A Lantern Festival Celebration Brings Night Market Vibes to Oakland Chinatown
Oakland Celebrates 100 Years of Black History With a Night of Culture and Creativity — and Free Food
Naoko Takei Moore Wants You to Live a Happy Donabe Life
SF’s Most Legendary Chicken Phở Is Now Available Until 3 a.m.
It’s a Golden Age for Asian-Style Afternoon Tea in the Bay Area
A New South Bay Restaurant Specializes in Decadent Japanese Seafood Bowls
This Hong Kong Cafe Might Be the East Bay’s Most Affordable New Restaurant
This San José Food Truck Is One of the Only Dominican Food Spots in the Bay
Revisiting Smokehouse, a Berkeley Classic for Late-Night Burgers and Shakes
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"content": "\u003cp>On Sunday, March 1, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/oakland\">Oakland’s\u003c/a> Pacific Renaissance Plaza will be festooned with red paper lanterns, lucky New Year’s scrolls and what event organizer Diana Wu describes as “spring blooms vibes.” The sound of taiko drums will echo through the streets of Chinatown. Hungry guests will feast on shrimp dumplings and hand-pulled noodles. Eventually, the whole plaza will erupt into an all-out dance party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s all part of the fourth annual \u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lantern-festival-2026-in-oakland-chinatown-tickets-1982206763790\">Oakland Chinatown Lantern Festival\u003c/a>, which traditionally marks the end of each year’s Lunar New Year festivities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wu — the executive director of the kitchen incubator \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/oaklandbloom/?hl=en\">Oakland Bloom\u003c/a>, which co-organizes the event along with the nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://stickyriceclub.org/\">Sticky Rice Club\u003c/a> — explains that when the festival began in 2023, the idea was to bring Chinatown to life with the atmosphere of an Asian-style night market. At the time, the community was reeling in the aftermath of the pandemic shutdowns and a spate of anti-Asian violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987223\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987223\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025.jpg\" alt=\"A customer buying food from a festival vendor at night.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1335\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A customer ordering from one of the food tents at last year’s festival. \u003ccite>(Amber Wang, courtesy of Oakland Bloom)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“And so that’s something we’ve continued — inviting the community out in the afternoon and evening, and then also inviting local businesses to stay open with us and really bring that vibrancy back to the neighborhood,” Wu says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13952739/lantern-festival-oakland-chinatown-oakland-bloom\">past years\u003c/a>, the Lantern Festival celebration will be a multicultural, intergenerational affair. A variety of all-ages activities will include a scavenger hunt where participants are given photo hints for landmarks located all around the Pacific Renaissance Plaza. (Prizes will include vouchers for a mango piggy dessert from \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/peonyseafoodrestaurant/?hl=en\">Peony\u003c/a>, the plaza’s dim sum standard bearer.) There will be mahjong tables, storytelling tents and even acupuncture booths. Meanwhile, a host of artists and makers will have tables set up to sell their wares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987224\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987224\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a bowl of beef noodle soup.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lil Devil’s beef noodle soup, one of the dishes featured at this year’s Lantern Festival. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Lil Devil Noodle Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13974383,arts_13986806']Foodwise, Oakland Bloom’s curatorial role means the offerings will be a mix of both Asian and non-Asian cuisines, with many of the vendors pulled from the stable of chefs who rotate through \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/otk_eats/\">Open Test Kitchen\u003c/a>, the nonprofit’s affiliated restaurant. Highlights include \u003ca href=\"https://tastecooking.com/biang-biang-goes-the-noodles/\">biang biang\u003c/a>–inspired hand-pulled noodles and Taiwanese beef noodle soup from newcomer \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/lil_devil_noodles/?hl=en\">Lil Devil Noodle Co.\u003c/a>, Michoacán-style tacos from \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tsiripurepecha/?hl=en\">Tsiri\u003c/a>, sweets from Goddess Noir Cakes (which comes out of Black American baking traditions) and heart-shaped empanadas from the Palestinian-Cuban pop-up \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/palestiniancubanfusion/?hl=en\">Asúkar\u003c/a>. (Traditionally, the Lantern Festival is also a romantic holiday, Wu explains.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wu says that as the festival has formed deeper connections in Oakland Chinatown over the years, more businesses in the neighborhood are now playing an active role in the event. In fact, two of the 10 food vendors are the brick-and-mortar restaurants \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ying_kee__restaurant/\">Ying Kee\u003c/a> and Nature Vegetarian, both longtime Chinatown staples. For the Lantern Festival, they’ll serve a selection of classics: from Ying Kee, shrimp wonton soup and shrimp dumpling soup (both lucky dishes for ringing in the New Year), and from Nature Vegetarian, plant-based salt-and-pepper chicken, Chinese broccoli chow fun and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987225\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987225\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of wonton soup.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ying Kee’s wonton soup. The restaurant is one of the Chinatown brick-and-mortar businesses participating in this year’s festival. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ying Kee)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And what better way for the whole evening to culminate than with a big dance party? “We just love inviting the neighbors to just come dance together in the plaza,” Wu says.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lantern-festival-2026-in-oakland-chinatown-tickets-1982206763790\">\u003ci>Oakland Chinatown Lantern Festival\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> will take place in and around the Pacific Renaissance Plaza (388 9th St., Oakland) on Sunday, March 1, 3–8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, with food available for purchase on an a la carte basis. Guests are asked to wear masks when not eating and drinking.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On Sunday, March 1, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/oakland\">Oakland’s\u003c/a> Pacific Renaissance Plaza will be festooned with red paper lanterns, lucky New Year’s scrolls and what event organizer Diana Wu describes as “spring blooms vibes.” The sound of taiko drums will echo through the streets of Chinatown. Hungry guests will feast on shrimp dumplings and hand-pulled noodles. Eventually, the whole plaza will erupt into an all-out dance party.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s all part of the fourth annual \u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lantern-festival-2026-in-oakland-chinatown-tickets-1982206763790\">Oakland Chinatown Lantern Festival\u003c/a>, which traditionally marks the end of each year’s Lunar New Year festivities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wu — the executive director of the kitchen incubator \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/oaklandbloom/?hl=en\">Oakland Bloom\u003c/a>, which co-organizes the event along with the nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://stickyriceclub.org/\">Sticky Rice Club\u003c/a> — explains that when the festival began in 2023, the idea was to bring Chinatown to life with the atmosphere of an Asian-style night market. At the time, the community was reeling in the aftermath of the pandemic shutdowns and a spate of anti-Asian violence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987223\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987223\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025.jpg\" alt=\"A customer buying food from a festival vendor at night.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1335\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025-768x513.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/amber-wang-2025-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A customer ordering from one of the food tents at last year’s festival. \u003ccite>(Amber Wang, courtesy of Oakland Bloom)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“And so that’s something we’ve continued — inviting the community out in the afternoon and evening, and then also inviting local businesses to stay open with us and really bring that vibrancy back to the neighborhood,” Wu says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13952739/lantern-festival-oakland-chinatown-oakland-bloom\">past years\u003c/a>, the Lantern Festival celebration will be a multicultural, intergenerational affair. A variety of all-ages activities will include a scavenger hunt where participants are given photo hints for landmarks located all around the Pacific Renaissance Plaza. (Prizes will include vouchers for a mango piggy dessert from \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/peonyseafoodrestaurant/?hl=en\">Peony\u003c/a>, the plaza’s dim sum standard bearer.) There will be mahjong tables, storytelling tents and even acupuncture booths. Meanwhile, a host of artists and makers will have tables set up to sell their wares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987224\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987224\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup.jpg\" alt=\"Overhead view of a bowl of beef noodle soup.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Lil-Devil-Beef-Noodle-Soup-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lil Devil’s beef noodle soup, one of the dishes featured at this year’s Lantern Festival. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Lil Devil Noodle Company)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Foodwise, Oakland Bloom’s curatorial role means the offerings will be a mix of both Asian and non-Asian cuisines, with many of the vendors pulled from the stable of chefs who rotate through \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/otk_eats/\">Open Test Kitchen\u003c/a>, the nonprofit’s affiliated restaurant. Highlights include \u003ca href=\"https://tastecooking.com/biang-biang-goes-the-noodles/\">biang biang\u003c/a>–inspired hand-pulled noodles and Taiwanese beef noodle soup from newcomer \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/lil_devil_noodles/?hl=en\">Lil Devil Noodle Co.\u003c/a>, Michoacán-style tacos from \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tsiripurepecha/?hl=en\">Tsiri\u003c/a>, sweets from Goddess Noir Cakes (which comes out of Black American baking traditions) and heart-shaped empanadas from the Palestinian-Cuban pop-up \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/palestiniancubanfusion/?hl=en\">Asúkar\u003c/a>. (Traditionally, the Lantern Festival is also a romantic holiday, Wu explains.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wu says that as the festival has formed deeper connections in Oakland Chinatown over the years, more businesses in the neighborhood are now playing an active role in the event. In fact, two of the 10 food vendors are the brick-and-mortar restaurants \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ying_kee__restaurant/\">Ying Kee\u003c/a> and Nature Vegetarian, both longtime Chinatown staples. For the Lantern Festival, they’ll serve a selection of classics: from Ying Kee, shrimp wonton soup and shrimp dumpling soup (both lucky dishes for ringing in the New Year), and from Nature Vegetarian, plant-based salt-and-pepper chicken, Chinese broccoli chow fun and more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987225\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987225\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of wonton soup.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/ying-kee-wontons-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ying Kee’s wonton soup. The restaurant is one of the Chinatown brick-and-mortar businesses participating in this year’s festival. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ying Kee)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And what better way for the whole evening to culminate than with a big dance party? “We just love inviting the neighbors to just come dance together in the plaza,” Wu says.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/lantern-festival-2026-in-oakland-chinatown-tickets-1982206763790\">\u003ci>Oakland Chinatown Lantern Festival\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> will take place in and around the Pacific Renaissance Plaza (388 9th St., Oakland) on Sunday, March 1, 3–8 p.m. The event is free and open to the public, with food available for purchase on an a la carte basis. Guests are asked to wear masks when not eating and drinking.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Oakland Celebrates 100 Years of Black History With a Night of Culture and Creativity — and Free Food",
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"content": "\u003cp>On Thursday, Feb. 26, the city of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/oakland\">Oakland\u003c/a> will celebrate 100 years of Black history with a night of music, art, wine tastings and spoken word poetry at the \u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2026/01/20/oakland-henry-j-kaiser-center-for-the-arts-reopening/\">newly reopened Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, no celebration of Black culture would be complete without a spread of delicious food. So event organizers have tapped some of the Town’s most prominent Black chefs to dish out plates of jerk chicken and barbecue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s going to be an all-out party, then. The best part? Everything will be entirely free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to build a sense of joy and spiritualism in Oakland,” says chef Nigel Jones of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/calabasheats/?hl=en\">Calabash\u003c/a>, one of the participating restaurants. “That’s the energy we want to bring for 2026.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13859578\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13859578\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3.jpg\" alt=\"A sculptural niche on the north side of the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1081\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-1200x676.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sculptural niche on the north side of the newly reopened Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, circa 2019. \u003ccite>(Sam Lefebvre/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The theme of Oakland’s centennial event — “Black History in Motion: Culture, Community & the Future We Build (1926–2026)” — alludes to the historian Carter G. Woodson’s creation of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/carter-woodson-black-history-month/\">first Negro History Week\u003c/a> in 1926. That weeklong celebration eventually evolved into what we now know as Black History Month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13986966,arts_13926878']Hosted by Oakland City Council President Kevin Jenkins, along with fellow Councilmembers Carroll Fife, Ken Houston and Rowena Brown, Thursday night’s event is meant to be a showcase of the depth and breadth of Black creativity in Oakland. Former \u003ci>America’s Got Talent \u003c/i>contestant Dee Dee Simon will perform, as will the MC and spoken word poet \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13976567/ryannicole-gets-real-about-the-world-on-new-album-yourstruly\">RyanNicole\u003c/a>. Dr. Chris Wachira of the Kenyan American winery Wachira Wines will be on hand to pour free tastes. And a Black Authors’ Corner will feature \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13985813/a-new-art-installation-celebrates-oscar-grants-40th-birthday\">Wanda Johnson\u003c/a>, Oscar Grant’s mother, who wrote a \u003ca href=\"https://wandajohnsonspeaks.com/product/from-tragedy-to-triumph/\">memoir\u003c/a> about her son’s heartbreaking death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, featured chefs dishing out tastes will include Jones (of Calabash and Kingston 11), caterer \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/juslaeats/?hl=en\">Jusala\u003c/a>, Dottie Moore and the team from longtime barbecue staple Everett & Jones. Jones, for his part, will serve what has been his signature dish since his \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13926878/kingston-11-jamaican-restaurant-closing-oakland-black-owned-business\">Kingston 11 days\u003c/a>: slow-roasted jerk chicken, served with a side of rice and peas and sweet plantains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of the food will be free, passed out on a first come, first served basis. (Good reason, perhaps, to show up early.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987176\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1408px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987176\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait of a chef in a baseball cap posing in his restaurant.\" width=\"1408\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones.jpg 1408w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones-160x227.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones-768x1091.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones-1081x1536.jpg 1081w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1408px) 100vw, 1408px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Calabash chef-owner Nigel Jones says he’s optimistic about the future of Oakland. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Nigel Jones)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jones notes that while it has been a challenging few years for all restaurants in Oakland, Black-owned food businesses have had a particularly difficult time. By and large, they’re scrappy, independent operations, often without any financial cushion. And the COVID shutdowns were brutal for restaurants like Calabash that depend on downtown foot traffic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the struggles, Jones says he’s hopeful for the future of Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oakland doesn’t have tech. We don’t have oil. We don’t have any anchor stores to drive people downtown. But what we do have is culture,” Jones says, noting how inspired he was by the thousands of people who came out to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986966/black-joy-parade-oakland-2026\">Black Joy Parade\u003c/a> this past weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The culture that we have in Oakland — that’s the thing that we need to invest in. That’s what we need to support.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DU_OJ2-oDnE/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Oakland’s Black History Month centennial celebration\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is on Feb. 26, 6–9 p.m., at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts (10 10th St., Oakland). The event is free and open to the public. Guests are encouraged to attend in “African swag or business attire.”\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On Thursday, Feb. 26, the city of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/oakland\">Oakland\u003c/a> will celebrate 100 years of Black history with a night of music, art, wine tastings and spoken word poetry at the \u003ca href=\"https://oaklandside.org/2026/01/20/oakland-henry-j-kaiser-center-for-the-arts-reopening/\">newly reopened Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, no celebration of Black culture would be complete without a spread of delicious food. So event organizers have tapped some of the Town’s most prominent Black chefs to dish out plates of jerk chicken and barbecue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s going to be an all-out party, then. The best part? Everything will be entirely free.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We want to build a sense of joy and spiritualism in Oakland,” says chef Nigel Jones of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/calabasheats/?hl=en\">Calabash\u003c/a>, one of the participating restaurants. “That’s the energy we want to bring for 2026.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13859578\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13859578\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3.jpg\" alt=\"A sculptural niche on the north side of the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1081\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-800x450.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-1020x574.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/Kaiser-Auditorium-Sculptural-niche-3-1200x676.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A sculptural niche on the north side of the newly reopened Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, circa 2019. \u003ccite>(Sam Lefebvre/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The theme of Oakland’s centennial event — “Black History in Motion: Culture, Community & the Future We Build (1926–2026)” — alludes to the historian Carter G. Woodson’s creation of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/carter-woodson-black-history-month/\">first Negro History Week\u003c/a> in 1926. That weeklong celebration eventually evolved into what we now know as Black History Month.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Hosted by Oakland City Council President Kevin Jenkins, along with fellow Councilmembers Carroll Fife, Ken Houston and Rowena Brown, Thursday night’s event is meant to be a showcase of the depth and breadth of Black creativity in Oakland. Former \u003ci>America’s Got Talent \u003c/i>contestant Dee Dee Simon will perform, as will the MC and spoken word poet \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13976567/ryannicole-gets-real-about-the-world-on-new-album-yourstruly\">RyanNicole\u003c/a>. Dr. Chris Wachira of the Kenyan American winery Wachira Wines will be on hand to pour free tastes. And a Black Authors’ Corner will feature \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13985813/a-new-art-installation-celebrates-oscar-grants-40th-birthday\">Wanda Johnson\u003c/a>, Oscar Grant’s mother, who wrote a \u003ca href=\"https://wandajohnsonspeaks.com/product/from-tragedy-to-triumph/\">memoir\u003c/a> about her son’s heartbreaking death.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, featured chefs dishing out tastes will include Jones (of Calabash and Kingston 11), caterer \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/juslaeats/?hl=en\">Jusala\u003c/a>, Dottie Moore and the team from longtime barbecue staple Everett & Jones. Jones, for his part, will serve what has been his signature dish since his \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13926878/kingston-11-jamaican-restaurant-closing-oakland-black-owned-business\">Kingston 11 days\u003c/a>: slow-roasted jerk chicken, served with a side of rice and peas and sweet plantains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of the food will be free, passed out on a first come, first served basis. (Good reason, perhaps, to show up early.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987176\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1408px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987176\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones.jpg\" alt=\"Portrait of a chef in a baseball cap posing in his restaurant.\" width=\"1408\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones.jpg 1408w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones-160x227.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones-768x1091.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/nigel-jones-1081x1536.jpg 1081w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1408px) 100vw, 1408px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Calabash chef-owner Nigel Jones says he’s optimistic about the future of Oakland. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Nigel Jones)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Jones notes that while it has been a challenging few years for all restaurants in Oakland, Black-owned food businesses have had a particularly difficult time. By and large, they’re scrappy, independent operations, often without any financial cushion. And the COVID shutdowns were brutal for restaurants like Calabash that depend on downtown foot traffic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the struggles, Jones says he’s hopeful for the future of Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oakland doesn’t have tech. We don’t have oil. We don’t have any anchor stores to drive people downtown. But what we do have is culture,” Jones says, noting how inspired he was by the thousands of people who came out to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986966/black-joy-parade-oakland-2026\">Black Joy Parade\u003c/a> this past weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The culture that we have in Oakland — that’s the thing that we need to invest in. That’s what we need to support.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DU_OJ2-oDnE/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Oakland’s Black History Month centennial celebration\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is on Feb. 26, 6–9 p.m., at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts (10 10th St., Oakland). The event is free and open to the public. Guests are encouraged to attend in “African swag or business attire.”\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Naoko Takei Moore has beautiful memories of her mother’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japanese-food\">Japanese\u003c/a> home cooking. Growing up in Tokyo in the ’80s, she savored those moments when she and her mom stood side by side in the kitchen making fresh onigiri and mochi, and, most of all, when they’d sit around the family table to enjoy a meal of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/C4ZHSAtvjUG/?hl=en&img_index=1\">yose-nabe\u003c/a>, a kind of hot pot made with simple ingredients like clams, fish and whatever vegetables they had on hand — all cooked in the traditional Japanese clay pot known as donabe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best part, she says, was when they’d lift the lid of the pot to reveal the finished dish, and all of the steam wafted up. “It’s so special,” she says. “It never gets old.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the introduction to her new cookbook, \u003ca href=\"https://toirokitchen.com/products/simply-donabe-cookbook\">\u003ci>Simply Donabe\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, Takei Moore recalls how years later, after she’d immigrated to Los Angeles, she found herself wanting to share traditional donabe with her new community in the United States. In 2008, she founded \u003ca href=\"https://toirokitchen.com/\">TOIRO\u003c/a>, a company that sold handmade donabe imported from Iga, Japan, and started hosting donabe-centric Japanese cooking classes in her home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before she knew it, she’d become donabe culture’s number one evangelist in the Western world, co-authoring her first award-winning cookbook on the topic (\u003ci>Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking) \u003c/i>in 2015, and expanding her business to include a brick-and-mortar donabe shop in West Hollywood. She’s also become a minor celebrity on Instagram, where she goes by “\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mrsdonabe/\">Mrs. Donabe\u003c/a>” and has more than 47,000 followers who marvel over her \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DERIT5-PuMw/?hl=en&img_index=1\">gorgeously presented\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DNjUQbRSZMj/?hl=en&img_index=1\">one-pot\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DRFm3pbkjW0/?hl=en&img_index=1\">dishes\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987068\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1334px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987068\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell.jpg\" alt=\"An Asian woman stirs a pot of soup.\" width=\"1334\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell.jpg 1334w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell-1025x1536.jpg 1025w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1334px) 100vw, 1334px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Takei Moore stirs a pot of soup cooked in a traditional donabe. \u003ccite>(Matt Russell)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These days, she says, donabe cooking has become mainstream in ways she never could have imagined when she first started teaching her little grassroots cooking classes, when most of her students couldn’t even pronounce the word. (It’s “doh-nah-bay,” not “doh-nah-bee.”) Now, magazines like \u003ci>Food & Wine \u003c/i>and \u003ci>Bon Appétit\u003c/i> will reference “donabe” in recipes without feeling the need to translate the word as “Japanese clay pot,” and TOIRO routinely gets orders from customers across the U.S. and in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Takei Moore says the gospel she’s spreading isn’t really about any particular recipe or cooking technique. Instead, she believes using donabe in day-to-day cooking is a pathway toward a slower, more intentional and more idyllic life — what she calls her “happy donabe life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the eve of a book tour visit to San Francisco that will include \u003ca href=\"https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/products/naoko-takei-moore-author-event-simply-donabe-japanese-one-pot-recipes\">a talk at Omnivore Books on Food\u003c/a> and a special dinner at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DUwLLUBEk3M/?img_index=1\">Rintaro\u003c/a>, I spoke to Takei Moore about the connective power of food and the life-changing, near-magical qualities of her beloved donabe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Luke Tsai: Can you briefly explain what a donabe \u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003ci>is\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb> for those who don’t know?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Naoko Takei Moore:\u003c/b> It literally means clay pot — “do” means clay, and “nabe” means pot. It’s the foundation of Japanese cuisine, going back more than 10,000 years during the Jōmon Period. So it’s almost like donabe is a national cookware for Japanese people; it’s so close to everybody’s heart. Almost every household owns at least one. It can be something very inexpensive and mass-produced, or, or you can invest in something a little bit more artisan — the super-premium style can go up to $1,000 or $2,000. But most donabe are very affordable and approachable, and if you use it properly, it can last for a long, long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the introduction to your book, you talk about how donabe isn’t just a cooking tool; it’s a “way of life” — and a way for a person to have a happy life. Can you elaborate on how that’s the case?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13986360,arts_13959259,arts_13926203']Ultimately, it’s a lifestyle, and it really symbolizes Japanese communal dining. In Japanese conversation, when we say “nabe,” it refers to a hot pot dish, but it also means “let’s get together.” Instead of saying “let’s get together,” we might say, “Let’s nabe sometime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you make hot pot in a donabe, you set up a tabletop burner in the center of the table, put the donabe there, add all the ingredients, and then you cook. Everybody gets to participate: Someone is in charge of the main cooking, but you might ask, “Can you pass that? Can you stir?” It’s really not about the vessel itself or the recipes, but it’s more about how donabe plays a role in communication and connecting people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And because donabe is essentially just a bowl and a lid, there’s always this time when the dish is done, so let’s reveal. That’s when everybody’s eyes just focus on the lid. And the joy when the donabe lid is lifted, that’s really so special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s really not about the finished dish, it’s the process of the entire meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987070\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987070\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell.jpg\" alt=\"A spread of meat and seafood, ready to be cooked in a donabe for a hot pot meal.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A display of raw meat and seafood, ready to be cooked in the donabe. \u003ccite>(Matt Russell)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>A lot of American home cooks already have too many pots and pans and might feel like it’s too much to buy this kind of specialized cooking vessel. What do you say to those people when convincing them to give donabe cooking a try?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First of all, I completely understand. [laughs] I promote the spirit of donabe cooking — if you want to use different kinds of pots, that’s totally fine. But I have seen so many people who are like that who say, “Ok, I’ll give it a try,” and buy a basic, medium-size donabe. Then they come back and say, your donabe changed my life and changed my family’s life. They talk about how the donabe is so beautiful to look at and how, when it’s at the center of the table, it just connects people. It becomes their Sunday ritual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, people comment that when cooking in donabe, somehow the food magically tastes better. And that has been proven scientifically, because donabe is made of porous clay. It takes more time to build the heat, and once it gets hot, it stays hot for a long time. So if you’re making a braised dish or a stew or soup, when the pot cools down very slowly, that’s how you develop multiple layers of flavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Is there one recipe in particular that you suggest that people try cooking in order to convince them of the “donabe way”?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s hard because all the recipes are so personal to me! But probably miso soup or a hot pot dish. Soup is so essential in my life because it calms me and slows me down. Also, rice tastes so good when you cook it in the donabe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987071\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987071\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell.jpg\" alt=\"A woman seated in front of a spread of Japanese small plates.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cookbook also includes recipes for assorted small bites meant to be eaten as part of a donabe-centric meal. \u003ccite>(Matt Russell)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What about the versatility of donabe? Can you use it for cooking dishes that are completely non-Japanese? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I love making curry in the donabe. And orange saffron rice, which is inspired by Persian cuisine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Again, donabe is not about the recipes; it’s really about the spirit of the cooking. Braising is part of every culture. Recently, I made a Mediterranean-style chickpea and lamb stew with tomato sauce that was really brilliant. And one time, a customer in Norway made a reindeer stew in the donabe and sent me a photo. It looked absolutely delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://toirokitchen.com/collections/books/products/simply-donabe-cookbook\">Simply Donabe\u003c/a>\u003ci> is available wherever books are sold. Takei Moore will be in conversation with food journalist Lauren Saria at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/products/naoko-takei-moore-author-event-simply-donabe-japanese-one-pot-recipes\">\u003ci>Omnivore Books on Food\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> (3885a Cesar Chavez St., San Francisco) on Feb. 24 at 6:30 p.m. The event is free to attend, but space is limited. Takei Moore will also help the chefs at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://resy.com/cities/san-francisco-ca/venues/izakaya-rintaro?date=2026-02-25&seats=2\">\u003ci>Rintaro\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> prepare a special a la carte donabe menu based on her recipes on Feb. 25. As of publication time, only a few reservations are still available.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Naoko Takei Moore has beautiful memories of her mother’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japanese-food\">Japanese\u003c/a> home cooking. Growing up in Tokyo in the ’80s, she savored those moments when she and her mom stood side by side in the kitchen making fresh onigiri and mochi, and, most of all, when they’d sit around the family table to enjoy a meal of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/C4ZHSAtvjUG/?hl=en&img_index=1\">yose-nabe\u003c/a>, a kind of hot pot made with simple ingredients like clams, fish and whatever vegetables they had on hand — all cooked in the traditional Japanese clay pot known as donabe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best part, she says, was when they’d lift the lid of the pot to reveal the finished dish, and all of the steam wafted up. “It’s so special,” she says. “It never gets old.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the introduction to her new cookbook, \u003ca href=\"https://toirokitchen.com/products/simply-donabe-cookbook\">\u003ci>Simply Donabe\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, Takei Moore recalls how years later, after she’d immigrated to Los Angeles, she found herself wanting to share traditional donabe with her new community in the United States. In 2008, she founded \u003ca href=\"https://toirokitchen.com/\">TOIRO\u003c/a>, a company that sold handmade donabe imported from Iga, Japan, and started hosting donabe-centric Japanese cooking classes in her home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Before she knew it, she’d become donabe culture’s number one evangelist in the Western world, co-authoring her first award-winning cookbook on the topic (\u003ci>Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking) \u003c/i>in 2015, and expanding her business to include a brick-and-mortar donabe shop in West Hollywood. She’s also become a minor celebrity on Instagram, where she goes by “\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mrsdonabe/\">Mrs. Donabe\u003c/a>” and has more than 47,000 followers who marvel over her \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DERIT5-PuMw/?hl=en&img_index=1\">gorgeously presented\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DNjUQbRSZMj/?hl=en&img_index=1\">one-pot\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DRFm3pbkjW0/?hl=en&img_index=1\">dishes\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987068\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1334px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987068\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell.jpg\" alt=\"An Asian woman stirs a pot of soup.\" width=\"1334\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell.jpg 1334w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell-160x240.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Naoko-1-c-Matt-Russell-1025x1536.jpg 1025w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1334px) 100vw, 1334px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Takei Moore stirs a pot of soup cooked in a traditional donabe. \u003ccite>(Matt Russell)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These days, she says, donabe cooking has become mainstream in ways she never could have imagined when she first started teaching her little grassroots cooking classes, when most of her students couldn’t even pronounce the word. (It’s “doh-nah-bay,” not “doh-nah-bee.”) Now, magazines like \u003ci>Food & Wine \u003c/i>and \u003ci>Bon Appétit\u003c/i> will reference “donabe” in recipes without feeling the need to translate the word as “Japanese clay pot,” and TOIRO routinely gets orders from customers across the U.S. and in Europe, Africa and the Middle East.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Takei Moore says the gospel she’s spreading isn’t really about any particular recipe or cooking technique. Instead, she believes using donabe in day-to-day cooking is a pathway toward a slower, more intentional and more idyllic life — what she calls her “happy donabe life.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the eve of a book tour visit to San Francisco that will include \u003ca href=\"https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/products/naoko-takei-moore-author-event-simply-donabe-japanese-one-pot-recipes\">a talk at Omnivore Books on Food\u003c/a> and a special dinner at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DUwLLUBEk3M/?img_index=1\">Rintaro\u003c/a>, I spoke to Takei Moore about the connective power of food and the life-changing, near-magical qualities of her beloved donabe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Luke Tsai: Can you briefly explain what a donabe \u003c/b>\u003cb>\u003ci>is\u003c/i>\u003c/b>\u003cb> for those who don’t know?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Naoko Takei Moore:\u003c/b> It literally means clay pot — “do” means clay, and “nabe” means pot. It’s the foundation of Japanese cuisine, going back more than 10,000 years during the Jōmon Period. So it’s almost like donabe is a national cookware for Japanese people; it’s so close to everybody’s heart. Almost every household owns at least one. It can be something very inexpensive and mass-produced, or, or you can invest in something a little bit more artisan — the super-premium style can go up to $1,000 or $2,000. But most donabe are very affordable and approachable, and if you use it properly, it can last for a long, long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>In the introduction to your book, you talk about how donabe isn’t just a cooking tool; it’s a “way of life” — and a way for a person to have a happy life. Can you elaborate on how that’s the case?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Ultimately, it’s a lifestyle, and it really symbolizes Japanese communal dining. In Japanese conversation, when we say “nabe,” it refers to a hot pot dish, but it also means “let’s get together.” Instead of saying “let’s get together,” we might say, “Let’s nabe sometime.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you make hot pot in a donabe, you set up a tabletop burner in the center of the table, put the donabe there, add all the ingredients, and then you cook. Everybody gets to participate: Someone is in charge of the main cooking, but you might ask, “Can you pass that? Can you stir?” It’s really not about the vessel itself or the recipes, but it’s more about how donabe plays a role in communication and connecting people.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And because donabe is essentially just a bowl and a lid, there’s always this time when the dish is done, so let’s reveal. That’s when everybody’s eyes just focus on the lid. And the joy when the donabe lid is lifted, that’s really so special.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s really not about the finished dish, it’s the process of the entire meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987070\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987070\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell.jpg\" alt=\"A spread of meat and seafood, ready to be cooked in a donabe for a hot pot meal.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Meat-Group-c-Matt-Russell-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A display of raw meat and seafood, ready to be cooked in the donabe. \u003ccite>(Matt Russell)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>A lot of American home cooks already have too many pots and pans and might feel like it’s too much to buy this kind of specialized cooking vessel. What do you say to those people when convincing them to give donabe cooking a try?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First of all, I completely understand. [laughs] I promote the spirit of donabe cooking — if you want to use different kinds of pots, that’s totally fine. But I have seen so many people who are like that who say, “Ok, I’ll give it a try,” and buy a basic, medium-size donabe. Then they come back and say, your donabe changed my life and changed my family’s life. They talk about how the donabe is so beautiful to look at and how, when it’s at the center of the table, it just connects people. It becomes their Sunday ritual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, people comment that when cooking in donabe, somehow the food magically tastes better. And that has been proven scientifically, because donabe is made of porous clay. It takes more time to build the heat, and once it gets hot, it stays hot for a long time. So if you’re making a braised dish or a stew or soup, when the pot cools down very slowly, that’s how you develop multiple layers of flavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Is there one recipe in particular that you suggest that people try cooking in order to convince them of the “donabe way”?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s hard because all the recipes are so personal to me! But probably miso soup or a hot pot dish. Soup is so essential in my life because it calms me and slows me down. Also, rice tastes so good when you cook it in the donabe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987071\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987071\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell.jpg\" alt=\"A woman seated in front of a spread of Japanese small plates.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/Small-Bites-2-c-Matt-Russell-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The cookbook also includes recipes for assorted small bites meant to be eaten as part of a donabe-centric meal. \u003ccite>(Matt Russell)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What about the versatility of donabe? Can you use it for cooking dishes that are completely non-Japanese? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I love making curry in the donabe. And orange saffron rice, which is inspired by Persian cuisine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Again, donabe is not about the recipes; it’s really about the spirit of the cooking. Braising is part of every culture. Recently, I made a Mediterranean-style chickpea and lamb stew with tomato sauce that was really brilliant. And one time, a customer in Norway made a reindeer stew in the donabe and sent me a photo. It looked absolutely delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://toirokitchen.com/collections/books/products/simply-donabe-cookbook\">Simply Donabe\u003c/a>\u003ci> is available wherever books are sold. Takei Moore will be in conversation with food journalist Lauren Saria at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://omnivorebooks.myshopify.com/products/naoko-takei-moore-author-event-simply-donabe-japanese-one-pot-recipes\">\u003ci>Omnivore Books on Food\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> (3885a Cesar Chavez St., San Francisco) on Feb. 24 at 6:30 p.m. The event is free to attend, but space is limited. Takei Moore will also help the chefs at \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://resy.com/cities/san-francisco-ca/venues/izakaya-rintaro?date=2026-02-25&seats=2\">\u003ci>Rintaro\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> prepare a special a la carte donabe menu based on her recipes on Feb. 25. As of publication time, only a few reservations are still available.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "SF’s Most Legendary Chicken Phở Is Now Available Until 3 a.m.",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986960\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986960\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1.jpg\" alt=\"A group of me devouring bowls of beef and chicken pho.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turtle Tower, one of San Francisco’s most famous pho restaurants, has a new location in the Marina District. The restaurant is known for its northern-style chicken pho. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d made the mistake of coming to the Marina District at 10 o’clock on a Friday night, and on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/super-bowl\">Super Bowl\u003c/a> weekend, no less. The intersection of Fillmore and Greenwich was even \u003ci>more\u003c/i> chaotic than usual — both sides of the street swarming with half-drunk twentysomething frat-boy and sorority-girl types traveling in packs of six or eight. Everyone was decked out in their tightest skirts and bro-iest muscle shirts to stand in line outside \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/balboa-cafe-bar-sf-19913258.php\">Balboa Cafe\u003c/a> or any of the half-dozen other bars that flank the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the Marina in a nutshell. Depending on your \u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2025/07/21/best-restaurants-bars-marina-sf/\">point of view\u003c/a>, it’s either the best or most obnoxious neighborhood in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe it goes without saying that our dowdy, middle-aged party did not trek to this corner of the Marina for espresso martinis or a night of sweaty, awkward flirtation. Instead, we’d come in search of much unlikelier treasure: the most wholesome bowl of chicken phở in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what we were hoping for, anyway, when we heard that \u003ca href=\"https://www.turtletowersf.com/\">Turtle Tower\u003c/a> had opened a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reels/DToVxp2kt29/\">brand new location on Fillmore\u003c/a> — and, just as exciting, that it was dishing out hot phở until 3 a.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re a serious phở slurper in San Francisco, you’re likely aware of Turtle Tower’s rise and fall and, now, rise again. Probably the most famous and widely beloved phở restaurant in San Francisco during its 25-year run, Turtle Tower operated four locations across the city at its peak. Regulars were understandably devastated, then, when the last location shut its doors in 2023 — and overjoyed when a new ownership group \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2025/3/19/24389523/san-francisco-turtle-tower-pho-restaurant-returns\">revived the business\u003c/a> with a sleek, well-appointed restaurant in the Financial District last spring. Then came the surprise news that Turtle Tower 2.0’s second location would be in the Marina, of all places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986959\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986959\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant. The sign up top reads, \"Turtle Tower.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turtle Tower’s Marina location is open until 3 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Open for about a month now, the new Fillmore Street restaurant has the look and feel of a swanky fusion restaurant, with low-pulsing electronic dance music and an abundance of stylishly backlit tropical greenery. A chic black-and-gold mural of what appears to be the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long spans the back wall. All in all, it’s quite a makeover from the stripped-down, mom-and-pop vibe of the original Larkin Street restaurant, where I used to go for big weekend lunches with my family in the early aughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The worry, of course, with the opening of a “fancier” Turtle Tower in a non-Asian neighborhood, is that the food is going to get whitewashed and watered down. Indeed, the first thing we noticed is that the menu didn’t list the “deluxe” version of the restaurant’s famous chicken phở (listed as “phở gà lòng” in the old days), which came with giblets and skin for a boost of texture and earthy oomph. When we asked our server about it, she smiled sheepishly and explained that, at least for now, they weren’t offering that version. “We weren’t sure if ‘Marina people’ would eat giblets,” she said. Which is, well, fair enough. (She noted, though, that a lot of Asian customers had been asking for them.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout our meal, there were other small signs of the “Marina-fication” of the restaurant: the (non-Asian) waitstaff’s confusion when one of us asked for some vinegar to mix into his dipping sauce for the phở meats. The fact that the phở arrived with only a single lime wedge and the tiniest imaginable pile of sliced jalapeños. (Not-so-pro tip: You just have to ask for more.) And, no surprise, the phở was priced about $5 higher than it was in the Tenderloin days, just a few years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when we actually dug into the food, we put aside all our skepticism. We started with an order of the fresh spring rolls stuffed with both shrimp and thin slices of pork — very light and very delicious, in large part because of the smokiness of the grilled pork, which lingered in our mouths. We also ordered the house-made crab chips (a perfect snack under any circumstance) and a plate of “Hanoi”-style chicken wings, which none of us remembered from any of the previous incarnations of Turtle Tower. These were whole, two-joint wings that we pulled apart with our hands, juicy and succulent, and fried to an attractive, crackly sheen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13961997,arts_13954983,arts_13985780']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Of course the main attraction was the phở itself. Turtle Tower has always specialized in northern-style phở — one of the purest distillations of the form that you can find in the Bay Area. That means the broth is less sweet and incorporates fewer spices and fresh herbs; instead of the giant plate of basil and bean sprouts that you get at southern-style joints, the soup comes topped with just a flurry of chopped scallions and cilantro. What you’re meant to taste is the pure flavor of the chicken or beef itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It had been too long since I’d eaten at the old Turtle Tower for me to say with certainty that the chicken phở was exactly the same. But all it took was one sip of that broth — clear, refined, intensely chicken-y with just a hint of ginger — to be fully satisfied. The noodles were wide and soft and highly slurpable, and even without my precious giblets, I could appreciate the silkiness of the shreds of both dark and white chicken meat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The beef phở, which many of the restaurant’s Vietnamese regulars like even better than the chicken, is similarly minimalistic. Thin slices of rare beef come lightly pounded, in the northern style, for extra tenderness, and the broth, once again, homes in on the pure essence of beef flavor. Both phởs are the very embodiment of a soup that’ll cure what ails you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the new incarnation of Turtle Tower first opened in the Financial District, that location was also open late on weekends and ran a steeply discounted late-night happy hour menu starting at 11 p.m. — $2 oysters, $8 chicken wings, $4 beers and the like. Now that the Marina location is the only one keeping those late-night hours, the happy hour has been discontinued while the restaurant sorts out its liquor license. But once it does, a manager told us, they plan to start those deals up once again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the night, we came away still a bit unsure of exactly what kind of “Marina person” the restaurant is hoping to attract, and how successful that effort has been. At least based on our visit, the crowd is a lot more restrained and low-key than we expected — no party people, just groups of two or three, mostly Asian Americans, quietly enjoying a bowl of phở at the end of the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mostly, everyone just seemed pleased to have found this little oasis of home-cooked goodness — a shelter from all the blustery noise outside. Most of them, I’d dare to venture, seemed like they could handle a bowl of giblets.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/turtletower.sf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Turtle Tower’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> Marina location is open Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–3 a.m. at 3145 Fillmore St. in San Francisco. The restaurant also has a location in the Financial District, at 220 California St., with shorter, non-late-night hours.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986960\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986960\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1.jpg\" alt=\"A group of me devouring bowls of beef and chicken pho.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turtle Tower, one of San Francisco’s most famous pho restaurants, has a new location in the Marina District. The restaurant is known for its northern-style chicken pho. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d made the mistake of coming to the Marina District at 10 o’clock on a Friday night, and on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/super-bowl\">Super Bowl\u003c/a> weekend, no less. The intersection of Fillmore and Greenwich was even \u003ci>more\u003c/i> chaotic than usual — both sides of the street swarming with half-drunk twentysomething frat-boy and sorority-girl types traveling in packs of six or eight. Everyone was decked out in their tightest skirts and bro-iest muscle shirts to stand in line outside \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/balboa-cafe-bar-sf-19913258.php\">Balboa Cafe\u003c/a> or any of the half-dozen other bars that flank the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the Marina in a nutshell. Depending on your \u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2025/07/21/best-restaurants-bars-marina-sf/\">point of view\u003c/a>, it’s either the best or most obnoxious neighborhood in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe it goes without saying that our dowdy, middle-aged party did not trek to this corner of the Marina for espresso martinis or a night of sweaty, awkward flirtation. Instead, we’d come in search of much unlikelier treasure: the most wholesome bowl of chicken phở in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what we were hoping for, anyway, when we heard that \u003ca href=\"https://www.turtletowersf.com/\">Turtle Tower\u003c/a> had opened a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reels/DToVxp2kt29/\">brand new location on Fillmore\u003c/a> — and, just as exciting, that it was dishing out hot phở until 3 a.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re a serious phở slurper in San Francisco, you’re likely aware of Turtle Tower’s rise and fall and, now, rise again. Probably the most famous and widely beloved phở restaurant in San Francisco during its 25-year run, Turtle Tower operated four locations across the city at its peak. Regulars were understandably devastated, then, when the last location shut its doors in 2023 — and overjoyed when a new ownership group \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2025/3/19/24389523/san-francisco-turtle-tower-pho-restaurant-returns\">revived the business\u003c/a> with a sleek, well-appointed restaurant in the Financial District last spring. Then came the surprise news that Turtle Tower 2.0’s second location would be in the Marina, of all places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986959\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986959\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant. The sign up top reads, \"Turtle Tower.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turtle Tower’s Marina location is open until 3 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Open for about a month now, the new Fillmore Street restaurant has the look and feel of a swanky fusion restaurant, with low-pulsing electronic dance music and an abundance of stylishly backlit tropical greenery. A chic black-and-gold mural of what appears to be the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long spans the back wall. All in all, it’s quite a makeover from the stripped-down, mom-and-pop vibe of the original Larkin Street restaurant, where I used to go for big weekend lunches with my family in the early aughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The worry, of course, with the opening of a “fancier” Turtle Tower in a non-Asian neighborhood, is that the food is going to get whitewashed and watered down. Indeed, the first thing we noticed is that the menu didn’t list the “deluxe” version of the restaurant’s famous chicken phở (listed as “phở gà lòng” in the old days), which came with giblets and skin for a boost of texture and earthy oomph. When we asked our server about it, she smiled sheepishly and explained that, at least for now, they weren’t offering that version. “We weren’t sure if ‘Marina people’ would eat giblets,” she said. Which is, well, fair enough. (She noted, though, that a lot of Asian customers had been asking for them.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout our meal, there were other small signs of the “Marina-fication” of the restaurant: the (non-Asian) waitstaff’s confusion when one of us asked for some vinegar to mix into his dipping sauce for the phở meats. The fact that the phở arrived with only a single lime wedge and the tiniest imaginable pile of sliced jalapeños. (Not-so-pro tip: You just have to ask for more.) And, no surprise, the phở was priced about $5 higher than it was in the Tenderloin days, just a few years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when we actually dug into the food, we put aside all our skepticism. We started with an order of the fresh spring rolls stuffed with both shrimp and thin slices of pork — very light and very delicious, in large part because of the smokiness of the grilled pork, which lingered in our mouths. We also ordered the house-made crab chips (a perfect snack under any circumstance) and a plate of “Hanoi”-style chicken wings, which none of us remembered from any of the previous incarnations of Turtle Tower. These were whole, two-joint wings that we pulled apart with our hands, juicy and succulent, and fried to an attractive, crackly sheen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Of course the main attraction was the phở itself. Turtle Tower has always specialized in northern-style phở — one of the purest distillations of the form that you can find in the Bay Area. That means the broth is less sweet and incorporates fewer spices and fresh herbs; instead of the giant plate of basil and bean sprouts that you get at southern-style joints, the soup comes topped with just a flurry of chopped scallions and cilantro. What you’re meant to taste is the pure flavor of the chicken or beef itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It had been too long since I’d eaten at the old Turtle Tower for me to say with certainty that the chicken phở was exactly the same. But all it took was one sip of that broth — clear, refined, intensely chicken-y with just a hint of ginger — to be fully satisfied. The noodles were wide and soft and highly slurpable, and even without my precious giblets, I could appreciate the silkiness of the shreds of both dark and white chicken meat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The beef phở, which many of the restaurant’s Vietnamese regulars like even better than the chicken, is similarly minimalistic. Thin slices of rare beef come lightly pounded, in the northern style, for extra tenderness, and the broth, once again, homes in on the pure essence of beef flavor. Both phởs are the very embodiment of a soup that’ll cure what ails you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the new incarnation of Turtle Tower first opened in the Financial District, that location was also open late on weekends and ran a steeply discounted late-night happy hour menu starting at 11 p.m. — $2 oysters, $8 chicken wings, $4 beers and the like. Now that the Marina location is the only one keeping those late-night hours, the happy hour has been discontinued while the restaurant sorts out its liquor license. But once it does, a manager told us, they plan to start those deals up once again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the night, we came away still a bit unsure of exactly what kind of “Marina person” the restaurant is hoping to attract, and how successful that effort has been. At least based on our visit, the crowd is a lot more restrained and low-key than we expected — no party people, just groups of two or three, mostly Asian Americans, quietly enjoying a bowl of phở at the end of the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mostly, everyone just seemed pleased to have found this little oasis of home-cooked goodness — a shelter from all the blustery noise outside. Most of them, I’d dare to venture, seemed like they could handle a bowl of giblets.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/turtletower.sf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Turtle Tower’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> Marina location is open Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–3 a.m. at 3145 Fillmore St. in San Francisco. The restaurant also has a location in the Financial District, at 220 California St., with shorter, non-late-night hours.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "asian-high-tea-afternoon-tea-singaporean-malaysian-bay-area-kopi-bar-malaya-tea-room",
"title": "It’s a Golden Age for Asian-Style Afternoon Tea in the Bay Area",
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"content": "\u003cp>On a recent Saturday morning, about a dozen elegantly dressed pastry lovers, decked out in their finest Regency-era gowns and dainty flower hats, promenaded into the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/bampfa\">Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive\u003c/a>. Up the museum’s bright red staircase they went, pausing occasionally to snap a selfie, until they’d reached the second-floor cafe, where a handsome spread of teacakes and finger sandwiches awaited.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The occasion? A \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>-themed tea party, which the cafe, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13980465/kopi-bar-bampfa-cafe-berkeley-avocado-iced-coffee-kaya-toast\">Kopi Bar\u003c/a>, had timed to coincide with the soapy Netflix costume drama’s fourth season premiere. Thus the cavalcade of pearls and frilly chiffon gowns. Everything about the event appeared to be oh-so-perfectly British in its sensibilities — except that the food displayed on the wooden two-tier cake stands wasn’t \u003cem>only \u003c/em>your typical array of scones, clotted cream and cucumber sandwiches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cinnamon-roll-like pastry swirls shot through with sweet pandan and coconut sat next to crispy beef rendang samosas. Curried tuna salad topped delicate open-face sourdough brioche sandwiches. And while one sandwich did feature sliced cucumbers, they were mainly there to provide a cooling counterpoint to the fiery sambal-spiked egg salad on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the kind of food that chef-owner Nora Haron likes to serve at Kopi Bar — a reflection of her background as a Singaporean immigrant of Indonesian-Indian descent. And while the spread might have surprised some Anglophile tea party enthusiasts, anyone who’s taken high tea at, say, one of Singapore’s grand hotels would find the mix of Eastern and Western flavors utterly familiar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, in countries like Singapore and Malaysia, where afternoon tea is a well-loved remnant of British colonization, it’s standard practice to combine the format and the aesthetics of English-style tea service with an infusion of Asian flavors. There, too, Haron likes to point out, guests get dressed up and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13963228/indonesian-high-tea-kopi-bar-sandai-walnut-creek\">sip their Earl Grey with their pinkies out\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986143\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986143\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Diners enjoying an afternoon tea spread inside a busy cafe.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Guests share tea and pastries while dressed in “Bridgerton”-inspired outfits during Kopi Bar’s themed high tea service on Jan. 31, 2026, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area has its own rich tea party traditions, mostly nodding to the British style. But up until a couple of years ago, it was nearly impossible to find this kind of hybridized, Asian-inspired afternoon tea service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s no longer the case. In fact, we’re experiencing something of a golden age for Asian-style afternoon tea here in the Bay Area, as new pop-ups and standalone tea rooms crop up to satisfy the growing demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To wit: Kopi Bar’s aforementioned \u003cem>Bridgerton \u003c/em>tea series will take over a section of the cafe every Saturday at least through the end of February. \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/littlemoonbakehouse/?hl=en\">Little Moon Bakehouse\u003c/a>, an Asian American vegan baking company in Oakland, hosts “reimagined” afternoon tea pop-ups at different venues around the Bay — packing 100 sweets lovers onto, say, the second floor of San Francisco’s Ferry Building for moon cakes and mini pork floss buns. Meanwhile, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pamanaplantas/?hl=en\">Pamana Plantas\u003c/a>, a plant store in Berkeley, has started throwing kamayan-inspired \u003ca href=\"https://pamanaplantas.com/pages/kamayan-tea-parties\">Filipino tea parties\u003c/a>, lining the tables with banana leaves and ube pastries. And while the afternoon tea program at San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/sonandgarden/?hl=en\">Son & Garden\u003c/a>, a lavishly flower-bedecked spot from the owners of the Farmhouse Thai restaurant empire, doesn’t have an explicit Asian focus, its \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/son-and-garden-san-francisco?select=WSZlwDtjjA9iLKVlv9XNng\">themed tea sets\u003c/a> often include delicacies like Japanese cherry blossom cookies and homemade samosas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986142\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986142\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up of a diner's hand holding up an open-face avocado sandwich.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A guest at Kopi Bar holds a tea sandwich topped with avocado and herbs. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the OG of the genre, Alameda’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/malayatearoom/?hl=en\">Malaya Tea Room\u003c/a>, which has served elegant Malaysian afternoon tea sets, both in person and as a take-home kit, for nearly seven years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For her part, Haron says the tea parties have by far been her most popular events since she started hosting them last year. After she \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13980465/kopi-bar-bampfa-cafe-berkeley-avocado-iced-coffee-kaya-toast\">moved Kopi Bar to Berkeley\u003c/a> from its original Walnut Creek location this past fall, she received a steady stream of DMs from old customers, pleading with her: “Please, please, will you do this again?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to such a groundswell of support, Haron says, laughing, “How can I not?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reclaiming a colonial history\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Of course, the British were the ones who brought the practice of a light afternoon meal with tea to Singapore and Malaysia during their long period of colonial rule — from 1819 to 1963, in the case of Singapore. The Raffles Hotel, probably the most iconic place to take tea in Singapore, started offering its afternoon tea service — complete with live orchestra — in 1918.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The new enterprise should be warmly encouraged by the public of both sexes who often find the hours between 4:30 and dinner time hang heavily,” an \u003ca href=\"https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19180109-1.2.26?qt=%22afternoon%20tea%22,%20%22raffles%20hotel%22&q=%22afternoon%20tea%22%20%22raffles%20hotel%22\">article in Singaporean newspaper \u003cem>The Straits Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a> enthused at the time. Meanwhile, a popular restaurant called Emmerson’s Tiffin Room was advertising a more modest daily afternoon tea \u003ca href=\"https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/singfreepressb18980702-1.2.32.2?qt=%22afternoon%20tea%22,%20emmerson&q=%22afternoon%20tea%22%20%22emmerson%27s%22\">as early as 1898\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986151\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986151\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in an elegant dark blue dress with matching floral hat.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cindy Lee, a guest at Kopi Bar’s “Bridgerton”-themed high tea, poses in the stairwell at BAMPFA. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These initial offerings were mostly geared toward Singapore’s British residents, as well as wealthy travelers visiting from Europe. But the custom of taking afternoon tea was eventually taken up by locals as well — and persisted long after the British left.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local expressions of the tradition began as early as the 1960s, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kfseetoh/?hl=en\">KF Seetoh\u003c/a>, probably the foremost street food expert in Singapore. Cafes began selling kaya toast and local coffee in the afternoon; curry puffs and pandan cakes also first appeared around this time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These days at Raffles, you’ll find Indian tiffin meals \u003cem>and\u003c/em> tiered trays of high tea offerings, [everything] from the usual British fare to even \u003ca href=\"https://ccs.city/en/chinese-cultural-club/chinese-culinary/nyonya-cake\">Nyonya cakes\u003c/a>,” Seetoh says. “The evolution [can be] credited to finding an identity true to the mishmash of cultures in Singapore — the best of everyone’s kitchens and grandmas’ recipes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A similar story played out in Malaysia. For Malaya Tea Room owner Leena Lim, going out for tea was an occasional mother-daughter treat she remembers enjoying all through her childhood. Every couple of months, her mother would bring her to afternoon tea at the Shangri-La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where she’d marvel at all of the fancy cakes and finger sandwiches.[aside postID=arts_13986360 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-kaisendon.jpg']“It was such an intimate, beautiful experience,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back then, in the ’80s and ’90s, most of the upscale hotel afternoon tea places in Malaysia still served food that was overwhelmingly British. At most, Lim recalls, maybe one item — say, a curry puff — would nod toward the local food culture. Because afternoon tea at the big hotels was “fancy” and expensive, Lim says even locals \u003cem>wanted\u003c/em> the food to be authentically British. Why would anyone pay so much to eat a Malaysian snack they could buy down the street for just a few ringgits?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lim estimates it’s only in the last 10 years or so that even the fanciest British-style tea rooms in Malaysia and Singapore have started leaning more into local flavors, adding sambals and curries and kuehs (assorted bite-size treats made with glutinous rice) into the mix with the scones and cucumber sandwiches that people still expect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Lim opened Malaya Tea Room in 2019, on a quiet stretch of Central Avenue in Alameda, she wanted it to be more of a hybrid. At the time, she didn’t know of any other businesses that were throwing Asian–inspired afternoon tea parties. Beloved local institutions like Lovejoy’s more or less replicate the British traditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/9/14/21436496/malaya-tea-room-afternoon-tea-takeout-box-kaya-jam-rendang-alameda\">Lim wanted to do both\u003c/a>. She planned to do the British stuff just as well as, or maybe even better than, the purely Anglophilic places — to, for instance, be one of the only places that make their clotted cream from scratch. But she also wanted to introduce customers to elegant, afternoon tea versions of some of her favorite Malaysian street snacks — in other words, to serve food that actually tastes \u003cem>good\u003c/em>. (She’d grown to find the British standards to be quite bland and boring.) Her menu included one finger sandwich that’s based on kaya toast, another that combines pork floss with a homemade basil spread, and yet another that features bakkwa (Malaysian pork jerky).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986561\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986561\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Three-tiered cake stand with an array of cakes, pastries and finger sandwiches.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">British-style scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam sit alongside curried potato canapés on gluten-free crackers during afternoon tea at Malaya Tea Room in Alameda on Feb. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When my family arrived at Malaya on a recent Sunday, the atmosphere inside the cozy tea room was languid and vaguely tropical — lush greenery sprawled in every direction; a ceiling fan spun lazily up above. Nostalgic knickknacks (antique Chinese vases, an abacus, an old Hup Seng cracker tin) decorated the display cabinets. On the table was a little bell to ring when you were ready for your server to come take your order.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sandwiches we loved best included the curry chicken, made with coconut milk and a secret spice blend, and a sardine-and-cucumber number that Lim makes by doctoring the canned sardines in tomato sauce that you can buy at Asian grocers. On the sweets side, we enjoyed an airy-light pandan chiffon cake that wasn’t \u003cem>too \u003c/em>sweet — the ultimate compliment for an Asian dessert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even the egg salad sandwich, which we ordered off the British side of the menu, was uncommonly good — lush with Kewpie mayonnaise and served on fluffy milk bread. It tasted exactly like the ones you get at 7-Eleven in Japan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lim says that’s exactly what she was going for: a familiar flavor that reminds you of childhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986559\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986559\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An Asian woman poses in front of a tiered cake stand with pastries and sandwiches.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leena Lim, owner of Malaya Tea Room, sits behind a table set for afternoon tea. The tea room opened in Alameda in 2019 and has become a destination for specialty tea service in the East Bay. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Her business has had its ups and downs over the past seven years, especially with the pandemic hitting just months after it opened. But she’s developed a loyal customer base, and people do seem to better understand Malaya’s afternoon tea offerings now than they did in the shop’s early days. Part of that, she says, just has to do with how much more popular Asian food is these days — how there’s now a cultural cachet to being the sort of person who understands pandan and ube: “Otherwise, it’s like who are you? Do you even live here?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It helps that afternoon tea is the ultimate Instagram-friendly meal. Plus, Lim says, “people love dressing up,” and going out for tea provides a rare opportunity to do that. Every year, she has a big group that comes in cosplaying as anime characters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During our visit, we spotted three elderly women enjoying a quiet conversation, a table of Gen Z Taiwanese ladies chattering happily in Mandarin, and a group of white otaku having an intense debate about \u003cem>Dragon Ball Z\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now I even get groups of men who come in by themselves,” Lim says. “I think that’s awesome.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Tea with a twist\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The bakeries and cafes that offer Asian-style afternoon tea in the Bay Area all have their own charm — and their own little twists on the genre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Little Moon Bakehouse owner Annie Wang says her pop-ups are a natural extension of the fact that she started baking bread for the first time in 2024, adding a variety of Chinese bakery–style buns to her repertoire of plant-based cookies and mooncakes. Unlike Wang’s other baked goods, the breads don’t have long enough of a shelf life to ship nationally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986606\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986606\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Little Moon Bakehouse owner Annie Wang (standing) mingles with guests at her afternoon tea pop-up at the San Francisco Ferry Building on Dec. 14, 2025. Featured items included plant-based mooncakes and mini pork floss buns. \u003ccite>(Phil Stockbridge/SF Event Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I realized that this would be great for an experience,” she says. She started renting out venues across the Bay Area to host one-day afternoon tea pop-ups, filling up three-tier cake stands with an equal split of sweet and savory treats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Feb. 22, she’ll host her second tea pop-up in the San Francisco Ferry Building — a \u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/products/afternoon-tea-in-sf-sun-dec-14-ferry-building-copy\">Lunar New Year–themed bash\u003c/a> for 100 guests, seated at long tables that stretch the length of the festive second-floor Grand Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The menu will include miniature pork floss buns, garlic butter buns, and \u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/products/preorder-soy-sauce-chocolate-citrus-cookie-sandwich-heydoh-x-little-moon-bakehouse\">citrus zest sugar cookies\u003c/a> filled with soy sauce–spiked white chocolate (that one is a collaboration with \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heydoh.co/\">Heydoh\u003c/a>, a Taiwanese American soy sauce brand). In the coming months, she’ll host \u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/collections/afternoon-tea\">additional pop-ups\u003c/a> in SF Chinatown, the Sunset District and San José.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986562\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986562\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Tea kettles, sugar bowls and metal canisters of loose-leaf tea on a wooden credenza.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Loose-leaf teas line a wooden cabinet at Malaya Tea Room. The tea room serves a wide selection of teas in a space filled with nostalgic antique furnishings. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Jai Kandayah, the owner of Pleasanton’s recently closed \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/curryleavesbistro/?hl=en\">Curry Leaves Bistro\u003c/a>, says he never \u003cem>intended \u003c/em>to serve afternoon tea at his restaurant. He, too, grew up taking afternoon tea in Malaysia, but not the kind served at fancy hotels, which wasn’t accessible for working-class people. For the majority of Malaysians, afternoon tea — or high tea — was more of a home ritual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(In Kandayah’s experience, Malaysians are more likely to talk about “high tea” than afternoon tea, referring to a heartier meal eaten later in the afternoon, at perhaps 4 or 5 p.m. after they get home from work — much more practical for working-class folks who can’t leave their jobs to eat cakes for an hour at 2 in the afternoon.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These meals always featured local flavors, Kandayah recalls. “I remember my mom would make a big pot of tea in the afternoon and then usually a savory snack — banana fritters, fried yucca, fried yams, fried taro,” he says. Sometimes the bread man would come around, and they’d buy a loaf and dip the bread in the curry that was left over from lunch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The local high tea buffets he remembers frequenting as a young man similarly skewed toward Malaysian flavors. Many of them would even serve fried noodles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But again, Kandayah never had a high tea menu at Curry Leaves Bistro. Instead, regular customers — all of them older Malaysian immigrants — would knock on his door on Friday or Saturday afternoons, when the restaurant was closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People would call and say, ‘Hey, there are eight of us coming in at 4 o’clock after our golf game. Can you prepare some tea and roti, and a plate of noodles?’” Kandayah says. “And we would do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curry Leaves Bistro wound up closing this past fall after the landlord increased the rent, but Kandayah has already scouted out a new location in the East Bay and hopes to reopen later this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, he says, afternoon tea on the restaurant’s backyard patio is going to come officially baked into the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A celebration of immigration\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Kopi Bar has leaned into the cosplay of it all. In addition to her \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> series, Haron has also hosted Bollywood- and \u003cem>Arabian Nights\u003c/em>–themed afternoon teas, and encourages guests to come dressed up to reflect the theme. People come for Haron’s stellar baked goods, sure. But they also come because the tea parties are joyful and extravagant — an all-out happening, as they say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for Haron, in the current political climate — while masked federal agents whisk soccer moms and five-year-old kids away to far-off detention centers — her tea parties aren’t just some frivolous, let-them-eat-cake moments to cosplay as British aristocrats. They’re important rituals that allow immigrants like her to come together and celebrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986148\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986148\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in glasses poses inside a cafe.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Nora Haron, owner of Kopi Bar and Bakery, poses in her cafe on the second floor of BAMPFA. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“This idea of ‘illegal’ immigrants being criminals — that’s obnoxious. We’re doing something for the community. You know, we’re bringing people together. We’re creating jobs,” she says. “So it’s wonderful to be able to support one another this way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, she says, food is intertwined with the immigration process. And traditions like afternoon tea are a vital way for immigrants to maintain their cultural identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Singapore and Malaysia, the history of afternoon tea followed the same path as so many other things in Southeast Asia: The colonizers brought it, but locals improved it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986547\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986547\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up on a pandan pastry, a cup of tea and a menu for a special high tea event.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pandan and coconut pastry swirl sits next to Kopi Bar’s “Bridgerton”-inspired high tea menu. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As the food writer Seetoh puts it, “You can still spend over a hundred bucks for the little pinky high teas at posh hotels flavored with affluence, but the majority, even the well-heeled, prefer a kueh salat, curry puff or ang ku kueh at local cafes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It feels more like a Singapore story,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it goes here in the diaspora, as Asian Americans create a new set of traditions replete with sourdough, vegan pork floss and the Bay Area’s own unique sense of swagger. They, too, are making afternoon tea their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kopi Bar’s \u003c/em>Bridgerton \u003cem>high tea series will run every Saturday through Feb. 28, plus an additional date on March 1, with seatings at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-bridgerton-inspired-high-tea-at-kopi-bar-tickets-1979138513571\">\u003cem>Tickets\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> are limited. The cafe is located on the second floor of BAMPFA, at 2155 Center St. in Berkeley.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Little Moon Bakehouse’s Lunar New Year–themed afternoon tea will take place on Feb. 22, 11:30-1:30 p.m., at the SF Ferry Building (1 Ferry Building, San Francisco). \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/products/afternoon-tea-in-sf-sun-dec-14-ferry-building-copy\">\u003cem>Tickets\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> are limited. \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/collections/afternoon-tea\">\u003cem>Future tea events\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> are scheduled to take place in SF Chinatown, the Sunset District, and San José.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://malayatearoom.com/\">\u003cem>Malaya Tea Room\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> has three seatings per day, Thu.-Sun., at 11 a.m., 1:15 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. It’s located at 920 Central Ave. in Alameda.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>On a recent Saturday morning, about a dozen elegantly dressed pastry lovers, decked out in their finest Regency-era gowns and dainty flower hats, promenaded into the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/bampfa\">Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive\u003c/a>. Up the museum’s bright red staircase they went, pausing occasionally to snap a selfie, until they’d reached the second-floor cafe, where a handsome spread of teacakes and finger sandwiches awaited.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The occasion? A \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em>-themed tea party, which the cafe, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13980465/kopi-bar-bampfa-cafe-berkeley-avocado-iced-coffee-kaya-toast\">Kopi Bar\u003c/a>, had timed to coincide with the soapy Netflix costume drama’s fourth season premiere. Thus the cavalcade of pearls and frilly chiffon gowns. Everything about the event appeared to be oh-so-perfectly British in its sensibilities — except that the food displayed on the wooden two-tier cake stands wasn’t \u003cem>only \u003c/em>your typical array of scones, clotted cream and cucumber sandwiches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Cinnamon-roll-like pastry swirls shot through with sweet pandan and coconut sat next to crispy beef rendang samosas. Curried tuna salad topped delicate open-face sourdough brioche sandwiches. And while one sandwich did feature sliced cucumbers, they were mainly there to provide a cooling counterpoint to the fiery sambal-spiked egg salad on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the kind of food that chef-owner Nora Haron likes to serve at Kopi Bar — a reflection of her background as a Singaporean immigrant of Indonesian-Indian descent. And while the spread might have surprised some Anglophile tea party enthusiasts, anyone who’s taken high tea at, say, one of Singapore’s grand hotels would find the mix of Eastern and Western flavors utterly familiar.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, in countries like Singapore and Malaysia, where afternoon tea is a well-loved remnant of British colonization, it’s standard practice to combine the format and the aesthetics of English-style tea service with an infusion of Asian flavors. There, too, Haron likes to point out, guests get dressed up and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13963228/indonesian-high-tea-kopi-bar-sandai-walnut-creek\">sip their Earl Grey with their pinkies out\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986143\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986143\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Diners enjoying an afternoon tea spread inside a busy cafe.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_003-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Guests share tea and pastries while dressed in “Bridgerton”-inspired outfits during Kopi Bar’s themed high tea service on Jan. 31, 2026, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The Bay Area has its own rich tea party traditions, mostly nodding to the British style. But up until a couple of years ago, it was nearly impossible to find this kind of hybridized, Asian-inspired afternoon tea service.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s no longer the case. In fact, we’re experiencing something of a golden age for Asian-style afternoon tea here in the Bay Area, as new pop-ups and standalone tea rooms crop up to satisfy the growing demand.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To wit: Kopi Bar’s aforementioned \u003cem>Bridgerton \u003c/em>tea series will take over a section of the cafe every Saturday at least through the end of February. \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/littlemoonbakehouse/?hl=en\">Little Moon Bakehouse\u003c/a>, an Asian American vegan baking company in Oakland, hosts “reimagined” afternoon tea pop-ups at different venues around the Bay — packing 100 sweets lovers onto, say, the second floor of San Francisco’s Ferry Building for moon cakes and mini pork floss buns. Meanwhile, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pamanaplantas/?hl=en\">Pamana Plantas\u003c/a>, a plant store in Berkeley, has started throwing kamayan-inspired \u003ca href=\"https://pamanaplantas.com/pages/kamayan-tea-parties\">Filipino tea parties\u003c/a>, lining the tables with banana leaves and ube pastries. And while the afternoon tea program at San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/sonandgarden/?hl=en\">Son & Garden\u003c/a>, a lavishly flower-bedecked spot from the owners of the Farmhouse Thai restaurant empire, doesn’t have an explicit Asian focus, its \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/son-and-garden-san-francisco?select=WSZlwDtjjA9iLKVlv9XNng\">themed tea sets\u003c/a> often include delicacies like Japanese cherry blossom cookies and homemade samosas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986142\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986142\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up of a diner's hand holding up an open-face avocado sandwich.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_001-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A guest at Kopi Bar holds a tea sandwich topped with avocado and herbs. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Then there’s the OG of the genre, Alameda’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/malayatearoom/?hl=en\">Malaya Tea Room\u003c/a>, which has served elegant Malaysian afternoon tea sets, both in person and as a take-home kit, for nearly seven years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For her part, Haron says the tea parties have by far been her most popular events since she started hosting them last year. After she \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13980465/kopi-bar-bampfa-cafe-berkeley-avocado-iced-coffee-kaya-toast\">moved Kopi Bar to Berkeley\u003c/a> from its original Walnut Creek location this past fall, she received a steady stream of DMs from old customers, pleading with her: “Please, please, will you do this again?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In response to such a groundswell of support, Haron says, laughing, “How can I not?”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Reclaiming a colonial history\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Of course, the British were the ones who brought the practice of a light afternoon meal with tea to Singapore and Malaysia during their long period of colonial rule — from 1819 to 1963, in the case of Singapore. The Raffles Hotel, probably the most iconic place to take tea in Singapore, started offering its afternoon tea service — complete with live orchestra — in 1918.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The new enterprise should be warmly encouraged by the public of both sexes who often find the hours between 4:30 and dinner time hang heavily,” an \u003ca href=\"https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19180109-1.2.26?qt=%22afternoon%20tea%22,%20%22raffles%20hotel%22&q=%22afternoon%20tea%22%20%22raffles%20hotel%22\">article in Singaporean newspaper \u003cem>The Straits Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a> enthused at the time. Meanwhile, a popular restaurant called Emmerson’s Tiffin Room was advertising a more modest daily afternoon tea \u003ca href=\"https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/singfreepressb18980702-1.2.32.2?qt=%22afternoon%20tea%22,%20emmerson&q=%22afternoon%20tea%22%20%22emmerson%27s%22\">as early as 1898\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986151\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986151\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in an elegant dark blue dress with matching floral hat.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_031-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cindy Lee, a guest at Kopi Bar’s “Bridgerton”-themed high tea, poses in the stairwell at BAMPFA. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>These initial offerings were mostly geared toward Singapore’s British residents, as well as wealthy travelers visiting from Europe. But the custom of taking afternoon tea was eventually taken up by locals as well — and persisted long after the British left.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Local expressions of the tradition began as early as the 1960s, says \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kfseetoh/?hl=en\">KF Seetoh\u003c/a>, probably the foremost street food expert in Singapore. Cafes began selling kaya toast and local coffee in the afternoon; curry puffs and pandan cakes also first appeared around this time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“These days at Raffles, you’ll find Indian tiffin meals \u003cem>and\u003c/em> tiered trays of high tea offerings, [everything] from the usual British fare to even \u003ca href=\"https://ccs.city/en/chinese-cultural-club/chinese-culinary/nyonya-cake\">Nyonya cakes\u003c/a>,” Seetoh says. “The evolution [can be] credited to finding an identity true to the mishmash of cultures in Singapore — the best of everyone’s kitchens and grandmas’ recipes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A similar story played out in Malaysia. For Malaya Tea Room owner Leena Lim, going out for tea was an occasional mother-daughter treat she remembers enjoying all through her childhood. Every couple of months, her mother would bring her to afternoon tea at the Shangri-La Hotel in Kuala Lumpur, where she’d marvel at all of the fancy cakes and finger sandwiches.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It was such an intimate, beautiful experience,” she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back then, in the ’80s and ’90s, most of the upscale hotel afternoon tea places in Malaysia still served food that was overwhelmingly British. At most, Lim recalls, maybe one item — say, a curry puff — would nod toward the local food culture. Because afternoon tea at the big hotels was “fancy” and expensive, Lim says even locals \u003cem>wanted\u003c/em> the food to be authentically British. Why would anyone pay so much to eat a Malaysian snack they could buy down the street for just a few ringgits?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lim estimates it’s only in the last 10 years or so that even the fanciest British-style tea rooms in Malaysia and Singapore have started leaning more into local flavors, adding sambals and curries and kuehs (assorted bite-size treats made with glutinous rice) into the mix with the scones and cucumber sandwiches that people still expect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Lim opened Malaya Tea Room in 2019, on a quiet stretch of Central Avenue in Alameda, she wanted it to be more of a hybrid. At the time, she didn’t know of any other businesses that were throwing Asian–inspired afternoon tea parties. Beloved local institutions like Lovejoy’s more or less replicate the British traditions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/9/14/21436496/malaya-tea-room-afternoon-tea-takeout-box-kaya-jam-rendang-alameda\">Lim wanted to do both\u003c/a>. She planned to do the British stuff just as well as, or maybe even better than, the purely Anglophilic places — to, for instance, be one of the only places that make their clotted cream from scratch. But she also wanted to introduce customers to elegant, afternoon tea versions of some of her favorite Malaysian street snacks — in other words, to serve food that actually tastes \u003cem>good\u003c/em>. (She’d grown to find the British standards to be quite bland and boring.) Her menu included one finger sandwich that’s based on kaya toast, another that combines pork floss with a homemade basil spread, and yet another that features bakkwa (Malaysian pork jerky).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986561\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986561\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Three-tiered cake stand with an array of cakes, pastries and finger sandwiches.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_039-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">British-style scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam sit alongside curried potato canapés on gluten-free crackers during afternoon tea at Malaya Tea Room in Alameda on Feb. 6, 2026. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>When my family arrived at Malaya on a recent Sunday, the atmosphere inside the cozy tea room was languid and vaguely tropical — lush greenery sprawled in every direction; a ceiling fan spun lazily up above. Nostalgic knickknacks (antique Chinese vases, an abacus, an old Hup Seng cracker tin) decorated the display cabinets. On the table was a little bell to ring when you were ready for your server to come take your order.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sandwiches we loved best included the curry chicken, made with coconut milk and a secret spice blend, and a sardine-and-cucumber number that Lim makes by doctoring the canned sardines in tomato sauce that you can buy at Asian grocers. On the sweets side, we enjoyed an airy-light pandan chiffon cake that wasn’t \u003cem>too \u003c/em>sweet — the ultimate compliment for an Asian dessert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even the egg salad sandwich, which we ordered off the British side of the menu, was uncommonly good — lush with Kewpie mayonnaise and served on fluffy milk bread. It tasted exactly like the ones you get at 7-Eleven in Japan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lim says that’s exactly what she was going for: a familiar flavor that reminds you of childhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986559\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986559\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"An Asian woman poses in front of a tiered cake stand with pastries and sandwiches.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_034-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Leena Lim, owner of Malaya Tea Room, sits behind a table set for afternoon tea. The tea room opened in Alameda in 2019 and has become a destination for specialty tea service in the East Bay. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Her business has had its ups and downs over the past seven years, especially with the pandemic hitting just months after it opened. But she’s developed a loyal customer base, and people do seem to better understand Malaya’s afternoon tea offerings now than they did in the shop’s early days. Part of that, she says, just has to do with how much more popular Asian food is these days — how there’s now a cultural cachet to being the sort of person who understands pandan and ube: “Otherwise, it’s like who are you? Do you even live here?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It helps that afternoon tea is the ultimate Instagram-friendly meal. Plus, Lim says, “people love dressing up,” and going out for tea provides a rare opportunity to do that. Every year, she has a big group that comes in cosplaying as anime characters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During our visit, we spotted three elderly women enjoying a quiet conversation, a table of Gen Z Taiwanese ladies chattering happily in Mandarin, and a group of white otaku having an intense debate about \u003cem>Dragon Ball Z\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now I even get groups of men who come in by themselves,” Lim says. “I think that’s awesome.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Tea with a twist\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The bakeries and cafes that offer Asian-style afternoon tea in the Bay Area all have their own charm — and their own little twists on the genre.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Little Moon Bakehouse owner Annie Wang says her pop-ups are a natural extension of the fact that she started baking bread for the first time in 2024, adding a variety of Chinese bakery–style buns to her repertoire of plant-based cookies and mooncakes. Unlike Wang’s other baked goods, the breads don’t have long enough of a shelf life to ship nationally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986606\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986606\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/LITTLE-MOON-BAKEHOUSE-TEA-PARTY-2025-136-KQED-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Little Moon Bakehouse owner Annie Wang (standing) mingles with guests at her afternoon tea pop-up at the San Francisco Ferry Building on Dec. 14, 2025. Featured items included plant-based mooncakes and mini pork floss buns. \u003ccite>(Phil Stockbridge/SF Event Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I realized that this would be great for an experience,” she says. She started renting out venues across the Bay Area to host one-day afternoon tea pop-ups, filling up three-tier cake stands with an equal split of sweet and savory treats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Feb. 22, she’ll host her second tea pop-up in the San Francisco Ferry Building — a \u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/products/afternoon-tea-in-sf-sun-dec-14-ferry-building-copy\">Lunar New Year–themed bash\u003c/a> for 100 guests, seated at long tables that stretch the length of the festive second-floor Grand Hall.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The menu will include miniature pork floss buns, garlic butter buns, and \u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/products/preorder-soy-sauce-chocolate-citrus-cookie-sandwich-heydoh-x-little-moon-bakehouse\">citrus zest sugar cookies\u003c/a> filled with soy sauce–spiked white chocolate (that one is a collaboration with \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heydoh.co/\">Heydoh\u003c/a>, a Taiwanese American soy sauce brand). In the coming months, she’ll host \u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/collections/afternoon-tea\">additional pop-ups\u003c/a> in SF Chinatown, the Sunset District and San José.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986562\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986562\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"Tea kettles, sugar bowls and metal canisters of loose-leaf tea on a wooden credenza.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/020626GOLDEN-AGE-OF-ASIAN-STYLE-HIGH-TEA_GH_042-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Loose-leaf teas line a wooden cabinet at Malaya Tea Room. The tea room serves a wide selection of teas in a space filled with nostalgic antique furnishings. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Jai Kandayah, the owner of Pleasanton’s recently closed \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/curryleavesbistro/?hl=en\">Curry Leaves Bistro\u003c/a>, says he never \u003cem>intended \u003c/em>to serve afternoon tea at his restaurant. He, too, grew up taking afternoon tea in Malaysia, but not the kind served at fancy hotels, which wasn’t accessible for working-class people. For the majority of Malaysians, afternoon tea — or high tea — was more of a home ritual.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(In Kandayah’s experience, Malaysians are more likely to talk about “high tea” than afternoon tea, referring to a heartier meal eaten later in the afternoon, at perhaps 4 or 5 p.m. after they get home from work — much more practical for working-class folks who can’t leave their jobs to eat cakes for an hour at 2 in the afternoon.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These meals always featured local flavors, Kandayah recalls. “I remember my mom would make a big pot of tea in the afternoon and then usually a savory snack — banana fritters, fried yucca, fried yams, fried taro,” he says. Sometimes the bread man would come around, and they’d buy a loaf and dip the bread in the curry that was left over from lunch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The local high tea buffets he remembers frequenting as a young man similarly skewed toward Malaysian flavors. Many of them would even serve fried noodles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But again, Kandayah never had a high tea menu at Curry Leaves Bistro. Instead, regular customers — all of them older Malaysian immigrants — would knock on his door on Friday or Saturday afternoons, when the restaurant was closed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“People would call and say, ‘Hey, there are eight of us coming in at 4 o’clock after our golf game. Can you prepare some tea and roti, and a plate of noodles?’” Kandayah says. “And we would do that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curry Leaves Bistro wound up closing this past fall after the landlord increased the rent, but Kandayah has already scouted out a new location in the East Bay and hopes to reopen later this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, he says, afternoon tea on the restaurant’s backyard patio is going to come officially baked into the program.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A celebration of immigration\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Kopi Bar has leaned into the cosplay of it all. In addition to her \u003cem>Bridgerton\u003c/em> series, Haron has also hosted Bollywood- and \u003cem>Arabian Nights\u003c/em>–themed afternoon teas, and encourages guests to come dressed up to reflect the theme. People come for Haron’s stellar baked goods, sure. But they also come because the tea parties are joyful and extravagant — an all-out happening, as they say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for Haron, in the current political climate — while masked federal agents whisk soccer moms and five-year-old kids away to far-off detention centers — her tea parties aren’t just some frivolous, let-them-eat-cake moments to cosplay as British aristocrats. They’re important rituals that allow immigrants like her to come together and celebrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986148\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986148\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"A woman in glasses poses inside a cafe.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GOLDENAGEOFASIANSTYLEHIGH-TEA_GH_019-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chef Nora Haron, owner of Kopi Bar and Bakery, poses in her cafe on the second floor of BAMPFA. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“This idea of ‘illegal’ immigrants being criminals — that’s obnoxious. We’re doing something for the community. You know, we’re bringing people together. We’re creating jobs,” she says. “So it’s wonderful to be able to support one another this way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After all, she says, food is intertwined with the immigration process. And traditions like afternoon tea are a vital way for immigrants to maintain their cultural identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in Singapore and Malaysia, the history of afternoon tea followed the same path as so many other things in Southeast Asia: The colonizers brought it, but locals improved it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986547\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986547\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed.jpg\" alt=\"Close-up on a pandan pastry, a cup of tea and a menu for a special high tea event.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/013126GoldenAgeofAsianStyleHigh-Tea_GH_020_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pandan and coconut pastry swirl sits next to Kopi Bar’s “Bridgerton”-inspired high tea menu. \u003ccite>(Gustavo Hernandez/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As the food writer Seetoh puts it, “You can still spend over a hundred bucks for the little pinky high teas at posh hotels flavored with affluence, but the majority, even the well-heeled, prefer a kueh salat, curry puff or ang ku kueh at local cafes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It feels more like a Singapore story,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it goes here in the diaspora, as Asian Americans create a new set of traditions replete with sourdough, vegan pork floss and the Bay Area’s own unique sense of swagger. They, too, are making afternoon tea their own.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Kopi Bar’s \u003c/em>Bridgerton \u003cem>high tea series will run every Saturday through Feb. 28, plus an additional date on March 1, with seatings at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-bridgerton-inspired-high-tea-at-kopi-bar-tickets-1979138513571\">\u003cem>Tickets\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> are limited. The cafe is located on the second floor of BAMPFA, at 2155 Center St. in Berkeley.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Little Moon Bakehouse’s Lunar New Year–themed afternoon tea will take place on Feb. 22, 11:30-1:30 p.m., at the SF Ferry Building (1 Ferry Building, San Francisco). \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/products/afternoon-tea-in-sf-sun-dec-14-ferry-building-copy\">\u003cem>Tickets\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> are limited. \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://littlemoonbakehouse.com/collections/afternoon-tea\">\u003cem>Future tea events\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> are scheduled to take place in SF Chinatown, the Sunset District, and San José.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://malayatearoom.com/\">\u003cem>Malaya Tea Room\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> has three seatings per day, Thu.-Sun., at 11 a.m., 1:15 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. It’s located at 920 Central Ave. in Alameda.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>One of the most memorable breakfasts of my life was at a small sushi stall at the old Tsukiji fish market in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japan\">Tokyo\u003c/a>, where I dug into a big wooden tub of rice topped with a mountain of incredibly fresh-tasting \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japanese-food\">uni, ikura and fatty tuna\u003c/a>. It was just past eight o’clock in the morning. After I’d devoured most of the raw seafood, the shopkeeper poured hot dashi over the last little bit so I could slurp it up like the most exquisite rice porridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Call it a typical Japanophile’s romanticized tourist experience, but for years I’ve thought about that bowl of seafood. I never found anything quite like it in the Bay Area until a couple of weeks ago when I stumbled on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/yaichi_restaurant/\">Yaichi\u003c/a>, a newish restaurant specializing in fresh seafood bowls, or kaisendon, in the Ulferts Center shopping plaza in Milpitas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986367\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986367\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior.jpg\" alt='Exterior of a restaurant. The blue curtain hanging in the doorway reads, \"Yaichi Japanese Udon & Seafood Bowl.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is located in the Ulferts Center shopping plaza in Milpitas. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Open since this past fall, Yaichi sells three progressively luxed-up versions of its sushi bowl. The basic “Ume” bowl ($26) comes piled extravagantly high with minced yellowfin tuna, flying fish roe, scallops and a plump morsel of snow crab leg meat. The more premium bowls ($32 and $41, respectively) add a generous scattering of ikura (marinated salmon roe) and Hokkaido sea urchin to the mix.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginner-friendly instructions displayed on every table teach first-timers how to best enjoy the kaisen don: First, place some of the rice and seafood on a piece of dried seaweed, wrapping it up to eat like a sushi hand roll. Then, mix together some wasabi and house-brewed soy sauce and pour it over the remaining seafood. The briny pop of the ikura and the buttery ocean umami of the uni make for an especially delicious combination when stirred into the warm rice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986366\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986366\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2.jpg\" alt=\"Japanese seafood bowl piled high with salmon roe, sea urchin and other assorted raw seafood.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Another view of the “Matsu” bowl — the fanciest and most expensive of Yaichi’s seafood bowls. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Toward the end of the meal, you can add the optional ochazuke set ($4.50), which comes with shredded shiso, seaweed, tiny rice cracker balls and a single piece of salmon sashimi. Add all that into what’s left of your bowl (make sure you save some of the rice!) and then pour hot dashi over everything, transforming the sushi bowl into a gentle, cozy soup that warms you up from the inside. In that way, diners get to enjoy their kaisendon as two totally different dishes in one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant is the brainchild of Tokyo-raised chef-owner Nobu Kashima, who also runs Leichi, a popular izakaya in Santa Clara. In Japan, he explains, you can find kaisendon at casual izakayas, at beachside seafood restaurants and — perhaps most commonly for foreign tourists — at fish market kiosks like the one I ate at Tsikiji. In recent years, popular, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/C_XZH2zz_pE/?hl=en&img_index=1\">Instagram-friendly kaisendon chains\u003c/a> in Tokyo have been known to draw two-hour lines during the dinner rush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, though, Kashima says he hasn’t really seen any restaurants specializing in these giant seafood bowls, though you might find a more modest version on the menu at certain sushi restaurants or izakayas. What’s much more common are chirashi bowls, which feature a variety of sashimi scattered on top of a bowl or bento box of vinegared sushi rice. Kaisendon like Yaichi’s, on the other hand, usually comes with plain, unseasoned rice, which makes it more suitable for the ochazuke treatment — also a relative rarity in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986371\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986371\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of dashi broth with seafood and rice.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The optional ochuzuke set gives diners an additional way to enjoy the meal. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Apart from the seafood bowls, Yaichi offers a concise selection of izakaya-style appetizers, my favorite of which was the delightful DIY Japanese potato salad, which comes with a little mortar and wooden pestle. You pound the potatoes to your preferred texture before mixing in the mayonnaise, cucumber, onion, soft-boiled egg and your choice of ham or salted cod roe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13986256,arts_13926203,arts_13957143']Eventually, the restaurant’s other main specialty will be udon. Kashimi says he’s in the process of importing a noodle machine from Japan so that he can make the udon fresh in-house. Both the noodles and the broth will be made according to the Sanuki style from Kanagawa Prefecture. The noodles are meant to be particularly chewy, and the broth will have a strong fish flavor from dried sardines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kanishi says he’s hoping the udon will be available within the coming month. At that point, the emphasis of the restaurant will be split evenly between the udon and the seafood rice bowls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some people really like noodles,” he says. “But if you’re eating noodles every day, you miss the rice. That’s why I want to do both.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://yaichi.netlify.app/\">\u003ci>Yaichi\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open daily 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. and 4:30–8:30 p.m., except for Tuesdays, when the restaurant is closed. It’s located in the Ulferts Center at 668 Barber Ln. in Milpitas.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>One of the most memorable breakfasts of my life was at a small sushi stall at the old Tsukiji fish market in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japan\">Tokyo\u003c/a>, where I dug into a big wooden tub of rice topped with a mountain of incredibly fresh-tasting \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/japanese-food\">uni, ikura and fatty tuna\u003c/a>. It was just past eight o’clock in the morning. After I’d devoured most of the raw seafood, the shopkeeper poured hot dashi over the last little bit so I could slurp it up like the most exquisite rice porridge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Call it a typical Japanophile’s romanticized tourist experience, but for years I’ve thought about that bowl of seafood. I never found anything quite like it in the Bay Area until a couple of weeks ago when I stumbled on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/yaichi_restaurant/\">Yaichi\u003c/a>, a newish restaurant specializing in fresh seafood bowls, or kaisendon, in the Ulferts Center shopping plaza in Milpitas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986367\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986367\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior.jpg\" alt='Exterior of a restaurant. The blue curtain hanging in the doorway reads, \"Yaichi Japanese Udon & Seafood Bowl.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-exterior-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is located in the Ulferts Center shopping plaza in Milpitas. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Open since this past fall, Yaichi sells three progressively luxed-up versions of its sushi bowl. The basic “Ume” bowl ($26) comes piled extravagantly high with minced yellowfin tuna, flying fish roe, scallops and a plump morsel of snow crab leg meat. The more premium bowls ($32 and $41, respectively) add a generous scattering of ikura (marinated salmon roe) and Hokkaido sea urchin to the mix.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beginner-friendly instructions displayed on every table teach first-timers how to best enjoy the kaisen don: First, place some of the rice and seafood on a piece of dried seaweed, wrapping it up to eat like a sushi hand roll. Then, mix together some wasabi and house-brewed soy sauce and pour it over the remaining seafood. The briny pop of the ikura and the buttery ocean umami of the uni make for an especially delicious combination when stirred into the warm rice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986366\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986366\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2.jpg\" alt=\"Japanese seafood bowl piled high with salmon roe, sea urchin and other assorted raw seafood.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-closeup-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Another view of the “Matsu” bowl — the fanciest and most expensive of Yaichi’s seafood bowls. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Toward the end of the meal, you can add the optional ochazuke set ($4.50), which comes with shredded shiso, seaweed, tiny rice cracker balls and a single piece of salmon sashimi. Add all that into what’s left of your bowl (make sure you save some of the rice!) and then pour hot dashi over everything, transforming the sushi bowl into a gentle, cozy soup that warms you up from the inside. In that way, diners get to enjoy their kaisendon as two totally different dishes in one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant is the brainchild of Tokyo-raised chef-owner Nobu Kashima, who also runs Leichi, a popular izakaya in Santa Clara. In Japan, he explains, you can find kaisendon at casual izakayas, at beachside seafood restaurants and — perhaps most commonly for foreign tourists — at fish market kiosks like the one I ate at Tsikiji. In recent years, popular, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/C_XZH2zz_pE/?hl=en&img_index=1\">Instagram-friendly kaisendon chains\u003c/a> in Tokyo have been known to draw two-hour lines during the dinner rush.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, though, Kashima says he hasn’t really seen any restaurants specializing in these giant seafood bowls, though you might find a more modest version on the menu at certain sushi restaurants or izakayas. What’s much more common are chirashi bowls, which feature a variety of sashimi scattered on top of a bowl or bento box of vinegared sushi rice. Kaisendon like Yaichi’s, on the other hand, usually comes with plain, unseasoned rice, which makes it more suitable for the ochazuke treatment — also a relative rarity in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986371\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986371\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke.jpg\" alt=\"A bowl of dashi broth with seafood and rice.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/yaichi-ochuzuke-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The optional ochuzuke set gives diners an additional way to enjoy the meal. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Apart from the seafood bowls, Yaichi offers a concise selection of izakaya-style appetizers, my favorite of which was the delightful DIY Japanese potato salad, which comes with a little mortar and wooden pestle. You pound the potatoes to your preferred texture before mixing in the mayonnaise, cucumber, onion, soft-boiled egg and your choice of ham or salted cod roe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Eventually, the restaurant’s other main specialty will be udon. Kashimi says he’s in the process of importing a noodle machine from Japan so that he can make the udon fresh in-house. Both the noodles and the broth will be made according to the Sanuki style from Kanagawa Prefecture. The noodles are meant to be particularly chewy, and the broth will have a strong fish flavor from dried sardines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kanishi says he’s hoping the udon will be available within the coming month. At that point, the emphasis of the restaurant will be split evenly between the udon and the seafood rice bowls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Some people really like noodles,” he says. “But if you’re eating noodles every day, you miss the rice. That’s why I want to do both.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://yaichi.netlify.app/\">\u003ci>Yaichi\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open daily 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m. and 4:30–8:30 p.m., except for Tuesdays, when the restaurant is closed. It’s located in the Ulferts Center at 668 Barber Ln. in Milpitas.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "This Hong Kong Cafe Might Be the East Bay’s Most Affordable New Restaurant",
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"content": "\u003cp>The Target plaza off Macdonald Avenue isn’t the first place you’d think of when planning a lunch excursion in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/richmond\">Richmond\u003c/a>. After all, this is the domain of better-than-replacement-level fast food (i.e., Wingstop and Panda Express), not anyone’s idea of destination dining.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it was something of a surprise when, a few weeks ago, I stepped into the plaza’s newest restaurant, Grand Cafe, and found a packed dining room. Almost all of the diners were Chinese seniors, a demographic I’ve rarely encountered on this side of town. Everyone was bent over steaming hot bowls of claypot rice and wonton noodle soup. Somehow, it seems, I’d stumbled into a proper Hong Kong–style cafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kicker? Nothing on the menu was priced at more than $10.75. Several entrées, in fact, were just $7 or $8, undercutting the Panda Express next door. At a time when affordability has reached a crisis point for so many Bay Area families, Grand Cafe might just be the East Bay’s most reasonably priced new restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turns out, the restaurant moved to Richmond this past summer after its \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/grand-cafe-south-san-francisco\">original South San Francisco location\u003c/a> closed. During my first visit, I decided to try the claypot rice with spare ribs and preserved sausage ($10.75), a Cantonese classic. It came loaded with meat and tender-crisp greens, with a little dish of sweet seasoned soy sauce to pour on top, and the rice was properly crackly and crispy on the edges. It was delicious — if anything, a little less decadently oily and salty than my favorite versions, and more like something a home cook would serve.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986262\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986262\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice.jpg\" alt=\"Claypot rice and a plate of beef chow fun on cafeteria-style trays.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Both the claypot rice and the beef chow fun came with complimentary soup and hot soy milk. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The value, on the other hand, was hard to top. All dine-in customers get a free cup of hot tea or unsweetened soy milk, the latter of which I doctored up to my liking with sugar. My meal also came with a complimentary bowl of pork bone soup — savory and soothing, loaded with leafy greens. An order of dry-cooked beef chow fun (also $10.75) — a solid, generously portioned rendition — came with all of the same extras.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the tradeoffs for Grand Cafe’s bargain-basement prices is a very DIY approach to service. The dining room — sparsely decorated, apart from a lone Bruce Lee poster in the corner — is set up somewhat cafeteria-style. Food comes out on trays; utensils, condiments and to-go containers are all laid out neatly on a shelf for you to help yourself. A large wire shelving unit along the opposite wall has enough space for a couple dozen diners to bus their trays and dishes when they’re done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a sign taped to the front counter reads, “No Tips Needed,” and stresses that food might take 10 to 20 minutes to come out, since every dish is cooked to order. Over a handful of visits, I never had to wait nearly that long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986263\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986263\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu.jpg\" alt=\"Chinese restaurant menu pinned on the wall.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Part of Grand Cafe’s menu, which is posted on the wall. As of January 2026, no item was priced higher than $10.75. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Unlike a full-on traditional Hong Kong–style \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cha_chaan_teng\">cha chaan teng\u003c/a>, Grand Cafe only offers a couple of Western-style dishes — a spaghetti with meat sauce I’ve yet to try, for instance. And my sense is that the menu, with its assortment of noodle dishes, rice plates, jook and snacky dim sum, is a bit too broad for \u003ci>every\u003c/i> item to be a hit. (I’d still go to a proper dim sum house for pan-fried daikon cakes or steamed rice rolls.) And the seasoning tends to be on the mild side, which is part of the restaurant’s appeal to Chinese elders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13950577,arts_13974383']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>The prices, of course, are hard to beat. Beef brisket noodle soup for $8.75? Pork and preserved egg porridge for less than $6? Grand Cafe might not be a destination restaurant, but if you live in the neighborhood, as I do, it’s easy to imagine it becoming a weekly lunchtime staple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the restaurant has already been open for seven months, it still seems to have a perpetual stream of people poking their head in for the first time, surprised they’ve never seen the place before. Partly, that’s because of Grand Cafe’s somewhat unlikely location and limited hours — it closes at 2 p.m. every day. The owners also seem to have no interest in marketing the business, politely but firmly declining my requests for an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re already too busy,” the woman at the counter, who seemed like she might be the owner, told me. For now, she’s more than content to just serve the crowd of local regulars.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Grand Cafe is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–2 p.m., at 4250 Macdonald Ave. Ste. D.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>The Target plaza off Macdonald Avenue isn’t the first place you’d think of when planning a lunch excursion in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/richmond\">Richmond\u003c/a>. After all, this is the domain of better-than-replacement-level fast food (i.e., Wingstop and Panda Express), not anyone’s idea of destination dining.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it was something of a surprise when, a few weeks ago, I stepped into the plaza’s newest restaurant, Grand Cafe, and found a packed dining room. Almost all of the diners were Chinese seniors, a demographic I’ve rarely encountered on this side of town. Everyone was bent over steaming hot bowls of claypot rice and wonton noodle soup. Somehow, it seems, I’d stumbled into a proper Hong Kong–style cafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kicker? Nothing on the menu was priced at more than $10.75. Several entrées, in fact, were just $7 or $8, undercutting the Panda Express next door. At a time when affordability has reached a crisis point for so many Bay Area families, Grand Cafe might just be the East Bay’s most reasonably priced new restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turns out, the restaurant moved to Richmond this past summer after its \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/grand-cafe-south-san-francisco\">original South San Francisco location\u003c/a> closed. During my first visit, I decided to try the claypot rice with spare ribs and preserved sausage ($10.75), a Cantonese classic. It came loaded with meat and tender-crisp greens, with a little dish of sweet seasoned soy sauce to pour on top, and the rice was properly crackly and crispy on the edges. It was delicious — if anything, a little less decadently oily and salty than my favorite versions, and more like something a home cook would serve.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986262\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986262\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice.jpg\" alt=\"Claypot rice and a plate of beef chow fun on cafeteria-style trays.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-claypot-rice-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Both the claypot rice and the beef chow fun came with complimentary soup and hot soy milk. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The value, on the other hand, was hard to top. All dine-in customers get a free cup of hot tea or unsweetened soy milk, the latter of which I doctored up to my liking with sugar. My meal also came with a complimentary bowl of pork bone soup — savory and soothing, loaded with leafy greens. An order of dry-cooked beef chow fun (also $10.75) — a solid, generously portioned rendition — came with all of the same extras.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the tradeoffs for Grand Cafe’s bargain-basement prices is a very DIY approach to service. The dining room — sparsely decorated, apart from a lone Bruce Lee poster in the corner — is set up somewhat cafeteria-style. Food comes out on trays; utensils, condiments and to-go containers are all laid out neatly on a shelf for you to help yourself. A large wire shelving unit along the opposite wall has enough space for a couple dozen diners to bus their trays and dishes when they’re done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a sign taped to the front counter reads, “No Tips Needed,” and stresses that food might take 10 to 20 minutes to come out, since every dish is cooked to order. Over a handful of visits, I never had to wait nearly that long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986263\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986263\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu.jpg\" alt=\"Chinese restaurant menu pinned on the wall.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/grand-cafe-menu-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Part of Grand Cafe’s menu, which is posted on the wall. As of January 2026, no item was priced higher than $10.75. \u003ccite>(Luke Tsai/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Unlike a full-on traditional Hong Kong–style \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cha_chaan_teng\">cha chaan teng\u003c/a>, Grand Cafe only offers a couple of Western-style dishes — a spaghetti with meat sauce I’ve yet to try, for instance. And my sense is that the menu, with its assortment of noodle dishes, rice plates, jook and snacky dim sum, is a bit too broad for \u003ci>every\u003c/i> item to be a hit. (I’d still go to a proper dim sum house for pan-fried daikon cakes or steamed rice rolls.) And the seasoning tends to be on the mild side, which is part of the restaurant’s appeal to Chinese elders.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>The prices, of course, are hard to beat. Beef brisket noodle soup for $8.75? Pork and preserved egg porridge for less than $6? Grand Cafe might not be a destination restaurant, but if you live in the neighborhood, as I do, it’s easy to imagine it becoming a weekly lunchtime staple.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the restaurant has already been open for seven months, it still seems to have a perpetual stream of people poking their head in for the first time, surprised they’ve never seen the place before. Partly, that’s because of Grand Cafe’s somewhat unlikely location and limited hours — it closes at 2 p.m. every day. The owners also seem to have no interest in marketing the business, politely but firmly declining my requests for an interview.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re already too busy,” the woman at the counter, who seemed like she might be the owner, told me. For now, she’s more than content to just serve the crowd of local regulars.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Grand Cafe is open Wednesday to Sunday, 10:30 a.m.–2 p.m., at 4250 Macdonald Ave. Ste. D.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "This San José Food Truck Is One of the Only Dominican Food Spots in the Bay",
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"content": "\u003cp>A half-mile stretch on the outskirts of south downtown San José has become a hotbed for food trucks from across Latin America. In the past two years, new trucks have launched specializing in corn cachapas from Venezuela, tender nacatamales from Nicaragua, and, as of last May, the slow-cooked stews and savory mashed plantains of the Dominican Republic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wrapped in the characteristic blue, red and white of the Dominican flag, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elfogongeny/\">El Fogon d’Geny\u003c/a> truck shares a small, picnic table–lined lot with a few other food trucks. Its arrival is great news for fans of Caribbean food: Dominican dishes used to be nearly impossible to come by in the Bay Area. Now, El Fogon d’Geny is putting in the work to introduce the cuisine’s hearty flavors to the South Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Owner Vanessa Rodríguez was born in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, but grew up in Nagua, a smaller city on the island’s northeastern coast. As a child, she learned to cook alongside her mother, grandmother and aunts. In 2002, she moved to Bávaro, Punta Cana, a more touristy area where she began her career as a professional cook. Over the years, she blended what she learned working in restaurant kitchens with her family’s recipes to develop her own style centered on patient, low-and-slow cooking and aggressive seasoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After immigrating to San José in 2016, she continued working at restaurants and, seeing the lack of Dominican representation, felt inspired to introduce her cuisine to the Bay. Three years ago, she finally gave it a shot, giving away plates of Dominican fried chicken to neighbors and friends. Eventually, she launched a home-based food business, selling habichuelas guisadas and moro de guandules via social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985941\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985941\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with long braids poses for a portrait in front on her food truck.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vanessa Rodríguez launched her food truck business in May of 2025. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Starting a business here isn’t as easy as it is in my country,” says Rodríguez, “I saw it as a difficult dream to achieve, but I did it. Here I am.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number one reason to visit El Fogon d’Geny is to devour a plate of mofongo. While the savory plantain dish originated in Puerto Rican, it’s also popular in the Dominican Republic. Rodríguez says it’s the most difficult item on her menu to prepare, as she incorporates several personal twists. Traditionally, mofongo is made by frying green plantains, then mashing them with garlic and chicharrón. Rodríguez shapes her version into a crater and fries it to develop a crispy exterior that contrasts the fluffy, meaty interior. It’s topped with shrimp, sliced cheese and a creamy sauce that overflows onto the plate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can also try the distinctly Dominican take on mashed plantains called mangú, in which green plantains are boiled instead of fried before mashing. Rodriguez serves it as part of a traditional Dominican breakfast known as los tres golpes.The mangú has a texture reminiscent of refried beans but even creamier. It comes with fried eggs, two crisped slices of Dominican salami (like extremely beefy-tasting sausage patties) and slabs of fresh cheese that are fried until golden on the outside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985942\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985942\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes.jpg\" alt=\"A plate with mashed plantains, fried eggs, and sliced of fried salami.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Los tres golpes, a popular Dominican breakfast dish. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>El Fogon d’Geny’s menu highlights a host of other Dominican specialties like habichuelas con dulce (sweet beans), pica pollo (fried chicken) and sancocho (a hearty stew). Rodríguez wanted to offer a large variety of dishes to reach as many people as possible. “I have Dominican and Latino clients, but there’s also a lot of people that aren’t familiar with the food,” says Rodríguez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13977950,arts_13977033,arts_13971280']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>For those trying Dominican food for the first time, she recommends La Bandera Dominicana — a home-style plate loaded with tostones, fried yuca balls, habichuelas and a choice of stewed meat. It also includes a scoop of white rice and a piece of crunchy fried rice known as concón. The dish’s colorful components correspond to the red, white and blue of the Dominican flag. Being a first-timer to the cuisine myself, I opted for La Bandera Dominicana with chicken, which turned out to be fall-off-the-bone thighs and drumettes. My favorite bites on the plate were the surprisingly savory cheese-stuffed bolitos de yuca.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one of the Bay Area’s only ambassadors of the cuisine, Rodríguez is dedicated to replicating the flavors of the Dominican Republic as closely as possible, importing spices, fresh chiles and cured meats from the island. Her crispy, highly seasoned fried chicken is made with several imported ingredients like adobo, sazón and ají gustoso (a sweet, fruity chile). One of her most popular rotating specials is the sancocho, a soup made with a medley of root vegetables and both fresh and cured meats. She also offers a wide selection of Dominican drinks like chinola (passionfruit), lechoza (papaya shake) and morir soñando (a creamy orange shake).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985943\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985943\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo.jpg\" alt=\"A plate of fried chicken and tostones.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">El Fogon D’geny’s crispy, highly seasoned Dominican-style fried chicken. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the end, what comes across most strongly is Rodriguez’s passion for her country, which shines through in the miniature Dominican flags she uses to decorate every dish and the selection of traditional Dominican snacks she keeps on display. She says her favorite compliment is when customers say that her food makes them want to visit the Dominican Republic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel very proud to represent my country,” says Rodríguez. “It’s an honor to share our culture and food with the people here. I hope La Bandera Dominicana can become a part of California’s gastronomy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>El Fogon d’Geny is currently open from 10:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m. every day except Tuesdays at 796 S. 1st St. in San José. Check the truck’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elfogongeny/\">\u003ci>Instagram page\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> for its most up-to-date schedule. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "El Fogon d’Geny is repping the Dominican Republic with its mofongo, pica pollo and assortment of hearty stews.",
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"title": "A San José Food Truck Is One of the Bay Area's Only Dominican Food Spots | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>A half-mile stretch on the outskirts of south downtown San José has become a hotbed for food trucks from across Latin America. In the past two years, new trucks have launched specializing in corn cachapas from Venezuela, tender nacatamales from Nicaragua, and, as of last May, the slow-cooked stews and savory mashed plantains of the Dominican Republic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wrapped in the characteristic blue, red and white of the Dominican flag, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elfogongeny/\">El Fogon d’Geny\u003c/a> truck shares a small, picnic table–lined lot with a few other food trucks. Its arrival is great news for fans of Caribbean food: Dominican dishes used to be nearly impossible to come by in the Bay Area. Now, El Fogon d’Geny is putting in the work to introduce the cuisine’s hearty flavors to the South Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Owner Vanessa Rodríguez was born in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, but grew up in Nagua, a smaller city on the island’s northeastern coast. As a child, she learned to cook alongside her mother, grandmother and aunts. In 2002, she moved to Bávaro, Punta Cana, a more touristy area where she began her career as a professional cook. Over the years, she blended what she learned working in restaurant kitchens with her family’s recipes to develop her own style centered on patient, low-and-slow cooking and aggressive seasoning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After immigrating to San José in 2016, she continued working at restaurants and, seeing the lack of Dominican representation, felt inspired to introduce her cuisine to the Bay. Three years ago, she finally gave it a shot, giving away plates of Dominican fried chicken to neighbors and friends. Eventually, she launched a home-based food business, selling habichuelas guisadas and moro de guandules via social media.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985941\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985941\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez.jpg\" alt=\"A woman with long braids poses for a portrait in front on her food truck.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Vanessa-Rodriguez-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vanessa Rodríguez launched her food truck business in May of 2025. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Starting a business here isn’t as easy as it is in my country,” says Rodríguez, “I saw it as a difficult dream to achieve, but I did it. Here I am.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The number one reason to visit El Fogon d’Geny is to devour a plate of mofongo. While the savory plantain dish originated in Puerto Rican, it’s also popular in the Dominican Republic. Rodríguez says it’s the most difficult item on her menu to prepare, as she incorporates several personal twists. Traditionally, mofongo is made by frying green plantains, then mashing them with garlic and chicharrón. Rodríguez shapes her version into a crater and fries it to develop a crispy exterior that contrasts the fluffy, meaty interior. It’s topped with shrimp, sliced cheese and a creamy sauce that overflows onto the plate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You can also try the distinctly Dominican take on mashed plantains called mangú, in which green plantains are boiled instead of fried before mashing. Rodriguez serves it as part of a traditional Dominican breakfast known as los tres golpes.The mangú has a texture reminiscent of refried beans but even creamier. It comes with fried eggs, two crisped slices of Dominican salami (like extremely beefy-tasting sausage patties) and slabs of fresh cheese that are fried until golden on the outside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985942\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985942\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes.jpg\" alt=\"A plate with mashed plantains, fried eggs, and sliced of fried salami.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Los-Tres-Golpes-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Los tres golpes, a popular Dominican breakfast dish. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>El Fogon d’Geny’s menu highlights a host of other Dominican specialties like habichuelas con dulce (sweet beans), pica pollo (fried chicken) and sancocho (a hearty stew). Rodríguez wanted to offer a large variety of dishes to reach as many people as possible. “I have Dominican and Latino clients, but there’s also a lot of people that aren’t familiar with the food,” says Rodríguez.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>For those trying Dominican food for the first time, she recommends La Bandera Dominicana — a home-style plate loaded with tostones, fried yuca balls, habichuelas and a choice of stewed meat. It also includes a scoop of white rice and a piece of crunchy fried rice known as concón. The dish’s colorful components correspond to the red, white and blue of the Dominican flag. Being a first-timer to the cuisine myself, I opted for La Bandera Dominicana with chicken, which turned out to be fall-off-the-bone thighs and drumettes. My favorite bites on the plate were the surprisingly savory cheese-stuffed bolitos de yuca.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As one of the Bay Area’s only ambassadors of the cuisine, Rodríguez is dedicated to replicating the flavors of the Dominican Republic as closely as possible, importing spices, fresh chiles and cured meats from the island. Her crispy, highly seasoned fried chicken is made with several imported ingredients like adobo, sazón and ají gustoso (a sweet, fruity chile). One of her most popular rotating specials is the sancocho, a soup made with a medley of root vegetables and both fresh and cured meats. She also offers a wide selection of Dominican drinks like chinola (passionfruit), lechoza (papaya shake) and morir soñando (a creamy orange shake).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985943\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985943\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo.jpg\" alt=\"A plate of fried chicken and tostones.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Pica-Pollo-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">El Fogon D’geny’s crispy, highly seasoned Dominican-style fried chicken. \u003ccite>(Octavio Peña)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In the end, what comes across most strongly is Rodriguez’s passion for her country, which shines through in the miniature Dominican flags she uses to decorate every dish and the selection of traditional Dominican snacks she keeps on display. She says her favorite compliment is when customers say that her food makes them want to visit the Dominican Republic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel very proud to represent my country,” says Rodríguez. “It’s an honor to share our culture and food with the people here. I hope La Bandera Dominicana can become a part of California’s gastronomy.”\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>El Fogon d’Geny is currently open from 10:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m. every day except Tuesdays at 796 S. 1st St. in San José. Check the truck’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elfogongeny/\">\u003ci>Instagram page\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> for its most up-to-date schedule. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "smokehouse-berkeley-late-night-burgers-hot-dogs-shakes",
"title": "Revisiting Smokehouse, a Berkeley Classic for Late-Night Burgers and Shakes",
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"headTitle": "Revisiting Smokehouse, a Berkeley Classic for Late-Night Burgers and Shakes | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985783\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985783\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smokehouse specializes in fire-grilled burgers and hot dogs. The Berkeley staple stays open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, guest artist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brianabreaks/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Briana Loewinsohn\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> joined the burger party.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lit up like a beacon on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/berkeley\">Berkeley\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/\">Smokehouse\u003c/a> is a picture-postcard image of a classic American burger shack: the big, red, retro diner–style sign; the no-frills menu; the string lights twinkling over the cluster of picnic tables in back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent chilly Friday night, we could smell the smoke and the charred meat from all the way down the block. Jackpot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d come because we were in the mood for a fast food–style char-grilled burger — and, like generations of Berkleyans before us, we knew that Smokehouse was \u003ci>the \u003c/i>spot to satisfy that craving, especially after 10 or 11 o’clock at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since 1951, the restaurant has a frozen-in-time quality that we found incredibly charming. The one of us who’d been a Smokehouse regular as a high schooler in the ’90s spotted only a handful of visible changes: Now, you order outside from a guy manning a tablet set up on a wheelie cart instead of lining up inside the restaurant itself. There’s now an Impossible Burger on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/menu/\">menu\u003c/a>. And, after a \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/11/20/the-smokehouse-berkeley-burger-restaurant-reopening\">post-fire renovation\u003c/a> during the pandemic, the grassy back patio has gotten a nice little makeover — if you come earlier in the day, there are always a bunch of kids running around on the lawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One other gesture to modernity: Smokehouse now has one of those \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/IndustrialDesign/comments/hlr50d/what_you_guys_think_about_this_freestyle_coke/\">Coke Freestyle machines\u003c/a> — a relatively rare sighting in the non-movie-theater wilds — adding 60-some flavors’ worth of whimsy and mad science to your burger shop experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Otherwise, the place feels more or less the same as it always has. Even as the prices have crept up over the years, the burgers and hot dogs are still shockingly inexpensive by Bay Area standards — less than $9, for instance, for a double cheeseburger. Now, as always, the restaurant is the kind of place where \u003ci>everyone \u003c/i>in Berkeley goes. During our visit, we saw a multi-generational Filipino family, a handful of elderly couples who seemed like they lived in the neighborhood, a pack of teens, a couple of professor types, and several college kids enjoying the last gasp of their winter break. It was a nice, welcoming vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985784\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985784\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2.jpg\" alt='Exterior of a burger shack lit up at night. The retro-style red sign reads, \"Smokehouse.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant has been open on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey since 1951. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Let’s be real, though: If you’ve come to Smokehouse, it’s probably because you want to see your food get set on fire. The big sign outside touts the restaurant’s “flame-grilled” hot dogs and burgers, and that’s something the line cooks take seriously. Every minute or so, the entire grill bursts into massive flames, engulfing everything on it. And that’s the taste I crave: The cheeseburgers at Smokehouse are super-simple (my order is lettuce, diced onion, caramelized onion, hold the tomato, add a little tub of cherry peppers on the side), but the deep smoky, charred flavor that they get on the patties is tough to beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13985042,arts_13983249,arts_13954597']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>The fire-grilling also makes for some of the tastiest hot dogs in town — snappy and juicy, but with that extra dimension of smokiness like you get when you cook over a campfire. (Be forewarned that when they ask if you want everything on your hot dog, they really do mean \u003ci>everything \u003c/i>— we probably could have done with a little less relish, onions and ketchup.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it went with the rest of what we ordered. Everything was better, or at least as good, as it needed to be: the thick-cut fries that were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. The extra-crunchy, frizzled onion rings that were cooked perfectly so you could bite through them cleanly. The savory, bean-forward chili with exactly the right texture for adhering to your fries or hot dog. The just-thick-enough straight chocolate shake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a “gourmet” destination meal by any stretch. But on many, many nights, it’s exactly the meal that hits the spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/\">\u003ci>Smokehouse\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Mon. to Thursday 10:30 a.m.–11 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 10:30 a.m.–midnight and Sun. 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m. at 3115 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Smokehouse Is a Berkeley Classic for Late-Night Burgers and Shakes | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985783\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985783\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smokehouse specializes in fire-grilled burgers and hot dogs. The Berkeley staple stays open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, guest artist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brianabreaks/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Briana Loewinsohn\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> joined the burger party.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lit up like a beacon on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/berkeley\">Berkeley\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/\">Smokehouse\u003c/a> is a picture-postcard image of a classic American burger shack: the big, red, retro diner–style sign; the no-frills menu; the string lights twinkling over the cluster of picnic tables in back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent chilly Friday night, we could smell the smoke and the charred meat from all the way down the block. Jackpot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d come because we were in the mood for a fast food–style char-grilled burger — and, like generations of Berkleyans before us, we knew that Smokehouse was \u003ci>the \u003c/i>spot to satisfy that craving, especially after 10 or 11 o’clock at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since 1951, the restaurant has a frozen-in-time quality that we found incredibly charming. The one of us who’d been a Smokehouse regular as a high schooler in the ’90s spotted only a handful of visible changes: Now, you order outside from a guy manning a tablet set up on a wheelie cart instead of lining up inside the restaurant itself. There’s now an Impossible Burger on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/menu/\">menu\u003c/a>. And, after a \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/11/20/the-smokehouse-berkeley-burger-restaurant-reopening\">post-fire renovation\u003c/a> during the pandemic, the grassy back patio has gotten a nice little makeover — if you come earlier in the day, there are always a bunch of kids running around on the lawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One other gesture to modernity: Smokehouse now has one of those \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/IndustrialDesign/comments/hlr50d/what_you_guys_think_about_this_freestyle_coke/\">Coke Freestyle machines\u003c/a> — a relatively rare sighting in the non-movie-theater wilds — adding 60-some flavors’ worth of whimsy and mad science to your burger shop experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Otherwise, the place feels more or less the same as it always has. Even as the prices have crept up over the years, the burgers and hot dogs are still shockingly inexpensive by Bay Area standards — less than $9, for instance, for a double cheeseburger. Now, as always, the restaurant is the kind of place where \u003ci>everyone \u003c/i>in Berkeley goes. During our visit, we saw a multi-generational Filipino family, a handful of elderly couples who seemed like they lived in the neighborhood, a pack of teens, a couple of professor types, and several college kids enjoying the last gasp of their winter break. It was a nice, welcoming vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985784\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985784\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2.jpg\" alt='Exterior of a burger shack lit up at night. The retro-style red sign reads, \"Smokehouse.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant has been open on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey since 1951. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Let’s be real, though: If you’ve come to Smokehouse, it’s probably because you want to see your food get set on fire. The big sign outside touts the restaurant’s “flame-grilled” hot dogs and burgers, and that’s something the line cooks take seriously. Every minute or so, the entire grill bursts into massive flames, engulfing everything on it. And that’s the taste I crave: The cheeseburgers at Smokehouse are super-simple (my order is lettuce, diced onion, caramelized onion, hold the tomato, add a little tub of cherry peppers on the side), but the deep smoky, charred flavor that they get on the patties is tough to beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>The fire-grilling also makes for some of the tastiest hot dogs in town — snappy and juicy, but with that extra dimension of smokiness like you get when you cook over a campfire. (Be forewarned that when they ask if you want everything on your hot dog, they really do mean \u003ci>everything \u003c/i>— we probably could have done with a little less relish, onions and ketchup.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it went with the rest of what we ordered. Everything was better, or at least as good, as it needed to be: the thick-cut fries that were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. The extra-crunchy, frizzled onion rings that were cooked perfectly so you could bite through them cleanly. The savory, bean-forward chili with exactly the right texture for adhering to your fries or hot dog. The just-thick-enough straight chocolate shake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a “gourmet” destination meal by any stretch. But on many, many nights, it’s exactly the meal that hits the spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/\">\u003ci>Smokehouse\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Mon. to Thursday 10:30 a.m.–11 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 10:30 a.m.–midnight and Sun. 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m. at 3115 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"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 />",
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"id": "commonwealth-club",
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"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.",
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"order": 9
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"link": "/radio/program/how-i-built-this",
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"hyphenacion": {
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"order": 15
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"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. ",
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"order": 18
},
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"latino-usa": {
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"title": "Latino USA",
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
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},
"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/",
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"source": "American Public Media"
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"masters-of-scale": {
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"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)",
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"rss": "https://rss.art19.com/masters-of-scale"
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},
"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>",
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"meta": {
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"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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},
"morning-edition": {
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"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.",
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"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",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"order": 11
},
"link": "/podcasts/onourwatch",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ucHIub3JnLzUxMDM2MC9wb2RjYXN0LnhtbD9zYz1nb29nbGVwb2RjYXN0cw",
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},
"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",
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},
"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"
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"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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"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"
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},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
"title": "Perspectives",
"tagline": "KQED's series of daily listener commentaries since 1991",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "/perspectives/",
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"order": 14
},
"link": "/perspectives",
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"planet-money": {
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"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",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"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
},
"location": {
"pathname": "/arts/tag/food",
"previousPathname": "/"
}
}
