vine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For many Asian Americans at the event, this celebration of vegetables not found in many Western grocery stores felt incredibly moving. “I never imagined sitting on a haystack, reading to kids in Mandarin about our vegetables, and then touring the same veggies like bitter melon and A-choy growing a few feet away, with the same kind of reverence I feel like is often reserved for heirloom tomatoes in the Bay,” Su says. “I really wish that I had had that growing up here in America.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of the CSA members, 70% of whom Wiser estimates to be Asian American, have become friends and co-conspirators. “We all want to learn more about our own Asian American culture and heritage,” Wiser says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is a lot to learn. Not everyone knows how to cook a winter melon, after all. One CSA member, Linda Tay Esposito, a food business consultant and a cooking instructor, has created a monthly itinerary based on the seasonal produce that comes in the boxes, including a Zoom cooking class that started this month. “The CSA is a community; we’re all tied together through food,” says Esposito, who was previously the director of La Cocina’s Municipal Marketplace in SF’s Tenderloin district. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, the names of the vegetables in each box were written on beautiful hand-lettered cards created by artist Jess Wu, which were made available to CSA members on the farm’s website. The cards were written in pinyin, bopomofo (the phonetic alphabet used in Taiwan) and Chinese characters, and some were also translated into Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese. CSA members also get access to a website full of recipes, many of them submitted by fellow customers, such as Chinese sweet and spicy pickles and winter melon soup.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897807\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2153px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897807\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"The vegetables from a CSA produce box, including long beans, okra and several varieties of eggplant, arranged artfully on a white wooden board.\" width=\"2153\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-scaled.jpg 2153w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-800x951.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-1020x1213.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-160x190.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-768x913.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-1292x1536.jpg 1292w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-1723x2048.jpg 1723w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-1920x2282.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2153px) 100vw, 2153px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The produce from one of last year’s CSA boxes, each vegetable labeled with its Chinese name. \u003ccite>(Sarah Deragon)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While most of the farm’s focus is on the family’s Asian roots, Wiser is also exploring her father’s ancestry. She lived for some time with her paternal grandparents in Indianapolis, Indiana. She saw how her grandmother, an immigrant of German and Polish-Jewish ancestry, yearned for her own homeland—the way she shopped for vegetables, baked goods and pantry items that were tied to her culture. “I learned sourcing from my grandmother,” Wiser notes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last season, Wiser began planting varieties of gooseberries, currants and kohlrabi in honor of her grandmother, who passed away in October before she could taste the fruits of her granddaughter’s labor. When I visited the farm in April, Wiser showed me one of the gooseberry plants—waist-high scrubs that will eventually have little green orbs popping out. “I think my grandmother would be very proud.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Near the gooseberry bush are a few other berry plants that speak to the farm’s mission and identity: Sichuan peppercorns, with their prickly heat that helps form the foundation for Taiwan’s national dish of beef noodle soup, and sweet goji berries, whose medicinal qualities infused the soups my own mother made for me after I gave birth to my daughter—part of a rich tradition of taking care of each other through food.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.momochang.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Momo Chang\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is a freelance writer based in the East Bay and the alumni coordinator for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandvoices.us/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oakland Voices\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a project of the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://mije.org/\">Maynard Institute for Journalism Education\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Follow her on Twitter \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/_momo_chang\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">@_momo_chang\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 2378,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 34
},
"modified": 1705008323,
"excerpt": "Now, Radical Family Farms' Leslie Wiser is one of the Bay Area's go-to farmers for Asian produce.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "Now, Radical Family Farms' Leslie Wiser is one of the Bay Area's go-to farmers for Asian produce.",
"title": "Growing Asian Produce Helped This Sonoma Farmer Connect With Her Taiwanese Heritage | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Growing Asian Produce Helped This Sonoma Farmer Connect With Her Taiwanese Heritage",
"datePublished": "2021-05-25T09:00:45-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:25:23-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "radical-family-farms-asian-produce-taiwanese-identity-sonoma",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"WpOldSlug": "radical-family-farms-asian-produce-taiwanese-identity-helped-this-sonoma-farmer-connect-with-her-taiwanese-heritage-sonoma",
"path": "/arts/13897752/radical-family-farms-asian-produce-taiwanese-identity-sonoma",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897763\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897763\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle.jpg\" alt=\"Leslie Wiser pushes a plow in a field; the backdrop of the field is shaded blue.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_InArticle-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photo by Sarah Deragon; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">A\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>cross from a few sheep bleating and baaing behind a fence, rainbow pride and Black Lives Matter flags softly wave in the wind. A “Stop Asian Hate” poster is propped against a wall. Around the corner, the property opens up to a 1.5-acre farm filled with trellises of bitter melon, rows of napa cabbage, and hoophouses holding dozens of other Asian herbs and vegetables. All signs, perhaps, that this is a farm with a strong sense of its own identity. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But when Leslie Wiser founded Sebastopol’s Radical Family Farms in 2018, she didn’t necessarily feel very connected to her Taiwanese and Chinese heritage. Over the course of the past three years, however, she has become one of the go-to local farmers for Asian produce—and she’s learned a lot about her roots in the process. Wiser runs the farm, and her partner, Sarah Deragon, grows flowers there. It is, as Wiser describes it, a chemical-free, low-till small farm specializing in Asian heritage vegetables and herbs. Wiser says her Chinese-Taiwanese background informs her choices, and in turn, she is also giving back to the culture here in the Bay Area through farming, food and education.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“The farm has been great in terms of personal exploration of this side of me that I didn’t know about,” Wiser, who is in her early 40s, says. Her mom grew up in Taiwan as part of the generation of people who left mainland China during the Communist war (a group known, collectively, as “waishengren” or the “1949’ers”); her father’s side of the family is German and Polish-Jewish.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Growing up in the Midwest—in Chicago, Cleveland, Minnesota and Indiana—Wiser says she never celebrated Chinese or Taiwanese holidays such as Lunar New Year. Her family did hold on to a few aspects of Taiwanese culture, including ordering a thousand copies of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/11/17/21570459/radical-family-farms-fu-pei-mei-chinese-cookbook-taiwan-cook-off\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fu Pei Mei’s popular cookbook from Taiwan in the early ’80s\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and her mom sometimes cooked Chinese dishes. By and large, though, Wiser didn’t have much contact with the Chinese and Taiwanese sides of her identity in her day-to-day life. Before growing them herself, she had never even tried some of the vegetables on the farm, such as bitter melon. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“[The farm is]…a way for me and my kids to hold on to our Asian heritage that has, for the most part, been assimilated,” notes Wiser, whose children have Chinese, Korean, Scandanavian, German and Polish-Jewish ancestry. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As for the “radical” in the farm’s name, Wiser says that’s a nod to her family story: Her parents married shortly after the Loving Act of 1967, during a time when interracial marriages in the Midwest were not the norm. Wiser, who is queer, is mixed race, as are her children, and the farm takes an intersectional stance on social justice issues—hence all of the flags waving proudly out front.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897804\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1613px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897804\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen.jpg\" alt=\"A family portrait of Leslie Wiser, her wife Sarah Deragon and their two children, standing in front of the lush green backdrop of their farm.\" width=\"1613\" height=\"1075\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen.jpg 1613w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarm_paigegreen-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1613px) 100vw, 1613px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wiser (back right) started Radical Family Farms in part because she wanted to give her kids the experience of growing up on a farm. \u003ccite>(Paige Green)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">None of Wiser’s family members in Taiwan have been farmers, but there is a rich history of agriculture in Taiwan, from its tea farms to its lush fields of sweet potatoes, pineapples and rice. Her own path to farming was somewhat circuitous: The summer after her sophomore year in college, after taking a class on food and farming, Wiser worked on a farm in Alaska for one season, staying with a family with young children who also helped out on the farm. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Though Wiser enjoyed the experience, she never envisioned that she would pursue farming as a career. “I never thought I could…have the land access,” she says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instead, she finished college, then graduate school, and started working in digital media, marketing, animation and project management. After having children, though, she started to dream of raising her kids on a farm the way she’d seen that family in Alaska do. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“It took years of thinking about it and wanting to do it,” Wiser says. She looked for land in the Midwest, but eventually moved to Sonoma, completing a master gardeners program there, and eventually found the three-acre farm in Sebastopol.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the Bay Area, more small-scale, Asian American-run farms specializing in Asian vegetables have cropped up in recent years: Namu Farm led by Kristyn Leach in Winters, CA; Shao Shan Farm in Bolinas; and Mai Nguyen in Sonoma, who also founded the Asian American Farmers Alliance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Wiser’s farm grows as many as 50 different crop varieties on the 1.5 acres that she currently uses: Japanese eggplants, Thai and Italian basil, si gua (aka sponge gourd or loofah), rau ram (Vietnamese coriander), kabocha squash, bitter melon, winter melon, sweet corn, Chinese broccoli, perilla leaves—and a lot more. Wiser is even experimenting with planting things that likely have never been farmed commercially in the Bay Area—red quinoa, a grain eaten by indigenous Taiwanese people, for instance. Most of the seeds are from Oakland-based Kitazawa Seed Company, which was started more than 100 years ago by a Japanese American man named Gijiu Kitazawa and specializes in Asian vegetable seeds. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The farm reminds me of my wai po’s—my maternal grandmother’s—backyard trees in Southern California, as well as my parents’ backyard, where they planted Asian fruits and vegetables that were hard to find in markets here in the United States. For immigrants from Taiwan, these fruits—persimmons, guavas, longans and Taiwanese mountain apples shaped like bells—are reminders of home.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Radical Family Farms isn’t \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">just \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a tribute to the farmer’s family ancestry—it’s also a business. It mostly operates under a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model during its May-through-November growing season. The every-other-week \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.radicalfamilyfarms.com/farmstore\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CSA produce and herb box\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is delivered throughout the Bay Area, with pickup points at many popular, Asian American–run restaurants. (There’s currently a waiting list to join.) Wiser’s partner, Sarah Deragon, manages a flower CSA box, which can be delivered together or separately with the produce.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Harvesting began this month, and Wiser and her small staff are busy checking on the seedlings, chasing away gophers and admiring some of the produce that’s already flourishing. In a matter of a few days, the gophers have eaten more than a dozen cabbage heads. “You can do your best to plan ahead but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way,” she says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897806\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897806\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"Two hands cupped together holding a large quantity of tiny quinoa seeds.\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_hands_MC-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Quinoa seeds from Taiwan are among the Asian varietals grown on the farm. \u003ccite>(Momo Chang)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n many ways, Radical Family Farms’ exploration of Taiwanese identity has extended far beyond the borders of the farm itself. While the farm is only starting its third season, Wiser has already established working relationships with a number of Taiwanese and other Asian American restaurants in the Bay Area such as \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.liondancecafe.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lion Dance Cafe\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.taiwanbento.us/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwan Bento\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.goodtoeatdumplings.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Good-to-Eat Dumplings\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, which all source from the farm and have become collaborators of sorts. (They are also CSA pickup points.) \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oakland’s Good-to-Eat Dumplings specializes in handmade Taiwanese potstickers. Co-founded by Tony Tung and Angie Lin, the restaurant, based at Original Pattern Brewing in Oakland’s Jack London neighborhood, had been looking for locally grown, Asian produce to use for their Taiwanese-style pan-fried dumplings and gua bao. Instead of buying packaged fermented mustard greens, which are readily available at most Chinese markets, Good-to-Eat Dumplings ferments their own version using mustard greens grown on Radical Family Farms. The fermented greens are used in their pork belly gua bao, “one of the most famous Taiwanese street food staples,” Lin notes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"tag": "eating-taiwanese",
"label": "Eating Taiwanese "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Starting this year, the farm will sun-dry the mustard greens for the restaurant on new drying racks, an idea inspired by a Radical Family Farms CSA member, Henry Hsu.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Through the partnership with Leslie, we learned a lot too,” Lin, an immigrant from Taiwan, says about figuring out which Taiwanese fruits and vegetables can grow in the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Christopher Yang, whose parents were born in Taiwan, began sourcing produce from the farm for his two Taiwanese-inspired pop-ups, Hén-zhi and El Chino Grande, in 2019. Yang turns the farm’s wax gourd, or winter melon, into a syrup by cooking it with sugar, then strains it into black tea. Or he’ll braise the winter melon with smoked shoyu dashi broth, serving it with a shrimp coconut leche de tigre. The relationship between restaurant and farm is “symbiotic,” Yang says. “I love to develop menu items with products [Leslie] is excited about.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even the farm’s CSA members get more than just a box of produce; they, too, have an opportunity to learn more about Taiwanese food culture. And here’s where the farm really puts “radical” front and center—where farming and activism intersect. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Two years ago, for instance, members gathered for a reading of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://gracelin.com/the-ugly-vegetables/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ugly Vegetables\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a children’s book by Grace Lin. The family-friendly event started with a land acknowledgment by Christine Su, a CSA member and one of the farm’s first customers, honoring the coastal Miwok and Pomo people, who still live in the area. “We are grateful to be settlers on this land, and also are responsible for stewarding it carefully while sharing our own cultural traditions,” Su told the audience. The book reading was bilingual in Mandarin—by Su, whose family is from Taiwan—and in English, by Adrian Chang of \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mykitsunecafe/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My Kitsune Cafe\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. After the reading, children had the opportunity to look at and eat some of the vegetables from the book. Many of the plants were labeled, so that kids could see how a bitter melon, for instance, grows on the vine. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For many Asian Americans at the event, this celebration of vegetables not found in many Western grocery stores felt incredibly moving. “I never imagined sitting on a haystack, reading to kids in Mandarin about our vegetables, and then touring the same veggies like bitter melon and A-choy growing a few feet away, with the same kind of reverence I feel like is often reserved for heirloom tomatoes in the Bay,” Su says. “I really wish that I had had that growing up here in America.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Many of the CSA members, 70% of whom Wiser estimates to be Asian American, have become friends and co-conspirators. “We all want to learn more about our own Asian American culture and heritage,” Wiser says. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There is a lot to learn. Not everyone knows how to cook a winter melon, after all. One CSA member, Linda Tay Esposito, a food business consultant and a cooking instructor, has created a monthly itinerary based on the seasonal produce that comes in the boxes, including a Zoom cooking class that started this month. “The CSA is a community; we’re all tied together through food,” says Esposito, who was previously the director of La Cocina’s Municipal Marketplace in SF’s Tenderloin district. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last year, the names of the vegetables in each box were written on beautiful hand-lettered cards created by artist Jess Wu, which were made available to CSA members on the farm’s website. The cards were written in pinyin, bopomofo (the phonetic alphabet used in Taiwan) and Chinese characters, and some were also translated into Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Japanese. CSA members also get access to a website full of recipes, many of them submitted by fellow customers, such as Chinese sweet and spicy pickles and winter melon soup.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897807\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2153px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897807\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"The vegetables from a CSA produce box, including long beans, okra and several varieties of eggplant, arranged artfully on a white wooden board.\" width=\"2153\" height=\"2560\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-scaled.jpg 2153w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-800x951.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-1020x1213.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-160x190.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-768x913.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-1292x1536.jpg 1292w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-1723x2048.jpg 1723w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/RadicalFamilyFarms_CSA_SD-1920x2282.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2153px) 100vw, 2153px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The produce from one of last year’s CSA boxes, each vegetable labeled with its Chinese name. \u003ccite>(Sarah Deragon)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">While most of the farm’s focus is on the family’s Asian roots, Wiser is also exploring her father’s ancestry. She lived for some time with her paternal grandparents in Indianapolis, Indiana. She saw how her grandmother, an immigrant of German and Polish-Jewish ancestry, yearned for her own homeland—the way she shopped for vegetables, baked goods and pantry items that were tied to her culture. “I learned sourcing from my grandmother,” Wiser notes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last season, Wiser began planting varieties of gooseberries, currants and kohlrabi in honor of her grandmother, who passed away in October before she could taste the fruits of her granddaughter’s labor. When I visited the farm in April, Wiser showed me one of the gooseberry plants—waist-high scrubs that will eventually have little green orbs popping out. “I think my grandmother would be very proud.” \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Near the gooseberry bush are a few other berry plants that speak to the farm’s mission and identity: Sichuan peppercorns, with their prickly heat that helps form the foundation for Taiwan’s national dish of beef noodle soup, and sweet goji berries, whose medicinal qualities infused the soups my own mother made for me after I gave birth to my daughter—part of a rich tradition of taking care of each other through food.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.momochang.com/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Momo Chang\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is a freelance writer based in the East Bay and the alumni coordinator for \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://oaklandvoices.us/\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oakland Voices\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, a project of the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://mije.org/\">Maynard Institute for Journalism Education\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Follow her on Twitter \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/_momo_chang\">\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">@_momo_chang\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13897752/radical-family-farms-asian-produce-taiwanese-identity-sonoma",
"authors": [
"11754"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_4672",
"arts_14406",
"arts_14375",
"arts_14476",
"arts_10278",
"arts_1297",
"arts_14475",
"arts_11460",
"arts_14396"
],
"featImg": "arts_13897762",
"label": "source_arts_13897752"
},
"arts_13897684": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13897684",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897684",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1621872026000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1621872026,
"format": "aside",
"title": "How the Pandemic Brought Taiwanese Food Back to Me",
"headTitle": "How the Pandemic Brought Taiwanese Food Back to Me | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897689\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897689\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of Pintung cold noodles with peanut sauce, garnished with slivers of cucumber, against a blue backdrop.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photo by Esmé Weijun Wang; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]I[/dropcap] grew up as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants—first in San Jose, and later in a South Bay suburb clocked as having only a 5.1% Asian population in 1990, when I was in elementary school. Other Asian American students were rare, and Taiwanese American students were even rarer; there were no Taiwanese American kids in my day-to-day life, as far as I knew. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwanese cuisine, on the other hand, remained a large part of my childhood. At home I ate light meals of vegetables and fish, with little oil, cooked by my mother. On weekends, my family went to Marina Foods or Ranch 99 for groceries after lunch at Cupertino Village, a mostly Asian shopping and restaurant center where we’d feast on soup dumplings and beef noodle soup, leaf-wrapped zhongzi and spicy string beans limp on the plate. At the end of every meal, we’d go to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/FantasiaCupertino/\">boba tea cafe called Fantasia\u003c/a> for thick, buttered toast and boba. Even back then, before boba had been widely recognized by the non-Taiwanese palate, the place was already popular among high school students.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These days, as a San Francisco resident, I am sometimes asked about where to best enjoy Chinese food in the city, and my answer is usually a verbal shrug. Whereas San Francisco’s famous Chinatown is historically working-class Cantonese, most Taiwanese immigrants to the Bay Area ended up in places like Cupertino, Milpitas, Foster City and Fremont, which is why so many of the region’s Taiwanese restaurants opened there. After I moved to San Francisco, my consumption of Chinese food dropped dramatically—to say nothing of Taiwanese food, which became nonexistent. Approximately a decade had passed since I’d lived in the South Bay, and I didn’t know where to find the dishes that I had grown up eating; visiting Cupertino was no longer a regular part of my schedule. In San Francisco, I was even confused about where to find the Taiwanese grocery brands with which I was so familiar, and relied on my brother and his wife for deliveries of Bull Head barbecue sauce and pink net–wrapped packages of made-in-Taiwan rice noodles.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Near the beginning of the pandemic, a friend sent me a link to \u003ca href=\"https://liangsvillage.com/pages/menu#\">Liang’s Village\u003c/a>, a Cupertino-based Taiwanese restaurant that had newly begun advertising Bay Area-wide delivery ever since it halted dine-in service during lockdown. I was delighted to find that their menu offered so many familiar dishes: preserved egg and tofu with pork sung and scallions, fried pork chop rice, beef and tendon noodle soup, and black bean with pork and bean curd noodles. These were dishes that my mother had made at home, or that I’d eaten during those weekend excursions to Cupertino.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897688\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2397px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897688\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW.jpg\" alt=\"Against a white background, a bowl of braised tofu topped with chili sauce; a spoon cuts into the tender tofu.\" width=\"2397\" height=\"1595\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW.jpg 2397w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-2048x1363.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-1920x1278.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2397px) 100vw, 2397px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The stewed tofu with oyster sauce from Liang’s Village provided comfort during the pandemic. \u003ccite>(Esmé Weijun Wang)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over time, I began to order from Liang’s Village on a regular basis, rediscovering my favorites easily as the restaurant dropped large boxes of food on my doorstep. I’ve ordered four or five servings of the stewed tofu with oyster sauce at a time, enjoying the silken tofu wrapped in a wrinkled bean curd skin anytime I felt like it. When the package of Pingtung cold noodles arrived at my door—called “Cold Peanut Noodle” on the Liang’s Village menu—I dumped the entire mixture of slippery noodles, peanut-sesame sauce and julienned cucumbers into a bowl, which I gleefully enjoyed in bed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pingtung, a city located in Southern Taiwan, is where the proprietors of Liang’s Village are from. As it happens, it’s also where my mother is from; I was supposed to visit family in the Pingtung countryside in 2020 before COVID derailed those plans. Eating Pingtung-style chilled noodles in peanut sauce was one way of nearing that experience. The Liang’s noodles were almost identical to the ones my mother made when I was growing up, minus the shredded chicken breast that she added along with the slender toothpicks of cucumber. It was a dish to be enjoyed in the summer, when the temperatures sometimes reached the triple digits and we couldn’t fathom eating a hot dish. My mother would summon us with the Taiwanese call, jia bng o’ (“come to eat”). We’d gather around the dining table, waiting for my father to dine first before we all slurped and sighed with gratitude.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside tag='eating-taiwanese' label='Eating Taiwanese']Another dish that brought a flood of memories was the stewed duck wings, which Liang’s delivered frozen. My father used to bring home warm baggies of these wings from the hot dish section of Marina Foods throughout my adolescence, stashing them in the fridge for late-night snacking. It was known within the family that the wings belonged primarily to him and me, because my mother and brother didn’t enjoy them. Now, years later, living in San Francisco, I placed the frozen, vacuum-sealed packet from Liang’s Village inside our fridge. Once defrosted, the duck wings had a chewy, occasionally gelatinous texture. Without my father to share them with me, I enjoyed the wings slowly, over a period of several days, though I missed the communal joy that he and I had shared. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of my favorite things from Liang’s is a fresh-squeezed, bottled beverage called \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B_dtcrOF_f9/\">Honey Grape Fruit Squeeze\u003c/a>. Like many fresh-squeezed juices in Taiwan, this one is cut with tea, and arrives with gorgeous jewels of pulp and chunks of peeled grapefruit that can be forked through the opening. It’s a pleasure that I enjoy by itself like a dessert—a final delight to follow the assortment of familiar dishes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It feels strange that it took a catastrophic, international pandemic—and a restaurant’s need to pivot its business during lockdown—to bring Taiwanese food back into my life. But I’ve been grateful for these familiar comforts. Being able to take solace in a spicy bowl of wrinkly bean curd has brought me closer not only to my family, but also to a culinary lineage of my ancestors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My parents moved back to Taiwan approximately a decade ago. Only recently did I talk with my mother on the LINE app about visiting near the end of the year. I’ve reached the fabled two-week point after my second dose of the Moderna vaccine; I’ve been able to dream of getting on that thirteen-hour flight again. Meanwhile, however, I have a frozen package of duck wings in the fridge, waiting for me to snip it open and enjoy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Esmé Weijun Wang is a Taiwanese American writer. She is the author of \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Border of Paradise\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">New York Times\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> bestseller \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Collected Schizophrenias\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 1229,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 15
},
"modified": 1705008330,
"excerpt": "It was a game-changer when Liang's Village started delivering to San Francisco during lockdown.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "The author was reunited with the Taiwanese comfort foods from her childhood when Liang's Village started delivering to San Francisco during lockdown.",
"socialDescription": "The author was reunited with the Taiwanese comfort foods from her childhood when Liang's Village started delivering to San Francisco during lockdown.",
"title": "How the Pandemic Brought Taiwanese Food Back to Me | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "How the Pandemic Brought Taiwanese Food Back to Me",
"datePublished": "2021-05-24T09:00:26-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:25:30-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "pandemic-taiwanese-food-liangs-village",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/arts/category/food",
"nprByline": "Esmé Weijun Wang",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"path": "/arts/13897684/pandemic-taiwanese-food-liangs-village",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897689\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897689\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of Pintung cold noodles with peanut sauce, garnished with slivers of cucumber, against a blue backdrop.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/PandemicTaiwanese-InArticle-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photo by Esmé Weijun Wang; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp> grew up as the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants—first in San Jose, and later in a South Bay suburb clocked as having only a 5.1% Asian population in 1990, when I was in elementary school. Other Asian American students were rare, and Taiwanese American students were even rarer; there were no Taiwanese American kids in my day-to-day life, as far as I knew. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwanese cuisine, on the other hand, remained a large part of my childhood. At home I ate light meals of vegetables and fish, with little oil, cooked by my mother. On weekends, my family went to Marina Foods or Ranch 99 for groceries after lunch at Cupertino Village, a mostly Asian shopping and restaurant center where we’d feast on soup dumplings and beef noodle soup, leaf-wrapped zhongzi and spicy string beans limp on the plate. At the end of every meal, we’d go to a \u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/FantasiaCupertino/\">boba tea cafe called Fantasia\u003c/a> for thick, buttered toast and boba. Even back then, before boba had been widely recognized by the non-Taiwanese palate, the place was already popular among high school students.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">These days, as a San Francisco resident, I am sometimes asked about where to best enjoy Chinese food in the city, and my answer is usually a verbal shrug. Whereas San Francisco’s famous Chinatown is historically working-class Cantonese, most Taiwanese immigrants to the Bay Area ended up in places like Cupertino, Milpitas, Foster City and Fremont, which is why so many of the region’s Taiwanese restaurants opened there. After I moved to San Francisco, my consumption of Chinese food dropped dramatically—to say nothing of Taiwanese food, which became nonexistent. Approximately a decade had passed since I’d lived in the South Bay, and I didn’t know where to find the dishes that I had grown up eating; visiting Cupertino was no longer a regular part of my schedule. In San Francisco, I was even confused about where to find the Taiwanese grocery brands with which I was so familiar, and relied on my brother and his wife for deliveries of Bull Head barbecue sauce and pink net–wrapped packages of made-in-Taiwan rice noodles.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Near the beginning of the pandemic, a friend sent me a link to \u003ca href=\"https://liangsvillage.com/pages/menu#\">Liang’s Village\u003c/a>, a Cupertino-based Taiwanese restaurant that had newly begun advertising Bay Area-wide delivery ever since it halted dine-in service during lockdown. I was delighted to find that their menu offered so many familiar dishes: preserved egg and tofu with pork sung and scallions, fried pork chop rice, beef and tendon noodle soup, and black bean with pork and bean curd noodles. These were dishes that my mother had made at home, or that I’d eaten during those weekend excursions to Cupertino.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897688\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2397px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897688\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW.jpg\" alt=\"Against a white background, a bowl of braised tofu topped with chili sauce; a spoon cuts into the tender tofu.\" width=\"2397\" height=\"1595\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW.jpg 2397w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-1020x679.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-1536x1022.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-2048x1363.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LiangsTofu_EsmeWW-1920x1278.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2397px) 100vw, 2397px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The stewed tofu with oyster sauce from Liang’s Village provided comfort during the pandemic. \u003ccite>(Esmé Weijun Wang)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over time, I began to order from Liang’s Village on a regular basis, rediscovering my favorites easily as the restaurant dropped large boxes of food on my doorstep. I’ve ordered four or five servings of the stewed tofu with oyster sauce at a time, enjoying the silken tofu wrapped in a wrinkled bean curd skin anytime I felt like it. When the package of Pingtung cold noodles arrived at my door—called “Cold Peanut Noodle” on the Liang’s Village menu—I dumped the entire mixture of slippery noodles, peanut-sesame sauce and julienned cucumbers into a bowl, which I gleefully enjoyed in bed. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pingtung, a city located in Southern Taiwan, is where the proprietors of Liang’s Village are from. As it happens, it’s also where my mother is from; I was supposed to visit family in the Pingtung countryside in 2020 before COVID derailed those plans. Eating Pingtung-style chilled noodles in peanut sauce was one way of nearing that experience. The Liang’s noodles were almost identical to the ones my mother made when I was growing up, minus the shredded chicken breast that she added along with the slender toothpicks of cucumber. It was a dish to be enjoyed in the summer, when the temperatures sometimes reached the triple digits and we couldn’t fathom eating a hot dish. My mother would summon us with the Taiwanese call, jia bng o’ (“come to eat”). We’d gather around the dining table, waiting for my father to dine first before we all slurped and sighed with gratitude.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"tag": "eating-taiwanese",
"label": "Eating Taiwanese "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Another dish that brought a flood of memories was the stewed duck wings, which Liang’s delivered frozen. My father used to bring home warm baggies of these wings from the hot dish section of Marina Foods throughout my adolescence, stashing them in the fridge for late-night snacking. It was known within the family that the wings belonged primarily to him and me, because my mother and brother didn’t enjoy them. Now, years later, living in San Francisco, I placed the frozen, vacuum-sealed packet from Liang’s Village inside our fridge. Once defrosted, the duck wings had a chewy, occasionally gelatinous texture. Without my father to share them with me, I enjoyed the wings slowly, over a period of several days, though I missed the communal joy that he and I had shared. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of my favorite things from Liang’s is a fresh-squeezed, bottled beverage called \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/B_dtcrOF_f9/\">Honey Grape Fruit Squeeze\u003c/a>. Like many fresh-squeezed juices in Taiwan, this one is cut with tea, and arrives with gorgeous jewels of pulp and chunks of peeled grapefruit that can be forked through the opening. It’s a pleasure that I enjoy by itself like a dessert—a final delight to follow the assortment of familiar dishes. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It feels strange that it took a catastrophic, international pandemic—and a restaurant’s need to pivot its business during lockdown—to bring Taiwanese food back into my life. But I’ve been grateful for these familiar comforts. Being able to take solace in a spicy bowl of wrinkly bean curd has brought me closer not only to my family, but also to a culinary lineage of my ancestors.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My parents moved back to Taiwan approximately a decade ago. Only recently did I talk with my mother on the LINE app about visiting near the end of the year. I’ve reached the fabled two-week point after my second dose of the Moderna vaccine; I’ve been able to dream of getting on that thirteen-hour flight again. Meanwhile, however, I have a frozen package of duck wings in the fridge, waiting for me to snip it open and enjoy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Esmé Weijun Wang is a Taiwanese American writer. She is the author of \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Border of Paradise\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">New York Times\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> bestseller \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Collected Schizophrenias\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13897684/pandemic-taiwanese-food-liangs-village",
"authors": [
"byline_arts_13897684"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_6902",
"arts_14406",
"arts_14375",
"arts_10278",
"arts_1297",
"arts_11460",
"arts_14396"
],
"featImg": "arts_13897687",
"label": "source_arts_13897684"
},
"arts_13897498": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13897498",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897498",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1621612807000
]
},
"parent": 0,
"labelTerm": {},
"blocks": [],
"publishDate": 1621612807,
"format": "aside",
"title": "Searching for Lu Rou Fan",
"headTitle": "Searching for Lu Rou Fan | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-13897507 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01.jpg\" alt=\"Comic panel of a bowl of braised pork over rice; the title reads "Searching for Lu Rou Fan."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897509\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02.jpg\" alt=\"A subway train is traveling above ground in the rain. The narration reads, "One of my most memorable meals in the past few years was a bowl of lu rou fan; Taipei, Taiwan 2018." 1st speech bubble: "You sure this is a good idea, bro?" 2nd speech bubble: "Yeah! Don't worry..."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897512\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists are seated in a train car; one of them checks his watch. 1st speech bubble: "I mean we have a 3 hour layover here in Taipei. That gives us like..." 2nd speech bubble: "...what, an hour?"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897515\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04.jpg\" alt=\"The blue-and-green facade of a small restaurant that opens out onto the street; rain is coming down. 1st speech bubble: "There it is! Jin Feng." 2nd speech bubble: "This cramped little place?" 3rd speech bubble: "This tiny restaurant has been selling the same dish, lu rou fan, for over 30 years!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897516\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists stand in front of the counter while a woman scoops meat over a bowl of rice. 1st speech bubble: "Lu rou fan is peasant food, chunks of hand-cut pork belly braised in soy sauce and aromatics, then ladled over rice." 2nd speech bubble: "All that for two dollars?!?"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897517\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists, both bespectacled men, sit at a table devouring their lu rou fan, chopsticks in hand. Speech bubble: "I can't believe I've never had this. It's amazing! The pork is so tender! Mmm"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897520\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists have finished their meal; one holds his stomach, stuffed. Speech bubble #1: "Lu rou fan is just something the Taiwanese side of my family grew up with." Speech bubble #2: "So good..." Speech bubble #3: "This reminds me of a story my uncle used to tell:"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897521\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08.jpg\" alt=\"The scene shifts to a flashback; a Taiwanese family sits around the dinner table, including an older gentleman in a white tank top. Speech bubble #1: "You know when we were younger our family didn't always have enough money to buy meat." Speech bubble #2: "This story again?" Speech bubble #3: "So we would go to the lu rou fan stall and ask:"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897523\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09.jpg\" alt=\"Scene shifts to an even earlier time. A young boy and girl stand in front of a food stall with their arms outstretched while the owner ladles meat onto a bowl of rice. Speech bubble 1: "This is all we have. Can you just scoop us some fat over rice?" Speech bubble #2: "PLEEEAASE???" \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897524\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10.jpg\" alt=\"The scene shifts back to the old uncle telling his story, holding his chopsticks over a bowl of rice. Speech bubble #1: "That bowl of lu rou fan with no meat, just the fat..." Speech bubble #2: "...would be the best thing we ate all week!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897528\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11.jpg\" alt=\"Three side-by-side panels show Luke tasting different versions of lu rou fan with an irritated expression on his face. The narration reads: "Here in the Bay Area I've spent years searching for a decent bowl of lu rou fan." Speech bubble #1: "So dry!" Speech bubble #2: "Why would they use ground pork?!?" Speech bubble #3: "Why is this one so sweet?!!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897544\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1.jpg\" alt=\"A yellow food truck with the name "Mama Liu Taiwanese Street Food" painted in red above its awning. The narration reads: "But nothing really scratched that itch until a recent trip to Milpitas." \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897530\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13.jpg\" alt=\"View from inside the truck, as an older woman passes food to Luke, who is waiting outside. Overhead narration: "Where Mama Liu was selling lu rou fan, stinky tofu, and other Taiwanese street foods." Speech bubble: "Just heat it up at home!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897531\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14.jpg\" alt=\"Scene shifts to the front of a house on a rainy day; Luke stands in the window while Thien rushes over with his hand shielding his head. Speech bubble #1: "Sorry bro, we have to eat outside!" Speech bubble #2: "But I'm vaccinated! And it's raining!" \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897532\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists are sitting on the porch eating. The narration reads: "This was the old style lu rou fan we'd been craving." Speech bubble #1: "I love this hand-cut pork belly..." Speech bubble #2: "The sauce is just right!" Speech bubble #3: "And that egg!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897533\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16.jpg\" alt=\"A zoomed out view of the two friends sitting on the porch. The narration reads: "And just like that it was like we were back in Taiwan again, swapping stories, eating our nostalgia." Speech bubble: "You know this dish reminds me of the time..."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thien Pham is a graphic novelist and high school teacher in Oakland. His food-based memoir about his family’s immigration story will be out in 2023 from First Second Books.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Luke Tsai is KQED’s food editor.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
"stats": {
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"hasAudio": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"wordCount": 64,
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"paragraphCount": 19
},
"modified": 1705008339,
"excerpt": "A comic about friendship, nostalgia and the search for the perfect Taiwanese braised pork belly rice.",
"headData": {
"twImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"socialTitle": "Comic: Searching for Lu Rou Fan in the Bay Area %%page%% %%sep%% KQED",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twDescription": "",
"description": "A comic about friendship, food nostalgia and the search for the perfect bowl of Taiwanese braised pork belly rice.",
"socialDescription": "A comic about friendship, food nostalgia and the search for the perfect bowl of Taiwanese braised pork belly rice.",
"title": "Comic: Searching for Lu Rou Fan in the Bay Area | KQED",
"ogDescription": "",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "Searching for Lu Rou Fan",
"datePublished": "2021-05-21T09:00:07-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-01-11T13:25:39-08:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "mama-liu-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-food-comic",
"status": "publish",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/arts/category/food",
"templateType": "standard",
"featuredImageType": "standard",
"sticky": false,
"source": "Food",
"path": "/arts/13897498/mama-liu-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-food-comic",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-13897507 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01.jpg\" alt=\"Comic panel of a bowl of braised pork over rice; the title reads "Searching for Lu Rou Fan."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan01-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897509\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02.jpg\" alt=\"A subway train is traveling above ground in the rain. The narration reads, "One of my most memorable meals in the past few years was a bowl of lu rou fan; Taipei, Taiwan 2018." 1st speech bubble: "You sure this is a good idea, bro?" 2nd speech bubble: "Yeah! Don't worry..."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan02-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897512\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists are seated in a train car; one of them checks his watch. 1st speech bubble: "I mean we have a 3 hour layover here in Taipei. That gives us like..." 2nd speech bubble: "...what, an hour?"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan03-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897515\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04.jpg\" alt=\"The blue-and-green facade of a small restaurant that opens out onto the street; rain is coming down. 1st speech bubble: "There it is! Jin Feng." 2nd speech bubble: "This cramped little place?" 3rd speech bubble: "This tiny restaurant has been selling the same dish, lu rou fan, for over 30 years!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan04-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897516\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists stand in front of the counter while a woman scoops meat over a bowl of rice. 1st speech bubble: "Lu rou fan is peasant food, chunks of hand-cut pork belly braised in soy sauce and aromatics, then ladled over rice." 2nd speech bubble: "All that for two dollars?!?"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan05-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897517\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists, both bespectacled men, sit at a table devouring their lu rou fan, chopsticks in hand. Speech bubble: "I can't believe I've never had this. It's amazing! The pork is so tender! Mmm"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan06-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897520\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists have finished their meal; one holds his stomach, stuffed. Speech bubble #1: "Lu rou fan is just something the Taiwanese side of my family grew up with." Speech bubble #2: "So good..." Speech bubble #3: "This reminds me of a story my uncle used to tell:"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan07-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897521\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08.jpg\" alt=\"The scene shifts to a flashback; a Taiwanese family sits around the dinner table, including an older gentleman in a white tank top. Speech bubble #1: "You know when we were younger our family didn't always have enough money to buy meat." Speech bubble #2: "This story again?" Speech bubble #3: "So we would go to the lu rou fan stall and ask:"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan08-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897523\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09.jpg\" alt=\"Scene shifts to an even earlier time. A young boy and girl stand in front of a food stall with their arms outstretched while the owner ladles meat onto a bowl of rice. Speech bubble 1: "This is all we have. Can you just scoop us some fat over rice?" Speech bubble #2: "PLEEEAASE???" \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan09-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897524\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10.jpg\" alt=\"The scene shifts back to the old uncle telling his story, holding his chopsticks over a bowl of rice. Speech bubble #1: "That bowl of lu rou fan with no meat, just the fat..." Speech bubble #2: "...would be the best thing we ate all week!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan10-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897528\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11.jpg\" alt=\"Three side-by-side panels show Luke tasting different versions of lu rou fan with an irritated expression on his face. The narration reads: "Here in the Bay Area I've spent years searching for a decent bowl of lu rou fan." Speech bubble #1: "So dry!" Speech bubble #2: "Why would they use ground pork?!?" Speech bubble #3: "Why is this one so sweet?!!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan11-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897544\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1.jpg\" alt=\"A yellow food truck with the name "Mama Liu Taiwanese Street Food" painted in red above its awning. The narration reads: "But nothing really scratched that itch until a recent trip to Milpitas." \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan12-1-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897530\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13.jpg\" alt=\"View from inside the truck, as an older woman passes food to Luke, who is waiting outside. Overhead narration: "Where Mama Liu was selling lu rou fan, stinky tofu, and other Taiwanese street foods." Speech bubble: "Just heat it up at home!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan13-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897531\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14.jpg\" alt=\"Scene shifts to the front of a house on a rainy day; Luke stands in the window while Thien rushes over with his hand shielding his head. Speech bubble #1: "Sorry bro, we have to eat outside!" Speech bubble #2: "But I'm vaccinated! And it's raining!" \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan14-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897532\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15.jpg\" alt=\"The two protagonists are sitting on the porch eating. The narration reads: "This was the old style lu rou fan we'd been craving." Speech bubble #1: "I love this hand-cut pork belly..." Speech bubble #2: "The sauce is just right!" Speech bubble #3: "And that egg!"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan15-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897533\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16.jpg\" alt=\"A zoomed out view of the two friends sitting on the porch. The narration reads: "And just like that it was like we were back in Taiwan again, swapping stories, eating our nostalgia." Speech bubble: "You know this dish reminds me of the time..."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1590\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-800x663.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-1020x845.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-160x133.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-768x636.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/LuRouFan16-1536x1272.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Thien Pham is a graphic novelist and high school teacher in Oakland. His food-based memoir about his family’s immigration story will be out in 2023 from First Second Books.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Luke Tsai is KQED’s food editor.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13897498/mama-liu-lu-rou-fan-taiwanese-food-comic",
"authors": [
"11743",
"11753"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_1942",
"arts_14406",
"arts_14375",
"arts_10278",
"arts_1297",
"arts_14398",
"arts_14401",
"arts_11460",
"arts_14396"
],
"featImg": "arts_13897506",
"label": "source_arts_13897498"
},
"arts_13897410": {
"type": "posts",
"id": "arts_13897410",
"meta": {
"index": "posts_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13897410",
"score": null,
"sort": [
1621526401000
]
},
"guestAuthors": [],
"slug": "taiwanese-food-texture-q-boba-love-boat",
"title": "An Ode to Q",
"publishDate": 1621526401,
"format": "aside",
"headTitle": "An Ode to Q | KQED",
"labelTerm": {},
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897434\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897434\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle.jpg\" alt=\"A collage of Taiwanese foods (ba-wan, beef noodle soup, and boba milk tea) on a blue background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photos by ugurv/insjoy/bonchan/iStock; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n 1994, after I returned from a study abroad program in Taiwan, the very first question my father asked wasn’t about the flight or what I’d learned in my language and culture classes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Did you meet any boys?” he asked, his expression hopeful.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I couldn’t blame him for asking. The six-week program—subsidized by the island government to increase awareness and support for Taiwan—was unofficially known as the “Love Boat.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">None of the hundreds of college students that summer—hailing from the United States, Canada and elsewhere in the Chinese diaspora—boarded a luxury ocean liner like the one from the television rom-com. Instead, the nickname referred to the relationships that blossomed in the steamy subtropical heat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sneaking out past curfew with my newfound friends, we’d get late night snacks from the endless stalls at the Shilin Night Market, the country’s largest and most famed street food destination. Fish balls bobbing in steaming cauldrons of hot pot; tendons in big bowls of beef noodle soup; and grass jelly drinks, jiggly cubes that you chewed \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">while\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> you sipped.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside tag='eating-taiwanese' label='Eating Taiwanese']As the Communists came to power in 1949, my parents—then children—had fled with their families to the island. Later they would attend graduate school in the United States, where they would marry and settle down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As much as my parents embraced the opportunities here, they hoped their children might retain a connection to what they’d left behind. The study tour, which began in 1967 and had its heyday during the 1990s, deployed potent political soft power, vital because Taiwan’s government\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">known officially as the Republic of China\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">lacked diplomatic recognition by most countries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That summer, I learned why: During the Cold War, the United States favored the regime in Taiwan and didn’t formally recognize Beijing’s. When diplomatic relations opened with the Communists in 1979, the U.S severed ties with Taiwan, which China still views as one of its provinces.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over the decades, tens of thousands of students have participated in the study tour, including celebrity chef Eddie Huang, who writes about it in his memoir, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fresh Off the Boat. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although I didn’t find romance, I left with lifelong friends and a lifelong love for the cuisine I encountered on my trip—especially the springy, bouncy yet gooey texture known as Q. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[pullquote size='large']“It’s food that fights back, that takes the energy of your bite and returns it to you.”[/pullquote]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The term Q is derived from the word k’iu in the Taiwanese Hokkien dialect for something wavy, curvy and bendy—say, in the shape of grilled squid. Q foods, both savory and sweet, often involve glutinous rice flour, yam flour, potato or corn starches. The texture has been compared to al dente pasta, gummy bears and marshmallows in Western cuisine, but to my mind, Q is even more liminal, with a this-and-that, here-and-there quality. Items exemplifying this texture are known as QQ—that is, very Q.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Culinary History of Taipei: Beyond Pork and Ponlai\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Steven Crook and Katy Hui-Wen Hung, Q foods are “more substantial than melt-in-the mouth and [have] a delectable chewiness without being gummy.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s food that fights back, that takes the energy of your bite and returns it to you. Q is nothing like the smooth, processed American foods that go down easy, eaten mindlessly: soft serve ice cream, huge cups of soda to guzzle at red lights or boneless Buffalo wings. With Q, you pay more attention—not only to prevent choking but because your delight in it makes you more mindful.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On humid nights in Taipei, steamy as the inside of a teakettle, I chomped into chewy balls of glutinous rice flour rolled in powdered peanuts and relished deep-fried fish balls on a stick. Just thinking about Q makes me crave it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During my summer in Taiwan, boba tea drinks—with the addictive Q of their tapioca pearls—hadn’t yet widely caught on, but would soon skyrocket in popularity before sweeping onto other shores, first in Asian enclaves and later in suburbia. Boba teas are now so popular that recent rumors of shortages due to shipping issues from Asia have led to collective bemoaning among fans. Those craving Q should consider its myriad forms available in the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stir fried rice cakes with mustard greens and slivers of pork at China Bee \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> San Mateo have been a favorite at our Love Boat reunions.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even though we’ve known each other more than half our lives, each time we meet it’s like no time has passed at all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ba-wan is another beloved treat, a gigantic mochi meatball that is \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a traditional southern Taiwanese snack: a fistful of pork, bamboo shoots and mushrooms, surrounded by a chewy, gelatinous wrapper—often made with rice or tapioca flour, potato and corn starches—and doused in a tangy sauce made with ketchup, rice vinegar and soy sauce. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Cafe-Taiwan-%E6%9E%97%E5%AE%B6%E8%90%AC%E5%B7%92%E8%B1%AC%E8%85%B3-Pleasanton-685514224889526/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Café Taiwan\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Pleasanton offers a glistening version for takeout. While you’re there, also get the Hakka dumpling soup, which has the look of the Frog Lady’s eggs from \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Mandalorian\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">; Grogu surely would approve of its ooey, chewy goo.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/taiwancafemilpitas\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwan Café\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Milpitas recently began shipping its frozen ba-wan, five spice rolls and wan luan pork hock (named for a rural eastern township known for its unctuous pork knuckles). You can also pick up these items and more on weekends via an ordering form through its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/taiwancafemilpitas\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Facebook group\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beef noodle soup is now considered Taiwan’s national dish—tender shank, tendons with a delicate Q texture, and broth punched up with ginger, star anise and red chilis. It arrived in the aftermath of WWII, the creation of former soldiers who became food vendors in a time marked by turmoil. Locals chafed against the Nationalist government, which violently cracked down on and imprisoned political dissidents. At the same time, in the military villages, an influx of newcomers from across the straits brought their taste for wheat-based noodles, soup dumplings and more.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Food was one of the first ways of bridging conflicting groups on the island,” notes Cathy Erway in her cookbook, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Food of Taiwan: Recipes from the Beautiful Island\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here in the Bay Area, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://liangsvillage.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Liang’s Village \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in Cupertino makes a stellar beef noodle soup, with loads of tender yet springy tendon. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://mumumeals.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mumu Meals\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—founded last year by Bay Area brothers Jeffrey and Daniel Hsu—ships and delivers a frozen adaptation of their mother’s recipe. “We hope that someday, this dish is just as well known as Japanese ramen or Vietnamese pho,” Daniel Hsu says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897471\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 828px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13897471 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua.jpg\" alt=\"A black sugar boba ice cream pop, streaked with caramel, against a leafy green backdrop.\" width=\"828\" height=\"830\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua.jpg 828w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua-800x802.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua-768x770.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 828px) 100vw, 828px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Q to the max: a black sugar boba ice cream pop. \u003ccite>(Vanessa Hua)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To finish off a meal, I’m a fan of \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">black sugar boba milk ice cream bars, which went viral on Instagram and TikTok with their photogenic, psychedelic swirls. In late May of last year—the first time I’d ventured into a Ranch 99 since the lockdown began—I raced down the aisles, double-masked, frantically grabbing items as if I were in some kind of game show.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the freezer case, I picked up two boxes of Tiger Sugar bars—“brave as a tiger,” its motto proclaims—but had no inkling of their popularity until I got to the checkout and realized the woman in front of me was buying five. (The treat is also available at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.toasttab.com/tigersugarcupertino/v3/?mode=fulfillment\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tiger Sugar\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, an outpost of the Taiwanese boba shop which opened last October \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in Cupertino.) \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The bar itself was creamy, with the taste of whole milk, and not too sweet despite ribbons of caramel-y brown sugar, and the black boba tender—the epitome of Q—and not the frozen marbles that I feared. It was pure indulgence on a stick. As soon as I finished it, I wanted another; I wished I’d bought more boxes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">t that early stage of the pandemic, when our choices\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and our reality\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">felt so constrained, certain fads spread across social media: sourdough bread, chickpea stew, and whatever else floated across our feed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some foods we tried once, but never ate again. Now as we haltingly emerge on the other side of it, my pulse still quickens for Q.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Vanessa Hua is a columnist for the \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the author of \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Deceit and Other Possibilities\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A River of Stars\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the forthcoming novel \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Forbidden City\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"blocks": [],
"excerpt": "A tribute to the springy, bouncy and gooey texture that characterizes so many Taiwanese foods.",
"status": "publish",
"parent": 0,
"modified": 1726704678,
"stats": {
"hasAudio": false,
"hasVideo": false,
"hasChartOrMap": false,
"iframeSrcs": [],
"hasGoogleForm": false,
"hasGallery": false,
"hasHearkenModule": false,
"hasPolis": false,
"paragraphCount": 30,
"wordCount": 1545
},
"headData": {
"title": "For Taiwanese Americans, There's No Better Texture Than Q | KQED",
"description": "A tribute to the springy, bouncy and gooey texture that characterizes so many Taiwanese foods.",
"ogTitle": "",
"ogDescription": "",
"ogImgId": "",
"twTitle": "",
"twDescription": "",
"twImgId": "",
"socialTitle": "For Taiwanese Americans, There's No Better Texture Than Q %%page%% %%sep%% KQED",
"socialDescription": "A tribute to the springy, bouncy and gooey texture that characterizes so many Taiwanese foods.",
"schema": {
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Article",
"headline": "An Ode to Q",
"datePublished": "2021-05-20T09:00:01-07:00",
"dateModified": "2024-09-18T17:11:18-07:00",
"image": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png"
}
},
"source": "Food",
"sourceUrl": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"sticky": false,
"nprByline": "Vanessa Hua",
"path": "/arts/13897410/taiwanese-food-texture-q-boba-love-boat",
"audioTrackLength": null,
"parsedContent": [
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897434\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13897434\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle.jpg\" alt=\"A collage of Taiwanese foods (ba-wan, beef noodle soup, and boba milk tea) on a blue background.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1277\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-800x532.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-1020x678.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-160x106.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-768x511.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/QQ_InArticle-1536x1022.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">\u003cem>(Photos by ugurv/insjoy/bonchan/iStock; design by Rebecca Kao)\u003c/em>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\">KQED’s \u003c/i>\u003c/em>Eating Taiwanese in the Bay\u003cem>\u003ci data-stringify-type=\"italic\"> is a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/eatingtaiwanese\">series of stories\u003c/a> exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity.\u003c/i>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>n 1994, after I returned from a study abroad program in Taiwan, the very first question my father asked wasn’t about the flight or what I’d learned in my language and culture classes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Did you meet any boys?” he asked, his expression hopeful.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I couldn’t blame him for asking. The six-week program—subsidized by the island government to increase awareness and support for Taiwan—was unofficially known as the “Love Boat.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">None of the hundreds of college students that summer—hailing from the United States, Canada and elsewhere in the Chinese diaspora—boarded a luxury ocean liner like the one from the television rom-com. Instead, the nickname referred to the relationships that blossomed in the steamy subtropical heat.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "fullwidth"
},
"numeric": [
"fullwidth"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sneaking out past curfew with my newfound friends, we’d get late night snacks from the endless stalls at the Shilin Night Market, the country’s largest and most famed street food destination. Fish balls bobbing in steaming cauldrons of hot pot; tendons in big bowls of beef noodle soup; and grass jelly drinks, jiggly cubes that you chewed \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">while\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> you sipped.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "aside",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"tag": "eating-taiwanese",
"label": "Eating Taiwanese "
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As the Communists came to power in 1949, my parents—then children—had fled with their families to the island. Later they would attend graduate school in the United States, where they would marry and settle down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As much as my parents embraced the opportunities here, they hoped their children might retain a connection to what they’d left behind. The study tour, which began in 1967 and had its heyday during the 1990s, deployed potent political soft power, vital because Taiwan’s government\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">known officially as the Republic of China\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">lacked diplomatic recognition by most countries.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That summer, I learned why: During the Cold War, the United States favored the regime in Taiwan and didn’t formally recognize Beijing’s. When diplomatic relations opened with the Communists in 1979, the U.S severed ties with Taiwan, which China still views as one of its provinces.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Over the decades, tens of thousands of students have participated in the study tour, including celebrity chef Eddie Huang, who writes about it in his memoir, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Fresh Off the Boat. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although I didn’t find romance, I left with lifelong friends and a lifelong love for the cuisine I encountered on my trip—especially the springy, bouncy yet gooey texture known as Q. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "“It’s food that fights back, that takes the energy of your bite and returns it to you.”",
"name": "pullquote",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"size": "large",
"label": ""
},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The term Q is derived from the word k’iu in the Taiwanese Hokkien dialect for something wavy, curvy and bendy—say, in the shape of grilled squid. Q foods, both savory and sweet, often involve glutinous rice flour, yam flour, potato or corn starches. The texture has been compared to al dente pasta, gummy bears and marshmallows in Western cuisine, but to my mind, Q is even more liminal, with a this-and-that, here-and-there quality. Items exemplifying this texture are known as QQ—that is, very Q.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Culinary History of Taipei: Beyond Pork and Ponlai\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> by Steven Crook and Katy Hui-Wen Hung, Q foods are “more substantial than melt-in-the mouth and [have] a delectable chewiness without being gummy.”\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s food that fights back, that takes the energy of your bite and returns it to you. Q is nothing like the smooth, processed American foods that go down easy, eaten mindlessly: soft serve ice cream, huge cups of soda to guzzle at red lights or boneless Buffalo wings. With Q, you pay more attention—not only to prevent choking but because your delight in it makes you more mindful.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">On humid nights in Taipei, steamy as the inside of a teakettle, I chomped into chewy balls of glutinous rice flour rolled in powdered peanuts and relished deep-fried fish balls on a stick. Just thinking about Q makes me crave it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">During my summer in Taiwan, boba tea drinks—with the addictive Q of their tapioca pearls—hadn’t yet widely caught on, but would soon skyrocket in popularity before sweeping onto other shores, first in Asian enclaves and later in suburbia. Boba teas are now so popular that recent rumors of shortages due to shipping issues from Asia have led to collective bemoaning among fans. Those craving Q should consider its myriad forms available in the Bay Area.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stir fried rice cakes with mustard greens and slivers of pork at China Bee \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> San Mateo have been a favorite at our Love Boat reunions.\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even though we’ve known each other more than half our lives, each time we meet it’s like no time has passed at all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ba-wan is another beloved treat, a gigantic mochi meatball that is \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">a traditional southern Taiwanese snack: a fistful of pork, bamboo shoots and mushrooms, surrounded by a chewy, gelatinous wrapper—often made with rice or tapioca flour, potato and corn starches—and doused in a tangy sauce made with ketchup, rice vinegar and soy sauce. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/Cafe-Taiwan-%E6%9E%97%E5%AE%B6%E8%90%AC%E5%B7%92%E8%B1%AC%E8%85%B3-Pleasanton-685514224889526/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Café Taiwan\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Pleasanton offers a glistening version for takeout. While you’re there, also get the Hakka dumpling soup, which has the look of the Frog Lady’s eggs from \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Mandalorian\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">; Grogu surely would approve of its ooey, chewy goo.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/taiwancafemilpitas\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Taiwan Café\u003c/span>\u003c/a> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Milpitas recently began shipping its frozen ba-wan, five spice rolls and wan luan pork hock (named for a rural eastern township known for its unctuous pork knuckles). You can also pick up these items and more on weekends via an ordering form through its \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.facebook.com/groups/taiwancafemilpitas\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Facebook group\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Beef noodle soup is now considered Taiwan’s national dish—tender shank, tendons with a delicate Q texture, and broth punched up with ginger, star anise and red chilis. It arrived in the aftermath of WWII, the creation of former soldiers who became food vendors in a time marked by turmoil. Locals chafed against the Nationalist government, which violently cracked down on and imprisoned political dissidents. At the same time, in the military villages, an influx of newcomers from across the straits brought their taste for wheat-based noodles, soup dumplings and more.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">“Food was one of the first ways of bridging conflicting groups on the island,” notes Cathy Erway in her cookbook, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Food of Taiwan: Recipes from the Beautiful Island\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here in the Bay Area, \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://liangsvillage.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Liang’s Village \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in Cupertino makes a stellar beef noodle soup, with loads of tender yet springy tendon. \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://mumumeals.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mumu Meals\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—founded last year by Bay Area brothers Jeffrey and Daniel Hsu—ships and delivers a frozen adaptation of their mother’s recipe. “We hope that someday, this dish is just as well known as Japanese ramen or Vietnamese pho,” Daniel Hsu says.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13897471\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 828px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-13897471 size-full\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua.jpg\" alt=\"A black sugar boba ice cream pop, streaked with caramel, against a leafy green backdrop.\" width=\"828\" height=\"830\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua.jpg 828w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua-800x802.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/tigersugar_vanessahua-768x770.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 828px) 100vw, 828px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Q to the max: a black sugar boba ice cream pop. \u003ccite>(Vanessa Hua)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">To finish off a meal, I’m a fan of \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">black sugar boba milk ice cream bars, which went viral on Instagram and TikTok with their photogenic, psychedelic swirls. In late May of last year—the first time I’d ventured into a Ranch 99 since the lockdown began—I raced down the aisles, double-masked, frantically grabbing items as if I were in some kind of game show.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">At the freezer case, I picked up two boxes of Tiger Sugar bars—“brave as a tiger,” its motto proclaims—but had no inkling of their popularity until I got to the checkout and realized the woman in front of me was buying five. (The treat is also available at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.toasttab.com/tigersugarcupertino/v3/?mode=fulfillment\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tiger Sugar\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, an outpost of the Taiwanese boba shop which opened last October \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">in Cupertino.) \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The bar itself was creamy, with the taste of whole milk, and not too sweet despite ribbons of caramel-y brown sugar, and the black boba tender—the epitome of Q—and not the frozen marbles that I feared. It was pure indulgence on a stick. As soon as I finished it, I wanted another; I wished I’d bought more boxes.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">t that early stage of the pandemic, when our choices\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and our reality\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">—\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">felt so constrained, certain fads spread across social media: sourdough bread, chickpea stew, and whatever else floated across our feed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some foods we tried once, but never ate again. Now as we haltingly emerge on the other side of it, my pulse still quickens for Q.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13897264\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"127\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-160x25.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/05/Taiwan.logobreak.greyish-768x122.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
},
{
"type": "component",
"content": "",
"name": "ad",
"attributes": {
"named": {
"label": "floatright"
},
"numeric": [
"floatright"
]
}
},
{
"type": "contentString",
"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Vanessa Hua is a columnist for the \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the author of \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Deceit and Other Possibilities\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A River of Stars\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and the forthcoming novel \u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Forbidden City\u003c/span>\u003cem>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
"attributes": {
"named": {},
"numeric": []
}
}
],
"link": "/arts/13897410/taiwanese-food-texture-q-boba-love-boat",
"authors": [
"byline_arts_13897410"
],
"categories": [
"arts_1",
"arts_12276"
],
"tags": [
"arts_14125",
"arts_14423",
"arts_14406",
"arts_14375",
"arts_10278",
"arts_14425",
"arts_11460",
"arts_14396"
],
"featImg": "arts_13897431",
"label": "source_arts_13897410"
}
},
"podcastsReducer": {
"isFetching": false,
"fetchFailed": false,
"hasFetched": false,
"podcasts": {}
},
"radioProgramsReducer": {
"isFetching": false,
"fetchFailed": false,
"hasFetched": false,
"radioPrograms": {}
},
"radioSearchSegmentsReducer": {},
"programsReducer": {
"all-things-considered": {
"id": "all-things-considered",
"title": "All Things Considered",
"info": "Every weekday, \u003cem>All Things Considered\u003c/em> hosts Robert Siegel, Audie Cornish, Ari Shapiro, and Kelly McEvers present the program's trademark mix of news, interviews, commentaries, reviews, and offbeat features. Michel Martin hosts on the weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 1pm-2pm, 4:30pm-6:30pm\u003cbr />SAT-SUN 5pm-6pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/All-Things-Considered-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/all-things-considered/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/all-things-considered"
},
"american-suburb-podcast": {
"id": "american-suburb-podcast",
"title": "American Suburb: The Podcast",
"tagline": "The flip side of gentrification, told through one town",
"info": "Gentrification is changing cities across America, forcing people from neighborhoods they have long called home. Call them the displaced. Now those priced out of the Bay Area are looking for a better life in an unlikely place. American Suburb follows this migration to one California town along the Delta, 45 miles from San Francisco. But is this once sleepy suburb ready for them?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/American-Suburb-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/news/series/american-suburb-podcast",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 19
},
"link": "/news/series/american-suburb-podcast/",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/RBrW",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?mt=2&id=1287748328",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/American-Suburb-p1086805/",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/series/american-suburb-podcast/feed/podcast",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkMzMDExODgxNjA5"
}
},
"baycurious": {
"id": "baycurious",
"title": "Bay Curious",
"tagline": "Exploring the Bay Area, one question at a time",
"info": "KQED’s new podcast, Bay Curious, gets to the bottom of the mysteries — both profound and peculiar — that give the Bay Area its unique identity. And we’ll do it with your help! You ask the questions. You decide what Bay Curious investigates. And you join us on the journey to find the answers.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Bay-Curious-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Bay Curious",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/news/series/baycurious",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 3
},
"link": "/podcasts/baycurious",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bay-curious/id1172473406",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/category/bay-curious-podcast/feed/podcast",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9a90d476-aa04-455d-9a4c-0871ed6216d4/bay-curious",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/bay-curious",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/6O76IdmhixfijmhTZLIJ8k"
}
},
"bbc-world-service": {
"id": "bbc-world-service",
"title": "BBC World Service",
"info": "The day's top stories from BBC News compiled twice daily in the week, once at weekends.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9pm-10pm, TUE-FRI 1am-2am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BBC-World-Service-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_world_service",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "BBC World Service"
},
"link": "/radio/program/bbc-world-service",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/global-news-podcast/id135067274?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/BBC-World-Service-p455581/",
"rss": "https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/p02nq0gn.rss"
}
},
"californiareport": {
"id": "californiareport",
"title": "The California Report",
"tagline": "California, day by day",
"info": "KQED’s statewide radio news program providing daily coverage of issues, trends and public policy decisions.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The California Report",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareport",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 8
},
"link": "/californiareport",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kqeds-the-california-report/id79681292",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/26099305-72af-4542-9dde-ac1807fe36d5/kqed-s-the-california-report",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432285393/the-california-report",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqedfm-kqeds-the-california-report-podcast-8838",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcram/feed/podcast"
}
},
"californiareportmagazine": {
"id": "californiareportmagazine",
"title": "The California Report Magazine",
"tagline": "Your state, your stories",
"info": "Every week, The California Report Magazine takes you on a road trip for the ears: to visit the places and meet the people who make California unique. The in-depth storytelling podcast from the California Report.",
"airtime": "FRI 4:30pm-5pm, 6:30pm-7pm, 11pm-11:30pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-California-Report-Magazine-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The California Report Magazine",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/californiareportmagazine",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 10
},
"link": "/californiareportmagazine",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-california-report-magazine/id1314750545",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM3NjkwNjk1OTAz",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/564733126/the-california-report-magazine",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/the-california-report-magazine",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/tcrmag/feed/podcast"
}
},
"city-arts": {
"id": "city-arts",
"title": "City Arts & Lectures",
"info": "A one-hour radio program to hear celebrated writers, artists and thinkers address contemporary ideas and values, often discussing the creative process. Please note: tapes or transcripts are not available",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/cityartsandlecture-300x300.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.cityarts.net/",
"airtime": "SUN 1pm-2pm, TUE 10pm, WED 1am",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "City Arts & Lectures"
},
"link": "https://www.cityarts.net",
"subscribe": {
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/City-Arts-and-Lectures-p692/",
"rss": "https://www.cityarts.net/feed/"
}
},
"closealltabs": {
"id": "closealltabs",
"title": "Close All Tabs",
"tagline": "Your irreverent guide to the trends redefining our world",
"info": "Close All Tabs breaks down how digital culture shapes our world through thoughtful insights and irreverent humor.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/CAT_2_Tile-scaled.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Close All Tabs",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 1
},
"link": "/podcasts/closealltabs",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/close-all-tabs/id214663465",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC6993880386",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/92d9d4ac-67a3-4eed-b10a-fb45d45b1ef2/close-all-tabs",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/6LAJFHnGK1pYXYzv6SIol6?si=deb0cae19813417c"
}
},
"code-switch-life-kit": {
"id": "code-switch-life-kit",
"title": "Code Switch / Life Kit",
"info": "\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em>, which listeners will hear in the first part of the hour, has fearless and much-needed conversations about race. Hosted by journalists of color, the show tackles the subject of race head-on, exploring how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and more.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em>, which will be in the second part of the hour, guides you through spaces and feelings no one prepares you for — from finances to mental health, from workplace microaggressions to imposter syndrome, from relationships to parenting. The show features experts with real world experience and shares their knowledge. Because everyone needs a little help being human.\u003cbr />\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch\">\u003cem>Code Switch\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/lifekit\">\u003cem>Life Kit\u003c/em> offical site and podcast\u003c/a>\u003cbr />",
"airtime": "SUN 9pm-10pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Code-Switch-Life-Kit-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/code-switch-life-kit",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/1112190608?mt=2&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubnByLm9yZy9yc3MvcG9kY2FzdC5waHA_aWQ9NTEwMzEy",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/3bExJ9JQpkwNhoHvaIIuyV",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510312/podcast.xml"
}
},
"commonwealth-club": {
"id": "commonwealth-club",
"title": "Commonwealth Club of California Podcast",
"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
"airtime": "THU 10pm, FRI 1am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Commonwealth-Club-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.commonwealthclub.org/podcasts",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Commonwealth Club of California"
},
"link": "/radio/program/commonwealth-club",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/commonwealth-club-of-california-podcast/id976334034?mt=2",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5jb21tb253ZWFsdGhjbHViLm9yZy9hdWRpby9wb2RjYXN0L3dlZWtseS54bWw",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Commonwealth-Club-of-California-p1060/"
}
},
"forum": {
"id": "forum",
"title": "Forum",
"tagline": "The conversation starts here",
"info": "KQED’s live call-in program discussing local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 9am-11am, 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Forum-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Forum with Mina Kim and Alexis Madrigal",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/forum",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 9
},
"link": "/forum",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kqeds-forum/id73329719",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM5NTU3MzgxNjMz",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432307980/forum",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqedfm-kqeds-forum-podcast",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC9557381633"
}
},
"freakonomics-radio": {
"id": "freakonomics-radio",
"title": "Freakonomics Radio",
"info": "Freakonomics Radio is a one-hour award-winning podcast and public-radio project hosted by Stephen Dubner, with co-author Steve Levitt as a regular guest. It is produced in partnership with WNYC.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/freakonomicsRadio.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://freakonomics.com/",
"airtime": "SUN 1am-2am, SAT 3pm-4pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/freakonomics-radio",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/freakonomics-radio/id354668519",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/Freakonomics-Radio-p272293/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/freakonomicsradio"
}
},
"fresh-air": {
"id": "fresh-air",
"title": "Fresh Air",
"info": "Hosted by Terry Gross, \u003cem>Fresh Air from WHYY\u003c/em> is the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues. One of public radio's most popular programs, Fresh Air features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 7pm-8pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Fresh-Air-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/fresh-air",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/4s8b",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=214089682&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Fresh-Air-p17/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/381444908/podcast.xml"
}
},
"here-and-now": {
"id": "here-and-now",
"title": "Here & Now",
"info": "A live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with stations across the country, Here & Now reflects the fluid world of news as it's happening in the middle of the day, with timely, in-depth news, interviews and conversation. Hosted by Robin Young, Jeremy Hobson and Tonya Mosley.",
"airtime": "MON-THU 11am-12pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Here-And-Now-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/here-and-now",
"subsdcribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?mt=2&id=426698661",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Here--Now-p211/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510051/podcast.xml"
}
},
"hidden-brain": {
"id": "hidden-brain",
"title": "Hidden Brain",
"info": "Shankar Vedantam uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/05/hiddenbrain.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/423302056/hidden-brain",
"airtime": "SUN 7pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "NPR"
},
"link": "/radio/program/hidden-brain",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Hidden-Brain-p787503/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510308/podcast.xml"
}
},
"how-i-built-this": {
"id": "how-i-built-this",
"title": "How I Built This with Guy Raz",
"info": "Guy Raz dives into the stories behind some of the world's best known companies. How I Built This weaves a narrative journey about innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists—and the movements they built.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/05/howIBuiltThis.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this",
"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/3zxy",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-guy-raz/id1150510297?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Arts--Culture-Podcasts/How-I-Built-This-p910896/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510313/podcast.xml"
}
},
"hyphenacion": {
"id": "hyphenacion",
"title": "Hyphenación",
"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"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. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Hyphenacion_FinalAssets_PodcastTile.png",
"imageAlt": "KQED Hyphenación",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 15
},
"link": "/podcasts/hyphenacion",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hyphenaci%C3%B3n/id1191591838",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/2p3Fifq96nw9BPcmFdIq0o?si=39209f7b25774f38",
"youtube": "https://www.youtube.com/c/kqedarts",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/6c3dd23c-93fb-4aab-97ba-1725fa6315f1/hyphenaci%C3%B3n",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC2275451163"
}
},
"jerrybrown": {
"id": "jerrybrown",
"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 18
},
"link": "/podcasts/jerrybrown",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/790253322/the-political-mind-of-jerry-brown",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1492194549",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/series/jerrybrown/feed/podcast/",
"tuneIn": "http://tun.in/pjGcK",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/the-political-mind-of-jerry-brown",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/54C1dmuyFyKMFttY6X2j6r?si=K8SgRCoISNK6ZbjpXrX5-w",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/44420f75-3b0e-4301-ab3b-16da6b09e543/the-political-mind-of-jerry-brown"
}
},
"latino-usa": {
"id": "latino-usa",
"title": "Latino USA",
"airtime": "MON 1am-2am, SUN 6pm-7pm",
"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/latinoUsa.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://latinousa.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/latino-usa",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/xtTd",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=79681317&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Latino-USA-p621/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510016/podcast.xml"
}
},
"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"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.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Marketplace-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.marketplace.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "American Public Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/marketplace",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=201853034&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/APM-Marketplace-p88/",
"rss": "https://feeds.publicradio.org/public_feeds/marketplace-pm/rss/rss"
}
},
"masters-of-scale": {
"id": "masters-of-scale",
"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Masters-of-Scale-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://mastersofscale.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "WaitWhat"
},
"link": "/radio/program/masters-of-scale",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "http://mastersofscale.app.link/",
"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
}
},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"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>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/mindshift/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindshift-podcast/id1078765985",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/464615685/mind-shift-podcast",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/stories-teachers-share",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0MxSpNYZKNprFLCl7eEtyx"
}
},
"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
"title": "Morning Edition",
"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3am-9am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Morning-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/morning-edition"
},
"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"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?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "On Our Watch from NPR and KQED",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1567098962",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/onourwatch",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/0OLWoyizopu6tY1XiuX70x",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-Our-Watch-p1436229/",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/show/on-our-watch",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510360/podcast.xml"
}
},
"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm-3pm, MON 12am-1am",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/onTheMedia.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/otm",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wnyc"
},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/on-the-media/id73330715?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/On-the-Media-p69/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/onthemedia"
}
},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
"title": "PBS NewsHour",
"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "pbs"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pbs-newshour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
"rss": "https://www.pbs.org/newshour/feeds/rss/podcasts/show"
}
},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
"info": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Perspectives_Tile_Final.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Perspectives",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id73801135",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/432309616/perspectives",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/perspectives/category/perspectives/feed/",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93dzIua3FlZC5vcmcvcGVyc3BlY3RpdmVzL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BlcnNwZWN0aXZlcy9mZWVkLw"
}
},
"planet-money": {
"id": "planet-money",
"title": "Planet Money",
"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/sections/money/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/M4f5",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business--Economics-Podcasts/Planet-Money-p164680/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510289/podcast.xml"
}
},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"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.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Political Breakdown",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/political-breakdown/id1327641087",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/572155894/political-breakdown",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/political-breakdown",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/07RVyIjIdk2WDuVehvBMoN",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/tag/political-breakdown/feed/podcast"
}
},
"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"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.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/possible/id1677184070",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
}
},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"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.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.pri.org/programs/the-world",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "PRI"
},
"link": "/radio/program/pri-the-world",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pris-the-world-latest-edition/id278196007?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/News--Politics-Podcasts/PRIs-The-World-p24/",
"rss": "http://feeds.feedburner.com/pri/theworld"
}
},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"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.",
"airtime": "SUN 12am-1am, SAT 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/radiolab1400.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/radiolab/",
"meta": {
"site": "science",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/radiolab",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/radiolab/id152249110?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/RadioLab-p68032/",
"rss": "https://feeds.wnyc.org/radiolab"
}
},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"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.",
"airtime": "SAT 4pm-5pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/reveal300px.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/reveal",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/reveal/id886009669",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Reveal-p679597/",
"rss": "http://feeds.revealradio.org/revealpodcast"
}
},
"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.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Rightnowish-Podcast-Tile-500x500-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Rightnowish with Pendarvis Harshaw",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/rightnowish",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 16
},
"link": "/podcasts/rightnowish",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/721590300/rightnowish",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/arts/programs/rightnowish/feed/podcast",
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rightnowish/id1482187648",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/rightnowish",
"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkMxMjU5MTY3NDc4",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/7kEJuafTzTVan7B78ttz1I"
}
},
"science-friday": {
"id": "science-friday",
"title": "Science Friday",
"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.",
"airtime": "FRI 11am-1pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Science-Friday-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/science-friday",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/science-friday",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=73329284&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Science-Friday-p394/",
"rss": "http://feeds.wnyc.org/science-friday"
}
},
"snap-judgment": {
"id": "snap-judgment",
"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
"airtime": "SAT 1pm-2pm, 9pm-10pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Snap-Judgment-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Snap Judgment",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://snapjudgment.org",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 4
},
"link": "https://snapjudgment.org",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/snap-judgment/id283657561",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/449018144/snap-judgment",
"stitcher": "https://www.pandora.com/podcast/snap-judgment/PC:241?source=stitcher-sunset",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/3Cct7ZWmxHNAtLgBTqjC5v",
"rss": "https://snap.feed.snapjudgment.org/"
}
},
"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
"info": "Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Sold-Out-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/soldout",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 13
},
"link": "/podcasts/soldout",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/911586047/s-o-l-d-o-u-t-a-new-future-for-housing",
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/introducing-sold-out-rethinking-housing-in-america/id1531354937",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/soldout",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/38dTBSk2ISFoPiyYNoKn1X",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/sold-out-rethinking-housing-in-america",
"tunein": "https://tunein.com/radio/SOLD-OUT-Rethinking-Housing-in-America-p1365871/"
}
},
"spooked": {
"id": "spooked",
"title": "Spooked",
"tagline": "True-life supernatural stories",
"info": "",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Spooked-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED Spooked",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://spookedpodcast.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 7
},
"link": "https://spookedpodcast.org/",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/spooked/id1279361017",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/549547848/snap-judgment-presents-spooked",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/76571Rfl3m7PLJQZKQIGCT",
"rss": "https://feeds.simplecast.com/TBotaapn"
}
},
"tech-nation": {
"id": "tech-nation",
"title": "Tech Nation Radio Podcast",
"info": "Tech Nation is a weekly public radio program, hosted by Dr. Moira Gunn. Founded in 1993, it has grown from a simple interview show to a multi-faceted production, featuring conversations with noted technology and science leaders, and a weekly science and technology-related commentary.",
"airtime": "FRI 10pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Tech-Nation-Radio-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "http://technation.podomatic.com/",
"meta": {
"site": "science",
"source": "Tech Nation Media"
},
"link": "/radio/program/tech-nation",
"subscribe": {
"rss": "https://technation.podomatic.com/rss2.xml"
}
},
"ted-radio-hour": {
"id": "ted-radio-hour",
"title": "TED Radio Hour",
"info": "The TED Radio Hour is a journey through fascinating ideas, astonishing inventions, fresh approaches to old problems, and new ways to think and create.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm, SAT 10pm-11pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/tedRadioHour.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/?showDate=2018-06-22",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/ted-radio-hour",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/8vsS",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=523121474&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/TED-Radio-Hour-p418021/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/510298/podcast.xml"
}
},
"thebay": {
"id": "thebay",
"title": "The Bay",
"tagline": "Local news to keep you rooted",
"info": "Host Devin Katayama walks you through the biggest story of the day with reporters and newsmakers.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Bay-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Bay",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/thebay",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 2
},
"link": "/podcasts/thebay",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bay/id1350043452",
"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/d800ea4c-7a2c-42f2-b861-edaf78a5db0b/the-bay",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/586725995/the-bay",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/the-bay",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/4BIKBKIujizLHlIlBNaAqQ",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC8259786327"
}
},
"thelatest": {
"id": "thelatest",
"title": "The Latest",
"tagline": "Trusted local news in real time",
"info": "",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/The-Latest-2025-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Latest",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/thelatest",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 6
},
"link": "/thelatest",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-latest-from-kqed/id1197721799",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/1257949365/the-latest-from-k-q-e-d",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/5KIIXMgM9GTi5AepwOYvIZ?si=bd3053fec7244dba",
"rss": "https://feeds.megaphone.fm/KQINC9137121918"
}
},
"theleap": {
"id": "theleap",
"title": "The Leap",
"tagline": "What if you closed your eyes, and jumped?",
"info": "Stories about people making dramatic, risky changes, told by award-winning public radio reporter Judy Campbell.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Leap-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED The Leap",
"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/theleap",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "kqed",
"order": 17
},
"link": "/podcasts/theleap",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-leap/id1046668171",
"npr": "https://www.npr.org/podcasts/447248267/the-leap",
"stitcher": "https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/kqed/the-leap",
"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/3sSlVHHzU0ytLwuGs1SD1U",
"rss": "https://ww2.kqed.org/news/programs/the-leap/feed/podcast"
}
},
"the-moth-radio-hour": {
"id": "the-moth-radio-hour",
"title": "The Moth Radio Hour",
"info": "Since its launch in 1997, The Moth has presented thousands of true stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide. Moth storytellers stand alone, under a spotlight, with only a microphone and a roomful of strangers. The storyteller and the audience embark on a high-wire act of shared experience which is both terrifying and exhilarating. Since 2008, The Moth podcast has featured many of our favorite stories told live on Moth stages around the country. For information on all of our programs and live events, visit themoth.org.",
"airtime": "SAT 8pm-9pm and SUN 11am-12pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/theMoth.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://themoth.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "prx"
},
"link": "/radio/program/the-moth-radio-hour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-moth-podcast/id275699983?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/The-Moth-p273888/",
"rss": "http://feeds.themoth.org/themothpodcast"
}
},
"the-new-yorker-radio-hour": {
"id": "the-new-yorker-radio-hour",
"title": "The New Yorker Radio Hour",
"info": "The New Yorker Radio Hour is a weekly program presented by the magazine's editor, David Remnick, and produced by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Each episode features a diverse mix of interviews, profiles, storytelling, and an occasional burst of humor inspired by the magazine, and shaped by its writers, artists, and editors. This isn't a radio version of a magazine, but something all its own, reflecting the rich possibilities of audio storytelling and conversation. Theme music for the show was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of tUnE-YArDs.",
"airtime": "SAT 10am-11am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-New-Yorker-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.wnycstudios.org/shows/tnyradiohour",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "WNYC"
},
"link": "/radio/program/the-new-yorker-radio-hour",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id1050430296",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/podcasts/WNYC-Podcasts/New-Yorker-Radio-Hour-p803804/",
"rss": "https://feeds.feedburner.com/newyorkerradiohour"
}
},
"the-sam-sanders-show": {
"id": "the-sam-sanders-show",
"title": "The Sam Sanders Show",
"info": "One of public radio's most dynamic voices, Sam Sanders helped launch The NPR Politics Podcast and hosted NPR's hit show It's Been A Minute. Now, the award-winning host returns with something brand new, The Sam Sanders Show. Every week, Sam Sanders and friends dig into the culture that shapes our lives: what's driving the biggest trends, how artists really think, and even the memes you can't stop scrolling past. Sam is beloved for his way of unpacking the world and bringing you up close to fresh currents and engaging conversations. The Sam Sanders Show is smart, funny and always a good time.",
"airtime": "FRI 12-1pm AND SAT 11am-12pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-Sam-Sanders-Show-Podcast-Tile-400x400-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.kcrw.com/shows/the-sam-sanders-show/latest",
"meta": {
"site": "arts",
"source": "KCRW"
},
"link": "https://www.kcrw.com/shows/the-sam-sanders-show/latest",
"subscribe": {
"rss": "https://feed.cdnstream1.com/zjb/feed/download/ac/28/59/ac28594c-e1d0-4231-8728-61865cdc80e8.xml"
}
},
"the-splendid-table": {
"id": "the-splendid-table",
"title": "The Splendid Table",
"info": "\u003cem>The Splendid Table\u003c/em> hosts our nation's conversations about cooking, sustainability and food culture.",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Splendid-Table-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.splendidtable.org/",
"airtime": "SUN 10-11 pm",
"meta": {
"site": "radio",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/the-splendid-table"
},
"this-american-life": {
"id": "this-american-life",
"title": "This American Life",
"info": "This American Life is a weekly public radio show, heard by 2.2 million people on more than 500 stations. Another 2.5 million people download the weekly podcast. It is hosted by Ira Glass, produced in collaboration with Chicago Public Media, delivered to stations by PRX The Public Radio Exchange, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards.",
"airtime": "SAT 12pm-1pm, 7pm-8pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/thisAmericanLife.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.thisamericanlife.org/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "wbez"
},
"link": "/radio/program/this-american-life",
"subscribe": {
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=201671138&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"rss": "https://www.thisamericanlife.org/podcast/rss.xml"
}
},
"tinydeskradio": {
"id": "tinydeskradio",
"title": "Tiny Desk Radio",
"info": "We're bringing the best of Tiny Desk to the airwaves, only on public radio.",
"airtime": "SUN 8pm and SAT 9pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/300x300-For-Member-Station-Logo-Tiny-Desk-Radio-@2x.png",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/series/g-s1-52030/tiny-desk-radio",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/tinydeskradio",
"subscribe": {
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/g-s1-52030/rss.xml"
}
},
"wait-wait-dont-tell-me": {
"id": "wait-wait-dont-tell-me",
"title": "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!",
"info": "Peter Sagal and Bill Kurtis host the weekly NPR News quiz show alongside some of the best and brightest news and entertainment personalities.",
"airtime": "SUN 10am-11am, SAT 11am-12pm, SAT 6pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Wait-Wait-Podcast-Tile-300x300-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/wait-wait-dont-tell-me/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/wait-wait-dont-tell-me",
"subscribe": {
"npr": "https://rpb3r.app.goo.gl/Xogv",
"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?s=143441&mt=2&id=121493804&at=11l79Y&ct=nprdirectory",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/Wait-Wait-Dont-Tell-Me-p46/",
"rss": "https://feeds.npr.org/344098539/podcast.xml"
}
},
"weekend-edition-saturday": {
"id": "weekend-edition-saturday",
"title": "Weekend Edition Saturday",
"info": "Weekend Edition Saturday wraps up the week's news and offers a mix of analysis and features on a wide range of topics, including arts, sports, entertainment, and human interest stories. The two-hour program is hosted by NPR's Peabody Award-winning Scott Simon.",
"airtime": "SAT 5am-10am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Weekend-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/weekend-edition-saturday/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/weekend-edition-saturday"
},
"weekend-edition-sunday": {
"id": "weekend-edition-sunday",
"title": "Weekend Edition Sunday",
"info": "Weekend Edition Sunday features interviews with newsmakers, artists, scientists, politicians, musicians, writers, theologians and historians. The program has covered news events from Nelson Mandela's 1990 release from a South African prison to the capture of Saddam Hussein.",
"airtime": "SUN 5am-10am",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Weekend-Edition-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.npr.org/programs/weekend-edition-sunday/",
"meta": {
"site": "news",
"source": "npr"
},
"link": "/radio/program/weekend-edition-sunday"
}
},
"racesReducer": {},
"racesGenElectionReducer": {},
"racesGenElection2026Reducer": {},
"radioSchedulesReducer": {},
"listsReducer": {
"posts/arts?category=food": {
"isFetching": false,
"latestQuery": {
"from": 516,
"size": 12
},
"vitalsOnly": false,
"totalRequested": 12,
"isLoading": false,
"isLoadingMore": true,
"total": {
"value": 549,
"relation": "eq"
},
"items": [
"arts_13898909",
"arts_13898743",
"arts_13898436",
"arts_13898185",
"arts_13897936",
"arts_13897987",
"arts_13897868",
"arts_13897830",
"arts_13897752",
"arts_13897684",
"arts_13897498",
"arts_13897410"
],
"complete": true
}
},
"recallGuideReducer": {
"intros": {},
"policy": {},
"candidates": {}
},
"savedArticleReducer": {
"articles": [],
"status": {}
},
"newslettersReducer": {
"isFetching": false,
"fetchFailed": false,
"hasFetched": false,
"newsletters": {},
"isSubscribing": false,
"isUnsubscribing": false,
"subscribedNewsletters": {}
},
"termsReducer": {
"about": {
"name": "About",
"type": "terms",
"id": "about",
"slug": "about",
"link": "/about",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"arts": {
"name": "Arts & Culture",
"grouping": [
"arts",
"pop",
"trulyca"
],
"description": "KQED Arts provides daily in-depth coverage of the Bay Area's music, art, film, performing arts, literature and arts news, as well as cultural commentary and criticism.",
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts",
"slug": "arts",
"link": "/arts",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"artschool": {
"name": "Art School",
"parent": "arts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "artschool",
"slug": "artschool",
"link": "/artschool",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"bayareabites": {
"name": "KQED food",
"grouping": [
"food",
"bayareabites",
"checkplease"
],
"parent": "food",
"type": "terms",
"id": "bayareabites",
"slug": "bayareabites",
"link": "/food",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"bayareahiphop": {
"name": "Bay Area Hiphop",
"type": "terms",
"id": "bayareahiphop",
"slug": "bayareahiphop",
"link": "/bayareahiphop",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"campaign21": {
"name": "Campaign 21",
"type": "terms",
"id": "campaign21",
"slug": "campaign21",
"link": "/campaign21",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"careers": {
"name": "Careers",
"type": "terms",
"id": "careers",
"slug": "careers",
"link": "/careers",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"checkplease": {
"name": "KQED food",
"grouping": [
"food",
"bayareabites",
"checkplease"
],
"parent": "food",
"type": "terms",
"id": "checkplease",
"slug": "checkplease",
"link": "/food",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"education": {
"name": "Education",
"grouping": [
"education"
],
"type": "terms",
"id": "education",
"slug": "education",
"link": "/education",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"elections": {
"name": "Elections",
"type": "terms",
"id": "elections",
"slug": "elections",
"link": "/elections",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"events": {
"name": "Events",
"type": "terms",
"id": "events",
"slug": "events",
"link": "/events",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"event": {
"name": "Event",
"alias": "events",
"type": "terms",
"id": "event",
"slug": "event",
"link": "/event",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"filmschoolshorts": {
"name": "Film School Shorts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "filmschoolshorts",
"slug": "filmschoolshorts",
"link": "/filmschoolshorts",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"food": {
"name": "KQED food",
"grouping": [
"food",
"bayareabites",
"checkplease"
],
"type": "terms",
"id": "food",
"slug": "food",
"link": "/food",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"forum": {
"name": "Forum",
"relatedContentQuery": "posts/forum?",
"parent": "news",
"type": "terms",
"id": "forum",
"slug": "forum",
"link": "/forum",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"futureofyou": {
"name": "Future of You",
"grouping": [
"science",
"futureofyou"
],
"parent": "science",
"type": "terms",
"id": "futureofyou",
"slug": "futureofyou",
"link": "/futureofyou",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"jpepinheart": {
"name": "KQED food",
"relatedContentQuery": "posts/food,bayareabites,checkplease",
"parent": "food",
"type": "terms",
"id": "jpepinheart",
"slug": "jpepinheart",
"link": "/food",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"liveblog": {
"name": "Live Blog",
"type": "terms",
"id": "liveblog",
"slug": "liveblog",
"link": "/liveblog",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"livetv": {
"name": "Live TV",
"parent": "tv",
"type": "terms",
"id": "livetv",
"slug": "livetv",
"link": "/livetv",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"lowdown": {
"name": "The Lowdown",
"relatedContentQuery": "posts/lowdown?",
"parent": "news",
"type": "terms",
"id": "lowdown",
"slug": "lowdown",
"link": "/lowdown",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"mindshift": {
"name": "Mindshift",
"parent": "news",
"description": "MindShift explores the future of education by highlighting the innovative – and sometimes counterintuitive – ways educators and parents are helping all children succeed.",
"type": "terms",
"id": "mindshift",
"slug": "mindshift",
"link": "/mindshift",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"news": {
"name": "News",
"grouping": [
"news",
"forum"
],
"type": "terms",
"id": "news",
"slug": "news",
"link": "/news",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"newsletters": {
"name": "newsletters",
"type": "terms",
"id": "newsletters",
"slug": "newsletters",
"link": "/newsletters",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"perspectives": {
"name": "Perspectives",
"parent": "radio",
"type": "terms",
"id": "perspectives",
"slug": "perspectives",
"link": "/perspectives",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"podcasts": {
"name": "Podcasts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "podcasts",
"slug": "podcasts",
"link": "/podcasts",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"pop": {
"name": "Pop",
"parent": "arts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "pop",
"slug": "pop",
"link": "/pop",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"pressroom": {
"name": "Pressroom",
"type": "terms",
"id": "pressroom",
"slug": "pressroom",
"link": "/pressroom",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"quest": {
"name": "Quest",
"parent": "science",
"type": "terms",
"id": "quest",
"slug": "quest",
"link": "/quest",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"radio": {
"name": "Radio",
"grouping": [
"forum",
"perspectives"
],
"description": "Listen to KQED Public Radio – home of Forum and The California Report – on 88.5 FM in San Francisco, 89.3 FM in Sacramento, 88.3 FM in Santa Rosa and 88.1 FM in Martinez.",
"type": "terms",
"id": "radio",
"slug": "radio",
"link": "/radio",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"root": {
"name": "KQED",
"image": "https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/2020/02/KQED-OG-Image@1x.png",
"imageWidth": 1200,
"imageHeight": 630,
"headData": {
"title": "KQED | News, Radio, Podcasts, TV | Public Media for Northern California",
"description": "KQED provides public radio, television, and independent reporting on issues that matter to the Bay Area. We’re the NPR and PBS member station for Northern California."
},
"type": "terms",
"id": "root",
"slug": "root",
"link": "/root",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"science": {
"name": "Science",
"grouping": [
"science",
"futureofyou"
],
"description": "KQED Science brings you award-winning science and environment coverage from the Bay Area and beyond.",
"type": "terms",
"id": "science",
"slug": "science",
"link": "/science",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"stateofhealth": {
"name": "State of Health",
"parent": "science",
"type": "terms",
"id": "stateofhealth",
"slug": "stateofhealth",
"link": "/stateofhealth",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"support": {
"name": "Support",
"type": "terms",
"id": "support",
"slug": "support",
"link": "/support",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"thedolist": {
"name": "The Do List",
"parent": "arts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "thedolist",
"slug": "thedolist",
"link": "/thedolist",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"trulyca": {
"name": "Truly CA",
"grouping": [
"arts",
"pop",
"trulyca"
],
"parent": "arts",
"type": "terms",
"id": "trulyca",
"slug": "trulyca",
"link": "/trulyca",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"tv": {
"name": "TV",
"type": "terms",
"id": "tv",
"slug": "tv",
"link": "/tv",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"voterguide": {
"name": "Voter Guide",
"parent": "elections",
"alias": "elections",
"type": "terms",
"id": "voterguide",
"slug": "voterguide",
"link": "/voterguide",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"guiaelectoral": {
"name": "Guia Electoral",
"parent": "elections",
"alias": "elections",
"type": "terms",
"id": "guiaelectoral",
"slug": "guiaelectoral",
"link": "/guiaelectoral",
"taxonomy": "site"
},
"arts_category_food": {
"isLoading": true
},
"arts_12276": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_12276",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "12276",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Food",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": "Explore the Bay Area culinary scene through KQED's food stories, recipes, dining experiences, and stories from the diverse tastemakers that define the Bay's cuisines.",
"title": "Bay Area Food Archives, Articles, News, and Reviews | KQED",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 12288,
"slug": "food",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/category/food"
},
"source_arts_13898909": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13898909",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "/food/",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13898743": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13898743",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13898436": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13898436",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13898185": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13898185",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13897936": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13897936",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13897987": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13897987",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13897868": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13897868",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13897830": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13897830",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13897752": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13897752",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13897684": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13897684",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/arts/category/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13897498": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13897498",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/arts/category/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"source_arts_13897410": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "source_arts_13897410",
"meta": {
"override": true
},
"name": "Food",
"link": "https://www.kqed.org/food",
"isLoading": false
},
"arts_1": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_1",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "1",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Arts",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "category",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Arts Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 1,
"slug": "arts",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/category/arts"
},
"arts_10278": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_10278",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "10278",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "featured-arts",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "featured-arts Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 10290,
"slug": "featured-arts",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/featured-arts"
},
"arts_14730": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14730",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14730",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "pizza",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "pizza Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14742,
"slug": "pizza",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/pizza"
},
"arts_14729": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14729",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14729",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "soul food",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "soul food Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14741,
"slug": "soul-food",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/soul-food"
},
"arts_10342": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_10342",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "10342",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "editorspick",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "editorspick Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 10354,
"slug": "editorspick",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/editorspick"
},
"arts_1297": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_1297",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "1297",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "food",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "food Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 1309,
"slug": "food",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/food"
},
"arts_21732": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_21732",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "21732",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "japanese food",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "japanese food Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 21744,
"slug": "japanese-food",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/japanese-food"
},
"arts_14089": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14089",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14089",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "pop-up",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "pop-up Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14101,
"slug": "pop-up",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/pop-up"
},
"arts_13915": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_13915",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13915",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "ramen",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "ramen Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 13927,
"slug": "ramen",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/ramen"
},
"arts_1146": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_1146",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "1146",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "San Francisco",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "San Francisco Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 701,
"slug": "san-francisco",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/san-francisco"
},
"arts_2855": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_2855",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "2855",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Filipino",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Filipino Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 2867,
"slug": "filipino",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/filipino"
},
"arts_14183": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14183",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14183",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Filipino food",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Filipino food Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14195,
"slug": "filipino-food",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/filipino-food"
},
"arts_8836": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_8836",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "8836",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "SOMA Pilipinas",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "SOMA Pilipinas Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 8848,
"slug": "soma-pilipinas",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/soma-pilipinas"
},
"arts_4672": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_4672",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "4672",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Asian American",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Asian American Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 4684,
"slug": "asian-american",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/asian-american"
},
"arts_2654": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_2654",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "2654",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "chinatown",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "chinatown Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 2666,
"slug": "chinatown",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/chinatown"
},
"arts_914": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_914",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "914",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "zines",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "zines Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 932,
"slug": "zines",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/zines"
},
"arts_14125": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14125",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14125",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "beef noodle soup",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "beef noodle soup Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14137,
"slug": "beef-noodle-soup",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/beef-noodle-soup"
},
"arts_14406": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14406",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14406",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "eating-taiwanese",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "eating-taiwanese Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14418,
"slug": "eating-taiwanese",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/eating-taiwanese"
},
"arts_14375": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14375",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14375",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "eatingtaiwanese",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "eatingtaiwanese Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14387,
"slug": "eatingtaiwanese",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/eatingtaiwanese"
},
"arts_11460": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_11460",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "11460",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Taiwan",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Taiwan Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 11472,
"slug": "taiwan",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/taiwan"
},
"arts_14396": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14396",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14396",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "taiwanese",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "taiwanese Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14408,
"slug": "taiwanese",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/taiwanese"
},
"arts_13831": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_13831",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "13831",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "barbecue",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "barbecue Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 13843,
"slug": "barbecue",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/barbecue"
},
"arts_1143": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_1143",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "1143",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Oakland",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Oakland Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 692,
"slug": "oakland",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/oakland"
},
"arts_6902": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_6902",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "6902",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "Cupertino",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "Cupertino Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 6914,
"slug": "cupertino",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/cupertino"
},
"arts_3001": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_3001",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "3001",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "silicon valley",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "silicon valley Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 3013,
"slug": "silicon-valley",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/silicon-valley"
},
"arts_14476": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14476",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14476",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "farm",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "farm Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14488,
"slug": "farm",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/farm"
},
"arts_14475": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14475",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14475",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "sebastopol",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "sebastopol Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14487,
"slug": "sebastopol",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/sebastopol"
},
"arts_1942": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_1942",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "1942",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "comics",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "comics Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 1954,
"slug": "comics",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/comics"
},
"arts_14398": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14398",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14398",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "lu rou fan",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "lu rou fan Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14410,
"slug": "lu-rou-fan",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/lu-rou-fan"
},
"arts_14401": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14401",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14401",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "mama liu",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "mama liu Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14413,
"slug": "mama-liu",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/mama-liu"
},
"arts_14423": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14423",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14423",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "boba",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "boba Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14435,
"slug": "boba",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/boba"
},
"arts_14425": {
"type": "terms",
"id": "arts_14425",
"meta": {
"index": "terms_1716263798",
"site": "arts",
"id": "14425",
"found": true
},
"relationships": {},
"featImg": null,
"name": "liang's village",
"description": null,
"taxonomy": "tag",
"headData": {
"twImgId": null,
"twTitle": null,
"ogTitle": null,
"ogImgId": null,
"twDescription": null,
"description": null,
"title": "liang's village Archives | KQED Arts",
"ogDescription": null
},
"ttid": 14437,
"slug": "liangs-village",
"isLoading": false,
"link": "/arts/tag/liangs-village"
}
},
"userPermissionsReducer": {
"wpLoggedIn": false
},
"eventsReducer": {},
"fssReducer": {},
"tvDailyScheduleReducer": {},
"tvWeeklyScheduleReducer": {},
"tvPrimetimeScheduleReducer": {},
"tvMonthlyScheduleReducer": {},
"userAccountReducer": {
"user": {
"email": null,
"emailStatus": "EMAIL_UNVALIDATED",
"loggedStatus": "LOGGED_OUT",
"loggingChecked": false,
"articles": [],
"firstName": null,
"lastName": null,
"phoneNumber": null,
"fetchingMembership": false,
"membershipError": false,
"memberships": [
{
"id": null,
"startDate": null,
"firstName": null,
"lastName": null,
"familyNumber": null,
"memberNumber": null,
"memberSince": null,
"expirationDate": null,
"pfsEligible": false,
"isSustaining": false,
"membershipLevel": "Prospect",
"membershipStatus": "Non Member",
"lastGiftDate": null,
"renewalDate": null,
"lastDonationAmount": null
}
]
},
"authModal": {
"isOpen": false,
"view": "LANDING_VIEW"
},
"error": null
},
"youthMediaReducer": {},
"checkPleaseReducer": {
"filterData": {
"region": {
"key": "Restaurant Region",
"filters": [
"Any Region"
]
},
"cuisine": {
"key": "Restaurant Cuisine",
"filters": [
"Any Cuisine"
]
}
},
"restaurantDataById": {},
"restaurantIdsSorted": [],
"error": null
},
"userAgentReducer": {
"userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; +claudebot@anthropic.com)",
"isBot": true
}
}
