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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13966816\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13966816\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating ice cream outside an ice cream shop at night. The sign above reads, "Mitchell's Ice Cream."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San Francisco classic since 1953, Mitchell’s Ice Cream’s Mission District shop is known for its tropical fruit flavors and its late-night hours. \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>If you wondered what everyone in San Francisco was doing at 10:30 on a Friday night during the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1994643/yes-these-california-heat-waves-are-connected-to-climate-change-heres-how\">hottest week\u003c/a> of the entire year, I can offer some insight: Almost all of them were standing in line outside \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mitchellsicecreamsanfran/?hl=en\">Mitchell’s Ice Cream\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what it felt like, anyway, when we pulled up to the classic Mission District scoop shop, sticky with the sweat of yet \u003ci>another\u003c/i> 90-degree October day. Even half an hour before closing time, there were probably three dozen eager ice cream eaters gathered on the sidewalk and crammed inside the shop — a 20-minute wait at a minimum after you grab your number from the ticket machine inside. Go on a weekend, almost any time of day, and it’s always the same. This is an ice cream shop for people who don’t mind standing in line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyway, Mitchell’s enduring popularity — \u003ca href=\"https://mitchellsicecream.com/celebrating-70-years/\">now going on 71 years\u003c/a> — speaks for itself. On the night of our recent visit, the chatty, upbeat crowd consisted of almost every imaginable demographic: flocks of teens, big, multigenerational immigrant families (Arab, South Asian and Filipino American), jocks, nerds, lovey-dovey young couples and at least a handful of solo middle-aged men treating themselves to a late-night sundae (because why not).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s because in the Bay Area ice cream scene, Mitchell’s has long been the people’s choice — the big-name San Francisco ice cream brand that most resonates with so many of our region’s multicultural communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some context: When it comes to ice cream, I’ve always been a texture snob, which means I usually gravitate toward newer-school shops that emphasize the extra-creaminess of their product — say, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/biritecreamery/\">Bi-Rite\u003c/a> or a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/lushgelato\">Lush\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/the-mad-science-of-gelato-1/\">Gelato\u003c/a>. Mitchell’s, on the other hand, makes pretty classic, old-fashioned hard scoop ice cream. What sets it apart is its near-encyclopedic selection of tropical fruit flavors you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, at least in the same quality and sheer variety: mango, lychee, ube, avocado (treated properly here as a fruit, as it is throughout most of Asia), lucuma, coconut pineapple, jackfruit and more. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, it was the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/mitchells-ice-cream-has-Filipino-flavors-sf-16588683.php\">first ice cream shop to bring these tropical flavors to the Bay Area\u003c/a>, using fruit imported directly from Southeast Asia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13966030,arts_13959808,arts_13956683']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>It’s no wonder, then, that in my heavily Latino neighborhood in Richmond, there are only two ice cream shops — and both of them sell Mitchell’s exclusively. And no wonder that the Bay Area’s Filipino American community has largely adopted the brand as its own. After all, what other local ice cream shop sells buko (young coconut), macapuno (“sweet, meaty coconut”) \u003ci>and \u003c/i>vegan roasted coconut flavors — all made with coconuts imported from the Philippines? And that’s before we even get to Mitchell’s two most iconic Filipino flavors, its mango and ube ice creams. The shop even sells a version of halo-halo, as a “sundae,” that’s as well regarded as many of the ones sold at proper Filipino restaurants. (In fact, for many years I labored under the illusion that Mitchell’s was actually owned by Filipinos. It isn’t.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when I’m in the mood to travel to that particular island of frozen-dessert paradise, Mitchell’s Ice Cream hits the spot like no other shop in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13966817\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13966817\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Customers inside a busy ice cream shop.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Even at 10:30 p.m., you can expect long lines. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What we loved, too, was the controlled chaos of the place on a busy night — the patience with which the staff divvied out sample tastes to the crowd pressed up against the display case; the hulking Australian who marveled, as he watched his sundae getting made, “This guy’s a legend. Look at the size of that, it’s the size of a baby’s bottom!” This is the kind of place where a stranger will, unprompted, give you a glowing review of the lucuma ice cream — a butterscotch-like flavor made with a Peruvian fruit, the man explained. It’s next on my list to try.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, we stuck to the classics: a double scoop of avocado and ube, both luxurious in both their bright colors and the way the flavors were a true, sweet distillation of the original fruit. And then, because we were caught up in the whole celebratory spirit of the place, we got one of Mitchell’s exorbitantly sized banana split sundaes — something we hadn’t even thought about ordering in years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a joyous thing to eat! It came topped, old-school McDonald’s style, with strawberry sauce, peanuts and whipped cream, plus Maraschino cherries for good measure. For the ice cream, we’d chosen toasted almond (a more flavorful stand-in for vanilla) and mango (some of the best we’ve had in the States), adding a tropical twist to the all-American treat. And in the heat of the night, as we ate our sundae hunched over on the sidewalk, the strawberry sauce and the whipped cream and the melted parts of the ice cream slowly mixed together into the most delicious slurry.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mitchellsicecreamsanfran/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Mitchell’s Ice Cream\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 11 a.m.–11 p.m. daily at 688 San Jose Ave. in San Francisco. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13966816\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13966816\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating ice cream outside an ice cream shop at night. The sign above reads, "Mitchell's Ice Cream."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A San Francisco classic since 1953, Mitchell’s Ice Cream’s Mission District shop is known for its tropical fruit flavors and its late-night hours. \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>If you wondered what everyone in San Francisco was doing at 10:30 on a Friday night during the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/science/1994643/yes-these-california-heat-waves-are-connected-to-climate-change-heres-how\">hottest week\u003c/a> of the entire year, I can offer some insight: Almost all of them were standing in line outside \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mitchellsicecreamsanfran/?hl=en\">Mitchell’s Ice Cream\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what it felt like, anyway, when we pulled up to the classic Mission District scoop shop, sticky with the sweat of yet \u003ci>another\u003c/i> 90-degree October day. Even half an hour before closing time, there were probably three dozen eager ice cream eaters gathered on the sidewalk and crammed inside the shop — a 20-minute wait at a minimum after you grab your number from the ticket machine inside. Go on a weekend, almost any time of day, and it’s always the same. This is an ice cream shop for people who don’t mind standing in line.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyway, Mitchell’s enduring popularity — \u003ca href=\"https://mitchellsicecream.com/celebrating-70-years/\">now going on 71 years\u003c/a> — speaks for itself. On the night of our recent visit, the chatty, upbeat crowd consisted of almost every imaginable demographic: flocks of teens, big, multigenerational immigrant families (Arab, South Asian and Filipino American), jocks, nerds, lovey-dovey young couples and at least a handful of solo middle-aged men treating themselves to a late-night sundae (because why not).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s because in the Bay Area ice cream scene, Mitchell’s has long been the people’s choice — the big-name San Francisco ice cream brand that most resonates with so many of our region’s multicultural communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some context: When it comes to ice cream, I’ve always been a texture snob, which means I usually gravitate toward newer-school shops that emphasize the extra-creaminess of their product — say, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/biritecreamery/\">Bi-Rite\u003c/a> or a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/lushgelato\">Lush\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/the-mad-science-of-gelato-1/\">Gelato\u003c/a>. Mitchell’s, on the other hand, makes pretty classic, old-fashioned hard scoop ice cream. What sets it apart is its near-encyclopedic selection of tropical fruit flavors you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else, at least in the same quality and sheer variety: mango, lychee, ube, avocado (treated properly here as a fruit, as it is throughout most of Asia), lucuma, coconut pineapple, jackfruit and more. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, it was the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/mitchells-ice-cream-has-Filipino-flavors-sf-16588683.php\">first ice cream shop to bring these tropical flavors to the Bay Area\u003c/a>, using fruit imported directly from Southeast Asia.\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>It’s no wonder, then, that in my heavily Latino neighborhood in Richmond, there are only two ice cream shops — and both of them sell Mitchell’s exclusively. And no wonder that the Bay Area’s Filipino American community has largely adopted the brand as its own. After all, what other local ice cream shop sells buko (young coconut), macapuno (“sweet, meaty coconut”) \u003ci>and \u003c/i>vegan roasted coconut flavors — all made with coconuts imported from the Philippines? And that’s before we even get to Mitchell’s two most iconic Filipino flavors, its mango and ube ice creams. The shop even sells a version of halo-halo, as a “sundae,” that’s as well regarded as many of the ones sold at proper Filipino restaurants. (In fact, for many years I labored under the illusion that Mitchell’s was actually owned by Filipinos. It isn’t.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when I’m in the mood to travel to that particular island of frozen-dessert paradise, Mitchell’s Ice Cream hits the spot like no other shop in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13966817\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13966817\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Customers inside a busy ice cream shop.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/Mitchells-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Even at 10:30 p.m., you can expect long lines. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What we loved, too, was the controlled chaos of the place on a busy night — the patience with which the staff divvied out sample tastes to the crowd pressed up against the display case; the hulking Australian who marveled, as he watched his sundae getting made, “This guy’s a legend. Look at the size of that, it’s the size of a baby’s bottom!” This is the kind of place where a stranger will, unprompted, give you a glowing review of the lucuma ice cream — a butterscotch-like flavor made with a Peruvian fruit, the man explained. It’s next on my list to try.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This time, we stuck to the classics: a double scoop of avocado and ube, both luxurious in both their bright colors and the way the flavors were a true, sweet distillation of the original fruit. And then, because we were caught up in the whole celebratory spirit of the place, we got one of Mitchell’s exorbitantly sized banana split sundaes — something we hadn’t even thought about ordering in years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a joyous thing to eat! It came topped, old-school McDonald’s style, with strawberry sauce, peanuts and whipped cream, plus Maraschino cherries for good measure. For the ice cream, we’d chosen toasted almond (a more flavorful stand-in for vanilla) and mango (some of the best we’ve had in the States), adding a tropical twist to the all-American treat. And in the heat of the night, as we ate our sundae hunched over on the sidewalk, the strawberry sauce and the whipped cream and the melted parts of the ice cream slowly mixed together into the most delicious slurry.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mitchellsicecreamsanfran/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Mitchell’s Ice Cream\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 11 a.m.–11 p.m. daily at 688 San Jose Ave. in San Francisco. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13966037\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13966037\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men seated at a bar devour a spread of hot dogs.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Foodwise, vegan hot dogs are the main attraction at Tallboy. The martini bar in Oakland’s Temescal district is one of the East Bay’s most popular late-night hot spots. \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>A minute after walking into \u003ca href=\"https://www.tallboy.bar/\">Tallboy\u003c/a>, Oakland’s new self-styled “martini dive bar,” I thought I may have made a mistake in coming here. It wasn’t just that this was the most crowded bar I’d been in since pre-pandemic times, with a throng of people three deep all the way around the big, horseshoe-shaped bar counter. It was more that all of the hip party people in Oakland seemed to have packed themselves into this unmarked, dimly lit watering hole in Temescal, and we couldn’t have felt more out of place. Sharply dressed twenty-somethings were doing rounds of Jell-O shots, and the buzz of boisterous conversation was so loud, I couldn’t even really hear the music — all I could make out was a thumping electronic bass line. I had to raise my voice to almost a shout just to be heard by the person right next to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And all we’d wanted was to eat some hot dogs at 10 o’clock on a Friday night. So it felt like maybe we had come to the wrong place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I do like, however, is a bar with a legible theme. And among Oakland’s new cocktail spots, Tallboy has the clearest, most appealing three-word elevator pitch: hot dogs and martinis. Or, as the bar has branded itself online, “’tinis and weenies” — a \u003ca href=\"https://www.bustle.com/life/tinis-weenies-party-theme-tiktok\">TikTok dinner party trend\u003c/a> turned into a whole brick-and-mortar business. The cocktail list is mostly martinis and martini-adjacent drinks — seven different varieties served in classic V-shaped martini glasses, plus shot-size “teeny-tinis” and frosty espresso martini slushies. The food menu, meanwhile, is all hot dogs. And we’re not talking your average bar weenie, but an entire menu of whimsically souped-up \u003ci>vegan \u003c/i>hot dogs created by the team behind the recently closed vegan Singaporean sensation, Lion Dance Cafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>’Tinis and (plant-based) weenies is the promise of a particular kind of good time — the kind of high-low schtick that plays particularly well online. The important thing is that once we finally squeezed into a spot at the counter, we found out that Tallboy’s martinis and hot dogs are both uncommonly good. The dirty martini I ordered came \u003ci>vigorously\u003c/i> shaken and was cold and refreshing as hell, shot through with enough olive brine to make it taste a little bit like the sea. If I were less of a lightweight, I would have happily thrown back two or three of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hot dogs, meanwhile, were a thousand times better than the sad, desiccated Tofu Pups I remember from vegan-friendly cookouts I attended when I was in grad school. The dogs themselves are a relatively new product from Impossible Foods, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/impossible-foods-ceo-says-company-will-raise-cash-with-or-without-ipo-2024-04-29/\">multibillion-dollar corporation\u003c/a> that doesn’t exactly \u003ca href=\"https://www.sportingnews.com/us/tsn/news/joey-chestnut-impossible-foods-banned-hot-dog-eating-contest/ac243bf293a40a3288623297#:~:text=Chestnut%20agreed%20to%20a%20sponsorship,Chestnut%20promoting%20a%20rival%20brand.\">need me to shill for it\u003c/a>. But suffice it to say that the faux-beef wieners deliver on their promise of tasting almost indistinguishable from the real thing, down to the firm but slightly squishy texture I associate with all processed meats. The only thing missing? The \u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/24175365/vegan-hot-dogs-snap-uptons-naturals-oscar-mayer\">springy snap\u003c/a> of the casing that you get with the best beef dogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13966041\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13966041\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The exterior of an unmarked, dimly lit bar at nighttime.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">It felt like all of Oakland’s hip party people had packed themselves into this unmarked, dimly lit cocktail bar. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But the main selling point of Tallboy’s hot dog menu is the Lion Dance–pedigreed array of multiculturally inspired topping combinations. The namesake Lion Dancing Dog comes garnished with cucumber, peanuts, pickled chilies, cilantro, fried shallots and a seriously spicy sambal aioli — a fire blast of bold, Southeast Asian flavors and crunchy textures. We liked the Korean-inspired Cheese in the Trap even better: The combination of well-fermented kimchi, vegan American cheese, gochujang aioli and crispy noodles is incredibly soothing, like a bowl of dressed-up Shin ramyun in hot dog form. If we had any minor complaint, it was that the buns were too big and overly bready — your classic \u003ca href=\"https://www.epicurious.com/recipes-menus/hot-dog-to-bun-ratio-is-a-scam-article\">wiener-to-bun ratio problem\u003c/a>. But even the simplest dog, topped with nothing but brown mustard and an avalanche of diced onions, scratched a certain comfort food itch.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13965215,arts_13962759,arts_13954597']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Tallboy also serves a handful of other snacky vegan dishes created by the Lion Dance Cafe team. There’s a wedge salad, served chilled and topped with faux-bacon bits and an uncannily funky vegan blue cheese dressing, and a chips and dip plate that features a creamy, umami-rich dill pickle dip. And the limey, smoky, toasted-chile-spiked roasted peanuts — a Lion Dance Cafe staple — are simply an elite bar snack. (For the budget-minded, there’s also a free, serve-yourself popcorn station.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For meat eaters, there’s an initial novelty to a meal like this, where upon sampling each new dish, you think, “Wow, is that really vegan??” It’s a testament to how far plant-based meats and cheeses have advanced — and to the broad appeal of Tallboy’s crowd-pleasing menu — that once we really dug in, we stopped thinking about that altogether. It was just damn tasty food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a while, the whole vibe of the place started to grow on us too. This is hardly the first time we’ve been in the position of being the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962759/viridian-asian-american-cocktail-bar-late-night-food-oakland\">only customers ordering a four-course feast\u003c/a> at a cocktail bar. But Tallboy is so crowded, and everyone is in such good spirits, there’s a pleasant kind of anonymity to the experience: No one is going to give you the side-eye for your gratuitous \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/09/03/nx-s1-5098967/joey-chestnut-hot-dog-eating-world-record\">Joey Chestnut impersonation\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More to the point, though, when we finally took a minute to look around, what struck us was how vibrantly diverse the crowd was — bar patrons of all races and ethnicities, often mixed together in surprising groupings, everyone vibing and having a great time. It’s the kind of crowd you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the Bay other than in Oakland. The kind that makes the idea of some all-pervasive “doom loop” — everyone too scared to have fun — seem almost laughable. That makes you fall in love with Oakland all over again.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tallboy.bar/\">\u003ci>Tallboy\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 2 p.m.–midnight on weekdays and 2 p.m.–2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays at 4210 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Tallboy makes a compelling case that Oakland nightlife isn’t dead.",
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"title": "At Tallboy in Oakland, Martinis and Hot Dogs Are a Winning Combination | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13966037\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13966037\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men seated at a bar devour a spread of hot dogs.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Foodwise, vegan hot dogs are the main attraction at Tallboy. The martini bar in Oakland’s Temescal district is one of the East Bay’s most popular late-night hot spots. \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>A minute after walking into \u003ca href=\"https://www.tallboy.bar/\">Tallboy\u003c/a>, Oakland’s new self-styled “martini dive bar,” I thought I may have made a mistake in coming here. It wasn’t just that this was the most crowded bar I’d been in since pre-pandemic times, with a throng of people three deep all the way around the big, horseshoe-shaped bar counter. It was more that all of the hip party people in Oakland seemed to have packed themselves into this unmarked, dimly lit watering hole in Temescal, and we couldn’t have felt more out of place. Sharply dressed twenty-somethings were doing rounds of Jell-O shots, and the buzz of boisterous conversation was so loud, I couldn’t even really hear the music — all I could make out was a thumping electronic bass line. I had to raise my voice to almost a shout just to be heard by the person right next to me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And all we’d wanted was to eat some hot dogs at 10 o’clock on a Friday night. So it felt like maybe we had come to the wrong place.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What I do like, however, is a bar with a legible theme. And among Oakland’s new cocktail spots, Tallboy has the clearest, most appealing three-word elevator pitch: hot dogs and martinis. Or, as the bar has branded itself online, “’tinis and weenies” — a \u003ca href=\"https://www.bustle.com/life/tinis-weenies-party-theme-tiktok\">TikTok dinner party trend\u003c/a> turned into a whole brick-and-mortar business. The cocktail list is mostly martinis and martini-adjacent drinks — seven different varieties served in classic V-shaped martini glasses, plus shot-size “teeny-tinis” and frosty espresso martini slushies. The food menu, meanwhile, is all hot dogs. And we’re not talking your average bar weenie, but an entire menu of whimsically souped-up \u003ci>vegan \u003c/i>hot dogs created by the team behind the recently closed vegan Singaporean sensation, Lion Dance Cafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>’Tinis and (plant-based) weenies is the promise of a particular kind of good time — the kind of high-low schtick that plays particularly well online. The important thing is that once we finally squeezed into a spot at the counter, we found out that Tallboy’s martinis and hot dogs are both uncommonly good. The dirty martini I ordered came \u003ci>vigorously\u003c/i> shaken and was cold and refreshing as hell, shot through with enough olive brine to make it taste a little bit like the sea. If I were less of a lightweight, I would have happily thrown back two or three of them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The hot dogs, meanwhile, were a thousand times better than the sad, desiccated Tofu Pups I remember from vegan-friendly cookouts I attended when I was in grad school. The dogs themselves are a relatively new product from Impossible Foods, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/impossible-foods-ceo-says-company-will-raise-cash-with-or-without-ipo-2024-04-29/\">multibillion-dollar corporation\u003c/a> that doesn’t exactly \u003ca href=\"https://www.sportingnews.com/us/tsn/news/joey-chestnut-impossible-foods-banned-hot-dog-eating-contest/ac243bf293a40a3288623297#:~:text=Chestnut%20agreed%20to%20a%20sponsorship,Chestnut%20promoting%20a%20rival%20brand.\">need me to shill for it\u003c/a>. But suffice it to say that the faux-beef wieners deliver on their promise of tasting almost indistinguishable from the real thing, down to the firm but slightly squishy texture I associate with all processed meats. The only thing missing? The \u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/24175365/vegan-hot-dogs-snap-uptons-naturals-oscar-mayer\">springy snap\u003c/a> of the casing that you get with the best beef dogs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13966041\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13966041\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The exterior of an unmarked, dimly lit bar at nighttime.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/10/tallboy2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">It felt like all of Oakland’s hip party people had packed themselves into this unmarked, dimly lit cocktail bar. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But the main selling point of Tallboy’s hot dog menu is the Lion Dance–pedigreed array of multiculturally inspired topping combinations. The namesake Lion Dancing Dog comes garnished with cucumber, peanuts, pickled chilies, cilantro, fried shallots and a seriously spicy sambal aioli — a fire blast of bold, Southeast Asian flavors and crunchy textures. We liked the Korean-inspired Cheese in the Trap even better: The combination of well-fermented kimchi, vegan American cheese, gochujang aioli and crispy noodles is incredibly soothing, like a bowl of dressed-up Shin ramyun in hot dog form. If we had any minor complaint, it was that the buns were too big and overly bready — your classic \u003ca href=\"https://www.epicurious.com/recipes-menus/hot-dog-to-bun-ratio-is-a-scam-article\">wiener-to-bun ratio problem\u003c/a>. But even the simplest dog, topped with nothing but brown mustard and an avalanche of diced onions, scratched a certain comfort food itch.\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>Tallboy also serves a handful of other snacky vegan dishes created by the Lion Dance Cafe team. There’s a wedge salad, served chilled and topped with faux-bacon bits and an uncannily funky vegan blue cheese dressing, and a chips and dip plate that features a creamy, umami-rich dill pickle dip. And the limey, smoky, toasted-chile-spiked roasted peanuts — a Lion Dance Cafe staple — are simply an elite bar snack. (For the budget-minded, there’s also a free, serve-yourself popcorn station.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For meat eaters, there’s an initial novelty to a meal like this, where upon sampling each new dish, you think, “Wow, is that really vegan??” It’s a testament to how far plant-based meats and cheeses have advanced — and to the broad appeal of Tallboy’s crowd-pleasing menu — that once we really dug in, we stopped thinking about that altogether. It was just damn tasty food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After a while, the whole vibe of the place started to grow on us too. This is hardly the first time we’ve been in the position of being the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962759/viridian-asian-american-cocktail-bar-late-night-food-oakland\">only customers ordering a four-course feast\u003c/a> at a cocktail bar. But Tallboy is so crowded, and everyone is in such good spirits, there’s a pleasant kind of anonymity to the experience: No one is going to give you the side-eye for your gratuitous \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2024/09/03/nx-s1-5098967/joey-chestnut-hot-dog-eating-world-record\">Joey Chestnut impersonation\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More to the point, though, when we finally took a minute to look around, what struck us was how vibrantly diverse the crowd was — bar patrons of all races and ethnicities, often mixed together in surprising groupings, everyone vibing and having a great time. It’s the kind of crowd you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else in the Bay other than in Oakland. The kind that makes the idea of some all-pervasive “doom loop” — everyone too scared to have fun — seem almost laughable. That makes you fall in love with Oakland all over again.\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.tallboy.bar/\">\u003ci>Tallboy\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 2 p.m.–midnight on weekdays and 2 p.m.–2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays at 4210 Telegraph Ave. in Oakland.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13965236\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13965236\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A man chows down on a spread of wagyu beef and other hot pot items at a shabu shabu restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Santa Clara’s Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House, unlimited quantities of wagyu beef are the main attraction. \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>I’m old enough to remember how Americans used to talk about wagyu beef like it was the most rarefied foodstuff in the world — the manna of the gods butchered from some miniscule number of Japanese cattle who’d spent their entire lives being pampered with \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSU5Iu9Z9qI\">massages and beer\u003c/a>. But at some point in the past decade, wagyu (and \u003ca href=\"https://www.seriouseats.com/fake-kobe-wagyu-beef-japanese-steak\">pseudo-wagyu\u003c/a>) became \u003ci>the\u003c/i> number one signifier of bourgeois dining aspirations, to the point that we now have dumpling houses and fast-casual burger joints that churn through hundreds of pounds of the stuff each day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve mostly been agnostic on the trend — but not so much so that I was immune to the inherent appeal of an (\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/NYTIMESALLCAPS\">all caps\u003c/a>) ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT WAGYU BEEF HOT POT restaurant, especially one that stays open until 11 o’clock at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is how we found ourselves at Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House at 9:30 on a recent Friday, having had the foresight to put ourselves on Yelp’s remote online waiting list about two and a half hours before we arrived. (Apparently, this is how things are after the hype has already died down a bit. According to our server, four-hour wait times were routine just a few months ago.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, the Santa Clara shop is the only Bay Area outpost for a \u003ca href=\"https://chubbygroup.com/\">conglomerate of assorted high-end wagyu beef restaurants\u003c/a>, with locations in Las Vegas, Honolulu and all over Southern California, each \u003ca href=\"https://thexpot.com/\">new dining concept\u003c/a> swankier than the last.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Mikiya is \u003ci>pretty\u003c/i> swanky, starting with the massive, theatrically lit display case full of imported A5 Japanese wagyu beef roasts that greeted us at the front entrance. Inside, the overall aesthetic is something akin to a bustling cyberpunk night market: bright neon signs, moody red backlighting and vaguely pagoda-like design features. The dining room was packed with groups of youngish, professional-looking types, and, for what it’s worth, I don’t know if I saw a non-Asian person the entire time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speaking as an Asian: We do \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13963093/supreme-crab-asian-cajun-ayce-buffet-crab-legs-redwood-city\">know our way around a buffet\u003c/a>. Even before the first tray of extravagantly marbled wagyu hits the table, you can tell that Mikiya is the kind of high-class Asian buffet that’s so ubiquitous in cities like Singapore and Taipei. The self-serve condiment, noodle and vegetable stations are immaculate — piles of chrysanthemum greens and pristine, unblemished Napa cabbage leaves refilled with such unflagging consistency that they never seemed to diminish. There’s an entire fridge full of pasteurized eggs so you can use the raw yolk as a “sauce” to pair with the sukiyaki broth. There’s a hot cauldron of saucy minced wagyu for you to ladle over rice — as many mini beef donburi as you have stomach space to eat. Cold appetizers like spicy clams and wasabi-spiked raw octopus were so tasty, I would have happily ordered them as a stand-alone at a nice, non-buffet restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A host of other fun touches feel similarly extravagant — the all-you-can-drink Assam milk tea dispenser, the freezer full of mini-cartons of Häagen-Dazs (i.e. the Rolls Royce of buffet ice cream).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13965238\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13965238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The exterior of a restaurant at night. Inside, a display case of meat is lit up.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mikiya epitomizes swanky Asian buffet culture. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All this, and we haven’t even gotten to the beef! Everything except alcohol is included with the price of admission, but deciding on which specific \u003ci>tier \u003c/i>of all-you-can-eat hot pot experience you want can still be confusing, as there are “silver,” “gold” and “diamond” options that vary in price from $55 to $98 in person, and mostly differ in terms of the grade of wagyu offered and a few other super-premium items.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trust me when I say that the silver tier is already plenty premium. You start the meal by choosing two soup bases for the split pot, and we opted for the most classic options: the slightly sweet, soy sauce–based sukiyaki broth (my favorite) and a clear shabu shabu broth — the most wholesome choice for hot pot eaters whose favorite part of the meal is drinking the soup at the end.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13963832,arts_13963093,arts_13960432']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Then comes the parade of meats. Tray after tray of wagyu brisket, shoulder and ribeye sliced nearly paper-thin for you to dip into the hot broth for just a few seconds, then into your sauce of choice: just raw egg yolk for richness if you want to eat it sukiyaki style, or maybe a nutty sesame dressing or a bracing ponzu spiked with garlic and chilies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, the hallmark of high-quality wagyu beef is its gorgeously fatty white marbling, which is the source of the meat’s rich flavor as well as its tenderness: The fat melts at a much lower temperature than most American beef fat, so you barely need to chew it. At the $55 tier, we were eating Australian wagyu beef, which was less sumptuously marbled than the higher-grade A5 Japanese wagyu available at the other price points, and already, each slice was unspeakably soft and buttery. (I would have argued that the extra marbling of the A5 wouldn’t make much difference at all when eaten in hot pot, but then we received one tray of it by accident — and oh, it \u003ci>did\u003c/i>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The meal also came with an equally luxurious tray of raw seafood to cook in the hot pot broth (scallops! crab legs! abalone!) and our choice of special stand-alone items — a wagyu marrow bone and seared-wagyu nigiri, both delicious but somewhat superfluous given the amount of beef we were already consuming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a slightly grating tech-y aspect to Mikiya, from the \u003ca href=\"https://chubbyclub.com/\">NFT-based memberships\u003c/a> (?!) to the unfailingly cheerful AI bot that responds to literally every single Yelp review. But once we sat down for our meal in person, the servers were all so friendly and attentive, and the whole dining experience was seamless and comfortable. Though I don’t know if I’m a full-on wagyu convert yet, I saw that Mikiya also sells an annual (non-NFT) membership that offers discounted rates for $28 a year. And I really, really thought about it. Honestly, I’m still thinking about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mikiyanorthcalifornia/\">Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday–Thursday 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. at 3590 Homestead Rd. in Santa Clara. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13965236\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13965236\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A man chows down on a spread of wagyu beef and other hot pot items at a shabu shabu restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Santa Clara’s Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House, unlimited quantities of wagyu beef are the main attraction. \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>I’m old enough to remember how Americans used to talk about wagyu beef like it was the most rarefied foodstuff in the world — the manna of the gods butchered from some miniscule number of Japanese cattle who’d spent their entire lives being pampered with \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSU5Iu9Z9qI\">massages and beer\u003c/a>. But at some point in the past decade, wagyu (and \u003ca href=\"https://www.seriouseats.com/fake-kobe-wagyu-beef-japanese-steak\">pseudo-wagyu\u003c/a>) became \u003ci>the\u003c/i> number one signifier of bourgeois dining aspirations, to the point that we now have dumpling houses and fast-casual burger joints that churn through hundreds of pounds of the stuff each day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve mostly been agnostic on the trend — but not so much so that I was immune to the inherent appeal of an (\u003ca href=\"https://x.com/NYTIMESALLCAPS\">all caps\u003c/a>) ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT WAGYU BEEF HOT POT restaurant, especially one that stays open until 11 o’clock at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is how we found ourselves at Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House at 9:30 on a recent Friday, having had the foresight to put ourselves on Yelp’s remote online waiting list about two and a half hours before we arrived. (Apparently, this is how things are after the hype has already died down a bit. According to our server, four-hour wait times were routine just a few months ago.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, the Santa Clara shop is the only Bay Area outpost for a \u003ca href=\"https://chubbygroup.com/\">conglomerate of assorted high-end wagyu beef restaurants\u003c/a>, with locations in Las Vegas, Honolulu and all over Southern California, each \u003ca href=\"https://thexpot.com/\">new dining concept\u003c/a> swankier than the last.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And Mikiya is \u003ci>pretty\u003c/i> swanky, starting with the massive, theatrically lit display case full of imported A5 Japanese wagyu beef roasts that greeted us at the front entrance. Inside, the overall aesthetic is something akin to a bustling cyberpunk night market: bright neon signs, moody red backlighting and vaguely pagoda-like design features. The dining room was packed with groups of youngish, professional-looking types, and, for what it’s worth, I don’t know if I saw a non-Asian person the entire time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Speaking as an Asian: We do \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13963093/supreme-crab-asian-cajun-ayce-buffet-crab-legs-redwood-city\">know our way around a buffet\u003c/a>. Even before the first tray of extravagantly marbled wagyu hits the table, you can tell that Mikiya is the kind of high-class Asian buffet that’s so ubiquitous in cities like Singapore and Taipei. The self-serve condiment, noodle and vegetable stations are immaculate — piles of chrysanthemum greens and pristine, unblemished Napa cabbage leaves refilled with such unflagging consistency that they never seemed to diminish. There’s an entire fridge full of pasteurized eggs so you can use the raw yolk as a “sauce” to pair with the sukiyaki broth. There’s a hot cauldron of saucy minced wagyu for you to ladle over rice — as many mini beef donburi as you have stomach space to eat. Cold appetizers like spicy clams and wasabi-spiked raw octopus were so tasty, I would have happily ordered them as a stand-alone at a nice, non-buffet restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A host of other fun touches feel similarly extravagant — the all-you-can-drink Assam milk tea dispenser, the freezer full of mini-cartons of Häagen-Dazs (i.e. the Rolls Royce of buffet ice cream).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13965238\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13965238\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The exterior of a restaurant at night. Inside, a display case of meat is lit up.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/mikiya-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mikiya epitomizes swanky Asian buffet culture. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All this, and we haven’t even gotten to the beef! Everything except alcohol is included with the price of admission, but deciding on which specific \u003ci>tier \u003c/i>of all-you-can-eat hot pot experience you want can still be confusing, as there are “silver,” “gold” and “diamond” options that vary in price from $55 to $98 in person, and mostly differ in terms of the grade of wagyu offered and a few other super-premium items.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Trust me when I say that the silver tier is already plenty premium. You start the meal by choosing two soup bases for the split pot, and we opted for the most classic options: the slightly sweet, soy sauce–based sukiyaki broth (my favorite) and a clear shabu shabu broth — the most wholesome choice for hot pot eaters whose favorite part of the meal is drinking the soup at the end.\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>Then comes the parade of meats. Tray after tray of wagyu brisket, shoulder and ribeye sliced nearly paper-thin for you to dip into the hot broth for just a few seconds, then into your sauce of choice: just raw egg yolk for richness if you want to eat it sukiyaki style, or maybe a nutty sesame dressing or a bracing ponzu spiked with garlic and chilies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, the hallmark of high-quality wagyu beef is its gorgeously fatty white marbling, which is the source of the meat’s rich flavor as well as its tenderness: The fat melts at a much lower temperature than most American beef fat, so you barely need to chew it. At the $55 tier, we were eating Australian wagyu beef, which was less sumptuously marbled than the higher-grade A5 Japanese wagyu available at the other price points, and already, each slice was unspeakably soft and buttery. (I would have argued that the extra marbling of the A5 wouldn’t make much difference at all when eaten in hot pot, but then we received one tray of it by accident — and oh, it \u003ci>did\u003c/i>.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The meal also came with an equally luxurious tray of raw seafood to cook in the hot pot broth (scallops! crab legs! abalone!) and our choice of special stand-alone items — a wagyu marrow bone and seared-wagyu nigiri, both delicious but somewhat superfluous given the amount of beef we were already consuming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There is a slightly grating tech-y aspect to Mikiya, from the \u003ca href=\"https://chubbyclub.com/\">NFT-based memberships\u003c/a> (?!) to the unfailingly cheerful AI bot that responds to literally every single Yelp review. But once we sat down for our meal in person, the servers were all so friendly and attentive, and the whole dining experience was seamless and comfortable. Though I don’t know if I’m a full-on wagyu convert yet, I saw that Mikiya also sells an annual (non-NFT) membership that offers discounted rates for $28 a year. And I really, really thought about it. Honestly, I’m still thinking about it.\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/mikiyanorthcalifornia/\">Mikiya Wagyu Shabu House\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday–Thursday 11:30 a.m.–10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. at 3590 Homestead Rd. in Santa Clara. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "Richmond’s New Late-Night Taqueria Goes Big | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963836\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963836\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating tacos and tortas inside a dimly lit restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Tacos El Rulas’ new brick-and-mortar taqueria, everything — from the tortas to the dining room — is uncommonly big. \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>The thing to know about Richmond’s newest late-night taqueria, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselrulas/?hl=en\">Tacos El Rulas\u003c/a>, is that everything about it is big.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Start with the space itself, which is, in a word, cavernous. Located on the southern edge of Richmond’s \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/a-richmond-taco-crawl-2-1/\">23rd Street taco corridor\u003c/a>, it’s a high-ceilinged barn of a building that used to house a Mexican grocery store. Every square inch of wall space is covered with colorful blinking lights, neon signs (“Save Water, Drink Micheladas”), Mexican flags and larger-than-life murals depicting Selena, Jenni Rivera and other Mexican American musical icons. At around 9:30 on a Wednesday night, Colombian salsa music was blasting over the speakers while a group of coworkers threw back a $100 round of tequila shots served atop a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/C_bc6q4yf6D/?hl=en\">miniature combi bus lit up with sparklers\u003c/a>. The overall vibe was somewhere between rowdy cafeteria and cool, dimly neon-lit nightclub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, it might not be the best place to visit if you’re trying to avoid overstimulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Veteran East Bay taco eaters may recall that El Rulas \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13931115/tacos-el-rulas-richmond-taco-truck-alambre-papa-loca-instagram-food-influencer\">started out as a taco truck\u003c/a> — which currently sits idle in its old spot in the restaurant’s parking lot. The truck was popular in part because of its block-party-meets-backyard-barbecue atmosphere, perfuming the neighborhood with the smell of charred meat late into the night. Its success was also largely a product of social media: Every item on the menu seemed specifically engineered to go viral on Instagram, from the red-tinged, dripping-wet quesabirria tacos to the monstrous (and since discontinued) three-foot-long burritos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the new brick-and-mortar Tacos El Rulas, too, much of the food is comically oversized — and all of it is available until midnight every night. We started with one of the restaurant’s Instagram hits, the papas locas, a.k.a. the Mexican American answer to a loaded baked potato, except that El Rulas’ version comes pre-smashed, sans skin, in an aluminum tray. It comes topped with your choice of protein (I recommend the supremely well-seasoned al pastor), butter, bacon, more butter, two big dollops of guacamole and a metric ton of stretchy melted cheese. Order this with a side of handmade tortillas to scoop it all up, and the dish is hearty enough to feed two or three hungry diners all by itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963838\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963838\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2.jpg\" alt='Exterior of a restaurant bathed in neon light at nighttime. The sign above reads, \"Tacos El Rulas.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The longtime taco truck has taken over a cavernous space on the southern edge of Richmond’s 23rd Street taco corridor. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The El Rulas taco truck’s \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/2/11/22275500/tacos-el-rulas-truck-berkeley-quesabirria-torta-cubana-handmade-tortillas\">first claim to fame\u003c/a>, long before it became a darling of Bay Area food influencers, was that it sold some of the biggest and tastiest tortas in our region. The restaurant makes a whopping 18 different varieties. And to this day, one of the most delicious things on the menu, pound for pound, is the torta Cubana. This is a sandwich the literal size of a football, layered so thick with meat that we practically had to unhinge our jaws in order to take a bite. The funny thing about El Rulas’ Cubana is that they seem to make it a little bit differently every time I order it, depending on what they have available in the kitchen. The most recent edition was crammed to overflowing with ham, four or five fried beef cutlets, a fried egg and stretchy mozzarella cheese — and no detectable vegetable matter whatsoever. (Other times, the sandwich has included some combination of lettuce, ham, chorizo and queso fresco.) Regardless: It’s a spectacular sandwich, especially after we doused it with some red salsa from the self-serve salsa station. And we still couldn’t finish even half.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13963437,arts_13958926,arts_13958466']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The closest thing to a normally-portioned dish that we ordered was the ribeye tacos. Reasonable people might quibble over whether they’re worth the $6-a-taco price tag, but the thick cubes of steak were as buttery and tender as we could have hoped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there’s a downside to Tacos El Rulas, it’s that the place has been so infected by the social media brain worm that some of the offerings veer a little bit too close to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13936325/social-media-biggest-pupusas-burritos-instagram-tiktok-latinextravagant-bay-area\">stunt food territory\u003c/a>. The menu is loaded with luxe upgrades that aren’t really necessary for you to have a good experience — though I’ll admit that ribeye papas locas \u003ci>do \u003c/i>sound pretty great.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My advice? Come with a group that likes to share, because you’re going to want to sample a few items. A solo diner can really only handle one of El Rulas’ special, over-the-top creations — and then you’re going to be eating one dish for a solid 40 minutes, and you still probably won’t finish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On weekend nights, the restaurant tends to fill up with the party crowd. The lines get long, and things can get a little bit chaotic. Late on a random weeknight, though? It’s a lot of families with kids, and coworkers stopping by for a drink and a meal at the end of their shift. Neon lights, gargantuan sandwiches and sensory overload notwithstanding, it’s actually a pretty chill place to grab a bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselrulas/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Tacos El Rulas\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 11 a.m.–midnight daily at 232 23rd St. in Richmond. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963836\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963836\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating tacos and tortas inside a dimly lit restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Tacos El Rulas’ new brick-and-mortar taqueria, everything — from the tortas to the dining room — is uncommonly big. \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>The thing to know about Richmond’s newest late-night taqueria, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselrulas/?hl=en\">Tacos El Rulas\u003c/a>, is that everything about it is big.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Start with the space itself, which is, in a word, cavernous. Located on the southern edge of Richmond’s \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/a-richmond-taco-crawl-2-1/\">23rd Street taco corridor\u003c/a>, it’s a high-ceilinged barn of a building that used to house a Mexican grocery store. Every square inch of wall space is covered with colorful blinking lights, neon signs (“Save Water, Drink Micheladas”), Mexican flags and larger-than-life murals depicting Selena, Jenni Rivera and other Mexican American musical icons. At around 9:30 on a Wednesday night, Colombian salsa music was blasting over the speakers while a group of coworkers threw back a $100 round of tequila shots served atop a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/C_bc6q4yf6D/?hl=en\">miniature combi bus lit up with sparklers\u003c/a>. The overall vibe was somewhere between rowdy cafeteria and cool, dimly neon-lit nightclub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In short, it might not be the best place to visit if you’re trying to avoid overstimulation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Veteran East Bay taco eaters may recall that El Rulas \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13931115/tacos-el-rulas-richmond-taco-truck-alambre-papa-loca-instagram-food-influencer\">started out as a taco truck\u003c/a> — which currently sits idle in its old spot in the restaurant’s parking lot. The truck was popular in part because of its block-party-meets-backyard-barbecue atmosphere, perfuming the neighborhood with the smell of charred meat late into the night. Its success was also largely a product of social media: Every item on the menu seemed specifically engineered to go viral on Instagram, from the red-tinged, dripping-wet quesabirria tacos to the monstrous (and since discontinued) three-foot-long burritos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the new brick-and-mortar Tacos El Rulas, too, much of the food is comically oversized — and all of it is available until midnight every night. We started with one of the restaurant’s Instagram hits, the papas locas, a.k.a. the Mexican American answer to a loaded baked potato, except that El Rulas’ version comes pre-smashed, sans skin, in an aluminum tray. It comes topped with your choice of protein (I recommend the supremely well-seasoned al pastor), butter, bacon, more butter, two big dollops of guacamole and a metric ton of stretchy melted cheese. Order this with a side of handmade tortillas to scoop it all up, and the dish is hearty enough to feed two or three hungry diners all by itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963838\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963838\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2.jpg\" alt='Exterior of a restaurant bathed in neon light at nighttime. The sign above reads, \"Tacos El Rulas.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/09/El-Rulas2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The longtime taco truck has taken over a cavernous space on the southern edge of Richmond’s 23rd Street taco corridor. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The El Rulas taco truck’s \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/2/11/22275500/tacos-el-rulas-truck-berkeley-quesabirria-torta-cubana-handmade-tortillas\">first claim to fame\u003c/a>, long before it became a darling of Bay Area food influencers, was that it sold some of the biggest and tastiest tortas in our region. The restaurant makes a whopping 18 different varieties. And to this day, one of the most delicious things on the menu, pound for pound, is the torta Cubana. This is a sandwich the literal size of a football, layered so thick with meat that we practically had to unhinge our jaws in order to take a bite. The funny thing about El Rulas’ Cubana is that they seem to make it a little bit differently every time I order it, depending on what they have available in the kitchen. The most recent edition was crammed to overflowing with ham, four or five fried beef cutlets, a fried egg and stretchy mozzarella cheese — and no detectable vegetable matter whatsoever. (Other times, the sandwich has included some combination of lettuce, ham, chorizo and queso fresco.) Regardless: It’s a spectacular sandwich, especially after we doused it with some red salsa from the self-serve salsa station. And we still couldn’t finish even half.\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>The closest thing to a normally-portioned dish that we ordered was the ribeye tacos. Reasonable people might quibble over whether they’re worth the $6-a-taco price tag, but the thick cubes of steak were as buttery and tender as we could have hoped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If there’s a downside to Tacos El Rulas, it’s that the place has been so infected by the social media brain worm that some of the offerings veer a little bit too close to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13936325/social-media-biggest-pupusas-burritos-instagram-tiktok-latinextravagant-bay-area\">stunt food territory\u003c/a>. The menu is loaded with luxe upgrades that aren’t really necessary for you to have a good experience — though I’ll admit that ribeye papas locas \u003ci>do \u003c/i>sound pretty great.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My advice? Come with a group that likes to share, because you’re going to want to sample a few items. A solo diner can really only handle one of El Rulas’ special, over-the-top creations — and then you’re going to be eating one dish for a solid 40 minutes, and you still probably won’t finish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On weekend nights, the restaurant tends to fill up with the party crowd. The lines get long, and things can get a little bit chaotic. Late on a random weeknight, though? It’s a lot of families with kids, and coworkers stopping by for a drink and a meal at the end of their shift. Neon lights, gargantuan sandwiches and sensory overload notwithstanding, it’s actually a pretty chill place to grab a bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselrulas/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Tacos El Rulas\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 11 a.m.–midnight daily at 232 23rd St. in Richmond. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "four-kings-hong-kong-restaurant-san-francisco-chinatown-hella-hungry-interview",
"title": "This Hong Kong-Inspired Hot Spot Abounds With Cantonese Soul",
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"headTitle": "This Hong Kong-Inspired Hot Spot Abounds With Cantonese Soul | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’ve never actually been to Hong Kong. How fortunate, then, that a multiverse portal to a 1990s Cantopop-themed iteration of the island city has ripped through the Bay Area’s space-time continuum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a hilly, jam-packed street in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Four Kings beckons. Led by chefs Franky Ho and Mike Long and their partners Lucy Li and Millie Boonkokua, the five-month-old restaurant is where the past, present and future of San Franciscan Cantonese food abounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nightly, not one but \u003ci>two\u003c/i> queues of curious locals overflow down opposite ends of the tiny block. Once seated inside, you’ll quickly surrender to the temptations of the casually upscale hot spot’s culinary éclat and abundance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is where you go when you want to feast on HK favorites — saucy pork chop rice, succulent black pepper steak and fusion offerings like mapo spaghetti or XO escargot — while industrial kitchen appliances hum around you, longtime friends chatter nearby and the immortal Wong Ka Kui croons over the speakers. If you’re savvy, you’ll enjoy a glass of monkey-picked oolong tea, a boozy Chinese almond milk highball or a crisp Taiwanese lager brewed with discarded bread crusts while observing the bustling energy from an intimately tight spot at the counter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961953\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961953\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The pork chop rice with tomato egg — Four Kings’ take on a classic Hong Kong cha chaan teng–style dish. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And just when you’ve finally begun to settle in and appreciate the restaurant’s funkier elements (unframed posters of Cantopop celebrities, golden maneki-neko playfully waving their paws, a kitschy array of knickknacks bathed in neon-lit perfection), a plate of fried squab arrives to recenter your attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That squab is the headlining draw at Four Kings, and, like the rest of the menu here, it’s both an ode to and a deviation from traditional Cantonese fare. The malt-sugar-brushed bird comes with its claws and beak intact, and you’ll need to properly angle it with your hands to get a piece of thigh — the best part, I’m told.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961950\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961950\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Salted egg squash croquettes. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Having grown up in Chinatown after immigrating from China, Ho is serving heat in the neighborhood where he was raised by his grandmother and mother, who still regularly drops off homemade soup at the restaurant in the mornings. While working as a chef at Mister Jiu’s, he struck up a friendship with Long, who brings his Los Angeles flare and memories of living in Hong Kong to Four Kings, which the duo started as a pop-up last year. With Li running the business end and Boonkokua greeting guests as the hostess, the team of four has overtaken San Francisco’s dining scene like a monsoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Built on a shared sense of childhood nostalgia, migratory friendships and the comfort of home away from home, Four Kings has an anima — a deep soulfulness — that can only be unlocked after living abroad, after tasting a homeland. It’s hot mustard jellyfish salad and sweet red bean shaved ice for the soul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four Kings isn’t the traditional dining experience you might encounter in the historic center of Chinatown. Instead, it’s like being inside the culinary fever dream of first-generation Cantonese millennials — where plates of sensory-overloading goodness keep piling up in front of you, and where you’re lavished with attention as the royal guest of honor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">********\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961956\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961956\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A full house of customers. Since opening in the spring of 2024, Four Kings has been one of San Francisco’s buzziest restaurants. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Chazaro: Cantopop music is a major element at Four Kings. How did you get into that genre and how does it fit with your concept? Also, any Cantopop recommendations?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike Long:\u003c/b> Cantopop is huge for Cantonese kids. Our parents play it all the time on TVB — that’s the channel for Cantonese stuff. Beyond is my favorite group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy Li: \u003c/b>Our name, Four Kings, references the Four Heavenly Kings, which is a specific group of Cantopop stars from the ’90s. They’re not an actual group, but they were dubbed as the four. It’s like Britney or Christina, but this is for four men in Cantopop [Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok]. Out of those four, I like Jacky Cheung’s music the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we used to all hang out before we worked together, we would always listen to a Chinese playlist, and then we just kept adding to it. So that’s what started it. We were like, oh, we should just play this at our future restaurant because we like it so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Millie Boonkokua::\u003c/b> We have \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7m5GmSTmYNqJ0VpZFyPG6A?si=c8282f11eef64212&nd=1&dlsi=d4a6f3ea1bdf4a88\">a Cantopop playlist\u003c/a> that we’re happy to share with customers if they ask about it at the restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/7m5GmSTmYNqJ0VpZFyPG6A?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>How are you all feeling a few months into your successful opening? You entered this endeavor as friends and life partners, so I’m sure there have been plenty of highlights and struggles in running your first food business in San Francisco.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The struggle has always been there, and it’s probably going to keep going, but the reward has definitely been amazing. We spent a lot of time in our careers working for other people, and Franky and I transitioned from fine dining to where we’re at now. That has always been a goal of ours, to open a more low-key, casual, approachable spot. But the whole journey has been really good. It really helps to have this team right here: Lucy, Millie, Franky. Each one of us brings a different strength to this team. Without it, this isn’t doable. It’s a lot easier to do it together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> It might look like we have a big team from the outside, but it’s really just the four of us. I’m doing press and accounting. I have no PR training. Millie is doing everything. She’s making drinks and serving. Mike and Franky are in the kitchen. Mike \u003ca href=\"https://www.itsfourkings.com/menu\">designed our menu\u003c/a>. And we love our staff. They’re amazing, and we can’t do this without them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> Yes, I agree. [Group laughs].\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Millie: \u003c/b>I just want to say, as the person who does the hosting and works the front every day, I just feel overwhelmed with joy. I get to be the one who physically opens our door every night, and sometimes there are 40 people or more waiting outside. It really is just a feeling of joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962301\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962301\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">KQED Arts Reporter Alan Chazaro eats the hot mustard jellyfish salad. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>When I visited, I could definitely feel that vibe of deep friendship and teamwork. You all seem to be doing multiple things at once.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The big ethos of our restaurant is that no one person is doing just one specific task. We want our kitchen to kind of operate in a way where each person gets each other’s back and everyone’s able to flow into helping one another out. A lot of traditional restaurants have a disconnect between front and back of the house. But for us, in a way, we’re like, hey, they’re a little busy right now. We’re going to help run food. And that’s kind of also what we want to encourage, that engagement with our guests and being able to drop off some food, check in on everyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What did you all learn from running a pop-up together?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> Our pop-up was extremely busy. There were long lines and we would run out of food. We were very short-staffed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> It was just the four of us [laughs].\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike: \u003c/b>Yeah, and the dishwasher had to be downstairs. So with running up and down the stairs to do that on top of cooking and serving, it was pretty rough. We were a little…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> Very slammed. But the reception, seeing people line up, was a good indicator of like, okay, maybe we’re doing something right. And then seeing continued interest only further confirmed that. That energy we had during the pop-up never went away. It just kept increasing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>I love pop-ups. A lot can be learned and creatively developed at that stage.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike: \u003c/b>With our pop-up, we had this idea of doing a Cantonese izakaya–style concept. But I think initially, it was a hard image for a lot of people to think about. But by doing our pop-up slowly, people began to recognize what we were trying to do. And it’s the same for ourselves, too, right? It allows us to start actually seeing what we had planned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up until now, even with the brick-and-mortar, we are still trying to realize that goal. It wasn’t until our opening night and seeing guests here that it really felt like we hit it. That’s when we felt like, okay, this is the spot where we want to be. A lot of energy and people just having a good time in a casual neighborhood spot. Sharing small-plate foods, enjoying everything. I think it’s through the pop-up phase that we were able to learn all that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961955\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961955\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">KQED Arts Reporter Alan Chazaro waits in line outside the Chinatown restaurant with Four Kings co-owner Lucy Li. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>And you’re doing it all in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the neighborhood where Franky grew up. How does it feel being there and what’s your relationship with this community? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> It’s been nice coming back and having a restaurant where [my family and I] first immigrated to [from Guangdong province of China]. We really like the neighborhood. We try to support a lot of the local producers and the produce people. We get a lot of our live seafood from Chinatown, and our noodles are all made in Chinatown. We weren’t specifically looking to be in Chinatown, but we just somehow ended up in the perfect space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13961696,arts_13950866,arts_13924997']\u003c/span>Mike: \u003c/b>Our building used to be an old shrimp company. When our landlord took over the space years ago, his wife wanted to build a Kumon. The space downstairs became a restaurant prior to us taking over. I definitely feel very honored to be in Chinatown. Being in this space, you see more and more of the culture. Just walking from the parking lot [beneath Portsmouth Square] to the restaurant, you see all the grandmas and grandpas playing chess and cards in the park. It’s dope to see everyday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> It’s a vibrant community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> Yeah. It gives you glimpses of the vibes of being in Hong Kong. Especially if you go down Stockton Street. When I think about Hong Kong, it’s walking down crowded streets. It’s hot, it’s humid. And then you have AC blasting from the storefronts, and they’re just selling random knickknacks. Sometimes when you walk down Chinatown in San Francisco, you hit those same feelings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Have you been back to Hong Kong recently? \u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://video.kqed.org/video/crackdown-1710973659/\">\u003cb>The government has implemented new national security laws\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb>. What’s the political climate there right now?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> Lucy and I actually went [a year ago]. Politics isn’t necessarily what you see on the streets. It doesn’t really affect tourism, doesn’t affect visitors. But you do see it in the families. like for me and my relatives. There’s a divide between people who are pro-China and people who are in support of the youth movements for liberation and democracy. So you definitely see the tension within families, but not necessarily out in the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Do you all have any go-to spots in Chinatown or nearby? How is being here a source of culinary inspiration?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> We go out in Chinatown all the time. Every Monday night after service, after a long week, we take our staff to eat dinner at like 2 a.m., and the only spot that’s open, which happens, in our opinion, to be the best place in Chinatown is \u003ca href=\"https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q3TFUs2W6LRwHMQS6\">Taishan Cuisine\u003c/a> on Broadway. We also go to Hon’s Wun-Tun around the corner. They have two locations. But yeah, we definitely eat out in Chinatown for sure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961957\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961957\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Line cook Brenda Lau plates a dessert. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Have other chefs or business owners in the area stopped by since you’ve moved in?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy: \u003c/b>One of our big inspirations in the Bay Area is actually \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2022/6/8/23160058/chome-izakaya-san-francisco-mission\">Chome\u003c/a>. They’re a Japanese izakaya [in the Mission], and we’ve been there plenty. They actually came to eat at Four Kings since we opened, and it was really cute. We love Chome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> R & G Lounge has stopped by. They’re right near to us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> Mow Lee [Shing Kee & Company]. They’re very established and do Chinese charcuterie plates just up the street. The owner’s son has eaten here. There has been a lot of support in general.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky, you’ve been in Chinatown the longest. How has the area changed over time?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky: \u003c/b>It changed a lot for a while, but I feel like it’s back to where it was when [my family and I] first immigrated here. We’re getting a lot more people again, and all the vendors are busy, the streets are busy. I feel like a couple of years ago it was pretty dead. And a lot of restaurants and businesses were closing, but it seems like it’s back to where it was from what I remember. I see a lot of the younger generations coming back to hang out in Chinatown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.itsfourkings.com/about\">\u003cb>Your amazing website\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb> lists Franky as being better than “a walking encyclopedia of Chinese food knowledge.” So I humbly ask, what defines Cantonese food for you, Franky?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> There’s a few descriptions and explanations for Cantonese food. In China, Cantonese food is pure food. They don’t add a lot of seasoning. Everything is fresh. That’s why many things are steamed or blanched. But when you move towards Hong Kong or Macau, Cantonese food becomes fusion food. A mixture of French cuisine. British influences. It can be more flavorful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What dish do you serve at Four Kings that most embodies your version of Cantonese food?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The pork chop rice. The inspiration for ours comes from cha chaan teng, which are the Hong Kong-style cafes we go to. One of our favorite orders that we get there is this big pork chop on either rice or spaghetti. And that’s kind of our take on it for our restaurant. We really needed to be able to bring something that’s nostalgic. It hits home for us and for a lot of young Cantonese kids, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> The dish also takes inspiration from Japanese katsudon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike: \u003c/b>Yeah, so we bread it with panko and deep-fry our pork chops after we brine it for a few days. And then we serve it with a tomato egg slurry versus the traditional sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> I also really like our take on a Hong Kong version of a Sichuan fish dish, which is fermented mustard greens and fried fish. I guess we do a San Francisco version of it. And we add butter, which is from the French influence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The fried squab is also an easy answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962300\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962300\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fried squab hanging in the kitchen. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>For those who don’t know, what exactly is squab, and why isn’t it more commonly served in the U.S.?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> I feel like a lot of people don’t really eat squab because they’re pigeons. But a good amount of fine dining restaurants use them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike: \u003c/b>There aren’t any farms for squab. So the general price for it is pretty expensive. And I guess for most people to get a smaller bird for that price, it’s not ideal. Hence, it’s a harder protein to sell at a restaurant because it always comes with a higher price tag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy: \u003c/b>Franky, you have a personal connection to squab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> Yeah, so in my hometown in China, we’re famous for our squab. Our dialect is squab, or “squab speak” in Chinese. Most banquets will serve one fried squab per person. We wanted to bring that here. We also really want people to eat it with their hands, to just devour it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The squab is ideal for our restaurant concept because we want to serve smaller plates for our size [the building is narrow]. It’s my favorite course from a Cantonese banquet. All the kids always fight for the squab.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Four Kings (710 Commercial St., San Francisco) is open Thurs. through Mon. from 6 to 11 p.m. \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.opentable.com/restref/client/?restref=1329550&lang=en-US&ot_source=Restaurant%20website&corrid=ba87a81d-b5c9-4732-9555-dbc3fd2783f1\">\u003ci>Reservations\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> are recommended up to three weeks in advance; walk-in counter seating is available on a limited basis. Fried squab is offered in small quantities on a first-come, first-served basis.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Four Kings Abounds With Cantonese Soul in SF Chinatown | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__dropcapShortcode__dropcap\">I\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>’ve never actually been to Hong Kong. How fortunate, then, that a multiverse portal to a 1990s Cantopop-themed iteration of the island city has ripped through the Bay Area’s space-time continuum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a hilly, jam-packed street in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Four Kings beckons. Led by chefs Franky Ho and Mike Long and their partners Lucy Li and Millie Boonkokua, the five-month-old restaurant is where the past, present and future of San Franciscan Cantonese food abounds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nightly, not one but \u003ci>two\u003c/i> queues of curious locals overflow down opposite ends of the tiny block. Once seated inside, you’ll quickly surrender to the temptations of the casually upscale hot spot’s culinary éclat and abundance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is where you go when you want to feast on HK favorites — saucy pork chop rice, succulent black pepper steak and fusion offerings like mapo spaghetti or XO escargot — while industrial kitchen appliances hum around you, longtime friends chatter nearby and the immortal Wong Ka Kui croons over the speakers. If you’re savvy, you’ll enjoy a glass of monkey-picked oolong tea, a boozy Chinese almond milk highball or a crisp Taiwanese lager brewed with discarded bread crusts while observing the bustling energy from an intimately tight spot at the counter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961953\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961953\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-012-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The pork chop rice with tomato egg — Four Kings’ take on a classic Hong Kong cha chaan teng–style dish. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>And just when you’ve finally begun to settle in and appreciate the restaurant’s funkier elements (unframed posters of Cantopop celebrities, golden maneki-neko playfully waving their paws, a kitschy array of knickknacks bathed in neon-lit perfection), a plate of fried squab arrives to recenter your attention.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That squab is the headlining draw at Four Kings, and, like the rest of the menu here, it’s both an ode to and a deviation from traditional Cantonese fare. The malt-sugar-brushed bird comes with its claws and beak intact, and you’ll need to properly angle it with your hands to get a piece of thigh — the best part, I’m told.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961950\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961950\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-001-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Salted egg squash croquettes. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Having grown up in Chinatown after immigrating from China, Ho is serving heat in the neighborhood where he was raised by his grandmother and mother, who still regularly drops off homemade soup at the restaurant in the mornings. While working as a chef at Mister Jiu’s, he struck up a friendship with Long, who brings his Los Angeles flare and memories of living in Hong Kong to Four Kings, which the duo started as a pop-up last year. With Li running the business end and Boonkokua greeting guests as the hostess, the team of four has overtaken San Francisco’s dining scene like a monsoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Built on a shared sense of childhood nostalgia, migratory friendships and the comfort of home away from home, Four Kings has an anima — a deep soulfulness — that can only be unlocked after living abroad, after tasting a homeland. It’s hot mustard jellyfish salad and sweet red bean shaved ice for the soul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Four Kings isn’t the traditional dining experience you might encounter in the historic center of Chinatown. Instead, it’s like being inside the culinary fever dream of first-generation Cantonese millennials — where plates of sensory-overloading goodness keep piling up in front of you, and where you’re lavished with attention as the royal guest of honor.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>This interview has been edited for length and clarity.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"text-align: center\">********\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961956\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961956\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-022-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A full house of customers. Since opening in the spring of 2024, Four Kings has been one of San Francisco’s buzziest restaurants. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Alan Chazaro: Cantopop music is a major element at Four Kings. How did you get into that genre and how does it fit with your concept? Also, any Cantopop recommendations?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike Long:\u003c/b> Cantopop is huge for Cantonese kids. Our parents play it all the time on TVB — that’s the channel for Cantonese stuff. Beyond is my favorite group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy Li: \u003c/b>Our name, Four Kings, references the Four Heavenly Kings, which is a specific group of Cantopop stars from the ’90s. They’re not an actual group, but they were dubbed as the four. It’s like Britney or Christina, but this is for four men in Cantopop [Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok]. Out of those four, I like Jacky Cheung’s music the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we used to all hang out before we worked together, we would always listen to a Chinese playlist, and then we just kept adding to it. So that’s what started it. We were like, oh, we should just play this at our future restaurant because we like it so much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Millie Boonkokua::\u003c/b> We have \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7m5GmSTmYNqJ0VpZFyPG6A?si=c8282f11eef64212&nd=1&dlsi=d4a6f3ea1bdf4a88\">a Cantopop playlist\u003c/a> that we’re happy to share with customers if they ask about it at the restaurant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe style=\"border-radius:12px\" src=\"https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/7m5GmSTmYNqJ0VpZFyPG6A?utm_source=generator\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>How are you all feeling a few months into your successful opening? You entered this endeavor as friends and life partners, so I’m sure there have been plenty of highlights and struggles in running your first food business in San Francisco.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The struggle has always been there, and it’s probably going to keep going, but the reward has definitely been amazing. We spent a lot of time in our careers working for other people, and Franky and I transitioned from fine dining to where we’re at now. That has always been a goal of ours, to open a more low-key, casual, approachable spot. But the whole journey has been really good. It really helps to have this team right here: Lucy, Millie, Franky. Each one of us brings a different strength to this team. Without it, this isn’t doable. It’s a lot easier to do it together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> It might look like we have a big team from the outside, but it’s really just the four of us. I’m doing press and accounting. I have no PR training. Millie is doing everything. She’s making drinks and serving. Mike and Franky are in the kitchen. Mike \u003ca href=\"https://www.itsfourkings.com/menu\">designed our menu\u003c/a>. And we love our staff. They’re amazing, and we can’t do this without them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> Yes, I agree. [Group laughs].\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Millie: \u003c/b>I just want to say, as the person who does the hosting and works the front every day, I just feel overwhelmed with joy. I get to be the one who physically opens our door every night, and sometimes there are 40 people or more waiting outside. It really is just a feeling of joy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962301\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962301\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-003-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">KQED Arts Reporter Alan Chazaro eats the hot mustard jellyfish salad. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>When I visited, I could definitely feel that vibe of deep friendship and teamwork. You all seem to be doing multiple things at once.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The big ethos of our restaurant is that no one person is doing just one specific task. We want our kitchen to kind of operate in a way where each person gets each other’s back and everyone’s able to flow into helping one another out. A lot of traditional restaurants have a disconnect between front and back of the house. But for us, in a way, we’re like, hey, they’re a little busy right now. We’re going to help run food. And that’s kind of also what we want to encourage, that engagement with our guests and being able to drop off some food, check in on everyone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What did you all learn from running a pop-up together?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> Our pop-up was extremely busy. There were long lines and we would run out of food. We were very short-staffed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> It was just the four of us [laughs].\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike: \u003c/b>Yeah, and the dishwasher had to be downstairs. So with running up and down the stairs to do that on top of cooking and serving, it was pretty rough. We were a little…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> Very slammed. But the reception, seeing people line up, was a good indicator of like, okay, maybe we’re doing something right. And then seeing continued interest only further confirmed that. That energy we had during the pop-up never went away. It just kept increasing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>I love pop-ups. A lot can be learned and creatively developed at that stage.\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike: \u003c/b>With our pop-up, we had this idea of doing a Cantonese izakaya–style concept. But I think initially, it was a hard image for a lot of people to think about. But by doing our pop-up slowly, people began to recognize what we were trying to do. And it’s the same for ourselves, too, right? It allows us to start actually seeing what we had planned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Up until now, even with the brick-and-mortar, we are still trying to realize that goal. It wasn’t until our opening night and seeing guests here that it really felt like we hit it. That’s when we felt like, okay, this is the spot where we want to be. A lot of energy and people just having a good time in a casual neighborhood spot. Sharing small-plate foods, enjoying everything. I think it’s through the pop-up phase that we were able to learn all that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961955\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961955\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-016-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">KQED Arts Reporter Alan Chazaro waits in line outside the Chinatown restaurant with Four Kings co-owner Lucy Li. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>And you’re doing it all in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the neighborhood where Franky grew up. How does it feel being there and what’s your relationship with this community? \u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> It’s been nice coming back and having a restaurant where [my family and I] first immigrated to [from Guangdong province of China]. We really like the neighborhood. We try to support a lot of the local producers and the produce people. We get a lot of our live seafood from Chinatown, and our noodles are all made in Chinatown. We weren’t specifically looking to be in Chinatown, but we just somehow ended up in the perfect space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>Mike: \u003c/b>Our building used to be an old shrimp company. When our landlord took over the space years ago, his wife wanted to build a Kumon. The space downstairs became a restaurant prior to us taking over. I definitely feel very honored to be in Chinatown. Being in this space, you see more and more of the culture. Just walking from the parking lot [beneath Portsmouth Square] to the restaurant, you see all the grandmas and grandpas playing chess and cards in the park. It’s dope to see everyday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> It’s a vibrant community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> Yeah. It gives you glimpses of the vibes of being in Hong Kong. Especially if you go down Stockton Street. When I think about Hong Kong, it’s walking down crowded streets. It’s hot, it’s humid. And then you have AC blasting from the storefronts, and they’re just selling random knickknacks. Sometimes when you walk down Chinatown in San Francisco, you hit those same feelings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Have you been back to Hong Kong recently? \u003c/b>\u003ca href=\"https://video.kqed.org/video/crackdown-1710973659/\">\u003cb>The government has implemented new national security laws\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb>. What’s the political climate there right now?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> Lucy and I actually went [a year ago]. Politics isn’t necessarily what you see on the streets. It doesn’t really affect tourism, doesn’t affect visitors. But you do see it in the families. like for me and my relatives. There’s a divide between people who are pro-China and people who are in support of the youth movements for liberation and democracy. So you definitely see the tension within families, but not necessarily out in the streets.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Do you all have any go-to spots in Chinatown or nearby? How is being here a source of culinary inspiration?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> We go out in Chinatown all the time. Every Monday night after service, after a long week, we take our staff to eat dinner at like 2 a.m., and the only spot that’s open, which happens, in our opinion, to be the best place in Chinatown is \u003ca href=\"https://maps.app.goo.gl/Q3TFUs2W6LRwHMQS6\">Taishan Cuisine\u003c/a> on Broadway. We also go to Hon’s Wun-Tun around the corner. They have two locations. But yeah, we definitely eat out in Chinatown for sure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961957\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961957\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HELLAHUNGRYFOURKINGS-JY-027-KQED-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Line cook Brenda Lau plates a dessert. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Have other chefs or business owners in the area stopped by since you’ve moved in?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy: \u003c/b>One of our big inspirations in the Bay Area is actually \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2022/6/8/23160058/chome-izakaya-san-francisco-mission\">Chome\u003c/a>. They’re a Japanese izakaya [in the Mission], and we’ve been there plenty. They actually came to eat at Four Kings since we opened, and it was really cute. We love Chome.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> R & G Lounge has stopped by. They’re right near to us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> Mow Lee [Shing Kee & Company]. They’re very established and do Chinese charcuterie plates just up the street. The owner’s son has eaten here. There has been a lot of support in general.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky, you’ve been in Chinatown the longest. How has the area changed over time?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky: \u003c/b>It changed a lot for a while, but I feel like it’s back to where it was when [my family and I] first immigrated here. We’re getting a lot more people again, and all the vendors are busy, the streets are busy. I feel like a couple of years ago it was pretty dead. And a lot of restaurants and businesses were closing, but it seems like it’s back to where it was from what I remember. I see a lot of the younger generations coming back to hang out in Chinatown.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.itsfourkings.com/about\">\u003cb>Your amazing website\u003c/b>\u003c/a>\u003cb> lists Franky as being better than “a walking encyclopedia of Chinese food knowledge.” So I humbly ask, what defines Cantonese food for you, Franky?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> There’s a few descriptions and explanations for Cantonese food. In China, Cantonese food is pure food. They don’t add a lot of seasoning. Everything is fresh. That’s why many things are steamed or blanched. But when you move towards Hong Kong or Macau, Cantonese food becomes fusion food. A mixture of French cuisine. British influences. It can be more flavorful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>What dish do you serve at Four Kings that most embodies your version of Cantonese food?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The pork chop rice. The inspiration for ours comes from cha chaan teng, which are the Hong Kong-style cafes we go to. One of our favorite orders that we get there is this big pork chop on either rice or spaghetti. And that’s kind of our take on it for our restaurant. We really needed to be able to bring something that’s nostalgic. It hits home for us and for a lot of young Cantonese kids, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy:\u003c/b> The dish also takes inspiration from Japanese katsudon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike: \u003c/b>Yeah, so we bread it with panko and deep-fry our pork chops after we brine it for a few days. And then we serve it with a tomato egg slurry versus the traditional sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> I also really like our take on a Hong Kong version of a Sichuan fish dish, which is fermented mustard greens and fried fish. I guess we do a San Francisco version of it. And we add butter, which is from the French influence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The fried squab is also an easy answer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962300\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2560px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962300\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1707\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-scaled.jpg 2560w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/20240729-HellaHungryFourKings-JY-019-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2560px) 100vw, 2560px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fried squab hanging in the kitchen. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>For those who don’t know, what exactly is squab, and why isn’t it more commonly served in the U.S.?\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> I feel like a lot of people don’t really eat squab because they’re pigeons. But a good amount of fine dining restaurants use them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike: \u003c/b>There aren’t any farms for squab. So the general price for it is pretty expensive. And I guess for most people to get a smaller bird for that price, it’s not ideal. Hence, it’s a harder protein to sell at a restaurant because it always comes with a higher price tag.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Lucy: \u003c/b>Franky, you have a personal connection to squab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Franky:\u003c/b> Yeah, so in my hometown in China, we’re famous for our squab. Our dialect is squab, or “squab speak” in Chinese. Most banquets will serve one fried squab per person. We wanted to bring that here. We also really want people to eat it with their hands, to just devour it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Mike:\u003c/b> The squab is ideal for our restaurant concept because we want to serve smaller plates for our size [the building is narrow]. It’s my favorite course from a Cantonese banquet. All the kids always fight for the squab.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Four Kings (710 Commercial St., San Francisco) is open Thurs. through Mon. from 6 to 11 p.m. \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.opentable.com/restref/client/?restref=1329550&lang=en-US&ot_source=Restaurant%20website&corrid=ba87a81d-b5c9-4732-9555-dbc3fd2783f1\">\u003ci>Reservations\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> are recommended up to three weeks in advance; walk-in counter seating is available on a limited basis. Fried squab is offered in small quantities on a first-come, first-served basis.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "emmys-spaghetti-shack-late-night-san-francisco-mission-bernal",
"title": "San Francisco’s Favorite Spaghetti Shack Has a New Late-Night Menu",
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"headTitle": "San Francisco’s Favorite Spaghetti Shack Has a New Late-Night Menu | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963442\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963442\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men in a funkily decorated restaurant. They're devouring spaghetti, mozzarella balls, and a large meatball hero.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Highlights of the new late-night menu at Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack include $9 spaghetti and a spectacular meatball hero. \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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/emmysspaghettishack/\">Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack\u003c/a> certainly isn’t the only spot in San Francisco serving an old-school Italian American menu. But it might be the only one I would describe as a punk rock red-sauce Italian dive bar. With its rainbow disco lights and weird chandeliers, its pinball machines and shrine of framed Dolly Parton photographs, the restaurant has the eclectic, lived-in quality of a place where someone — say, a fun aunt — has collected all the things they love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more than 20 years, founder (and namesake) Emmy Kaplan \u003ci>was \u003c/i>that “fun aunt,” and under her warm-hearted watch, the restaurant played great music every night, sold probably a million plates of spaghetti and meatballs, and cemented its reputation as a quintessentially \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-emmys-spaghetti-shack-17632474.php\">fun and casual neighborhood joint\u003c/a> on the edge of the Mission and Bernal Heights. A legit San Francisco classic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, a few weeks ago, Kaplan \u003ca href=\"https://brokeassstuart.com/2024/08/02/emmys-spaghetti-shack-is-being-sold-and-this-is-good-news/\">announced that she had sold Emmy’s\u003c/a> to Mike Irish, the restaurant’s bar manager for the past several years. To everyone’s great relief, the upshot of that sale appears to be that precisely nothing will change. Well, almost nothing. The menu has a few crowd-pleasing additions (lasagna! shrimp cocktail!). And, at least on Fridays and Saturdays, the restaurant now stays open until midnight — a throwback to the early-2000s incarnation of the spaghetti shack, when it was one of the only casual sit-down restaurants in the neighborhood that was open late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More to the point: On those nights, starting at 9:30, the restaurant serves a special late-night menu, which includes a $9 plate of spaghetti and a meatball parm hero that — spoiler alert — immediately ranks among San Francisco’s most appealing late-night dishes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is what brought us into Emmy’s sparkly, tinsel- and string light–bedecked dining room on a recent Friday night. The restaurant was only one or two weeks into its new late-night offerings, but the prospect of good red sauce Italian after 10 p.m. had a gravitational pull too heavy for us to resist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe the most impressive thing about Emmy’s is how the restaurant has been a master of capturing so many different demographics. We arrived a few minutes before it shifted over to the late-night menu, and the dining room was a multicultural mix of all different types of parties: young couples, older couples, families with exceptionally hungry teenagers, and swagged-out college kids pregaming on their way to the club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emmy’s is known as one of the city’s most family-friendly restaurants, with a longstanding “kids eat free” deal on Tuesdays. It’s also an enormously popular date-night spot — and just doubled down by \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/offbeat-sf-restaurant-best-deal-19626297.php\">launching a $60 “Monday Is for Lovers” prix-fixe for two\u003c/a> that comes with a bottle of wine. In many ways, then, the new late-night hours are just the latest extension of the restaurant’s ongoing effort to provide things the community really wants — which, in this case, happens to be hearty red sauce Italian at midnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963444\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963444\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: red and purple front facade of a restaurant at nighttime. The sign reads, "Emmy's" in cursive.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant has been open in San Francisco’s Mission Bernal neighborhood for more than 20 years. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Because we arrived a little early, we were able to try the new “Cadillac lasagna” from the regular dinner menu. It was kind of a “deconstructed” version, the pasta sheets arranged in a loose pile rather than cut into a neatly layered square. But the combination of flavors — the rich vodka meat sauce, dollops of sunflower seed pesto and cool ricotta — were just as homey and nostalgic as we’d hoped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turns out, though, it’s easy enough to cobble together a delicious meal ordering exclusively off the new late-night menu, which offers a mix of new dishes and Emmy’s classics. We started with a standard (and perfectly satisfying) version of shrimp cocktail and the crowd favorite cauliflower balls — oozy, stretchy, spherical mozzarella sticks, essentially, with bits of cauliflower mixed in for health (?) and textural interest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13963093,arts_13961997,arts_13959808']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>While you can dine at Emmy’s at any time of night and find at least one massive plate of spaghetti and meatballs on every table, the late-night menu gives you the opportunity to order a smaller (but still not exactly petite) order of that red sauce spaghetti — for just $9, with the option to add on a meatball (or vegan meatball). It had been a number of years since I’d had a plate of Emmy’s spaghetti, but we were hooked from the first piping hot, eminently slurpable bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The showstopper is that new meatball hero, which repurposes several of the restaurant’s staple ingredients — vodka sauce, pesto, stretchy cheese and maybe the best meatballs in town — and serves them hot on a toasty sesame roll. The sandwich comes with a little squeeze bottle of Calabrian hot sauce, which you don’t really need. The real pro hack is to scoop some spaghetti into the hero so you get a bit of extra sauciness in every bite. This is it: the Platonic ideal of late-night drunk food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emmy’s hasn’t done a ton of advertising for the new late-night menu on its \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/emmysspaghettishack/\">social media\u003c/a>, and for a while it seemed like maybe we were the only ones who knew about it. But by the time we left, around 11 o’clock, they’d curtained off the front room and turned up the music, and the restaurant had once again started to fill up. The playlist shuffled from MF Doom to Bo Diddley to a plaintive country ballad, and the night owls sipped Cosmos and dug into their plates of spaghetti. And for at least one night, in this one spot, it felt like San Francisco’s late-night scene hadn’t ever died at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://sfspaghettishack.com/\">\u003ci>Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sun.–Thu. 5–9:30 p.m. and Fri.–Sat. 5 p.m.–midnight at 3230 Mission St. in San Francisco. On Fridays and Saturdays, it serves a special late-night menu starting at 9:30 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963442\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963442\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men in a funkily decorated restaurant. They're devouring spaghetti, mozzarella balls, and a large meatball hero.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Highlights of the new late-night menu at Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack include $9 spaghetti and a spectacular meatball hero. \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>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/emmysspaghettishack/\">Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack\u003c/a> certainly isn’t the only spot in San Francisco serving an old-school Italian American menu. But it might be the only one I would describe as a punk rock red-sauce Italian dive bar. With its rainbow disco lights and weird chandeliers, its pinball machines and shrine of framed Dolly Parton photographs, the restaurant has the eclectic, lived-in quality of a place where someone — say, a fun aunt — has collected all the things they love.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For more than 20 years, founder (and namesake) Emmy Kaplan \u003ci>was \u003c/i>that “fun aunt,” and under her warm-hearted watch, the restaurant played great music every night, sold probably a million plates of spaghetti and meatballs, and cemented its reputation as a quintessentially \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/sf-emmys-spaghetti-shack-17632474.php\">fun and casual neighborhood joint\u003c/a> on the edge of the Mission and Bernal Heights. A legit San Francisco classic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Then, a few weeks ago, Kaplan \u003ca href=\"https://brokeassstuart.com/2024/08/02/emmys-spaghetti-shack-is-being-sold-and-this-is-good-news/\">announced that she had sold Emmy’s\u003c/a> to Mike Irish, the restaurant’s bar manager for the past several years. To everyone’s great relief, the upshot of that sale appears to be that precisely nothing will change. Well, almost nothing. The menu has a few crowd-pleasing additions (lasagna! shrimp cocktail!). And, at least on Fridays and Saturdays, the restaurant now stays open until midnight — a throwback to the early-2000s incarnation of the spaghetti shack, when it was one of the only casual sit-down restaurants in the neighborhood that was open late.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More to the point: On those nights, starting at 9:30, the restaurant serves a special late-night menu, which includes a $9 plate of spaghetti and a meatball parm hero that — spoiler alert — immediately ranks among San Francisco’s most appealing late-night dishes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is what brought us into Emmy’s sparkly, tinsel- and string light–bedecked dining room on a recent Friday night. The restaurant was only one or two weeks into its new late-night offerings, but the prospect of good red sauce Italian after 10 p.m. had a gravitational pull too heavy for us to resist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe the most impressive thing about Emmy’s is how the restaurant has been a master of capturing so many different demographics. We arrived a few minutes before it shifted over to the late-night menu, and the dining room was a multicultural mix of all different types of parties: young couples, older couples, families with exceptionally hungry teenagers, and swagged-out college kids pregaming on their way to the club.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emmy’s is known as one of the city’s most family-friendly restaurants, with a longstanding “kids eat free” deal on Tuesdays. It’s also an enormously popular date-night spot — and just doubled down by \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/offbeat-sf-restaurant-best-deal-19626297.php\">launching a $60 “Monday Is for Lovers” prix-fixe for two\u003c/a> that comes with a bottle of wine. In many ways, then, the new late-night hours are just the latest extension of the restaurant’s ongoing effort to provide things the community really wants — which, in this case, happens to be hearty red sauce Italian at midnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963444\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963444\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: red and purple front facade of a restaurant at nighttime. The sign reads, "Emmy's" in cursive.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Emmys-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant has been open in San Francisco’s Mission Bernal neighborhood for more than 20 years. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Because we arrived a little early, we were able to try the new “Cadillac lasagna” from the regular dinner menu. It was kind of a “deconstructed” version, the pasta sheets arranged in a loose pile rather than cut into a neatly layered square. But the combination of flavors — the rich vodka meat sauce, dollops of sunflower seed pesto and cool ricotta — were just as homey and nostalgic as we’d hoped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turns out, though, it’s easy enough to cobble together a delicious meal ordering exclusively off the new late-night menu, which offers a mix of new dishes and Emmy’s classics. We started with a standard (and perfectly satisfying) version of shrimp cocktail and the crowd favorite cauliflower balls — oozy, stretchy, spherical mozzarella sticks, essentially, with bits of cauliflower mixed in for health (?) and textural interest.\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>While you can dine at Emmy’s at any time of night and find at least one massive plate of spaghetti and meatballs on every table, the late-night menu gives you the opportunity to order a smaller (but still not exactly petite) order of that red sauce spaghetti — for just $9, with the option to add on a meatball (or vegan meatball). It had been a number of years since I’d had a plate of Emmy’s spaghetti, but we were hooked from the first piping hot, eminently slurpable bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The showstopper is that new meatball hero, which repurposes several of the restaurant’s staple ingredients — vodka sauce, pesto, stretchy cheese and maybe the best meatballs in town — and serves them hot on a toasty sesame roll. The sandwich comes with a little squeeze bottle of Calabrian hot sauce, which you don’t really need. The real pro hack is to scoop some spaghetti into the hero so you get a bit of extra sauciness in every bite. This is it: the Platonic ideal of late-night drunk food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Emmy’s hasn’t done a ton of advertising for the new late-night menu on its \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/emmysspaghettishack/\">social media\u003c/a>, and for a while it seemed like maybe we were the only ones who knew about it. But by the time we left, around 11 o’clock, they’d curtained off the front room and turned up the music, and the restaurant had once again started to fill up. The playlist shuffled from MF Doom to Bo Diddley to a plaintive country ballad, and the night owls sipped Cosmos and dug into their plates of spaghetti. And for at least one night, in this one spot, it felt like San Francisco’s late-night scene hadn’t ever died at all.\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://sfspaghettishack.com/\">\u003ci>Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sun.–Thu. 5–9:30 p.m. and Fri.–Sat. 5 p.m.–midnight at 3230 Mission St. in San Francisco. On Fridays and Saturdays, it serves a special late-night menu starting at 9:30 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "as-late-night-loses-its-band-we-rank-the-best-groups-ever-on-late-night-tv",
"title": "As ‘Late Night’ Loses Its Band, We Rank the Best Groups Ever on Late Night TV",
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"content": "\u003cp>When producers at \u003cem>Late Night with Seth Meyers\u003c/em> told keyboardist and associate musical director Eli Janney the show would eliminate its live backing group, The 8G Band, due to budget cuts, he wasn’t all that surprised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was a moment, honestly, we all saw coming,” said Janney, who made his name as a bassist and keyboardist for the indie rock band Girls Against Boys — and as a producer with artists like James Blunt — before musical director Fred Armisen asked him to join \u003cem>Late Night\u003c/em>’s backing group in 2014.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13912923']Janney says Armisen was looking to bring an indie rock band into the world of late night TV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with Janney on keyboards and Armisen on guitar, they had Seth Jabour on guitar, Marnie Stern on guitar, Syd Butler on bass and Kimberly Thompson on drums. But when Armisen’s performing career took off, he wound up leaving Janney in charge — returning for short stints as a guest drummer several times a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“About six months into the show, [Armisen] was like, ‘Hey I have to go work on the next season of \u003cem>Portlandia\u003c/em>, I should be back in about 30 days,” Janney said, laughing. “And then he just never came back [full time].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thompson and Stern eventually left the band, and 8G began playing with a succession of guest drummers, including Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain, Styx’s Todd Sucherman and Queens of the Stone Age’s Jon Theodore. Janney said they likely performed with over 300 drummers; Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters was on their schedule to appear when he died in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group’s last appearance in a new episode is Thursday, with Armisen back playing drums for their final week. Ironically, Janney and Armisen were just nominated for an Emmy this year for best musical direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we knew broadcast TV was shrinking in general…[and] there’s just a limit to how many people are watching after 12:30 [a.m.] at night on broadcast,” he added. “Everybody’s moving to streaming. But I thought we had a couple more years, at least.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I caught up with Janney on a Zoom call last week, he was philosophical and relatively upbeat, stressing that producers and star Seth Meyers had fought to keep the band. Instead, they’ll pre-record music that the show can use in future episodes.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Looking back on more late-night bands worth remembering\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>[aside postid='arts_13867505']As a musician and late night TV nerd, I have an accompanying obsession with the bands who back the shows, and I’ve seen lots of them live. Late night bands often embody and amplify the tone of a show — Johnny Carson’s \u003cem>Tonight Show\u003c/em> had a rollicking, old school big band, while Jimmy Fallon’s version has the urbane cool of rap/soul/funk stars The Roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now that 8G joins the ranks of bands of the past, I’m reflecting on more late night bands that have — or will one day — go down in history. Here’s a list of the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#1: The World’s Most Dangerous Band/CBS Orchestra\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Late Night with David Letterman (NBC) and The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUPSilcJFrQ\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This group was squarely in my generation — a band I was hooked on from their early days with Letterman on NBC in the mid 1980s, right up until his retirement on CBS in 2015. It began as a hip four piece packed with the best session musicians in New York, including drummer Steve Jordan (now with the Rolling Stones), bassist Will Lee and often-barefoot guitarist Hiram Bullock, led by keyboardist and \u003cem>Saturday Night Live\u003c/em> alum Paul Shaffer. Their stripped-down, funky sound was a welcome change from Carson’s massive, more traditional jazz band.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, the group evolved into a much larger unit with two guitar players and a horn section; P-Funk keyboard legend Bernie Worrell even played with them for a time. And the band was capable of everything from skin-tight backing of James Brown to including guest musicians like David Sanborn and trading quips with Letterman himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I watched them all the time … and just felt like they were on another level from what I was doing,” Janney said. “Also, they seemed to be having the best f—ing time. It wasn’t uptight at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#2: The NBC Orchestra\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (NBC)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QXdi25469U\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many of the traditions we associate with late night TV and music started with Carson’s big band, from a flashy, signature theme song to a group packed with ace musicians — like jazz trumpeters Clark Terry and Snooky Young. Trumpeter Carl “Doc” Severinsen led the group, wearing flashy clothes and bantering with Carson while occasionally leading bits like “Stump the Band,” where audience members tried to name songs they couldn’t play.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#3: The Roots\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (NBC)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziwYbVx_-qg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It may have seemed odd to some for a rap band from Philadelphia to join \u003cem>Late Night\u003c/em> when \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em> alum Fallon took over the show from Conan O’Brien in 2009. But it made perfect sense to me — bringing a modern, genre-blending attitude to the show while featuring one of the best bands in any category. And their “Slow Jam the News” segments are still a classic. Still, NBC took a little while to agree: bandleader Questlove \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2014/07/03/328167474/questlove-and-the-roots-how-a-hip-hop-band-conquered-late-night\">\u003cu>told me they were originally signed\u003c/u>\u003c/a> to a succession of 13-week contracts, in case the network decided to make a change quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#4: Jon Batiste and Stay Human\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HiBKSOeqvg\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No shade to current Colbert bandleader/guitarist Louis Cato — an amazing multi-instrumentalist who I first saw playing drums with David Sanborn, George Duke and Marcus Miller years ago — but the first version of Colbert’s band led by piano prodigy Batiste was a breath of fresh, innovative air. The band, which Batiste had put together with classmates from Julliard well before they landed on Colbert‘s show, effortlessly moved from jazz and R&B to pop and even classical — with a cool way of playing while walking through the audience that recalled the Second Line marching bands from Batiste’s native New Orleans.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#5: David Sanborn and friends\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sunday Night/Night Music (NBC)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwgOUzodS6E\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Executive produced by \u003cem>SNL \u003c/em>showrunner Lorne Michaels, this show was an offbeat experiment which aired for two seasons beginning in 1988, featuring the late jazz saxophonist Sanborn and co-host Jools Holland with a band of ace backing musicians, performing with a wide array of different artists in one show. Bassist Marcus Miller (Miles Davis/Luther Vandross) was the musical director, with guitarist Hiram Bullock, drummer Omar Hakim (Sting/David Bowie), keyboardist Philippe Saisse and many more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn loved to bring different types of musicians together, having jazzers Carla Bley and Steve Swallow perform with funk master Bootsy Collins. And the band’s rocking take on “See the Light” with Jeff Healey remains one of my favorite performances by the late guitar god.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When producers at \u003cem>Late Night with Seth Meyers\u003c/em> told keyboardist and associate musical director Eli Janney the show would eliminate its live backing group, The 8G Band, due to budget cuts, he wasn’t all that surprised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This was a moment, honestly, we all saw coming,” said Janney, who made his name as a bassist and keyboardist for the indie rock band Girls Against Boys — and as a producer with artists like James Blunt — before musical director Fred Armisen asked him to join \u003cem>Late Night\u003c/em>’s backing group in 2014.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Janney says Armisen was looking to bring an indie rock band into the world of late night TV.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along with Janney on keyboards and Armisen on guitar, they had Seth Jabour on guitar, Marnie Stern on guitar, Syd Butler on bass and Kimberly Thompson on drums. But when Armisen’s performing career took off, he wound up leaving Janney in charge — returning for short stints as a guest drummer several times a year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“About six months into the show, [Armisen] was like, ‘Hey I have to go work on the next season of \u003cem>Portlandia\u003c/em>, I should be back in about 30 days,” Janney said, laughing. “And then he just never came back [full time].”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thompson and Stern eventually left the band, and 8G began playing with a succession of guest drummers, including Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain, Styx’s Todd Sucherman and Queens of the Stone Age’s Jon Theodore. Janney said they likely performed with over 300 drummers; Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters was on their schedule to appear when he died in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The group’s last appearance in a new episode is Thursday, with Armisen back playing drums for their final week. Ironically, Janney and Armisen were just nominated for an Emmy this year for best musical direction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we knew broadcast TV was shrinking in general…[and] there’s just a limit to how many people are watching after 12:30 [a.m.] at night on broadcast,” he added. “Everybody’s moving to streaming. But I thought we had a couple more years, at least.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When I caught up with Janney on a Zoom call last week, he was philosophical and relatively upbeat, stressing that producers and star Seth Meyers had fought to keep the band. Instead, they’ll pre-record music that the show can use in future episodes.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Looking back on more late-night bands worth remembering\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>As a musician and late night TV nerd, I have an accompanying obsession with the bands who back the shows, and I’ve seen lots of them live. Late night bands often embody and amplify the tone of a show — Johnny Carson’s \u003cem>Tonight Show\u003c/em> had a rollicking, old school big band, while Jimmy Fallon’s version has the urbane cool of rap/soul/funk stars The Roots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now that 8G joins the ranks of bands of the past, I’m reflecting on more late night bands that have — or will one day — go down in history. Here’s a list of the best.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#1: The World’s Most Dangerous Band/CBS Orchestra\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Late Night with David Letterman (NBC) and The Late Show with David Letterman (CBS)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/RUPSilcJFrQ'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/RUPSilcJFrQ'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>This group was squarely in my generation — a band I was hooked on from their early days with Letterman on NBC in the mid 1980s, right up until his retirement on CBS in 2015. It began as a hip four piece packed with the best session musicians in New York, including drummer Steve Jordan (now with the Rolling Stones), bassist Will Lee and often-barefoot guitarist Hiram Bullock, led by keyboardist and \u003cem>Saturday Night Live\u003c/em> alum Paul Shaffer. Their stripped-down, funky sound was a welcome change from Carson’s massive, more traditional jazz band.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Over the years, the group evolved into a much larger unit with two guitar players and a horn section; P-Funk keyboard legend Bernie Worrell even played with them for a time. And the band was capable of everything from skin-tight backing of James Brown to including guest musicians like David Sanborn and trading quips with Letterman himself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I watched them all the time … and just felt like they were on another level from what I was doing,” Janney said. “Also, they seemed to be having the best f—ing time. It wasn’t uptight at all.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#2: The NBC Orchestra\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (NBC)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/1QXdi25469U'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/1QXdi25469U'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>So many of the traditions we associate with late night TV and music started with Carson’s big band, from a flashy, signature theme song to a group packed with ace musicians — like jazz trumpeters Clark Terry and Snooky Young. Trumpeter Carl “Doc” Severinsen led the group, wearing flashy clothes and bantering with Carson while occasionally leading bits like “Stump the Band,” where audience members tried to name songs they couldn’t play.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#3: The Roots\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon (NBC)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/ziwYbVx_-qg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/ziwYbVx_-qg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>It may have seemed odd to some for a rap band from Philadelphia to join \u003cem>Late Night\u003c/em> when \u003cem>SNL\u003c/em> alum Fallon took over the show from Conan O’Brien in 2009. But it made perfect sense to me — bringing a modern, genre-blending attitude to the show while featuring one of the best bands in any category. And their “Slow Jam the News” segments are still a classic. Still, NBC took a little while to agree: bandleader Questlove \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2014/07/03/328167474/questlove-and-the-roots-how-a-hip-hop-band-conquered-late-night\">\u003cu>told me they were originally signed\u003c/u>\u003c/a> to a succession of 13-week contracts, in case the network decided to make a change quickly.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#4: Jon Batiste and Stay Human\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (CBS)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/1HiBKSOeqvg'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/1HiBKSOeqvg'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>No shade to current Colbert bandleader/guitarist Louis Cato — an amazing multi-instrumentalist who I first saw playing drums with David Sanborn, George Duke and Marcus Miller years ago — but the first version of Colbert’s band led by piano prodigy Batiste was a breath of fresh, innovative air. The band, which Batiste had put together with classmates from Julliard well before they landed on Colbert‘s show, effortlessly moved from jazz and R&B to pop and even classical — with a cool way of playing while walking through the audience that recalled the Second Line marching bands from Batiste’s native New Orleans.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>#5: David Sanborn and friends\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Sunday Night/Night Music (NBC)\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video\">\u003c/figure>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/gwgOUzodS6E'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/gwgOUzodS6E'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>Executive produced by \u003cem>SNL \u003c/em>showrunner Lorne Michaels, this show was an offbeat experiment which aired for two seasons beginning in 1988, featuring the late jazz saxophonist Sanborn and co-host Jools Holland with a band of ace backing musicians, performing with a wide array of different artists in one show. Bassist Marcus Miller (Miles Davis/Luther Vandross) was the musical director, with guitarist Hiram Bullock, drummer Omar Hakim (Sting/David Bowie), keyboardist Philippe Saisse and many more.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sanborn loved to bring different types of musicians together, having jazzers Carla Bley and Steve Swallow perform with funk master Bootsy Collins. And the band’s rocking take on “See the Light” with Jeff Healey remains one of my favorite performances by the late guitar god.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "supreme-crab-asian-cajun-ayce-buffet-crab-legs-redwood-city",
"title": "This All-You-Can-Eat Cajun Crab Buffet Is for Serious Eaters Only",
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"headTitle": "This All-You-Can-Eat Cajun Crab Buffet Is for Serious Eaters Only | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963096\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963096\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men look starry-eyed with happiness as they devour plates of crab, shimp and other seafood.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Redwood City’s Supreme Crab Buffet is known for its Cajun-style crab legs. \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>They say that \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/5/19/21259918/sweet-tomatoes-hometown-buffet-silicon-valley-asian-american\">COVID killed the buffet restaurant\u003c/a>. But don’t tell that to the dozens of eager seafood lovers we saw standing in line at Supreme Crab Buffet at 9 o’clock on a Friday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d been searching for an all-you-can-eat spot that was open late, and this popular Redwood City Asian Cajun spot seemed to check all the boxes: It features two serve-yourself hot food buffet counters, a salad bar, a dessert station, and, oh, did I mention that the crab legs, too, are all-you-can-eat? All that for just over $30 a person, and it’s open until 10:30 every night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact that the place has the cheesy charm of a theme restaurant — a super-sized inflatable crawfish that greets you at the door, and all manner of maritime paraphernalia — is just an added bonus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even more than your average buffet restaurant, Supreme Crab isn’t for the faint of heart. At about half past 9, no one in Supreme Crab Buffet’s dining room looked like they had come to partake in fun conversation. These were serious eaters only. A sisterhood of pre-loosened pants strings. A convocation of hawk-eyed killers ready to clear that fresh tray of crab legs as soon as it hit the buffet counter. (Special shout-out to the \u003ci>solo\u003c/i> diners at a buffet restaurant, like the slender Filipino gentleman we saw who appeared to be loading plate after plate with crawfish exclusively. That guy will eat you under the table.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Any AYCE enthusiast can tell you about the folly of hitting up a buffet without a strategy, which is to say, without a firm commitment to avoid filling up on low-value carbs. And Supreme Crab does offer plenty of carb options to tempt you: garlic bread, fried rice, potstickers, at least two or three different kinds of potato and, for some reason (it’s a trap!), pizza. The two I couldn’t resist were the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13900855/garlic-noodles-sf-bay-area-iconic-foods-thanh-long-smellys\">garlic noodles\u003c/a> and the plain white rice, both of which go so well with all of that saucy, spicy seafood — especially when you ladle a little bit of extra garlic butter or Cajun sauce on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two main hot food counters are laden with many of the staple dishes you can find at any Asian American buffet: beef and broccoli, teriyaki chicken, General Tso’s and a panoply of assorted batter-fried things. There were dim sum–style sesame balls. There were leathery kalbi-style short ribs. There was even a whole corner of the salad bar dedicated to Korean banchan — a tasty baby octopus salad and better-than-you’d-expect kimchi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963099\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963099\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2.jpg\" alt=\"An giant inflatable crawfish decorates a restaurant's front entrance.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Supreme Crab has the cheesy charm of a theme restaurant. It’s open until 10:30 p.m. daily. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Listen: You should eat whatever you love. But in our professional opinion, you’re wasting precious stomach space if you stray too far away from Supreme Crab’s most prized offerings — its many different varieties of shellfish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13962759,arts_13954983,arts_13956683']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>In this regard, the restaurant more than met our expectations. We piled our plates high with crawfish and juicy garlic-butter clams. We must have taken down a dozen cheesy mussels, that Asian buffet staple, each plump specimen topped with a comforting layer of mayo and Parmesan. And we feasted on a half-dozen different varieties of shrimp, each one more delicious than the last: cocktail shrimp; easy-peel garlic-butter shrimp; crispy salt-and-pepper shrimp whose heads we bit off and devoured, shells and all; and head-on Cajun seafood boil–style shrimp, whose juices were especially tasty soaked into a mound of steamed rice. We left a fearsome stack of crustacean carcasses in our wake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(You can also order your seafood boil by the bag, a la carte, if that seems like a better value proposition for your party — or if you like your crawfish spicier than the relatively mild heat level they default to on the buffet table.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of it was great, but none greater than the restaurant’s biggest star attraction: the long and spindly snow crab legs, whose tray at the buffet station we monitored at all times so we could snag a plateful whenever the staff unloaded a fresh supply. (This is a “snooze you lose” situation; we watched a whole batch get cleared out in less than 10 minutes.) These, too, were cooked Cajun-style, with lots of garlic and a mild chili heat. We’d suck all the flavor off of the shell, then work our forks inside, jostling them around until it popped open. When we did it just right, the crab’s sweet, succulent flesh would pull out intact, ready to be dipped in butter or lemon juice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For certain immigrant communities in the Bay, in particular, there’s no bite of food that feels more luxurious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is maybe a good time to mention that Supreme Crab Buffet was one of the most diverse restaurants we’ve visited recently, with an even split of Black, brown and Asian American customers. Here in the multicultural Bay Area, it seems, there are few things that bring our communities together quite like the promise of all-you-can-eat crab legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For anyone who’s ever gone out to eat at a trendy upscale restaurant, looked around the lily-white dining room and wondered, “Where are all my POC at?” — the answer might be that they’ve got their disposable gloves on and are absolutely going to town on a big plate of seafood at Supreme Crab. And they’re probably having a better time than you.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/supremecrabbuffet/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Supreme Crab Buffet\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Mon.–Sat. 11 a.m.–10:30 p.m. and Sun. 10 a.m.–10:30 p.m. at 373 Main St. in Redwood City. (The buffet stations close at around 10 p.m.) There’s also a \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/supremecrabbuffet/?hl=en\">\u003ci>San Francisco location\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, in Fisherman’s Wharf, that isn’t open as late.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963096\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963096\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men look starry-eyed with happiness as they devour plates of crab, shimp and other seafood.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supreme-crab-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Redwood City’s Supreme Crab Buffet is known for its Cajun-style crab legs. \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>They say that \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/5/19/21259918/sweet-tomatoes-hometown-buffet-silicon-valley-asian-american\">COVID killed the buffet restaurant\u003c/a>. But don’t tell that to the dozens of eager seafood lovers we saw standing in line at Supreme Crab Buffet at 9 o’clock on a Friday night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d been searching for an all-you-can-eat spot that was open late, and this popular Redwood City Asian Cajun spot seemed to check all the boxes: It features two serve-yourself hot food buffet counters, a salad bar, a dessert station, and, oh, did I mention that the crab legs, too, are all-you-can-eat? All that for just over $30 a person, and it’s open until 10:30 every night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fact that the place has the cheesy charm of a theme restaurant — a super-sized inflatable crawfish that greets you at the door, and all manner of maritime paraphernalia — is just an added bonus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even more than your average buffet restaurant, Supreme Crab isn’t for the faint of heart. At about half past 9, no one in Supreme Crab Buffet’s dining room looked like they had come to partake in fun conversation. These were serious eaters only. A sisterhood of pre-loosened pants strings. A convocation of hawk-eyed killers ready to clear that fresh tray of crab legs as soon as it hit the buffet counter. (Special shout-out to the \u003ci>solo\u003c/i> diners at a buffet restaurant, like the slender Filipino gentleman we saw who appeared to be loading plate after plate with crawfish exclusively. That guy will eat you under the table.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Any AYCE enthusiast can tell you about the folly of hitting up a buffet without a strategy, which is to say, without a firm commitment to avoid filling up on low-value carbs. And Supreme Crab does offer plenty of carb options to tempt you: garlic bread, fried rice, potstickers, at least two or three different kinds of potato and, for some reason (it’s a trap!), pizza. The two I couldn’t resist were the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13900855/garlic-noodles-sf-bay-area-iconic-foods-thanh-long-smellys\">garlic noodles\u003c/a> and the plain white rice, both of which go so well with all of that saucy, spicy seafood — especially when you ladle a little bit of extra garlic butter or Cajun sauce on top.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The two main hot food counters are laden with many of the staple dishes you can find at any Asian American buffet: beef and broccoli, teriyaki chicken, General Tso’s and a panoply of assorted batter-fried things. There were dim sum–style sesame balls. There were leathery kalbi-style short ribs. There was even a whole corner of the salad bar dedicated to Korean banchan — a tasty baby octopus salad and better-than-you’d-expect kimchi.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13963099\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13963099\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2.jpg\" alt=\"An giant inflatable crawfish decorates a restaurant's front entrance.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/supremecrab2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Supreme Crab has the cheesy charm of a theme restaurant. It’s open until 10:30 p.m. daily. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Listen: You should eat whatever you love. But in our professional opinion, you’re wasting precious stomach space if you stray too far away from Supreme Crab’s most prized offerings — its many different varieties of shellfish.\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>In this regard, the restaurant more than met our expectations. We piled our plates high with crawfish and juicy garlic-butter clams. We must have taken down a dozen cheesy mussels, that Asian buffet staple, each plump specimen topped with a comforting layer of mayo and Parmesan. And we feasted on a half-dozen different varieties of shrimp, each one more delicious than the last: cocktail shrimp; easy-peel garlic-butter shrimp; crispy salt-and-pepper shrimp whose heads we bit off and devoured, shells and all; and head-on Cajun seafood boil–style shrimp, whose juices were especially tasty soaked into a mound of steamed rice. We left a fearsome stack of crustacean carcasses in our wake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(You can also order your seafood boil by the bag, a la carte, if that seems like a better value proposition for your party — or if you like your crawfish spicier than the relatively mild heat level they default to on the buffet table.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of it was great, but none greater than the restaurant’s biggest star attraction: the long and spindly snow crab legs, whose tray at the buffet station we monitored at all times so we could snag a plateful whenever the staff unloaded a fresh supply. (This is a “snooze you lose” situation; we watched a whole batch get cleared out in less than 10 minutes.) These, too, were cooked Cajun-style, with lots of garlic and a mild chili heat. We’d suck all the flavor off of the shell, then work our forks inside, jostling them around until it popped open. When we did it just right, the crab’s sweet, succulent flesh would pull out intact, ready to be dipped in butter or lemon juice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For certain immigrant communities in the Bay, in particular, there’s no bite of food that feels more luxurious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is maybe a good time to mention that Supreme Crab Buffet was one of the most diverse restaurants we’ve visited recently, with an even split of Black, brown and Asian American customers. Here in the multicultural Bay Area, it seems, there are few things that bring our communities together quite like the promise of all-you-can-eat crab legs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For anyone who’s ever gone out to eat at a trendy upscale restaurant, looked around the lily-white dining room and wondered, “Where are all my POC at?” — the answer might be that they’ve got their disposable gloves on and are absolutely going to town on a big plate of seafood at Supreme Crab. And they’re probably having a better time than you.\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/supremecrabbuffet/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Supreme Crab Buffet\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Mon.–Sat. 11 a.m.–10:30 p.m. and Sun. 10 a.m.–10:30 p.m. at 373 Main St. in Redwood City. (The buffet stations close at around 10 p.m.) There’s also a \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/supremecrabbuffet/?hl=en\">\u003ci>San Francisco location\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, in Fisherman’s Wharf, that isn’t open as late.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "We Hung Out With the Cool Kids at This Vibe-y Asian American Cocktail Bar",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962763\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962763\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Viridian, we filled every available inch of our assigned counter space with plates and bowls piled high with food. The Oakland bar is best known for its cocktails. \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>The list of Bay Area hotspots that I don’t feel cool enough to frequent is too long to enumerate, but suffice it to say that \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/viridianbar/\">Viridian\u003c/a>, Uptown Oakland’s sleek Asian American cocktail bar, is near the top. With its pulsing electronic music, purple-pink neon glow, abundance of paper lanterns and psychedelic light show projected onto the walls, the vibe at Viridian is somewhere between a moody Wong Kar-wai film set (one of the owners’ \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/2/3/21119819/viridian-uptown-oakland-bar-cocktails-desserts-asian-photos\">stated inspirations\u003c/a>) and a particularly stylish rave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The main thing you notice, though, is how impeccably cool and well-dressed everyone is, from the bar staff to the patrons. Viridian draws an ethnically diverse crowd, but the clientele does skew young (20s and 30s), and it especially skews toward the demographic I’ve always referred to as the Cool Asian, in every single strand: good-looking Cool Asians in designer black-framed glasses, in muscle shirts or showing off intricate full sleeve tattoos. Cool Asians wearing trucker hats or vintage Japanese denim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one thing that made us feel we hadn’t come to the wrong place at 9 o’clock on a Friday night? The fact that the bar also serves some of Oakland’s best late-night food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be fair, Viridian only qualifies as a late-night restaurant if you’re grading on a bit of a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13951382/chinese-skewers-are-the-last-bastion-of-late-night-dining-in-the-bay\">Bay Area curve\u003c/a>. The bar is always open late, so you can stay and nibble at your plate of garlic noodles for as long as you like. But the latest the kitchen ever stays open is 10 p.m., and that’s only on weekends. During our recent visit, a server started politely collecting last-call orders at 9:30 sharp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that it mattered much: We appeared to be the only customers in the entire bustling, fully packed bar who had ordered any food whatsoever. No one else had purchased even a single lonely bowl of tater tots. Meanwhile, in typical fashion, we’d filled every available inch of our assigned counter space with plates and bowls piled high with braised meats and pickled greens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyway, I get it. The vibes at Viridian are great, and the cocktails are spectacular — and I say this as someone who’d never describe themselves as a cocktail person. The signature Tomato Beef, a magically crystal-clear tequila drink that tastes like the purest essence of a ripe summer tomato, might be my favorite cocktail in the Bay Area. For a change of pace, this time I tried the Cafe Sữa Đáddy, a jet-black iced coffee concoction topped with a thick, fluffy cloud of egg foam. It was dangerously sweet and smooth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we’re here to tell you, though, is that you shouldn’t skip out on the food — that, in fact, Viridian is well worth a dinner or after-dinner-snack visit even if you don’t drink at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962765\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962765\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2.jpg\" alt=\"Exterior facade of Viridian cocktail bar at night, lit up inside in purple neon.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The vibe at Viridian is somewhere between a moody Wong Kar-wai film set and a particularly stylish rave. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is at least the third or fourth permutation that Viridian’s distinctly Asian American food program has gone through. When the bar first opened in early 2020, just a month before the start of the pandemic, it served almost exclusively desserts — elegant pandan custard pies and Thai tea tiramisu. It went through a period when the kitchen mostly served fancy reinterpretations of dim sum, and then various stretches when every intricately plated dish would have looked right at home at any three-star palace of fine dining.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current food menu, which launched just a few weeks ago, is probably the simplest, most bar-snacky edition yet, leaning toward homey diasporic Asian flavors in a way we found especially enjoyable. There was piping-hot “mala spice chicken tempura,” which turned out to be spicy chicken nuggets, essentially, served with a carrot-flecked sweet chili dipping sauce — but such a tasty rendition that McDonald’s really should have consulted with \u003ci>them\u003c/i> before launching its own tepid version. There were tater tots served with a sour cream, chili crisp and chive dip. It wasn’t anything fancy, but a must-order for anyone who likes munching on hot, crunchy carbs when they drink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13962340,arts_13961997,arts_13956218']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Our favorite dish might have been the huge mound of cucumbers that came coated with a thick layer of fiery, extra-crunchy chili crunch — the ideal bar snack. As delicious as it was, the portion was so abundant that we still wound up taking half of it home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the best thing to order if you want a hearty \u003ci>dinner-\u003c/i>dinner, or to just sample a few different things, is the donburi. The rice bowl comes topped with a generous portion of mirin-glazed pork, crushed peanuts, pickled mustard greens topped with pork floss, and fresh cilantro. Taken all together, it was just like eating a deconstructed gua bao (pork belly bun) — pure comfort to my Taiwanese American soul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We must have looked like we were having a good time, because toward the end of the night, one of those Cool Asians (black dress, tattoos) sitting just down the counter from us leaned over to ask what we’d recommend from the food menu. She and her date had already eaten before they came, but they’d noticed how delicious we made everything look when we were eating it. (This is, in the end, our one specialized skill.) So, we talked up the cucumbers, and the donburi, and the chicken, and…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So everything’s good,” she said, laughing. And you could tell she believed us, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.viridianbar.com/\">Viridian\u003c/a> is open Fri.–Sat. 5 p.m.–2 a.m. and Wed., Thu. and Sun. 5 p.m.–midnight at 2216 Broadway in Oakland. The kitchen closes at 9 p.m. except for on Fridays and Saturdays, when it’s open until 10 p.m. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Viridian Is an Asian American Cocktail Bar That Serves Great Food | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962763\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962763\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Viridian, we filled every available inch of our assigned counter space with plates and bowls piled high with food. The Oakland bar is best known for its cocktails. \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>The list of Bay Area hotspots that I don’t feel cool enough to frequent is too long to enumerate, but suffice it to say that \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/viridianbar/\">Viridian\u003c/a>, Uptown Oakland’s sleek Asian American cocktail bar, is near the top. With its pulsing electronic music, purple-pink neon glow, abundance of paper lanterns and psychedelic light show projected onto the walls, the vibe at Viridian is somewhere between a moody Wong Kar-wai film set (one of the owners’ \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2020/2/3/21119819/viridian-uptown-oakland-bar-cocktails-desserts-asian-photos\">stated inspirations\u003c/a>) and a particularly stylish rave.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The main thing you notice, though, is how impeccably cool and well-dressed everyone is, from the bar staff to the patrons. Viridian draws an ethnically diverse crowd, but the clientele does skew young (20s and 30s), and it especially skews toward the demographic I’ve always referred to as the Cool Asian, in every single strand: good-looking Cool Asians in designer black-framed glasses, in muscle shirts or showing off intricate full sleeve tattoos. Cool Asians wearing trucker hats or vintage Japanese denim.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one thing that made us feel we hadn’t come to the wrong place at 9 o’clock on a Friday night? The fact that the bar also serves some of Oakland’s best late-night food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be fair, Viridian only qualifies as a late-night restaurant if you’re grading on a bit of a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13951382/chinese-skewers-are-the-last-bastion-of-late-night-dining-in-the-bay\">Bay Area curve\u003c/a>. The bar is always open late, so you can stay and nibble at your plate of garlic noodles for as long as you like. But the latest the kitchen ever stays open is 10 p.m., and that’s only on weekends. During our recent visit, a server started politely collecting last-call orders at 9:30 sharp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that it mattered much: We appeared to be the only customers in the entire bustling, fully packed bar who had ordered any food whatsoever. No one else had purchased even a single lonely bowl of tater tots. Meanwhile, in typical fashion, we’d filled every available inch of our assigned counter space with plates and bowls piled high with braised meats and pickled greens.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyway, I get it. The vibes at Viridian are great, and the cocktails are spectacular — and I say this as someone who’d never describe themselves as a cocktail person. The signature Tomato Beef, a magically crystal-clear tequila drink that tastes like the purest essence of a ripe summer tomato, might be my favorite cocktail in the Bay Area. For a change of pace, this time I tried the Cafe Sữa Đáddy, a jet-black iced coffee concoction topped with a thick, fluffy cloud of egg foam. It was dangerously sweet and smooth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we’re here to tell you, though, is that you shouldn’t skip out on the food — that, in fact, Viridian is well worth a dinner or after-dinner-snack visit even if you don’t drink at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962765\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962765\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2.jpg\" alt=\"Exterior facade of Viridian cocktail bar at night, lit up inside in purple neon.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Viridian2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The vibe at Viridian is somewhere between a moody Wong Kar-wai film set and a particularly stylish rave. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>This is at least the third or fourth permutation that Viridian’s distinctly Asian American food program has gone through. When the bar first opened in early 2020, just a month before the start of the pandemic, it served almost exclusively desserts — elegant pandan custard pies and Thai tea tiramisu. It went through a period when the kitchen mostly served fancy reinterpretations of dim sum, and then various stretches when every intricately plated dish would have looked right at home at any three-star palace of fine dining.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The current food menu, which launched just a few weeks ago, is probably the simplest, most bar-snacky edition yet, leaning toward homey diasporic Asian flavors in a way we found especially enjoyable. There was piping-hot “mala spice chicken tempura,” which turned out to be spicy chicken nuggets, essentially, served with a carrot-flecked sweet chili dipping sauce — but such a tasty rendition that McDonald’s really should have consulted with \u003ci>them\u003c/i> before launching its own tepid version. There were tater tots served with a sour cream, chili crisp and chive dip. It wasn’t anything fancy, but a must-order for anyone who likes munching on hot, crunchy carbs when they drink.\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>Our favorite dish might have been the huge mound of cucumbers that came coated with a thick layer of fiery, extra-crunchy chili crunch — the ideal bar snack. As delicious as it was, the portion was so abundant that we still wound up taking half of it home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the best thing to order if you want a hearty \u003ci>dinner-\u003c/i>dinner, or to just sample a few different things, is the donburi. The rice bowl comes topped with a generous portion of mirin-glazed pork, crushed peanuts, pickled mustard greens topped with pork floss, and fresh cilantro. Taken all together, it was just like eating a deconstructed gua bao (pork belly bun) — pure comfort to my Taiwanese American soul.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We must have looked like we were having a good time, because toward the end of the night, one of those Cool Asians (black dress, tattoos) sitting just down the counter from us leaned over to ask what we’d recommend from the food menu. She and her date had already eaten before they came, but they’d noticed how delicious we made everything look when we were eating it. (This is, in the end, our one specialized skill.) So, we talked up the cucumbers, and the donburi, and the chicken, and…\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“So everything’s good,” she said, laughing. And you could tell she believed us, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.viridianbar.com/\">Viridian\u003c/a> is open Fri.–Sat. 5 p.m.–2 a.m. and Wed., Thu. and Sun. 5 p.m.–midnight at 2216 Broadway in Oakland. The kitchen closes at 9 p.m. except for on Fridays and Saturdays, when it’s open until 10 p.m. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "late-night-hawaiian-barbecue-donuts-palo-alto",
"title": "Hawaiian Barbecue Is This Late-Night Doughnut Shop’s Secret Weapon",
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"headTitle": "Hawaiian Barbecue Is This Late-Night Doughnut Shop’s Secret Weapon | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962345\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962345\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men seen through the window of a doughnut shop. They're devouring doughnuts and plates of Hawaiian barbecue.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Open late in a Palo Alto strip mall, SH Hawaiian BBQ & Donuts specializes in hearty Hawaiian plate lunches. \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>In our quest to document the Bay Area’s sweetest and most sacred late-night haunts, let us not forget the humble doughnut shop. Temples to sweet-tooth possessors, havens for night owls and scratch lotto addicts, these fried pastry purveyors are often the only food business within a several-mile radius that’s open past midnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Located in a quiet Palo Alto strip mall, SH Hawaiian BBQ & Donuts isn’t a colorful, bustling hangout spot like a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/bobsdonuts/?hl=en\">Bob’s\u003c/a>. (During our visit on a recent Friday night, it was almost completely empty.) It doesn’t have the surreal weirdness of a Silver Crest Donut Shop (\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13961794/silver-crest-closed-sf-donut-shop\">R.I.P.\u003c/a>). It isn’t quite open 24 hours. It doesn’t even sell lotto scratchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one thing the doughnut shop/Hawaiian barbecue hybrid is committed to, though, is feeding anyone with a case of late-night munchies — and not just with doughnuts, but noodle soups, rice bowls and full-on Hawaiian plate lunches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant falls vaguely in the same category as the kind of \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/doughnuts-and-barbecue-1/\">Cambodian-owned doughnut shop\u003c/a> that sells lemongrass-scented meat skewers and sticky-sweet chicken wings on the side — except the savory food menu is even broader and more eclectic. As its name indicates, the shop is best known for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13911062/hawaiian-barbecue-bay-area-multicultural-oakland-ilava\">Hawaiian barbecue\u003c/a>, but like other Bay Area restaurants in this genre, it rounds out its menu with a wide array of Hawaiian and Chinese American takeout standards. There’s Spam musubi, of course, along with other comfort food favorites like loco moco and kalua pork. You can order a Hawaiian-Japanese beef curry plate, a bowl of wonton soup, and about a half-dozen different variations on saimin (Hawaii’s homegrown, ramen-like noodle soup).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s even Vietnamese pho on the menu, even if we weren’t quite feeling frisky enough to try it on this particular visit. The dining room looks the part, too: the bottles of sriracha and sweet chili sauce (and, why not, green Tabasco) on every table, the flatscreen TV perpetually tuned to cable news, and the Christmas decorations still lit up in the middle of July. It’s a pleasantly chill late-night coffee shop vibe (though the place seems to mostly do a lot of takeout business).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962346\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962346\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The facade of SH Hawaiian BBQ & Donuts, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant has a pleasantly chill late-night coffee shop vibe. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In any case, if you’re in the mood for a big, meaty Hawaiian plate lunch at 2 o’clock in the morning — and you won’t believe how often I get this \u003ci>specific\u003c/i> late-night craving — this is your spot. The good news is that the food at SH is as tasty as we had hoped, especially if you stick to the straightforward offerings on the barbecue side of the menu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re feeling particularly famished, go for the “BBQ Mix” plate, which for about $17 comes jam-packed with teriyaki-glazed grilled chicken, beef and kalbi-style on-the-bone short ribs, two scoops of rice, and one scoop of excellent, mayonnaise-y mac salad. The chicken and the short ribs, in particular, were excellent — juicy and flavorful with a nicely caramelized char. It was such a generous plate of food, the takeout carton still had an impressive heft to it even after we’d eaten half of it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13961997,arts_13961613,arts_13911062']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, but SH’s version of even something as ubiquitous as Spam musubi impressed us. Past midnight, where else can you get musubi where the Spam comes hot off the grill and the crisp nori is freshly toasted?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we couldn’t visit a late-night doughnut shop without scoring at least a couple of doughnuts, and in this regard too, SH’s offerings seemed to be a few notches better and more varied than the norm. In addition to the standard doughnut purveyor’s selection of crullers, cake doughnuts, variously-filled-and-glazed raised doughnuts, and croissant breakfast sandwiches, the shop also sells trendier items — maple-bacon bars, for instance, and doughnuts topped with ube-taro, Fruity Pebbles or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. (“Some young person is affiliated with this business,” I wrote in my notes.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, I opted for a classic apple fritter — a gargantuan specimen, and one of several different fritter varieties on offer. The first bite was the best bite: those wonderfully crisp edges, rich and oily without being too sweet. The sudden urge I felt to scratch off a lotto ticket notwithstanding, it was the perfect way to close out the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>SH Hawaiian BBQ & Donuts (3890 El Camino Real, Palo Alto) is open Mon.–Wed. 9 a.m.–2 a.m., Thu.–Sat. 8 a.m.–3 a.m. and Sun. 8 a.m.–2 a.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962345\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962345\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men seen through the window of a doughnut shop. They're devouring doughnuts and plates of Hawaiian barbecue.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Open late in a Palo Alto strip mall, SH Hawaiian BBQ & Donuts specializes in hearty Hawaiian plate lunches. \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>In our quest to document the Bay Area’s sweetest and most sacred late-night haunts, let us not forget the humble doughnut shop. Temples to sweet-tooth possessors, havens for night owls and scratch lotto addicts, these fried pastry purveyors are often the only food business within a several-mile radius that’s open past midnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Located in a quiet Palo Alto strip mall, SH Hawaiian BBQ & Donuts isn’t a colorful, bustling hangout spot like a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/bobsdonuts/?hl=en\">Bob’s\u003c/a>. (During our visit on a recent Friday night, it was almost completely empty.) It doesn’t have the surreal weirdness of a Silver Crest Donut Shop (\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13961794/silver-crest-closed-sf-donut-shop\">R.I.P.\u003c/a>). It isn’t quite open 24 hours. It doesn’t even sell lotto scratchers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The one thing the doughnut shop/Hawaiian barbecue hybrid is committed to, though, is feeding anyone with a case of late-night munchies — and not just with doughnuts, but noodle soups, rice bowls and full-on Hawaiian plate lunches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant falls vaguely in the same category as the kind of \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/doughnuts-and-barbecue-1/\">Cambodian-owned doughnut shop\u003c/a> that sells lemongrass-scented meat skewers and sticky-sweet chicken wings on the side — except the savory food menu is even broader and more eclectic. As its name indicates, the shop is best known for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13911062/hawaiian-barbecue-bay-area-multicultural-oakland-ilava\">Hawaiian barbecue\u003c/a>, but like other Bay Area restaurants in this genre, it rounds out its menu with a wide array of Hawaiian and Chinese American takeout standards. There’s Spam musubi, of course, along with other comfort food favorites like loco moco and kalua pork. You can order a Hawaiian-Japanese beef curry plate, a bowl of wonton soup, and about a half-dozen different variations on saimin (Hawaii’s homegrown, ramen-like noodle soup).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s even Vietnamese pho on the menu, even if we weren’t quite feeling frisky enough to try it on this particular visit. The dining room looks the part, too: the bottles of sriracha and sweet chili sauce (and, why not, green Tabasco) on every table, the flatscreen TV perpetually tuned to cable news, and the Christmas decorations still lit up in the middle of July. It’s a pleasantly chill late-night coffee shop vibe (though the place seems to mostly do a lot of takeout business).\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962346\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962346\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The facade of SH Hawaiian BBQ & Donuts, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/Sams-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant has a pleasantly chill late-night coffee shop vibe. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In any case, if you’re in the mood for a big, meaty Hawaiian plate lunch at 2 o’clock in the morning — and you won’t believe how often I get this \u003ci>specific\u003c/i> late-night craving — this is your spot. The good news is that the food at SH is as tasty as we had hoped, especially if you stick to the straightforward offerings on the barbecue side of the menu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re feeling particularly famished, go for the “BBQ Mix” plate, which for about $17 comes jam-packed with teriyaki-glazed grilled chicken, beef and kalbi-style on-the-bone short ribs, two scoops of rice, and one scoop of excellent, mayonnaise-y mac salad. The chicken and the short ribs, in particular, were excellent — juicy and flavorful with a nicely caramelized char. It was such a generous plate of food, the takeout carton still had an impressive heft to it even after we’d eaten half of it.\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>Maybe it was the lateness of the hour, but SH’s version of even something as ubiquitous as Spam musubi impressed us. Past midnight, where else can you get musubi where the Spam comes hot off the grill and the crisp nori is freshly toasted?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we couldn’t visit a late-night doughnut shop without scoring at least a couple of doughnuts, and in this regard too, SH’s offerings seemed to be a few notches better and more varied than the norm. In addition to the standard doughnut purveyor’s selection of crullers, cake doughnuts, variously-filled-and-glazed raised doughnuts, and croissant breakfast sandwiches, the shop also sells trendier items — maple-bacon bars, for instance, and doughnuts topped with ube-taro, Fruity Pebbles or Cinnamon Toast Crunch. (“Some young person is affiliated with this business,” I wrote in my notes.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, I opted for a classic apple fritter — a gargantuan specimen, and one of several different fritter varieties on offer. The first bite was the best bite: those wonderfully crisp edges, rich and oily without being too sweet. The sudden urge I felt to scratch off a lotto ticket notwithstanding, it was the perfect way to close out the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>SH Hawaiian BBQ & Donuts (3890 El Camino Real, Palo Alto) is open Mon.–Wed. 9 a.m.–2 a.m., Thu.–Sat. 8 a.m.–3 a.m. and Sun. 8 a.m.–2 a.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "brazen-head-late-night-san-francisco-marina-cow-hollow",
"title": "Brazen Head Is San Francisco’s Most Delightful Late-Night Secret",
"publishDate": 1722620939,
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"headTitle": "Brazen Head Is San Francisco’s Most Delightful Late-Night Secret | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962008\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962008\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: One man eats a bowl of French onion soup, pulling up a long strand of melted cheese. Another, in the foreground, forks escargots into his mouth.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The food at Brazen Head is delightfully old-school. The Cow Hollow pub is one of San Francisco’s best late-night restaurants. \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>One of San Francisco’s best-kept secrets is an unmarked Irish pub that serves French food until midnight — a dimly lit time capsule of a restaurant hidden away on a windswept corner of the Marina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But maybe you already knew that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, what I love about \u003ca href=\"https://www.brazenheadsf.com/\">Brazen Head\u003c/a> — the Cow Hollow pub in question — is how the place is full of seeming contradictions. Start with how the restaurant still feels like a well-kept secret, unknown to wide swaths of San Franciscans — despite being, at the same time, a beloved local institution. Since we started this column, no other late-night spot in San Francisco has been recommended to us more frequently or with greater enthusiasm, in some cases by readers who’ve been frequenting the place since it first opened in the early ’80s. It’s your \u003ca href=\"https://blog.resy.com/2021/09/at-places-like-brazen-head-its-all-about-the-people/\">favorite chef’s favorite restaurant\u003c/a> — an IYKYK haunt for \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/The-old-fashioned-art-of-bartending-is-alive-at-13171622.php\">local food and beverage industry types\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it really \u003ci>is \u003c/i>popular. Even at 10 o’clock on a random Monday night, both the bar counter and dining room were almost fully packed, the whole place busy and buzzing with conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s also true that no one we knew personally had ever heard of Brazen Head, let alone eaten there. And the place is easy to miss, even if you’re already in the area. There’s no signage to speak of, other than a chalkboard specials sign posted on the sidewalk out front and a “B” and “H” on the old-timey stained-glass door panes. Pro tip: Look for the blue awning across the street from the Motel Capri.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962006\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962006\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The facade of an unmarked bar pictured late at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">There’s no signage other than a sidewalk chalkboard listing the day’s specials. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Inside, Brazen Head’s aesthetics are those of an Irish pub even more ancient than its 40-plus years: wood paneling, thick velvet curtains and portraits of men in wigs reminiscent of the Elizabethan era. Dim orange lights suffuse the room with an eerie, Halloween-esque glow. The vibe is excellent — even if I’m convinced no human has ever taken a food photo here that doesn’t look like it was \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brazenheadsf/\">shot in infrared\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The menu, too, feels like a delightful time warp. It’s about evenly split between French bistro, Italian American and “classic American,” by which I mean the kind of old-school food that used to be ubiquitous at hotel restaurants in the 1980s — or the 1950s, even. When was the last time you saw escargots on the menu at a casual restaurant? Not some newfangled version topped with foam or microgreens, but the classic French style, in deep pools of hot, garlicky melted butter that you sop up with toasted sourdough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13961613,arts_13961328,arts_13959808']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Or when was the last time you had beef Stroganoff, or even thought about the dish’s existence? (I’d probably have to go all the way back to my college struggle meals of Hamburger Helper.) Brazen Head’s version, a special on the night of our visit, featured tender chunks of filet mignon and fresh, handmade pappardelle, all tossed in a tangy sour cream sauce — a combination that was so wonderfully cozy and nostalgic, we couldn’t stop eating it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>French onion soup might seem like a perfunctory dish to put on a pub menu, but Brazen Head’s tastes like it was made with love — rich and melty, with a full-flavored broth that warmed us up from the inside. And even though most tables had ordered hefty prime rib plates (probably the restaurant’s most popular dish), we decided to go with another throwback: New York strip steak seared to an exquisitely tender and pink-centered medium rare, then bathed in a velvety black pepper au jus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It felt extraordinarily luxurious to be eating food like this — escargots and handmade pasta! — at 11 o’clock on a weeknight. But the most surprising thing about Brazen Head was just how genuinely warm and friendly the service was — and, for a casual pub, how downright elegant. I wouldn’t have pegged this as the kind of restaurant where they swap out your plates and silverware between every course, and brush every stray crumb off the table. As soon as we mentioned to our server that we planned on sharing everything, she coursed out the entire meal, bringing one entree at a time, so that we could savor each dish at our own pace. All without the slightest hint of pretension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No wonder the restaurant was still bustling even as the night wound down, a cross section of San Francisco all gathered in that hazy orange glow — young and septuagenarian; tourists and locals; couples dressed up for date night, and servers and line cooks just finished with their shift at some other restaurant. Everyone chatting up the bartender over cold martinis or polishing off the last bit of their prime rib plate. It was hard to imagine a more comfortable place.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brazenheadsf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Brazen Head\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> (3166 Buchanan St., San Francisco) serves dinner Mon. and Tue. from 5–11 p.m. and Wed.–Sun. from 5 p.m.–midnight. The bar is open until 2 a.m. daily. No reservations.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The Cow Hollow pub is unapologetically old-fashioned — but both its food and service are surprisingly elegant.",
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"title": "Brazen Head Is San Francisco’s Most Delightful Late-Night Secret | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962008\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962008\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: One man eats a bowl of French onion soup, pulling up a long strand of melted cheese. Another, in the foreground, forks escargots into his mouth.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The food at Brazen Head is delightfully old-school. The Cow Hollow pub is one of San Francisco’s best late-night restaurants. \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>One of San Francisco’s best-kept secrets is an unmarked Irish pub that serves French food until midnight — a dimly lit time capsule of a restaurant hidden away on a windswept corner of the Marina.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But maybe you already knew that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, what I love about \u003ca href=\"https://www.brazenheadsf.com/\">Brazen Head\u003c/a> — the Cow Hollow pub in question — is how the place is full of seeming contradictions. Start with how the restaurant still feels like a well-kept secret, unknown to wide swaths of San Franciscans — despite being, at the same time, a beloved local institution. Since we started this column, no other late-night spot in San Francisco has been recommended to us more frequently or with greater enthusiasm, in some cases by readers who’ve been frequenting the place since it first opened in the early ’80s. It’s your \u003ca href=\"https://blog.resy.com/2021/09/at-places-like-brazen-head-its-all-about-the-people/\">favorite chef’s favorite restaurant\u003c/a> — an IYKYK haunt for \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/The-old-fashioned-art-of-bartending-is-alive-at-13171622.php\">local food and beverage industry types\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it really \u003ci>is \u003c/i>popular. Even at 10 o’clock on a random Monday night, both the bar counter and dining room were almost fully packed, the whole place busy and buzzing with conversation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it’s also true that no one we knew personally had ever heard of Brazen Head, let alone eaten there. And the place is easy to miss, even if you’re already in the area. There’s no signage to speak of, other than a chalkboard specials sign posted on the sidewalk out front and a “B” and “H” on the old-timey stained-glass door panes. Pro tip: Look for the blue awning across the street from the Motel Capri.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13962006\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13962006\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The facade of an unmarked bar pictured late at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/BrazenHead-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">There’s no signage other than a sidewalk chalkboard listing the day’s specials. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Inside, Brazen Head’s aesthetics are those of an Irish pub even more ancient than its 40-plus years: wood paneling, thick velvet curtains and portraits of men in wigs reminiscent of the Elizabethan era. Dim orange lights suffuse the room with an eerie, Halloween-esque glow. The vibe is excellent — even if I’m convinced no human has ever taken a food photo here that doesn’t look like it was \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brazenheadsf/\">shot in infrared\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The menu, too, feels like a delightful time warp. It’s about evenly split between French bistro, Italian American and “classic American,” by which I mean the kind of old-school food that used to be ubiquitous at hotel restaurants in the 1980s — or the 1950s, even. When was the last time you saw escargots on the menu at a casual restaurant? Not some newfangled version topped with foam or microgreens, but the classic French style, in deep pools of hot, garlicky melted butter that you sop up with toasted sourdough.\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>Or when was the last time you had beef Stroganoff, or even thought about the dish’s existence? (I’d probably have to go all the way back to my college struggle meals of Hamburger Helper.) Brazen Head’s version, a special on the night of our visit, featured tender chunks of filet mignon and fresh, handmade pappardelle, all tossed in a tangy sour cream sauce — a combination that was so wonderfully cozy and nostalgic, we couldn’t stop eating it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>French onion soup might seem like a perfunctory dish to put on a pub menu, but Brazen Head’s tastes like it was made with love — rich and melty, with a full-flavored broth that warmed us up from the inside. And even though most tables had ordered hefty prime rib plates (probably the restaurant’s most popular dish), we decided to go with another throwback: New York strip steak seared to an exquisitely tender and pink-centered medium rare, then bathed in a velvety black pepper au jus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It felt extraordinarily luxurious to be eating food like this — escargots and handmade pasta! — at 11 o’clock on a weeknight. But the most surprising thing about Brazen Head was just how genuinely warm and friendly the service was — and, for a casual pub, how downright elegant. I wouldn’t have pegged this as the kind of restaurant where they swap out your plates and silverware between every course, and brush every stray crumb off the table. As soon as we mentioned to our server that we planned on sharing everything, she coursed out the entire meal, bringing one entree at a time, so that we could savor each dish at our own pace. All without the slightest hint of pretension.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No wonder the restaurant was still bustling even as the night wound down, a cross section of San Francisco all gathered in that hazy orange glow — young and septuagenarian; tourists and locals; couples dressed up for date night, and servers and line cooks just finished with their shift at some other restaurant. Everyone chatting up the bartender over cold martinis or polishing off the last bit of their prime rib plate. It was hard to imagine a more comfortable place.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brazenheadsf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Brazen Head\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> (3166 Buchanan St., San Francisco) serves dinner Mon. and Tue. from 5–11 p.m. and Wed.–Sun. from 5 p.m.–midnight. The bar is open until 2 a.m. daily. No reservations.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "silver-crest-closed-sf-donut-shop",
"title": "R.I.P., Silver Crest Donut Shop",
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"content": "\u003cp>And so it has finally closed, the portal to another dimension, the 24-hour purveyor of eggs and cigarettes and baked goods that claimed to be donuts, the David Lynch film come to life right here in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m talking, of course, about \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-23/silver-crest-donut-24-hour-business-battle-to-stay-open\">Silver Crest\u003c/a>, the donut shop on Bayshore Boulevard that improbably stayed open for over 50 years, becoming a San Francisco institution. Along the way, it also became a restaurant and bar, a hangout for drunks, a set for photoshoots and at least \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/lcqwfFKagH4?feature=shared\">one music video\u003c/a>, and a late-night “Heyyy, you wanna see something \u003cem>really\u003c/em> weird?” double-dare for area teenagers. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/silver-crest-donut-shop-closed-19606798.php\">reports\u003c/a>, Silver Crest was boarded up Monday, seemingly for good. My immediate reaction was conflicting feelings of shock that such an institution could ever close and wonder that it lasted so long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You see, I actually \u003cem>went\u003c/em> to Silver Crest, at least when I was in the area. I never ventured into the bar in the back, but I regularly sidled up and bought a donut to go. Like the Old Clam House just down the boulevard, it seemed like a place that deserved support while it was around, instead of mourned when it was gone. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961796\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1520\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961796\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-800x608.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-1020x775.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-768x584.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-1536x1167.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-1920x1459.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Silver Crest was co-owned by George and Nina Giavris, who opened it in 1970. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If you also went to Silver Crest, you already know the ambiance. A fading menu, posted above a formica lunch counter with fixed seats. Usually empty. “CASH ONLY” signs. Countertop jukeboxes that didn’t work. Five wooden 1950s pinball machines against the wall that amazingly did work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And to the left, tended to by an older woman who’d eventually emerge from the bar area: a cash register, a row of cigarettes, a sad houseplant, and a display case of donuts. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Were they donuts, though? Those five-inch-diameter puffs of dry bread, topped with a tart glaze that only made them taste weirder?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just last week, on the way back from SFO, I suggested to my wife that we stop at Silver Crest. “I don’t like donuts,” she said. “You know that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh, but these are not really donuts,” I replied. “In fact, I’m not even sure if Silver Crest is a real place that exists on this Earth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I couldn’t talk her into it, the way I talked other friends into visiting Silver Crest with me, always late at night. The owners, George and Nina Giavris, routinely said in interviews that they lost the front door key years ago. The neon sign out front still boasts — at least until someone steals it — “WE NEVER CLOSE.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, Silver Crest finally closed. It may not have been as popular as Tommy’s Joynt, or as enduring as Red’s Java House. But it did feel like a misunderstood runt of that particular family, and San Francisco will be a little less surreal without it. \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>And so it has finally closed, the portal to another dimension, the 24-hour purveyor of eggs and cigarettes and baked goods that claimed to be donuts, the David Lynch film come to life right here in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m talking, of course, about \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-23/silver-crest-donut-24-hour-business-battle-to-stay-open\">Silver Crest\u003c/a>, the donut shop on Bayshore Boulevard that improbably stayed open for over 50 years, becoming a San Francisco institution. Along the way, it also became a restaurant and bar, a hangout for drunks, a set for photoshoots and at least \u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/lcqwfFKagH4?feature=shared\">one music video\u003c/a>, and a late-night “Heyyy, you wanna see something \u003cem>really\u003c/em> weird?” double-dare for area teenagers. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As the \u003cem>San Francisco Chronicle\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/silver-crest-donut-shop-closed-19606798.php\">reports\u003c/a>, Silver Crest was boarded up Monday, seemingly for good. My immediate reaction was conflicting feelings of shock that such an institution could ever close and wonder that it lasted so long.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You see, I actually \u003cem>went\u003c/em> to Silver Crest, at least when I was in the area. I never ventured into the bar in the back, but I regularly sidled up and bought a donut to go. Like the Old Clam House just down the boulevard, it seemed like a place that deserved support while it was around, instead of mourned when it was gone. \u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961796\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1520\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961796\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-800x608.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-1020x775.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-768x584.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-1536x1167.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SilverCrest.Counter-1920x1459.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Silver Crest was co-owned by George and Nina Giavris, who opened it in 1970. \u003ccite>(Gabe Meline/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>If you also went to Silver Crest, you already know the ambiance. A fading menu, posted above a formica lunch counter with fixed seats. Usually empty. “CASH ONLY” signs. Countertop jukeboxes that didn’t work. Five wooden 1950s pinball machines against the wall that amazingly did work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And to the left, tended to by an older woman who’d eventually emerge from the bar area: a cash register, a row of cigarettes, a sad houseplant, and a display case of donuts. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Were they donuts, though? Those five-inch-diameter puffs of dry bread, topped with a tart glaze that only made them taste weirder?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just last week, on the way back from SFO, I suggested to my wife that we stop at Silver Crest. “I don’t like donuts,” she said. “You know that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Oh, but these are not really donuts,” I replied. “In fact, I’m not even sure if Silver Crest is a real place that exists on this Earth.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I couldn’t talk her into it, the way I talked other friends into visiting Silver Crest with me, always late at night. The owners, George and Nina Giavris, routinely said in interviews that they lost the front door key years ago. The neon sign out front still boasts — at least until someone steals it — “WE NEVER CLOSE.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, Silver Crest finally closed. It may not have been as popular as Tommy’s Joynt, or as enduring as Red’s Java House. But it did feel like a misunderstood runt of that particular family, and San Francisco will be a little less surreal without it. \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "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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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"radiolab": {
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},
"rightnowish": {
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"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
"info": "Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
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