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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961617\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961617\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men sweating while they eat Indian/Pakistani food.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zareen’s has been a beloved Peninsula institution for the past 10 years, known for its homestyle Pakistani and Indian dishes. \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>For me, the most scenic vista in Palo Alto isn’t the view from the top of Hoover Tower, or within Gamble Garden’s immaculately manicured grounds, or deep inside a coastal redwood grove, lovely as all of those might be. As of last week, I’ve decided that the most beautiful sight in the entire city is the front patio at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/zareensrestaurant/?hl=en\">Zareen’s\u003c/a> at 10 o’clock on a gorgeous mid-summer night, when the umbrella-bedecked picnic tables are lit up with string lights and bustling with dozens of contented kebab and curry eaters. The vibe was so choice, I started to fall in love even before I took my first bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The beloved Pakistani and Indian restaurant, a staple on the Peninsula for the past 10 years, has two other locations, including the Mountain View original, which opened in 2014. But the Palo Alto Zareen’s is the only one that’s open late — until midnight every day — so that’s where we headed on a recent Friday night, joining the long queue of customers waiting to order at the front counter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13961328,arts_13958041,arts_13952384']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The menu covers a wide gamut of contemporary Pakistani and Indian food trends. There is, for instance, a whole section devoted to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13952384/pakistani-desi-burger-fremont-late-night\">desi burgers\u003c/a>, naan wraps and other hybridized street foods that would fit in at any next-generation desi food truck — chapli burgers, fried chicken tikka sandwiches and so forth. Meanwhile, the traditional thali plates, which come with rice, pickles and lentil daal, are perfect for the solo diner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We decided to stick to the kind of cozy, homestyle Indo-Pak dishes upon which Zareen’s first built its reputation. In many ways, the restaurant embodies the apotheosis of fast-casual dining: Within five minutes flat, our order arrives at our patio table piping hot, everything fresh and vibrant as a home-cooked meal. The chicken biryani, a specialty of the restaurant only available on Fridays, is an excellent version of the dish. Each grain of rice is perfectly toothsome, without any clumping, and we couldn’t stop eating the moist, well-spiced chicken and red-tinged potatoes buried underneath. Even better is the lamb gosht, with its tender chunks of meat and rich, savory gravy — the ideal vehicle for Zareen’s outrageously fluffy naan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961619\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961619\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A bustling front patio of a restaurant (the sign reads, "Zareen's") lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The front patio at Zareen’s. The restaurant’s Palo Alto location is open until midnight daily. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I have to admit that I may have been profiled just a bit: When I inquired about the gola kebab sizzler, the staff member at the front counter took a quick glance at me and suggested, not unkindly, that the dish might be too spicy for me. Of course — something something toxic masculinity — I couldn’t back down from that challenge. When the dish came out sizzling intensely, as promised, on a bed of grilled onions atop a cast iron plate, we took our first bite with more than a little trepidation. Thankfully, these beef meatballs were spicy enough to leave our tongues tingling but not so much that they set our mouths on fire. More importantly, they were \u003ci>delicious \u003c/i>— incredibly soft and flavorful. We smashed them onto pieces of sheermal, a slightly sweet, flaky flatbread that the restaurant suggests ordering to accompany its kebabs. It was a killer combo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we loved best, though, was the whole atmosphere of the place, whether you’re eating outside on the patio or inside the small but cozy dining room, with its chalkboard art and hanging, mobile-style lending library providing a spark of warmth and color. The vibe is equal parts relaxed and lively, but also cosmopolitan in that uniquely Bay Area way — the crowd is a mix of families with kids, tech workers, older white couples and groups of mostly South Asian teens and college kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On this particular night in Palo Alto, there wasn’t anywhere else we’d rather be.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Palo Alto location of \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/zareensrestaurant/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Zareen’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> (365 S. California Ave.) is open 11 a.m. to midnight daily (takeout only after 11 p.m.). The restaurant also has \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.zareensrestaurant.com/locations\">\u003ci>locations in Mountain View and Redwood City\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> that close earlier in the evening.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961617\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961617\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men sweating while they eat Indian/Pakistani food.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Zareen’s has been a beloved Peninsula institution for the past 10 years, known for its homestyle Pakistani and Indian dishes. \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>For me, the most scenic vista in Palo Alto isn’t the view from the top of Hoover Tower, or within Gamble Garden’s immaculately manicured grounds, or deep inside a coastal redwood grove, lovely as all of those might be. As of last week, I’ve decided that the most beautiful sight in the entire city is the front patio at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/zareensrestaurant/?hl=en\">Zareen’s\u003c/a> at 10 o’clock on a gorgeous mid-summer night, when the umbrella-bedecked picnic tables are lit up with string lights and bustling with dozens of contented kebab and curry eaters. The vibe was so choice, I started to fall in love even before I took my first bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The beloved Pakistani and Indian restaurant, a staple on the Peninsula for the past 10 years, has two other locations, including the Mountain View original, which opened in 2014. But the Palo Alto Zareen’s is the only one that’s open late — until midnight every day — so that’s where we headed on a recent Friday night, joining the long queue of customers waiting to order at the front counter.\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 menu covers a wide gamut of contemporary Pakistani and Indian food trends. There is, for instance, a whole section devoted to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13952384/pakistani-desi-burger-fremont-late-night\">desi burgers\u003c/a>, naan wraps and other hybridized street foods that would fit in at any next-generation desi food truck — chapli burgers, fried chicken tikka sandwiches and so forth. Meanwhile, the traditional thali plates, which come with rice, pickles and lentil daal, are perfect for the solo diner.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We decided to stick to the kind of cozy, homestyle Indo-Pak dishes upon which Zareen’s first built its reputation. In many ways, the restaurant embodies the apotheosis of fast-casual dining: Within five minutes flat, our order arrives at our patio table piping hot, everything fresh and vibrant as a home-cooked meal. The chicken biryani, a specialty of the restaurant only available on Fridays, is an excellent version of the dish. Each grain of rice is perfectly toothsome, without any clumping, and we couldn’t stop eating the moist, well-spiced chicken and red-tinged potatoes buried underneath. Even better is the lamb gosht, with its tender chunks of meat and rich, savory gravy — the ideal vehicle for Zareen’s outrageously fluffy naan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961619\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961619\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A bustling front patio of a restaurant (the sign reads, "Zareen's") lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Zareens-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The front patio at Zareen’s. The restaurant’s Palo Alto location is open until midnight daily. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I have to admit that I may have been profiled just a bit: When I inquired about the gola kebab sizzler, the staff member at the front counter took a quick glance at me and suggested, not unkindly, that the dish might be too spicy for me. Of course — something something toxic masculinity — I couldn’t back down from that challenge. When the dish came out sizzling intensely, as promised, on a bed of grilled onions atop a cast iron plate, we took our first bite with more than a little trepidation. Thankfully, these beef meatballs were spicy enough to leave our tongues tingling but not so much that they set our mouths on fire. More importantly, they were \u003ci>delicious \u003c/i>— incredibly soft and flavorful. We smashed them onto pieces of sheermal, a slightly sweet, flaky flatbread that the restaurant suggests ordering to accompany its kebabs. It was a killer combo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we loved best, though, was the whole atmosphere of the place, whether you’re eating outside on the patio or inside the small but cozy dining room, with its chalkboard art and hanging, mobile-style lending library providing a spark of warmth and color. The vibe is equal parts relaxed and lively, but also cosmopolitan in that uniquely Bay Area way — the crowd is a mix of families with kids, tech workers, older white couples and groups of mostly South Asian teens and college kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On this particular night in Palo Alto, there wasn’t anywhere else we’d rather be.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>The Palo Alto location of \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/zareensrestaurant/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Zareen’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> (365 S. California Ave.) is open 11 a.m. to midnight daily (takeout only after 11 p.m.). The restaurant also has \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.zareensrestaurant.com/locations\">\u003ci>locations in Mountain View and Redwood City\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> that close earlier in the evening.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "bay-pocha-late-night-korean-pub-bossam-army-stew-sf",
"title": "Bay Pocha Was Made for a Late-Night Feast With Friends",
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"headTitle": "Bay Pocha Was Made for a Late-Night Feast With Friends | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961332\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961332\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: One diner at a Korean restaurant shoves a lettuce wrap into his mouth while another eats noodles from a pot of stew.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Pocha sets itself apart from the crowd of Korean pubs by serving big, shareable, celebratory dishes like its bossam (pork belly wraps). The San Francisco restaurant is open until 1 a.m. on weekends. \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>Back in college, my friends and I would eat at the Fontainbleau Diner in Piscataway, New Jersey, every Thursday night after our weekly club meeting. This meant 10 or 20 of us, mostly Asian American, rolling in at 10 p.m. to commandeer a row of pushed-together two-tops. We were loud and giddy, reveling in our Monte Cristos, chicken fingers and root beer floats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, here in the Bay Area, a lot of the late-night restaurants aren’t built for that kind of large-group merrymaking — not when you’re squished up at a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957143/late-night-japanese-whisky-highball-karaage-sunnyvale-nokori\">tiny bar counter\u003c/a> or, in some cases, there \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959808/golden-boy-pizza-north-beach-sf-late-night\">isn’t any seating at all\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://baypocha.menu11.com/\">Bay Pocha\u003c/a>, a Korean pub on Ocean Avenue near Stonestown, is the exception that proves the rule. Even though it isn’t a particularly big restaurant, a long communal table, spacious enough to fit 20 people, runs down the center of the dining room, and the menu skews toward hearty, shareable dishes: bubbling stews and hot pots, and big platters piled high with braised and stir-fried meats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Named after Korea’s famed “pocha” (or \u003ca href=\"https://la.eater.com/2020/8/13/21366722/koreatown-pojangmacha-street-food-parking-look-outdoor-dining-los-angeles\">pojangmacha\u003c/a>) street carts and semi-outdoor food stalls, Bay Pocha has a similar aesthetic to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13952823/zzan-korean-fried-chicken-late-night-san-francisco\">other Korean pubs in the Bay Area\u003c/a> with its cheery K-pop soundtrack and neon-lit signs advertising soju and Korean beer brands. On weekends, it’s open until 1 a.m. and, on a recent Friday night, it only seemed to get busier and more rambunctious as the night got later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The broad menu runs through the greatest hits of the kind of booze-friendly food you would find at your standard Bay Area soju bang: Korean fried chicken, cheese corn, tteokbokki. But where Bay Pocha sets itself apart is in its selection of big, celebratory dishes — the kind you’re surprised and delighted to be able to share with a group of friends at 11 o’clock at night. That includes harder-to-find dishes like spicy stir-fried chicken feet and jokbal, a.k.a. braised pig trotters, which Bay Pocha offers in both spicy and non-spicy versions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961334\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961334\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Facade of a Korean restaurant; the sign reads, \"Bay Pocha.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is perfect for a late meal with a big group of friends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But we had mainly come for the hidden star of the menu, the bossam, or braised pork belly wraps, which is probably the dish Bay Pocha is best known for, even though it isn’t listed on the menu — you have to know to ask for it. It’s a huge platter of tender, fatty meat, cut into thick slices and fanned out like a beautiful flower, with a salad of thinly slivered scallions piled in the center. Make sure you also order the ssam set — a plate of lettuce, raw and pickled jalapeños, raw garlic and spicy ssamjang sauce — so that you can eat the pork belly Korean-style, as lettuce wraps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13961051,arts_13959808,arts_13956218']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>For each ssam, you’ll want a couple of slices of pork, a tangle of scallion salad, a smear of ssamjang, maybe some kimchi and, if you’re like me, an unconscionable amount of garlic. Build each wrap on your plate or do it “freestyle,” the way I learned from watching too many Korean dramas, holding the lettuce leaf in front of your mouth like you’re setting a trap, then \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@plumsoju/video/6799690626007977221?lang=en\">chopsticking all of the other ingredients into the leaf in one smooth motion\u003c/a>. Take it down in one bite if you can. Either way, the result is delicious — unctuous and meaty, spicy and sharp, with enough freshness from the lettuce that you don’t feel weighed down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other thing the restaurant does well is its ample selection of shareable stews and hot pots, the most striking of which is the army stew, or budae jjigae, a Korean pub staple whose use of American processed foods has its \u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/budae-jjigae-army-stew-spam\">roots in the U.S. post-war military occupation of South Korea\u003c/a>. At Bay Pocha, they light up a portable gas burner, then bring the big pot of bubbling red broth to your table to finish cooking. The soup comes loaded with spicy pork, Spam, sliced up hot dogs, onions, kimchi, tofu, two different kinds of rice cakes, and a big block of instant ramen topped with two slices of American cheese. It is \u003ci>a lot\u003c/i>. But for us, it was pure comfort food. The salty, spicy broth got more and more flavorful as the night went on, and with some white rice on the side to soak up the soup, we stretched the leftovers into two more meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As if on cue, toward the end of the night, a boisterous, Cantonese-speaking adult volleyball or baseball team in matching red jackets came in and spread themselves out at the long communal table — the same kind of squad I’d go on those late-night diner runs with in college. They were celebrating, or consoling themselves, with a bubbling pot of galbijjim (short rib stew) that the server ceremoniously scorched with a blow torch until the cheese on top was brown-speckled and melty. I wasn’t sure how their night had gone up until then, but it seemed clear that they were ending it in the best possible way.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/baypocha/\">\u003ci>Bay Pocha\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is located at 2642 Ocean Ave. in San Francisco. The restaurant is open Monday through Thursday from 5 p.m.–midnight, Friday and Saturday 5 p.m.–1 a.m. and Sunday 5–11:30 p.m.; it’s also open for lunch 11 a.m.–2 p.m. daily.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Bay Pocha in SF Is a Korean Pub Made for Late-Night Feasts | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961332\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961332\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: One diner at a Korean restaurant shoves a lettuce wrap into his mouth while another eats noodles from a pot of stew.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bay Pocha sets itself apart from the crowd of Korean pubs by serving big, shareable, celebratory dishes like its bossam (pork belly wraps). The San Francisco restaurant is open until 1 a.m. on weekends. \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>Back in college, my friends and I would eat at the Fontainbleau Diner in Piscataway, New Jersey, every Thursday night after our weekly club meeting. This meant 10 or 20 of us, mostly Asian American, rolling in at 10 p.m. to commandeer a row of pushed-together two-tops. We were loud and giddy, reveling in our Monte Cristos, chicken fingers and root beer floats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, here in the Bay Area, a lot of the late-night restaurants aren’t built for that kind of large-group merrymaking — not when you’re squished up at a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957143/late-night-japanese-whisky-highball-karaage-sunnyvale-nokori\">tiny bar counter\u003c/a> or, in some cases, there \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13959808/golden-boy-pizza-north-beach-sf-late-night\">isn’t any seating at all\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://baypocha.menu11.com/\">Bay Pocha\u003c/a>, a Korean pub on Ocean Avenue near Stonestown, is the exception that proves the rule. Even though it isn’t a particularly big restaurant, a long communal table, spacious enough to fit 20 people, runs down the center of the dining room, and the menu skews toward hearty, shareable dishes: bubbling stews and hot pots, and big platters piled high with braised and stir-fried meats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Named after Korea’s famed “pocha” (or \u003ca href=\"https://la.eater.com/2020/8/13/21366722/koreatown-pojangmacha-street-food-parking-look-outdoor-dining-los-angeles\">pojangmacha\u003c/a>) street carts and semi-outdoor food stalls, Bay Pocha has a similar aesthetic to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13952823/zzan-korean-fried-chicken-late-night-san-francisco\">other Korean pubs in the Bay Area\u003c/a> with its cheery K-pop soundtrack and neon-lit signs advertising soju and Korean beer brands. On weekends, it’s open until 1 a.m. and, on a recent Friday night, it only seemed to get busier and more rambunctious as the night got later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The broad menu runs through the greatest hits of the kind of booze-friendly food you would find at your standard Bay Area soju bang: Korean fried chicken, cheese corn, tteokbokki. But where Bay Pocha sets itself apart is in its selection of big, celebratory dishes — the kind you’re surprised and delighted to be able to share with a group of friends at 11 o’clock at night. That includes harder-to-find dishes like spicy stir-fried chicken feet and jokbal, a.k.a. braised pig trotters, which Bay Pocha offers in both spicy and non-spicy versions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961334\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961334\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Facade of a Korean restaurant; the sign reads, \"Bay Pocha.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/Untitled_Artwork-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is perfect for a late meal with a big group of friends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But we had mainly come for the hidden star of the menu, the bossam, or braised pork belly wraps, which is probably the dish Bay Pocha is best known for, even though it isn’t listed on the menu — you have to know to ask for it. It’s a huge platter of tender, fatty meat, cut into thick slices and fanned out like a beautiful flower, with a salad of thinly slivered scallions piled in the center. Make sure you also order the ssam set — a plate of lettuce, raw and pickled jalapeños, raw garlic and spicy ssamjang sauce — so that you can eat the pork belly Korean-style, as lettuce wraps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>For each ssam, you’ll want a couple of slices of pork, a tangle of scallion salad, a smear of ssamjang, maybe some kimchi and, if you’re like me, an unconscionable amount of garlic. Build each wrap on your plate or do it “freestyle,” the way I learned from watching too many Korean dramas, holding the lettuce leaf in front of your mouth like you’re setting a trap, then \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@plumsoju/video/6799690626007977221?lang=en\">chopsticking all of the other ingredients into the leaf in one smooth motion\u003c/a>. Take it down in one bite if you can. Either way, the result is delicious — unctuous and meaty, spicy and sharp, with enough freshness from the lettuce that you don’t feel weighed down.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The other thing the restaurant does well is its ample selection of shareable stews and hot pots, the most striking of which is the army stew, or budae jjigae, a Korean pub staple whose use of American processed foods has its \u003ca href=\"https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/budae-jjigae-army-stew-spam\">roots in the U.S. post-war military occupation of South Korea\u003c/a>. At Bay Pocha, they light up a portable gas burner, then bring the big pot of bubbling red broth to your table to finish cooking. The soup comes loaded with spicy pork, Spam, sliced up hot dogs, onions, kimchi, tofu, two different kinds of rice cakes, and a big block of instant ramen topped with two slices of American cheese. It is \u003ci>a lot\u003c/i>. But for us, it was pure comfort food. The salty, spicy broth got more and more flavorful as the night went on, and with some white rice on the side to soak up the soup, we stretched the leftovers into two more meals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As if on cue, toward the end of the night, a boisterous, Cantonese-speaking adult volleyball or baseball team in matching red jackets came in and spread themselves out at the long communal table — the same kind of squad I’d go on those late-night diner runs with in college. They were celebrating, or consoling themselves, with a bubbling pot of galbijjim (short rib stew) that the server ceremoniously scorched with a blow torch until the cheese on top was brown-speckled and melty. I wasn’t sure how their night had gone up until then, but it seemed clear that they were ending it in the best possible way.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/baypocha/\">\u003ci>Bay Pocha\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is located at 2642 Ocean Ave. in San Francisco. The restaurant is open Monday through Thursday from 5 p.m.–midnight, Friday and Saturday 5 p.m.–1 a.m. and Sunday 5–11:30 p.m.; it’s also open for lunch 11 a.m.–2 p.m. daily.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "sandwich-spot-hookah-lounge-redwood-city-late-night",
"title": "This Hookah Sandwich Lounge Is Redwood City’s Buzziest Late-Night Hotspot",
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"headTitle": "This Hookah Sandwich Lounge Is Redwood City’s Buzziest Late-Night Hotspot | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961061\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961061\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men eat sandwiches on Dutch Crunch bread while a hookah pipe lets off a wisp of smoke behind them.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Redwood City’s The Sandwich Spot is a combination deli and late-night hookah lounge. \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 no \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/hookah/comments/4qc1zg/food_and_shisha_pairings/\">hookah food-pairing\u003c/a> expert, but I never would have guessed that a hot Dutch Crunch deli sandwich, dripping with garlic sauce, would be the perfect match for an hour-long session with the shisha pipe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that is the premise — and the genius — of \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspotrwc.com/\">The Sandwich Spot\u003c/a> in downtown Redwood City, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspot.com/about\">deli chain\u003c/a> outpost that stands apart from all of its sister locations in two important ways: 1) it’s open until at least midnight every night (1 a.m. on the weekend), and 2) the restaurant doubles as a vibey, slightly raucous hookah lounge in the evenings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we walked in at around 10:30 on a Friday night, it felt a little bit like we were pulling up to the club. On the left was a regular old sandwich counter, and there was a full bar on the right. But most of the real action was happening on the restaurant’s spacious covered patio, where the sound system blasted Kendrick Lamar and a mix of upbeat, danceable Arabic pop music while colorful disco lights made the floor and walls sparkle. Here, and in the long spillover tent on the sidewalk outside, big groups of twenty- and thirtysomethings sat around just kicking it — gossiping, talking shit and, of course, chomping down on some enormous sandwiches. Every once in a while, someone would take a deep drag on their hookah pipe and blow out a thick plume of smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The place was so packed and boisterous, it felt like every single young(ish) person in Redwood City was there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, even just having the option to get a good, fresh sandwich — especially a hot one — at 11 o’clock at night feels nearly miraculous in the Bay Area. (Plenty of customers came through just to pick up takeout orders to bring home.) With \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspot.com/copy-of-menu-locations-1\">30 locations\u003c/a> mostly spread around California, The Sandwich Spot belongs in the Ike’s-like genre of uniquely Northern Californian deli chains, with its unusual ingredient combinations; quirky, localized names (the “Bumgarner,” the “Smokin’ Sequoia”); variously zesty, spicy and garlicky sauces; and excellent Dutch Crunch bread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961065\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961065\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Inside a bar, groups of friends chat. Hookah pipes with glowing red coals are placed next to the tables.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">It felt like every young(ish) person in Redwood City was there — especially young Arab Americans and South Asians. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A sandwich called The Hangover was like a slightly funkified Bay Area take on a club sandwich, with hot turkey, cream cheese, avocado, “Bomb” sauce (like a tangy hot sauce), garlicky Kassi sauce, and a lot of crispy bacon — extremely satisfying on warm Dutch Crunch. The equally tasty Purple Koosh, an original Redwood City creation available only on Fridays, was a smoky variation on a similarly saucy theme, featuring house-smoked chicken, fried onion strings and a tangle of purple coleslaw. To round out the meal, we had air-fried Cajun fries, which came out hot and crispy even if they didn’t seem particularly Cajun, with a side of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894684/toum-shawarmaji-jordanian-restaurant-oakland-garlic-sauce\">toum-like\u003c/a> garlic dipping sauce — a nod to the restaurant’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspotrwc.com/about\">Lebanese ownership\u003c/a>, perhaps — that made everything taste five times more delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13960432,arts_13958926,arts_13955884']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>All the while we fiddled, like the total amateurs we were, with the hookah pipe we’d ordered — trying and failing and then finally succeeding at getting a decent puff of the mango mint flavored tobacco that we’d chosen, the little cubes of charcoal on top of the bowl glowing bright red as we got deeper into the night. The truth was, we felt a little bit out of place at first in this crowd of mostly college kids and recent college grads. Call it “Portrait of Two Lonely Middle-Aged Men at the Hookah Bar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even if we’d started out a bit dubious about the hookah/sandwich concept, it didn’t take long for us to get caught up in the mood. I’ll leave it to the medical experts to pontificate on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/tobacco_industry/hookahs/\">health risks\u003c/a> associated with long-term hookah use, but the water pipe’s efficacy as a social lubricant and builder of community and feel-good vibes seems self-evident — especially among the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/20/style/hookah-dearborn-michigan.html\">young Arab Americans\u003c/a> and South Asians who made up a large chunk of The Sandwich Spot’s late-night crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sitting out on one of the sidewalk tables, with a cool breeze blowing through, we watched all those big groups of friends laughing and talking deep into the night, relaxed as can be, taking big bites of their sandwiches and blowing out even bigger puffs of smoke. Before long, we were already planning our return visit — because past 10 or 11 o’clock in Redwood City, what better way is there to pass a couple of pleasant hours with friends?\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspotrwc.com/\">\u003ci>The Sandwich Spot\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m.–midnight, Friday and Saturday 10 a.m.–1 a.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.–midnight at 2420 Broadway in Redwood City. After 5 p.m., when the lounge starts serving hookah, it’s a 21-and-over-only venue, and the kitchen closes at 11 p.m. daily.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Smoke, vibes and good Dutch Crunch at The Sandwich Spot.",
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"title": "The Sandwich Spot Hookah Lounge Is Redwood City’s Late-Night Hotspot | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961061\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961061\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men eat sandwiches on Dutch Crunch bread while a hookah pipe lets off a wisp of smoke behind them.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Redwood City’s The Sandwich Spot is a combination deli and late-night hookah lounge. \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 no \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/hookah/comments/4qc1zg/food_and_shisha_pairings/\">hookah food-pairing\u003c/a> expert, but I never would have guessed that a hot Dutch Crunch deli sandwich, dripping with garlic sauce, would be the perfect match for an hour-long session with the shisha pipe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that is the premise — and the genius — of \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspotrwc.com/\">The Sandwich Spot\u003c/a> in downtown Redwood City, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspot.com/about\">deli chain\u003c/a> outpost that stands apart from all of its sister locations in two important ways: 1) it’s open until at least midnight every night (1 a.m. on the weekend), and 2) the restaurant doubles as a vibey, slightly raucous hookah lounge in the evenings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we walked in at around 10:30 on a Friday night, it felt a little bit like we were pulling up to the club. On the left was a regular old sandwich counter, and there was a full bar on the right. But most of the real action was happening on the restaurant’s spacious covered patio, where the sound system blasted Kendrick Lamar and a mix of upbeat, danceable Arabic pop music while colorful disco lights made the floor and walls sparkle. Here, and in the long spillover tent on the sidewalk outside, big groups of twenty- and thirtysomethings sat around just kicking it — gossiping, talking shit and, of course, chomping down on some enormous sandwiches. Every once in a while, someone would take a deep drag on their hookah pipe and blow out a thick plume of smoke.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The place was so packed and boisterous, it felt like every single young(ish) person in Redwood City was there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, even just having the option to get a good, fresh sandwich — especially a hot one — at 11 o’clock at night feels nearly miraculous in the Bay Area. (Plenty of customers came through just to pick up takeout orders to bring home.) With \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspot.com/copy-of-menu-locations-1\">30 locations\u003c/a> mostly spread around California, The Sandwich Spot belongs in the Ike’s-like genre of uniquely Northern Californian deli chains, with its unusual ingredient combinations; quirky, localized names (the “Bumgarner,” the “Smokin’ Sequoia”); variously zesty, spicy and garlicky sauces; and excellent Dutch Crunch bread.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13961065\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13961065\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Inside a bar, groups of friends chat. Hookah pipes with glowing red coals are placed next to the tables.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/SH2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">It felt like every young(ish) person in Redwood City was there — especially young Arab Americans and South Asians. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A sandwich called The Hangover was like a slightly funkified Bay Area take on a club sandwich, with hot turkey, cream cheese, avocado, “Bomb” sauce (like a tangy hot sauce), garlicky Kassi sauce, and a lot of crispy bacon — extremely satisfying on warm Dutch Crunch. The equally tasty Purple Koosh, an original Redwood City creation available only on Fridays, was a smoky variation on a similarly saucy theme, featuring house-smoked chicken, fried onion strings and a tangle of purple coleslaw. To round out the meal, we had air-fried Cajun fries, which came out hot and crispy even if they didn’t seem particularly Cajun, with a side of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894684/toum-shawarmaji-jordanian-restaurant-oakland-garlic-sauce\">toum-like\u003c/a> garlic dipping sauce — a nod to the restaurant’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspotrwc.com/about\">Lebanese ownership\u003c/a>, perhaps — that made everything taste five times more delicious.\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>All the while we fiddled, like the total amateurs we were, with the hookah pipe we’d ordered — trying and failing and then finally succeeding at getting a decent puff of the mango mint flavored tobacco that we’d chosen, the little cubes of charcoal on top of the bowl glowing bright red as we got deeper into the night. The truth was, we felt a little bit out of place at first in this crowd of mostly college kids and recent college grads. Call it “Portrait of Two Lonely Middle-Aged Men at the Hookah Bar.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even if we’d started out a bit dubious about the hookah/sandwich concept, it didn’t take long for us to get caught up in the mood. I’ll leave it to the medical experts to pontificate on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/tobacco_industry/hookahs/\">health risks\u003c/a> associated with long-term hookah use, but the water pipe’s efficacy as a social lubricant and builder of community and feel-good vibes seems self-evident — especially among the \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/20/style/hookah-dearborn-michigan.html\">young Arab Americans\u003c/a> and South Asians who made up a large chunk of The Sandwich Spot’s late-night crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sitting out on one of the sidewalk tables, with a cool breeze blowing through, we watched all those big groups of friends laughing and talking deep into the night, relaxed as can be, taking big bites of their sandwiches and blowing out even bigger puffs of smoke. Before long, we were already planning our return visit — because past 10 or 11 o’clock in Redwood City, what better way is there to pass a couple of pleasant hours with friends?\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.thesandwichspotrwc.com/\">\u003ci>The Sandwich Spot\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m.–midnight, Friday and Saturday 10 a.m.–1 a.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.–midnight at 2420 Broadway in Redwood City. After 5 p.m., when the lounge starts serving hookah, it’s a 21-and-over-only venue, and the kitchen closes at 11 p.m. daily.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "late-night-boba-san-jose-sweet-gelato-tea-lounge",
"title": "San Jose’s Late-Night Boba Shop Is a One-of-a-Kind Experience",
"publishDate": 1719534920,
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"headTitle": "San Jose’s Late-Night Boba Shop Is a One-of-a-Kind Experience | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960436\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960436\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A gray-haired man proudly holds up two boba drinks while two customers scarf down a bowl of tiramisu.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Jose’s Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge one of the Bay Area’s priciest — and most unique — boba shops. The owner, Tony, runs the place by sheer force of his personality.\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>Before my first visit to San Jose’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/sweetgelatotealounge/\">Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge\u003c/a>, I had never gone out for boba past 11 o’clock — never even knew that was an option, really, when even boba shops in Taipei mostly call it a night by 8 p.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when I walked into this little storefront in the Vietnam Town shopping complex on a recent Friday night, I had to take a minute to let it all soak in. The vibey lights bathing the shop in a dim neon purple. The groups of Asian Zoomers and younger Millennials lounging in leather booths. The pastel-hued digital menu board with its vaguely (and not-so-vaguely) inappropriate drink names: the Pop Her Cherry, the PMS (Please Make Sweet), the Don’t Be a Hater and, unbelievably, the Lil Pee Pee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shop is open until 2 a.m. every night, and yes, I do believe that was a red Porsche parked right out front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When all was said and done, we’d paid $50 (!) for a dessert and two drinks, including one called the “Boba Virgin.” Was it worth it? Your mileage may vary, but at the end of a very, very long night, we couldn’t stop laughing at the ballsiness of the place, and how we’d just taken part in a truly only-in-San-Jose experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, few people embody the Vietnam Town mall’s boot-strappy, go-big-or-go-home ethic better than Sweet Gelato’s owner, who introduces himself as Tony. A trim, energetic older Vietnamese man with salt-and-pepper hair, Tony runs the shop by sheer force of his personality. As soon as we walk in, he pulls us over, gesturing toward the menu, and says, “Forget about this. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t like your drink, you don’t pay. Simple as that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Never mind that we’re already willing customers standing in line to order drinks. Tony holds up his phone to show us an article listing Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge as one of the top boba shops in San Jose. He pulls up the shop’s Yelp page. “Look at how many reviews,” he says. (There are \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/sweet-gelato-tea-lounge-san-jose\">more than 2,000\u003c/a>, for what it’s worth.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960437\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The brightly lit exterior of a boba shop called Sweet Gelato.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The shop is open until 2 a.m. every night. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What Tony likes to do, it seems, is to play boba sommelier, insisting that we not waste our time perusing the menu and instead just let him pick out something we’ll like based on our preferences. Do we like smoothies? Milk teas? Something fruity? How do we feel about strawberries? What about dragon fruit?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For someone like me, who’s prone to analyzing a menu for upwards of 10 minutes to engineer the ideal order, giving up control in this way feels more than a little bit stressful. But Tony seems so fired up about the dragon fruit that I warm up to the idea. And that’s how I wind up ordering the Boba Virgin, a vaguely tropical concoction of dragon fruit, pomegranate, basil seeds and both popping boba and the regular tapioca-based variety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony decides to narrate my first sip. “Look at his face,” he says with palpable excitement. “Look at his face!” The drink is a bit sweet for my taste and doesn’t have any \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957666/best-boba-shops-bay-area-berkeley-cupertino-sf\">discernible tea flavor\u003c/a>, but I feel too bad about letting Tony down to do anything but nod enthusiastically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also order a durian smoothie with boba, which costs $18 all by itself, and I’ve never seen anyone make a smoothie with as much vigor as Tony, putting his whole back and shoulders into it as he stirs with a spatula.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13959808,arts_13958466,arts_13957666']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>My biggest piece of advice? Don’t come to Sweet Gelato unprepared, or you’ll be steamrolled by the force of Tony’s charisma and salesmanship. This man could sell me any car in the used car lot. If he sold vacation packages, I’d wind up letting him send me anywhere in the world, via a mode of transportation of his own choosing. We asked one tentative question about the shop’s gelato and other dessert offerings, and before we knew what was happening, he’d taken out two spoons, offered us a taste of tiramisu, and closed the sale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Were the drinks amazing enough to merit the highest prices I’ve ever encountered in a boba shop? I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder. The durian smoothie was delicious, rich and super-buttery, and loaded with the fruit’s characteristically bold, pungent flavor. Like Tony promised, it was made with 100% \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13925835/durian-bay-area-love-letter-singaporean-culture\">real durian\u003c/a>, and it showed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Really, though, I think the reason the shop has garnered such a cult following (and \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/sweet-gelato-tea-lounge-san-jose\">near-perfect Yelp rating\u003c/a>) has more to do with the shop’s odd quirks and Tony’s unique style of hospitality. A piece of paper taped to the display case previews not new drinks but simply new drink \u003ci>names \u003c/i>that he’s planning to release in the future. (A sample: LIFE (Living It Fiercely Everyday)”) And, in its own way, the entire process of ordering a drink and watching Tony make it (and then watching him watch you drink it!) is a kind of show in and of itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I haven’t encountered anything else like it in 30-plus years of boba drinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/sweetgelatotealounge/\">\u003ci>Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 5 p.m.–2 a.m. daily at 972 Green St. Unit 7084 in San Jose. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960436\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960436\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A gray-haired man proudly holds up two boba drinks while two customers scarf down a bowl of tiramisu.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEET-GELATO-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Jose’s Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge one of the Bay Area’s priciest — and most unique — boba shops. The owner, Tony, runs the place by sheer force of his personality.\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>Before my first visit to San Jose’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/sweetgelatotealounge/\">Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge\u003c/a>, I had never gone out for boba past 11 o’clock — never even knew that was an option, really, when even boba shops in Taipei mostly call it a night by 8 p.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when I walked into this little storefront in the Vietnam Town shopping complex on a recent Friday night, I had to take a minute to let it all soak in. The vibey lights bathing the shop in a dim neon purple. The groups of Asian Zoomers and younger Millennials lounging in leather booths. The pastel-hued digital menu board with its vaguely (and not-so-vaguely) inappropriate drink names: the Pop Her Cherry, the PMS (Please Make Sweet), the Don’t Be a Hater and, unbelievably, the Lil Pee Pee.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shop is open until 2 a.m. every night, and yes, I do believe that was a red Porsche parked right out front.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When all was said and done, we’d paid $50 (!) for a dessert and two drinks, including one called the “Boba Virgin.” Was it worth it? Your mileage may vary, but at the end of a very, very long night, we couldn’t stop laughing at the ballsiness of the place, and how we’d just taken part in a truly only-in-San-Jose experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Indeed, few people embody the Vietnam Town mall’s boot-strappy, go-big-or-go-home ethic better than Sweet Gelato’s owner, who introduces himself as Tony. A trim, energetic older Vietnamese man with salt-and-pepper hair, Tony runs the shop by sheer force of his personality. As soon as we walk in, he pulls us over, gesturing toward the menu, and says, “Forget about this. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t like your drink, you don’t pay. Simple as that.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Never mind that we’re already willing customers standing in line to order drinks. Tony holds up his phone to show us an article listing Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge as one of the top boba shops in San Jose. He pulls up the shop’s Yelp page. “Look at how many reviews,” he says. (There are \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/sweet-gelato-tea-lounge-san-jose\">more than 2,000\u003c/a>, for what it’s worth.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13960437\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13960437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The brightly lit exterior of a boba shop called Sweet Gelato.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/SWEEY-GELATO-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The shop is open until 2 a.m. every night. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What Tony likes to do, it seems, is to play boba sommelier, insisting that we not waste our time perusing the menu and instead just let him pick out something we’ll like based on our preferences. Do we like smoothies? Milk teas? Something fruity? How do we feel about strawberries? What about dragon fruit?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For someone like me, who’s prone to analyzing a menu for upwards of 10 minutes to engineer the ideal order, giving up control in this way feels more than a little bit stressful. But Tony seems so fired up about the dragon fruit that I warm up to the idea. And that’s how I wind up ordering the Boba Virgin, a vaguely tropical concoction of dragon fruit, pomegranate, basil seeds and both popping boba and the regular tapioca-based variety.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tony decides to narrate my first sip. “Look at his face,” he says with palpable excitement. “Look at his face!” The drink is a bit sweet for my taste and doesn’t have any \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13957666/best-boba-shops-bay-area-berkeley-cupertino-sf\">discernible tea flavor\u003c/a>, but I feel too bad about letting Tony down to do anything but nod enthusiastically.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also order a durian smoothie with boba, which costs $18 all by itself, and I’ve never seen anyone make a smoothie with as much vigor as Tony, putting his whole back and shoulders into it as he stirs with a spatula.\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>My biggest piece of advice? Don’t come to Sweet Gelato unprepared, or you’ll be steamrolled by the force of Tony’s charisma and salesmanship. This man could sell me any car in the used car lot. If he sold vacation packages, I’d wind up letting him send me anywhere in the world, via a mode of transportation of his own choosing. We asked one tentative question about the shop’s gelato and other dessert offerings, and before we knew what was happening, he’d taken out two spoons, offered us a taste of tiramisu, and closed the sale.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Were the drinks amazing enough to merit the highest prices I’ve ever encountered in a boba shop? I suppose that’s in the eye of the beholder. The durian smoothie was delicious, rich and super-buttery, and loaded with the fruit’s characteristically bold, pungent flavor. Like Tony promised, it was made with 100% \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13925835/durian-bay-area-love-letter-singaporean-culture\">real durian\u003c/a>, and it showed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Really, though, I think the reason the shop has garnered such a cult following (and \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/sweet-gelato-tea-lounge-san-jose\">near-perfect Yelp rating\u003c/a>) has more to do with the shop’s odd quirks and Tony’s unique style of hospitality. A piece of paper taped to the display case previews not new drinks but simply new drink \u003ci>names \u003c/i>that he’s planning to release in the future. (A sample: LIFE (Living It Fiercely Everyday)”) And, in its own way, the entire process of ordering a drink and watching Tony make it (and then watching him watch you drink it!) is a kind of show in and of itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I haven’t encountered anything else like it in 30-plus years of boba drinking.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/sweetgelatotealounge/\">\u003ci>Sweet Gelato Tea Lounge\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 5 p.m.–2 a.m. daily at 972 Green St. Unit 7084 in San Jose. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Golden Boy Pizza Is Where You Want To End Your Night",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959812\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959812\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy.jpg\" alt=\"Two men devour a pizza straight out of the box while standing in a crowd of other customers.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eating a Golden Boy slice while standing on the sidewalk late at night is an indelible San Francisco experience. \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’re a lifelong San Franciscan, chances are you’ve grabbed a slice at \u003ca href=\"https://goldenboypizza.com/\">Golden Boy Pizza\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or to be more specific: If your misspent youth involved hanging around the vicinity of North Beach late at night, you’ve probably burned the roof of your mouth scarfing down a Golden Boy clam-and-garlic slice while standing on the sidewalk well past midnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ever since Golden Boy’s original Green Street location opened in 1978, the pizzeria has been an indelible fixture of San Francisco’s late-night scene. Pre-pandemic, and for the bulk of its 40-plus-year heyday as an after-hours hangout, Golden Boy was open past 2 a.m. on the weekend, making it the ideal place to hit up after a punk show or a reckless night of bar-hopping. Back then, the restaurant itself doubled as a neighborhood dive bar of sorts, with pizza eaters squeezing shoulder-to-shoulder at the counter to enjoy pitchers of cold Stella and a thrash metal–heavy playlist with their meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Times change, of course. These days, Golden Boy is strictly takeout only. It now closes at 9 p.m. on weekdays, and 11 p.m. on weekends. But even in its streamlined form, the restaurant remains one of the best spots in the city to grab a bite late at night. At a little before 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, you could still spot the pizzeria’s iconic neon sign (an enormous hand, lit up in red and green, its index finger pointing the way) from several blocks away. The line outside seemed as long as it had ever been, maybe nine or 10 customers deep — an ethnically diverse crowd, mostly in their 20s or 30s. Because there isn’t any dine-in option, some took off in their cars as they’d gotten their pizzas. A few took their slices into the cocktail bar next door; a few more, like us, found a spot on the sidewalk where they could lean against a wall and eat their pizza standing up, like a proper street food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959811\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959811\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A line of customers waiting outside of Golden Boy Pizza.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Even though it’s no longer open past 2 a.m. on the weekend, Golden Boy Pizza remains a popular late-night destination in North Beach. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What I love about Golden Boy is its commitment to selling just pizza, nothing else — no perfunctory salad or chicken wings. (If you want a balanced, multicourse meal, there are plenty of other places in North Beach that’ll do the job.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pizza, meanwhile, is uniquely and idiosyncratically Bay Area. A Golden Boy pie’s thick crust and rectangular shape predate the region’s recent wave of trendy, right-angled Detroit-style pizzas by about 40 years — though no one would confuse the two styles. According to its official backstory, a Golden Boy “San Francilian” pie is basically “\u003ca href=\"https://www.goldenboypizza.com/sanfrancisco.php\">focaccia with pizza topping\u003c/a>.” That description might lead you to imagine a pizza with a spongy or bready texture, but the most remarkable thing about a Golden Boy slice is how light and airy it is once you’ve bitten into its golden-brown, impeccably crunchy bottom. Though I’ve never tested the theory, I \u003ci>feel\u003c/i> like I could eat 100 slices without feeling uncomfortably full.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13958926,arts_13958466,arts_13954597']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>It’s a tempting prospect, too, because the pizza’s components are so well-balanced and delicious — the juicy, thick red sauce (hands-down one of the best in the Bay); the generous amount of stretchy cheese; the charred, squared-off edges on each coveted corner slice. The toppings list is short and sweet, not veering far beyond pepperoni, sausage and a few simple vegetables. The clam-and-garlic pie is the cult favorite of the bunch, topped with chewy baby clams, enough garlic to bowl you over and linger on your breath, and a flurry of chopped parsley to act as a fresh counterpoint. How good is it? If we were sculpting a Mount Rushmore of Bay Area pizzas, it would easily snag one of the four spots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Golden Boy also does a more standard combination pizza, as well as a tasty vegetarian pie that subs in pesto for the red sauce. During our recent visit, however, we found ourselves gravitating toward the simplest pizzas — the plain cheese slice and the classic, no-frills pepperoni. Without any fussy toppings to distract, we marinated in that perfect union of cheese, sauce and ethereal crust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know if this is the best slice in San Francisco, but it sure \u003ci>felt\u003c/i> like it was. Standing there hunched over outside in the lamplight, balancing the pizza box in one hand and a can of soda in the other while we ate. Cars whizzed past. A saxophone guy on the opposite street corner was playing something plaintive and jazzy. In that moment, it was hard to imagine anything better.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://goldenboypizza.com/\">\u003ci>Golden Boy Pizza’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> original North Beach location is open Sunday through Thursday 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m. at 542 Green St. in San Francisco. There’s also a San Mateo location and a forthcoming location at 1447 Taraval St., in the Parkside neighborhood of SF.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959812\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959812\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy.jpg\" alt=\"Two men devour a pizza straight out of the box while standing in a crowd of other customers.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eating a Golden Boy slice while standing on the sidewalk late at night is an indelible San Francisco experience. \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’re a lifelong San Franciscan, chances are you’ve grabbed a slice at \u003ca href=\"https://goldenboypizza.com/\">Golden Boy Pizza\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Or to be more specific: If your misspent youth involved hanging around the vicinity of North Beach late at night, you’ve probably burned the roof of your mouth scarfing down a Golden Boy clam-and-garlic slice while standing on the sidewalk well past midnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ever since Golden Boy’s original Green Street location opened in 1978, the pizzeria has been an indelible fixture of San Francisco’s late-night scene. Pre-pandemic, and for the bulk of its 40-plus-year heyday as an after-hours hangout, Golden Boy was open past 2 a.m. on the weekend, making it the ideal place to hit up after a punk show or a reckless night of bar-hopping. Back then, the restaurant itself doubled as a neighborhood dive bar of sorts, with pizza eaters squeezing shoulder-to-shoulder at the counter to enjoy pitchers of cold Stella and a thrash metal–heavy playlist with their meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Times change, of course. These days, Golden Boy is strictly takeout only. It now closes at 9 p.m. on weekdays, and 11 p.m. on weekends. But even in its streamlined form, the restaurant remains one of the best spots in the city to grab a bite late at night. At a little before 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, you could still spot the pizzeria’s iconic neon sign (an enormous hand, lit up in red and green, its index finger pointing the way) from several blocks away. The line outside seemed as long as it had ever been, maybe nine or 10 customers deep — an ethnically diverse crowd, mostly in their 20s or 30s. Because there isn’t any dine-in option, some took off in their cars as they’d gotten their pizzas. A few took their slices into the cocktail bar next door; a few more, like us, found a spot on the sidewalk where they could lean against a wall and eat their pizza standing up, like a proper street food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959811\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959811\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A line of customers waiting outside of Golden Boy Pizza.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/Goldenboy2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Even though it’s no longer open past 2 a.m. on the weekend, Golden Boy Pizza remains a popular late-night destination in North Beach. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What I love about Golden Boy is its commitment to selling just pizza, nothing else — no perfunctory salad or chicken wings. (If you want a balanced, multicourse meal, there are plenty of other places in North Beach that’ll do the job.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The pizza, meanwhile, is uniquely and idiosyncratically Bay Area. A Golden Boy pie’s thick crust and rectangular shape predate the region’s recent wave of trendy, right-angled Detroit-style pizzas by about 40 years — though no one would confuse the two styles. According to its official backstory, a Golden Boy “San Francilian” pie is basically “\u003ca href=\"https://www.goldenboypizza.com/sanfrancisco.php\">focaccia with pizza topping\u003c/a>.” That description might lead you to imagine a pizza with a spongy or bready texture, but the most remarkable thing about a Golden Boy slice is how light and airy it is once you’ve bitten into its golden-brown, impeccably crunchy bottom. Though I’ve never tested the theory, I \u003ci>feel\u003c/i> like I could eat 100 slices without feeling uncomfortably full.\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 a tempting prospect, too, because the pizza’s components are so well-balanced and delicious — the juicy, thick red sauce (hands-down one of the best in the Bay); the generous amount of stretchy cheese; the charred, squared-off edges on each coveted corner slice. The toppings list is short and sweet, not veering far beyond pepperoni, sausage and a few simple vegetables. The clam-and-garlic pie is the cult favorite of the bunch, topped with chewy baby clams, enough garlic to bowl you over and linger on your breath, and a flurry of chopped parsley to act as a fresh counterpoint. How good is it? If we were sculpting a Mount Rushmore of Bay Area pizzas, it would easily snag one of the four spots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Golden Boy also does a more standard combination pizza, as well as a tasty vegetarian pie that subs in pesto for the red sauce. During our recent visit, however, we found ourselves gravitating toward the simplest pizzas — the plain cheese slice and the classic, no-frills pepperoni. Without any fussy toppings to distract, we marinated in that perfect union of cheese, sauce and ethereal crust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I don’t know if this is the best slice in San Francisco, but it sure \u003ci>felt\u003c/i> like it was. Standing there hunched over outside in the lamplight, balancing the pizza box in one hand and a can of soda in the other while we ate. Cars whizzed past. A saxophone guy on the opposite street corner was playing something plaintive and jazzy. In that moment, it was hard to imagine anything better.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://goldenboypizza.com/\">\u003ci>Golden Boy Pizza’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> original North Beach location is open Sunday through Thursday 11:30 a.m.–9 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 11:30 a.m.–11 p.m. at 542 Green St. in San Francisco. There’s also a San Mateo location and a forthcoming location at 1447 Taraval St., in the Parkside neighborhood of SF.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Kinda Is Bringing the Fun Back to Bay Area Izakaya",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959437\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating noodles and sushi hand rolls at a bar counter.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley’s Kinda Izakaya stands apart from the masses of expensive and overly precious izakayas in the Bay Area. \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>Based on vibes alone, I knew \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kinda.izakaya/\">Kinda Izakaya\u003c/a> was going to be my kind of spot the moment I walked in. The walls were papered over with manga panels and vintage-y beer posters featuring sumo wrestlers and lucky cats. Yellow Asahi beer crates had been flipped upside down to use as stools. Strings of paper lanterns and colorful little flags gave the feeling of dining outdoors in an alleyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I took one whiff of the smoke coming off the charcoal grill, and all of the pleasure receptors in my brain started firing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since last summer, Kinda is Berkeley’s newest izakaya — which, broadly defined, is a kind of Japanese pub that serves food that goes well with beer and sake. It’s one of my favorite restaurant genres. But with a few notable \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/review-abura-ya-a-punk-rock-fried-chicken-pop-up-1/\">exceptions\u003c/a>, Bay Area restaurateurs have tended to reinterpret the izakaya to mean an upscale bar that traffics in $15 meat skewers and stingily-portioned $25 plates of raw fish — and closes well before 10 p.m., as if to add insult to injury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What Kinda seems to understand on a molecular level is that izakaya culture is meant to be fun, a little bit boisterous and very, very casual. The restaurant is open until midnight on weekends, and at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the place was packed — a mix of middle-aged couples seated shoulder to shoulder at the bar and groups of twenty- and thirtysomethings chatting happily as they split a big spread of dishes. The dining room thrummed with upbeat J-pop that made you want to dance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959438\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959438\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: View of a Japanese izakaya from outside the front window. Paper lanterns and flags are hung up both inside and out.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">On weekends, Kinda is open — and lively — until midnight. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kinda has the fun and casual part down, even if it isn’t exactly a cheap restaurant; it’d still be a splurge for most college students schlepping over from Cal’s campus, which is a few blocks away. That said, you can buy a big-ass pitcher of cold beer for $24. And the menu is broad and varied enough to make it just as easy to piece together a tasty meal for about $30 a person as it is to ball out and drop a couple hundred bucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most importantly, the menu runs the gamut of typical izakaya food categories — raw seafood, salads, skewers, fried things, skewers, rice bowls, noodles and more — with enough verve and creativity to keep things interesting. If anything, the menu is so long, and everything sounds so fun, that you might be hit with decision-making panic. “Golden spoons” with ikura, uni and Hokkaido scallops? Grilled beef tongue with ponzu, egg yolk and fresh wasabi? That same tongue served on a curry plate? With sufficient stomach space and a more robust budget, we would have ordered it all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13958926,arts_13957599,arts_13955884']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Most everything we did order hit the spot. There was a block of cold tofu topped with sweet seaweed and salmon roe, equal parts briny and refreshing. There was a big bowl of fried chicken skin (at $10, the deal of the night), as immaculately crunchy as the wonton strips they serve at Americanized Chinese restaurants, which was the ideal match for cold beer. There were hand rolls piled high with grilled eel and ponzu-kissed raw yellowtail. Our favorite was a bowl of udon carbonara topped with bonito flakes and spicy, bright-orange cod roe — a creamy, buttery taste of the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We finished with a grilled rice ball that had been brushed with a sweet soy sauce glaze and cooked over hot charcoal until it was smoky and crunchy and perfectly golden-brown: an elite-tier final bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kinda is also the rare Bay Area restaurant that feels tailor-made for a solo (midnight) diner — where you can swing by after work, grab a seat at the bar, order a couple of cold appetizers and a plate of mentaiko pasta, and feel completely comfortable and unhurried. I think we can all toast to that.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://kindaizakaya.com/\">\u003ci>Kinda Izakaya\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday 5:30–11 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 5:30 p.m.–midnight at 1941 University Ave. in Berkeley.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959437\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959437\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating noodles and sushi hand rolls at a bar counter.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Berkeley’s Kinda Izakaya stands apart from the masses of expensive and overly precious izakayas in the Bay Area. \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>Based on vibes alone, I knew \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/kinda.izakaya/\">Kinda Izakaya\u003c/a> was going to be my kind of spot the moment I walked in. The walls were papered over with manga panels and vintage-y beer posters featuring sumo wrestlers and lucky cats. Yellow Asahi beer crates had been flipped upside down to use as stools. Strings of paper lanterns and colorful little flags gave the feeling of dining outdoors in an alleyway.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I took one whiff of the smoke coming off the charcoal grill, and all of the pleasure receptors in my brain started firing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since last summer, Kinda is Berkeley’s newest izakaya — which, broadly defined, is a kind of Japanese pub that serves food that goes well with beer and sake. It’s one of my favorite restaurant genres. But with a few notable \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/review-abura-ya-a-punk-rock-fried-chicken-pop-up-1/\">exceptions\u003c/a>, Bay Area restaurateurs have tended to reinterpret the izakaya to mean an upscale bar that traffics in $15 meat skewers and stingily-portioned $25 plates of raw fish — and closes well before 10 p.m., as if to add insult to injury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What Kinda seems to understand on a molecular level is that izakaya culture is meant to be fun, a little bit boisterous and very, very casual. The restaurant is open until midnight on weekends, and at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the place was packed — a mix of middle-aged couples seated shoulder to shoulder at the bar and groups of twenty- and thirtysomethings chatting happily as they split a big spread of dishes. The dining room thrummed with upbeat J-pop that made you want to dance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13959438\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13959438\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: View of a Japanese izakaya from outside the front window. Paper lanterns and flags are hung up both inside and out.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/06/kinda-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">On weekends, Kinda is open — and lively — until midnight. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kinda has the fun and casual part down, even if it isn’t exactly a cheap restaurant; it’d still be a splurge for most college students schlepping over from Cal’s campus, which is a few blocks away. That said, you can buy a big-ass pitcher of cold beer for $24. And the menu is broad and varied enough to make it just as easy to piece together a tasty meal for about $30 a person as it is to ball out and drop a couple hundred bucks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most importantly, the menu runs the gamut of typical izakaya food categories — raw seafood, salads, skewers, fried things, skewers, rice bowls, noodles and more — with enough verve and creativity to keep things interesting. If anything, the menu is so long, and everything sounds so fun, that you might be hit with decision-making panic. “Golden spoons” with ikura, uni and Hokkaido scallops? Grilled beef tongue with ponzu, egg yolk and fresh wasabi? That same tongue served on a curry plate? With sufficient stomach space and a more robust budget, we would have ordered it all.\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>Most everything we did order hit the spot. There was a block of cold tofu topped with sweet seaweed and salmon roe, equal parts briny and refreshing. There was a big bowl of fried chicken skin (at $10, the deal of the night), as immaculately crunchy as the wonton strips they serve at Americanized Chinese restaurants, which was the ideal match for cold beer. There were hand rolls piled high with grilled eel and ponzu-kissed raw yellowtail. Our favorite was a bowl of udon carbonara topped with bonito flakes and spicy, bright-orange cod roe — a creamy, buttery taste of the sea.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We finished with a grilled rice ball that had been brushed with a sweet soy sauce glaze and cooked over hot charcoal until it was smoky and crunchy and perfectly golden-brown: an elite-tier final bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kinda is also the rare Bay Area restaurant that feels tailor-made for a solo (midnight) diner — where you can swing by after work, grab a seat at the bar, order a couple of cold appetizers and a plate of mentaiko pasta, and feel completely comfortable and unhurried. I think we can all toast to that.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://kindaizakaya.com/\">\u003ci>Kinda Izakaya\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday 5:30–11 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 5:30 p.m.–midnight at 1941 University Ave. in Berkeley.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958934\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958934\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating a spread of diner food (burger, onion rings, bacon, strawberry pie) while a woman approaches the table carrying more food on a tray.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nation’s hefty cheeseburgers and glistening strawberry pies are classic Bay Area diner food. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, they were joined by guest artist — and longtime Nation’s enthusiast — Briana Loewinsohn. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://nationsrestaurants.com\">Nation’s Giant Hamburgers and Great Pies\u003c/a> probably doesn’t need much of an introduction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Particularly if you grew up in the East Bay, chances are there was one of these fast food diners in or near your hometown. Maybe it was where your family went to grab a quick dinner when no one felt like cooking, or where the Little League coach would bring the team for post-game burgers and shakes. In high school, you might have spent hours there after school, multiple times a week, just shooting the shit with friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for a wide swath of the Bay, the local Nation’s was almost certainly one of the only places in town where you could order a slice of pie or a full breakfast plate at 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when we saw that the chain’s original location in San Pablo is still open 24/7, we knew we had to pay a visit. The restaurant opened in 1952 as a tiny, \u003ca href=\"https://nationsrestaurants.com/our-story\">six-stool hot dog counter\u003c/a> (originally called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Nations-Giant-Hamburgers-East-Bay-16211282.php\">Harvey’s\u003c/a>”). The current, and much larger, iteration of the building sits across the street from the (also 24-hour) San Pablo Lytton Casino, and when you pull up after dark, it looks very much like the image of the quintessential diner that I hold in my mind’s eye: a squat, brick-faced beacon in the night, all aglow with red and white neon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958936\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958936\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The exterior of a Nation's fast food burger restaurant, lit up in neon at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The original San Pablo location of Nation’s is still open 24/7. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On a recent Thursday night, the crowd inside was about 40% young families out late with their kids, 40% chatty high schoolers and 20% very hungry middle-aged men (salute to my people), with their diner breakfast plates \u003ci>and\u003c/i> chili con carne \u003ci>and\u003c/i> banana cream pie spread out on the table like some midcentury still life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than anything, it seemed to be a strictly locals kind of place – Nation’s, as a rule, is not much of a destination restaurant. “I guess you guys are from out of town,” the woman next to us in line said, laughing, not unkindly, when she saw us taking photos of the pie case and gawking at the menu with a little bit too much excitement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If in doubt, you’ll probably just want to order a cheeseburger. So many Bay Area people talk up In-N-Out, our most celebrated SoCal import, that it’s easy to forget that Nation’s is the Bay’s own homegrown — and arguably superior — fast food burger chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Nation’s cheeseburger has its own particular architecture. It has a surprising heft, mostly attributable to the thick, 5-ounce patty, but the main points of distinction are 1) the massive dollop of mayonnaise slathered underneath the patty and 2) the thick rounds of crunchy raw onion that provide a sharp counterpoint to the salty, fatty beef and cheese. (Ignore the wrongheaded people who try to convince you that it’s “too much onion.”) It’s a tasty, well-constructed burger — and if you’re feeling decadent, the fried egg and the uncommonly crispy bacon are both excellent add-ons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13958466,arts_13954597,arts_13956683']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>We found the rest of the menu to be a little bit hit or miss. The fries were mediocre. The onion rings, while piping hot, were crumbly and underseasoned, and fell apart when we tried to eat them. The Oreo milkshake, on the other hand, was fantastic, with the ideal, slurpable thickness. And the classic breakfast plates — available in One-Egger, Two-Egger and Three-Egger permutations — are as solid as they come for an after-midnight breakfast option, with properly runny fried eggs and more of that good bacon (even if the hash browns were a bit pale and limp).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our apologies, though, that we’ve gone this far without talking about Nation’s second biggest claim to fame: its pies.To be more specific, the strawberry pies, which the chain sells each spring and early summer as part of a big seasonal promotion that also features strawberry pancakes, strawberry French toast, strawberry cheesecake and straight-up bowls of strawberries (the quaintest, and most Bay Area, option).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The stunner, though, is the individual-size strawberry tart: a fairly standard pie shell with a mound of whole, fresh strawberries piled probably six inches high, ringed with spray-can whipped cream and coated in goopy red glaze — a pleasing juxtaposition in the way it’s both natural \u003ci>and \u003c/i>unnatural. Despite the glop, the luxuriousness of this Nation’s pie is that you’re essentially just eating a whole pint’s worth of surprisingly sweet, ripe strawberries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I suppose that’s Bay Area diner culture, in a nutshell. And to be able to eat such a pie, and such a burger, at 3 o’clock in the morning? It’s what makes Nation’s a Bay Area classic.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://nationsrestaurants.com/\">\u003ci>Nation’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> has 28 locations in Northern California, mostly concentrated in the East Bay (plus two in Texas). The original San Pablo location at 13296 San Pablo Dam Rd. is open 24/7.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958934\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958934\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating a spread of diner food (burger, onion rings, bacon, strawberry pie) while a woman approaches the table carrying more food on a tray.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_1-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nation’s hefty cheeseburgers and glistening strawberry pies are classic Bay Area diner food. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, they were joined by guest artist — and longtime Nation’s enthusiast — Briana Loewinsohn. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://nationsrestaurants.com\">Nation’s Giant Hamburgers and Great Pies\u003c/a> probably doesn’t need much of an introduction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Particularly if you grew up in the East Bay, chances are there was one of these fast food diners in or near your hometown. Maybe it was where your family went to grab a quick dinner when no one felt like cooking, or where the Little League coach would bring the team for post-game burgers and shakes. In high school, you might have spent hours there after school, multiple times a week, just shooting the shit with friends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for a wide swath of the Bay, the local Nation’s was almost certainly one of the only places in town where you could order a slice of pie or a full breakfast plate at 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when we saw that the chain’s original location in San Pablo is still open 24/7, we knew we had to pay a visit. The restaurant opened in 1952 as a tiny, \u003ca href=\"https://nationsrestaurants.com/our-story\">six-stool hot dog counter\u003c/a> (originally called “\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Nations-Giant-Hamburgers-East-Bay-16211282.php\">Harvey’s\u003c/a>”). The current, and much larger, iteration of the building sits across the street from the (also 24-hour) San Pablo Lytton Casino, and when you pull up after dark, it looks very much like the image of the quintessential diner that I hold in my mind’s eye: a squat, brick-faced beacon in the night, all aglow with red and white neon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958936\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958936\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The exterior of a Nation's fast food burger restaurant, lit up in neon at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nations_2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The original San Pablo location of Nation’s is still open 24/7. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On a recent Thursday night, the crowd inside was about 40% young families out late with their kids, 40% chatty high schoolers and 20% very hungry middle-aged men (salute to my people), with their diner breakfast plates \u003ci>and\u003c/i> chili con carne \u003ci>and\u003c/i> banana cream pie spread out on the table like some midcentury still life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than anything, it seemed to be a strictly locals kind of place – Nation’s, as a rule, is not much of a destination restaurant. “I guess you guys are from out of town,” the woman next to us in line said, laughing, not unkindly, when she saw us taking photos of the pie case and gawking at the menu with a little bit too much excitement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If in doubt, you’ll probably just want to order a cheeseburger. So many Bay Area people talk up In-N-Out, our most celebrated SoCal import, that it’s easy to forget that Nation’s is the Bay’s own homegrown — and arguably superior — fast food burger chain.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A Nation’s cheeseburger has its own particular architecture. It has a surprising heft, mostly attributable to the thick, 5-ounce patty, but the main points of distinction are 1) the massive dollop of mayonnaise slathered underneath the patty and 2) the thick rounds of crunchy raw onion that provide a sharp counterpoint to the salty, fatty beef and cheese. (Ignore the wrongheaded people who try to convince you that it’s “too much onion.”) It’s a tasty, well-constructed burger — and if you’re feeling decadent, the fried egg and the uncommonly crispy bacon are both excellent add-ons.\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>We found the rest of the menu to be a little bit hit or miss. The fries were mediocre. The onion rings, while piping hot, were crumbly and underseasoned, and fell apart when we tried to eat them. The Oreo milkshake, on the other hand, was fantastic, with the ideal, slurpable thickness. And the classic breakfast plates — available in One-Egger, Two-Egger and Three-Egger permutations — are as solid as they come for an after-midnight breakfast option, with properly runny fried eggs and more of that good bacon (even if the hash browns were a bit pale and limp).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our apologies, though, that we’ve gone this far without talking about Nation’s second biggest claim to fame: its pies.To be more specific, the strawberry pies, which the chain sells each spring and early summer as part of a big seasonal promotion that also features strawberry pancakes, strawberry French toast, strawberry cheesecake and straight-up bowls of strawberries (the quaintest, and most Bay Area, option).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The stunner, though, is the individual-size strawberry tart: a fairly standard pie shell with a mound of whole, fresh strawberries piled probably six inches high, ringed with spray-can whipped cream and coated in goopy red glaze — a pleasing juxtaposition in the way it’s both natural \u003ci>and \u003c/i>unnatural. Despite the glop, the luxuriousness of this Nation’s pie is that you’re essentially just eating a whole pint’s worth of surprisingly sweet, ripe strawberries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I suppose that’s Bay Area diner culture, in a nutshell. And to be able to eat such a pie, and such a burger, at 3 o’clock in the morning? It’s what makes Nation’s a Bay Area classic.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://nationsrestaurants.com/\">\u003ci>Nation’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> has 28 locations in Northern California, mostly concentrated in the East Bay (plus two in Texas). The original San Pablo location at 13296 San Pablo Dam Rd. is open 24/7.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958470\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958470\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devour tacos and burritos while pouring hot sauce from squeeze bottles directly into their mouths.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Jose’s La Victoria Taqueria (aka La Vic’s), is famous for its orange sauce — and for feeding hungry college students until 3 a.m. \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’ve never stumbled into \u003ca href=\"https://www.lavicsj.com/\">La Victoria Taqueria\u003c/a> at 2 o’clock in the morning, bleary-eyed and half-starving midway through a six-hour cram session during finals week at San Jose State. Never crushed a plate of carne asada fries, half-drunk, after a night of dancing at Agenda or SJ Live back in the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So my devotion to La Vic’s legendary orange sauce — the creamy, chile-flecked condiment that spawned a hundred imitators — is merely practical rather than religious. I just think it’s one of the most delicious hot sauces in the Bay Area. Almost certainly the most delicious you can get your hands on at 3 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And after our recent late-night visit, I think I understand the hype.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since 1998, the original San Carlos Street location of La Vic’s sits kitty-corner to SJSU’s main campus, inside a cheery, slightly ramshackle old house — like a cartoon Victorian where a child detective goes mystery hunting. The family-owned taqueria offers a very standard college town burrito shop menu: enormously overstuffed tacos and burritos, quesadillas and loaded nachos and fries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only difference is that everywhere you look, there’s orange sauce. Twelve-ounce squeeze bottles on every table, and lined up in the fridge case behind the counter. Multiple orange sauce posters on the walls. College kids — so many college kids, in gym shorts or decked out for a night at the club — ordering extra tubs of orange sauce to go with their takeout burritos. Even the cup for our agua fresca was decorated with a picture of a bottle of orange sauce. (“Orange you glad you tried,” reads the tagline.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958473\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958473\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of La Victoria Taqueria, in an old Victorian house, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The original La Vic’s is located in downtown San Jose, right across the street from San Jose State University. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Look, if we’re being strictly honest, there are plenty of taquerias in San Jose — and all around the Bay — where you can get a tastier, more well-constructed burrito than the ones La Vic’s is rolling out these days. You can find more flavorful carnitas and juicier, less gristly carne asada. There are other restaurants that do a better job of piling meat and cheese on top of French fries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But man does that orange sauce paper over a thousand sins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like any well-guarded family recipe, the actual contents of the sauce are shrouded in secrecy and wild speculation. In \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/07/07/san-jose-orange-sauce-taco-burrito-la-victoria-recipe/\">public interviews\u003c/a>, La Vic’s owners have only revealed a handful of obvious ingredients: garlic, onions, tomatoes, dried red chiles. Meanwhile, orange-sauce conspiracy theorists have long debated the source of the sauce’s telltale creaminess, which has been rumored to come from crushed-up crackers, mayonnaise and even leftover chorizo grease (!). The restaurant, for its part, stresses that the sauce has always been \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/La-Victoria-orange-sauce-is-secret-17081821.php\">100% vegan\u003c/a>. (I, and most \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/SalsaSnobs/comments/191wyaw/update_la_victorias_orange_sauce_aka_san_jose/\">copycat recipes\u003c/a>, suspect the creaminess just comes from emulsified vegetable oil.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13958041,arts_13955884,arts_13954983']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Whatever the secret, La Vic’s orange sauce is delicious. It has a bright, garlicky heat that immediately perks up the palate and a tanginess that keeps it from being overly heavy, making it a natural foil to salty grilled meats. And we loved how the sauce’s slightly dense, creamy texture allows it to cling to surfaces instead of making the food soggy like your typical watery salsa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also figured out how, if you order smartly, you can put together a legitimately solid meal at La Vic’s, even apart from squirting orange sauce onto every bite. First pro tip: It’s the super tacos, not the burritos, that are the star of the menu, especially if you order them with lengua, which is the tastiest and most tender of the meat options. The super tacos feature thick, double-stacked tortillas that the taqueros will crisp up on request, and they’re loaded with guacamole and sour cream, which provide a refreshing tang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Second tip: Don’t sleep on the zippy and criminally underrated green sauce, which some La Vic’s loyalists like even better than the orange sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Third: It’s true that the carne asada fries, which come loaded with steak, nacho cheese, sour cream and guac, are the ideal drunk food. But the fries here aren’t especially crispy, and it’s only a matter of minutes before the whole thing turns into a soggy mess. Consider instead the nachos. They have a much more resilient crunch and are, in my view, the perfect vessel for orange sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unless you count my own cooking, that is. Like so many other La Vic’s initiates, I dropped $8 on a bottle of the sauce to bring home — to test if it does, in fact, taste amazing on everything, like so many of the glowing reviews I’d read. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been putting it on scrambled eggs and homemade carnitas, stirring it into bowls of rice and beans. And it really is true: I haven’t been disappointed yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.lavicsj.com/\">\u003ci>La Victoria Taqueria\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> has six Bay Area locations, mostly in San Jose. The original location at 140 E. San Carlos St. is open from 7 a.m.–3 a.m. daily.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958470\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958470\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devour tacos and burritos while pouring hot sauce from squeeze bottles directly into their mouths.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">San Jose’s La Victoria Taqueria (aka La Vic’s), is famous for its orange sauce — and for feeding hungry college students until 3 a.m. \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’ve never stumbled into \u003ca href=\"https://www.lavicsj.com/\">La Victoria Taqueria\u003c/a> at 2 o’clock in the morning, bleary-eyed and half-starving midway through a six-hour cram session during finals week at San Jose State. Never crushed a plate of carne asada fries, half-drunk, after a night of dancing at Agenda or SJ Live back in the day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So my devotion to La Vic’s legendary orange sauce — the creamy, chile-flecked condiment that spawned a hundred imitators — is merely practical rather than religious. I just think it’s one of the most delicious hot sauces in the Bay Area. Almost certainly the most delicious you can get your hands on at 3 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And after our recent late-night visit, I think I understand the hype.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since 1998, the original San Carlos Street location of La Vic’s sits kitty-corner to SJSU’s main campus, inside a cheery, slightly ramshackle old house — like a cartoon Victorian where a child detective goes mystery hunting. The family-owned taqueria offers a very standard college town burrito shop menu: enormously overstuffed tacos and burritos, quesadillas and loaded nachos and fries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only difference is that everywhere you look, there’s orange sauce. Twelve-ounce squeeze bottles on every table, and lined up in the fridge case behind the counter. Multiple orange sauce posters on the walls. College kids — so many college kids, in gym shorts or decked out for a night at the club — ordering extra tubs of orange sauce to go with their takeout burritos. Even the cup for our agua fresca was decorated with a picture of a bottle of orange sauce. (“Orange you glad you tried,” reads the tagline.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958473\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958473\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of La Victoria Taqueria, in an old Victorian house, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Lavics2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The original La Vic’s is located in downtown San Jose, right across the street from San Jose State University. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Look, if we’re being strictly honest, there are plenty of taquerias in San Jose — and all around the Bay — where you can get a tastier, more well-constructed burrito than the ones La Vic’s is rolling out these days. You can find more flavorful carnitas and juicier, less gristly carne asada. There are other restaurants that do a better job of piling meat and cheese on top of French fries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But man does that orange sauce paper over a thousand sins.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like any well-guarded family recipe, the actual contents of the sauce are shrouded in secrecy and wild speculation. In \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/07/07/san-jose-orange-sauce-taco-burrito-la-victoria-recipe/\">public interviews\u003c/a>, La Vic’s owners have only revealed a handful of obvious ingredients: garlic, onions, tomatoes, dried red chiles. Meanwhile, orange-sauce conspiracy theorists have long debated the source of the sauce’s telltale creaminess, which has been rumored to come from crushed-up crackers, mayonnaise and even leftover chorizo grease (!). The restaurant, for its part, stresses that the sauce has always been \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/La-Victoria-orange-sauce-is-secret-17081821.php\">100% vegan\u003c/a>. (I, and most \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/SalsaSnobs/comments/191wyaw/update_la_victorias_orange_sauce_aka_san_jose/\">copycat recipes\u003c/a>, suspect the creaminess just comes from emulsified vegetable oil.)\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>Whatever the secret, La Vic’s orange sauce is delicious. It has a bright, garlicky heat that immediately perks up the palate and a tanginess that keeps it from being overly heavy, making it a natural foil to salty grilled meats. And we loved how the sauce’s slightly dense, creamy texture allows it to cling to surfaces instead of making the food soggy like your typical watery salsa.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also figured out how, if you order smartly, you can put together a legitimately solid meal at La Vic’s, even apart from squirting orange sauce onto every bite. First pro tip: It’s the super tacos, not the burritos, that are the star of the menu, especially if you order them with lengua, which is the tastiest and most tender of the meat options. The super tacos feature thick, double-stacked tortillas that the taqueros will crisp up on request, and they’re loaded with guacamole and sour cream, which provide a refreshing tang.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Second tip: Don’t sleep on the zippy and criminally underrated green sauce, which some La Vic’s loyalists like even better than the orange sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Third: It’s true that the carne asada fries, which come loaded with steak, nacho cheese, sour cream and guac, are the ideal drunk food. But the fries here aren’t especially crispy, and it’s only a matter of minutes before the whole thing turns into a soggy mess. Consider instead the nachos. They have a much more resilient crunch and are, in my view, the perfect vessel for orange sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unless you count my own cooking, that is. Like so many other La Vic’s initiates, I dropped $8 on a bottle of the sauce to bring home — to test if it does, in fact, taste amazing on everything, like so many of the glowing reviews I’d read. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been putting it on scrambled eggs and homemade carnitas, stirring it into bowls of rice and beans. And it really is true: I haven’t been disappointed yet.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.lavicsj.com/\">\u003ci>La Victoria Taqueria\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> has six Bay Area locations, mostly in San Jose. The original location at 140 E. San Carlos St. is open from 7 a.m.–3 a.m. daily.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "original-joes-westlake-red-sauce-italian-steak-late-night-daly-city",
"title": "Original Joe’s Westlake Is a Time Warp to Red Sauce Heaven",
"publishDate": 1715905147,
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"headTitle": "Original Joe’s Westlake Is a Time Warp to Red Sauce Heaven | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958045\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958045\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1.jpg\" alt=\"Man devouring a steak while sitting at the counter at a restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Original Joe’s Westlake is one of the few places where you can get both good steak *and* red sauce Italian. \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 never ate the old Joe’s of Westlake, which opened in 1956. As far as I can gather, the Italian chop house stayed perfectly frozen in time for nearly six decades — serving the same char-broiled steaks and heaping plates of pasta to multiple generations of Daly City families. Eventually, the restaurant was sold to the owners of the North Beach Original Joe’s, who \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/arcanumarchitecture/p/CxOGBirRWCR/?img_index=1\">lovingly renovated\u003c/a> the place and reopened it \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Joe-s-of-Westlake-returns-in-over-the-top-6838178.php\">to much fanfare\u003c/a> in 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even post-renovation, Original Joe’s Westlake still feels like a bit of a time warp. The handsome, low-slung building, with its neon signage and vaguely space-age, curvilinear architectural design, looks straight out of the ’60s, as do the waiters in tuxedos offering to grind fresh black pepper on your linguine. The whole dining room is full of quaint mid-century details: starburst chandeliers and shiny leather booths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nor has the restaurant’s popularity diminished. Now, as always, Westlake Joe’s at peak dinner hours is one of the hardest reservations to land on the Peninsula. What I like to do, then, is stroll in at around 10 p.m. on a Friday night, an hour before closing, when it’s usually possible to snag one of the swivel seats at the counter without having to wait. (Prior to the pandemic, the restaurant used to stay open until midnight, but we’ll take what we can get.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As grand as the cushy, classic mid-century green leather booths are, the counter spots are the best seats in the house, with their close-up view of the finely orchestrated chaos of the open kitchen: six or seven line cooks standing shoulder to shoulder, cranking out dish after dish with no wasted motion. One of them, a thickly bearded chef in a black headband, handled the charcoal broiler where most of the meat cooks — the heart of the whole operation — all on his own like a magician, tending to the hot coals and nimbly flipping the seven or eight steaks that he had going at once.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958046\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958046\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Red facade of Original Joe's Westlake lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">On weekends, the Westlake location of Original Joe’s is open until 11 p.m. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Original Joe’s is your quintessential birthday/anniversary/Father’s Day kind of restaurant, and when I’ve come for big celebratory dinners, I’ve always gotten the 24-ounce bone-in porterhouse: a richly marbled, special occasion-worthy steak. But for a casual, slip-in-for-a-quick-meal-at-the-bar kind of night, the $32 Steak Ala Bruno (one of the old Joe’s signatures) is more my speed. It’s a 10-ounce flat iron steak marinated in garlic, olive oil and rosemary, then char-broiled to a phenomenally tender, juicy medium-rare. It’s fantastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two of my biggest complaints about the Bay Area dining scene are 1) how few proper steakhouses there are, and 2) how difficult it is to find good red-sauce Italian, which constituted one of the four major food groups of my East Coast upbringing. The beauty of Original Joe’s is that those are precisely the two areas where it excels. You don’t even have to convince your dining partner to go halfsies to have them both in one meal; you just need to opt for the ravioli as your chosen side. Steak \u003ci>and \u003c/i>plump, meat sauce–laden ravioli. Unspeakable luxury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13957599,arts_13956683,arts_13951914']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>There are, of course also pasta entrees, served on comically oversized plates: rich, oozy bricks of lasagna and a child’s Platonic ideal of spaghetti and meatballs (in large enough a portion to feed five children). There’s an unorthodox version of shrimp scampi linguine that comes tossed in a lemony garlic cream sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even when you’re seated at the bar, Original Joe’s offers the kind of impeccable service that feels both understated and a little bit old-fashioned. To start the meal, we’d ordered a Louie salad to share, and without saying anything, our kindly server had the kitchen split it into two bowls, each one piled high with tiny pink bay shrimp and slices of avocado and hard-boiled egg — the kind of small gesture that made us feel well taken care of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking around a happily buzzing dining room, still more than half full well past 10 o’clock, we saw we clearly weren’t the only ones. Maybe my favorite thing about Original Joe’s Westlake is that it’s that rare “fancy” restaurant — along with \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkOZPxo3qPM\">House of Prime Rib\u003c/a> and a handful of others — that feels both timeless and oddly democratic. It’s not an inexpensive restaurant, and there’s an Old World kind of formality to the servers in their black vests and starched white shirts. But you’ll find more diversity here than you will at just about any of the trendy hotspots a couple of miles north in San Francisco — diners of all ages (with the over-80 crowd especially well represented). All ethnicities. Folks in T-shirts and sweatpants and folks in full-on power suits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everyone seemed to be celebrating something. And everyone looked like they were having a good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.originaljoes.com/westlake\">\u003ci>Original Joe’s Westlake\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open until 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The restaurant is located at 11 Glenwood Ave. in Daly City.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "One of the best ways to experience this Daly City classic? Walk up to the counter late at night.",
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"title": "Original Joe’s Westlake Serves Late-Night Italian in Daly City | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958045\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958045\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1.jpg\" alt=\"Man devouring a steak while sitting at the counter at a restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/originsljoes1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Original Joe’s Westlake is one of the few places where you can get both good steak *and* red sauce Italian. \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 never ate the old Joe’s of Westlake, which opened in 1956. As far as I can gather, the Italian chop house stayed perfectly frozen in time for nearly six decades — serving the same char-broiled steaks and heaping plates of pasta to multiple generations of Daly City families. Eventually, the restaurant was sold to the owners of the North Beach Original Joe’s, who \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/arcanumarchitecture/p/CxOGBirRWCR/?img_index=1\">lovingly renovated\u003c/a> the place and reopened it \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Joe-s-of-Westlake-returns-in-over-the-top-6838178.php\">to much fanfare\u003c/a> in 2016.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But even post-renovation, Original Joe’s Westlake still feels like a bit of a time warp. The handsome, low-slung building, with its neon signage and vaguely space-age, curvilinear architectural design, looks straight out of the ’60s, as do the waiters in tuxedos offering to grind fresh black pepper on your linguine. The whole dining room is full of quaint mid-century details: starburst chandeliers and shiny leather booths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nor has the restaurant’s popularity diminished. Now, as always, Westlake Joe’s at peak dinner hours is one of the hardest reservations to land on the Peninsula. What I like to do, then, is stroll in at around 10 p.m. on a Friday night, an hour before closing, when it’s usually possible to snag one of the swivel seats at the counter without having to wait. (Prior to the pandemic, the restaurant used to stay open until midnight, but we’ll take what we can get.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As grand as the cushy, classic mid-century green leather booths are, the counter spots are the best seats in the house, with their close-up view of the finely orchestrated chaos of the open kitchen: six or seven line cooks standing shoulder to shoulder, cranking out dish after dish with no wasted motion. One of them, a thickly bearded chef in a black headband, handled the charcoal broiler where most of the meat cooks — the heart of the whole operation — all on his own like a magician, tending to the hot coals and nimbly flipping the seven or eight steaks that he had going at once.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13958046\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13958046\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Red facade of Original Joe's Westlake lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/original-joe2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">On weekends, the Westlake location of Original Joe’s is open until 11 p.m. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Original Joe’s is your quintessential birthday/anniversary/Father’s Day kind of restaurant, and when I’ve come for big celebratory dinners, I’ve always gotten the 24-ounce bone-in porterhouse: a richly marbled, special occasion-worthy steak. But for a casual, slip-in-for-a-quick-meal-at-the-bar kind of night, the $32 Steak Ala Bruno (one of the old Joe’s signatures) is more my speed. It’s a 10-ounce flat iron steak marinated in garlic, olive oil and rosemary, then char-broiled to a phenomenally tender, juicy medium-rare. It’s fantastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Two of my biggest complaints about the Bay Area dining scene are 1) how few proper steakhouses there are, and 2) how difficult it is to find good red-sauce Italian, which constituted one of the four major food groups of my East Coast upbringing. The beauty of Original Joe’s is that those are precisely the two areas where it excels. You don’t even have to convince your dining partner to go halfsies to have them both in one meal; you just need to opt for the ravioli as your chosen side. Steak \u003ci>and \u003c/i>plump, meat sauce–laden ravioli. Unspeakable luxury.\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>There are, of course also pasta entrees, served on comically oversized plates: rich, oozy bricks of lasagna and a child’s Platonic ideal of spaghetti and meatballs (in large enough a portion to feed five children). There’s an unorthodox version of shrimp scampi linguine that comes tossed in a lemony garlic cream sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even when you’re seated at the bar, Original Joe’s offers the kind of impeccable service that feels both understated and a little bit old-fashioned. To start the meal, we’d ordered a Louie salad to share, and without saying anything, our kindly server had the kitchen split it into two bowls, each one piled high with tiny pink bay shrimp and slices of avocado and hard-boiled egg — the kind of small gesture that made us feel well taken care of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Looking around a happily buzzing dining room, still more than half full well past 10 o’clock, we saw we clearly weren’t the only ones. Maybe my favorite thing about Original Joe’s Westlake is that it’s that rare “fancy” restaurant — along with \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkOZPxo3qPM\">House of Prime Rib\u003c/a> and a handful of others — that feels both timeless and oddly democratic. It’s not an inexpensive restaurant, and there’s an Old World kind of formality to the servers in their black vests and starched white shirts. But you’ll find more diversity here than you will at just about any of the trendy hotspots a couple of miles north in San Francisco — diners of all ages (with the over-80 crowd especially well represented). All ethnicities. Folks in T-shirts and sweatpants and folks in full-on power suits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everyone seemed to be celebrating something. And everyone looked like they were having a good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.originaljoes.com/westlake\">\u003ci>Original Joe’s Westlake\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open until 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and until 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. The restaurant is located at 11 Glenwood Ave. in Daly City.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "late-night-thai-food-dessert-sf-ping-yang",
"title": "This Cozy Thai Cafe Serves Eye-Popping Desserts Until Midnight",
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"headTitle": "This Cozy Thai Cafe Serves Eye-Popping Desserts Until Midnight | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957597\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957597\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eat noodles and Thai desserts with an animalistic fervor.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The charms of Ping Yang Thai Grill & Dessert are at least twofold: homey Thai noodles and rice dishes, and over-the-top Asian desserts. \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 the most charming restaurants I’ve been to in San Francisco is a little Thai cafe that sits on a relatively unobtrusive street corner in Lower Nob Hill, stays open until midnight every night, and serves a menu that’s equal parts impeccable Thai home cooking and gloriously over-the-top desserts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s only the beginning of the pleasures that \u003ca href=\"https://www.pingyangthaigrilldessert.com/\">Ping Yang Thai Grill & Dessert\u003c/a> has to offer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant has a cozy, lived-in quality. The walls are lined with succulents, climbing vine plants and other assorted greenery. The steady stream of guitar-driven Thai pop-rock that plays over the speakers was catchy enough to get my head bopping. A small bookshelf is stocked with the same mix of slightly random reading material you might find in a friend’s living room: \u003ci>Harry Potter\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Catcher in the Rye\u003c/i>, some test prep workbooks, the Thai translation of the \u003ci>Detective Conan\u003c/i> manga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The menu, too, is optimized with an eye toward homey comfort. Which isn’t to say that the cooking is uninteresting or unambitious. In fact, Ping Yang serves a whole slew of dishes that I rarely see at other Thai restaurants in the Bay Area, like fried silkworms and mok pla — a Lao dish that consists of catfish steamed inside a banana leaf. This is, after all, the kind of Thai restaurant that has a specials board handwritten in Thai, with no translation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ping Yang also serves one of the most ubiquitous home-cooked Thai dishes that you’ll only occasionally find at a restaurant: a Thai omelet. This is one of my all-time favorite egg dishes (which, coming from an egg-obsessed person, says a lot) — essentially just egg and fish sauce, whisked together and fried quickly in a hot wok until it’s puffed up and golden-brown. Served over a plate of hot jasmine rice, Ping Yang’s herb-flecked version is simple and supremely comforting, especially when doctored with a few dabs of Sriracha. Left to my own devices, I would happily eat this twice a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a similar comfort food vein: the restaurant’s pad see ew, which, by contrast, is a dish you can find at practically every Thai restaurant in the U.S. But I was enamored with Ping Yang’s homey, oil-slicked version of the dish, which was loaded with vegetables and full of umami without being overly salty. It didn’t hurt that I ordered the version with pork jowl, a luxurious, underrated cut that gives you a little of the fattiness of the belly with a nice, crisp, cartilaginous chew. After applying a few liberal drops of prik nam som (chili vinegar) from the condiment caddy, we inhaled this dish in a matter of minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Again, this is restaurant-quality food cooked with light enough a touch that I could easily imagine myself eating here multiple times a week if I lived in the neighborhood — especially with so much of the menu left to explore, and many of the dishes priced at $15 or less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957596\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957596\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant at nighttime — the sign reads \"Ping Yang.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in Lower Nob Hill, the restaurant is open until midnight every night. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, I would come even if the food were only half as good, because the vibe at Ping Yang is just so pleasant, welcoming and chill. Half the people who came in during our visit seemed to be regulars or personal friends of the owners, and no one seemed to be in any particular rush. At around 10 o’clock on a Thursday night, a couple of thirtysomething Thai dudes had their laptops out, sipping cold Thai lagers while they worked on a project. Others came in after dinner elsewhere just to share a dessert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The service, meanwhile, was friendly without being overly familiar. I especially appreciated the conviction with which our server delivered her recommendations when we asked for them. “The pad see ew is my favorite,” she said without a moment’s hesitation when we asked about the noodle dishes. And later, when it was time for dessert, she once again spoke, with absolute certainty, in favor of the watermelon bing soo.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13954983,arts_13953702,arts_13952823']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Ah yes, dessert. Can I speak for a moment on how dispiriting I have found it, personally, that there aren’t more dessert shops in the Bay Area open past, say, 9 o’clock? The struggle is real, and if you’ve felt it too, I am here to tell you that Ping Yang is the solution to your woes: It serves a vast Thai and pan-Asian dessert menu until midnight every night. In contrast to the homey, simple quality of the savory foods, the desserts are elaborate and over-the-top in a way that feels made for Instagram — but \u003ci>also \u003c/i>entirely delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are Hong Kong–style toast boxes filled to overflowing with ube ice cream, whipped cream and all manner of fresh fruits. There are variations on the Thai-style dessert rotis that are wildly popular at night markets all across Asia. The banana roti we tried was a deconstructed version — crispy roti wedges piled on a plate and topped with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and condensed milk, with a stack of banana slices arranged neatly on the side. You assemble each perfect bite yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for that watermelon bing soo? It was fully half of a small, sweet watermelon, served with the carved-out balls of its flesh piled high inside the rind itself. Layered inside was the bing soo, or shaved ice, itself — mixed with condensed milk and shaved so finely that for the first several bites I was convinced it was ice cream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s just say the recommendation didn’t miss: This was the tastiest, most refreshing dessert I’d eaten in months.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pingyangsf/\">\u003ci>Ping Yang Grill & Dessert\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Saturday from noon–3 p.m. and 5 p.m.–midnight, and Sunday 5 p.m.–midnight at 955 Larkin St. in San Francisco.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Ping Yang Thai Grill & Dessert is a late-night comfort food oasis in SF.",
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"title": "This Late-Night Thai Restaurant in SF Serves Dessert Until Midnight | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957597\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957597\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eat noodles and Thai desserts with an animalistic fervor.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Ping-Yang-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The charms of Ping Yang Thai Grill & Dessert are at least twofold: homey Thai noodles and rice dishes, and over-the-top Asian desserts. \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 the most charming restaurants I’ve been to in San Francisco is a little Thai cafe that sits on a relatively unobtrusive street corner in Lower Nob Hill, stays open until midnight every night, and serves a menu that’s equal parts impeccable Thai home cooking and gloriously over-the-top desserts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And that’s only the beginning of the pleasures that \u003ca href=\"https://www.pingyangthaigrilldessert.com/\">Ping Yang Thai Grill & Dessert\u003c/a> has to offer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant has a cozy, lived-in quality. The walls are lined with succulents, climbing vine plants and other assorted greenery. The steady stream of guitar-driven Thai pop-rock that plays over the speakers was catchy enough to get my head bopping. A small bookshelf is stocked with the same mix of slightly random reading material you might find in a friend’s living room: \u003ci>Harry Potter\u003c/i>, \u003ci>The Catcher in the Rye\u003c/i>, some test prep workbooks, the Thai translation of the \u003ci>Detective Conan\u003c/i> manga.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The menu, too, is optimized with an eye toward homey comfort. Which isn’t to say that the cooking is uninteresting or unambitious. In fact, Ping Yang serves a whole slew of dishes that I rarely see at other Thai restaurants in the Bay Area, like fried silkworms and mok pla — a Lao dish that consists of catfish steamed inside a banana leaf. This is, after all, the kind of Thai restaurant that has a specials board handwritten in Thai, with no translation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ping Yang also serves one of the most ubiquitous home-cooked Thai dishes that you’ll only occasionally find at a restaurant: a Thai omelet. This is one of my all-time favorite egg dishes (which, coming from an egg-obsessed person, says a lot) — essentially just egg and fish sauce, whisked together and fried quickly in a hot wok until it’s puffed up and golden-brown. Served over a plate of hot jasmine rice, Ping Yang’s herb-flecked version is simple and supremely comforting, especially when doctored with a few dabs of Sriracha. Left to my own devices, I would happily eat this twice a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a similar comfort food vein: the restaurant’s pad see ew, which, by contrast, is a dish you can find at practically every Thai restaurant in the U.S. But I was enamored with Ping Yang’s homey, oil-slicked version of the dish, which was loaded with vegetables and full of umami without being overly salty. It didn’t hurt that I ordered the version with pork jowl, a luxurious, underrated cut that gives you a little of the fattiness of the belly with a nice, crisp, cartilaginous chew. After applying a few liberal drops of prik nam som (chili vinegar) from the condiment caddy, we inhaled this dish in a matter of minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Again, this is restaurant-quality food cooked with light enough a touch that I could easily imagine myself eating here multiple times a week if I lived in the neighborhood — especially with so much of the menu left to explore, and many of the dishes priced at $15 or less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957596\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957596\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant at nighttime — the sign reads \"Ping Yang.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/pin-yang-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in Lower Nob Hill, the restaurant is open until midnight every night. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Truth be told, I would come even if the food were only half as good, because the vibe at Ping Yang is just so pleasant, welcoming and chill. Half the people who came in during our visit seemed to be regulars or personal friends of the owners, and no one seemed to be in any particular rush. At around 10 o’clock on a Thursday night, a couple of thirtysomething Thai dudes had their laptops out, sipping cold Thai lagers while they worked on a project. Others came in after dinner elsewhere just to share a dessert.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The service, meanwhile, was friendly without being overly familiar. I especially appreciated the conviction with which our server delivered her recommendations when we asked for them. “The pad see ew is my favorite,” she said without a moment’s hesitation when we asked about the noodle dishes. And later, when it was time for dessert, she once again spoke, with absolute certainty, in favor of the watermelon bing soo.\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>Ah yes, dessert. Can I speak for a moment on how dispiriting I have found it, personally, that there aren’t more dessert shops in the Bay Area open past, say, 9 o’clock? The struggle is real, and if you’ve felt it too, I am here to tell you that Ping Yang is the solution to your woes: It serves a vast Thai and pan-Asian dessert menu until midnight every night. In contrast to the homey, simple quality of the savory foods, the desserts are elaborate and over-the-top in a way that feels made for Instagram — but \u003ci>also \u003c/i>entirely delicious.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are Hong Kong–style toast boxes filled to overflowing with ube ice cream, whipped cream and all manner of fresh fruits. There are variations on the Thai-style dessert rotis that are wildly popular at night markets all across Asia. The banana roti we tried was a deconstructed version — crispy roti wedges piled on a plate and topped with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and condensed milk, with a stack of banana slices arranged neatly on the side. You assemble each perfect bite yourself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for that watermelon bing soo? It was fully half of a small, sweet watermelon, served with the carved-out balls of its flesh piled high inside the rind itself. Layered inside was the bing soo, or shaved ice, itself — mixed with condensed milk and shaved so finely that for the first several bites I was convinced it was ice cream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s just say the recommendation didn’t miss: This was the tastiest, most refreshing dessert I’d eaten in months.\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/pingyangsf/\">\u003ci>Ping Yang Grill & Dessert\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Saturday from noon–3 p.m. and 5 p.m.–midnight, and Sunday 5 p.m.–midnight at 955 Larkin St. in San Francisco.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "late-night-japanese-whisky-highball-karaage-sunnyvale-nokori",
"title": "Sunnyvale’s Secret Japanese Whisky Bar Serves Killer Late-Night Karaage",
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"headTitle": "Sunnyvale’s Secret Japanese Whisky Bar Serves Killer Late-Night Karaage | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957148\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957148\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a man shovels scallops into his mouth while sitting at an elegant bar. On the counter are tidy lobster sandwiches and fizzy cocktails in highball glasses.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nokori is a Japanese whisky highball bar hidden inside Sunnyvale’s TETRA Hotel. \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>Here in the Bay Area, the search for late-night food is mostly a matter of excavating the unexpected gems that are hiding in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To wit: In order to get to \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/nokori-sunnyvale\">Nokori\u003c/a>, an elegant Japanese whisky bar in Sunnyvale that most Sunnyvaleans haven’t even heard of, you first have to navigate the city’s maze of identical high-tech office parks. Sandwiched between a couple of these anonymous tech campuses sits a \u003ca href=\"https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/sjcva-tetra-hotel-autograph-collection/overview/\">stylish boutique hotel\u003c/a>. And inside that hotel, after you walk through the cool, minimalistic lobby, past the shiny gold leaves dangling from the ceiling, you’ll spot this very chic, very Japanese little cocktail bar — with room for no more than seven or eight people at the counter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we sidled up to that counter at around 10 o’clock on a recent Friday, there was only one other gentleman there, nursing a cocktail and watching the Japanese F1 race on the TV with the volume turned off. So it really felt like we had stumbled on a secret spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we had come because we’d heard Nokori was open until midnight every night, and that it served a concise, appealing menu of fancy izakaya-style small plates until the kitchen did its last call at 11. And also because the bar specializes in the Japanese whisky highball, which happens to be my favorite drink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A basic highball is just Japanese whisky, soda water and ice, but Nokori is one of a handful of bars around the Bay Area that has installed a \u003ca href=\"https://punchdrink.com/articles/toki-japanese-whisky-highball-machine-has-been-hacked/\">special soda dispenser\u003c/a> from Japan that makes the soda water extra-extra fizzy — so much so that the bubbles look visibly angry. The bar serves a whopping nine different highballs, and it uses the expensive kind of ice that’s just one long, perfectly clear cuboid in your glass. All of which to say: My yuzu highball was fantastic. Cold and refreshing as could be. Subtly citrusy. Sneakily strong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957149\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957149\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: An elegant hotel lobby with modern, minimalist couches and an elegant bar at one end of the room, with sparkly gold leaves dangling from the ceiling.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">For late-night diners looking for a more quiet and chill experience. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It was the food, however, that will bring me back. We ordered torched Hokkaido scallops that were served in a style you might expect to find at one of the Bay Area’s buzzier, Asian-inflected fine dining restaurants. The mostly raw scallops had a zippy leche de tigre dressing and were artfully garnished with algae, rice puffs and briny sea grapes that burst in your mouth — a fun pop-and-crunch effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13956683,arts_13955884,arts_13954112']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>I also had one of the tastiest versions of Japanese karaage-style fried chicken that I’ve eaten in months — just impeccably crispy, well-seasoned and juicy thighs, no bells and whistles other than the little bowl of watery onion salsa that you could spoon over the chicken for a bit of brightness. And, perhaps most decadently, there were furikake-topped lobster grilled cheese sandwiches, served on bouncy Japanese milk bread. (Could I \u003ci>really\u003c/i> taste that it was lobster, instead of some less rarefied protein, under all that cheese? Maybe not. But I did want to dunk everything on the table into the savory miso aioli that came with the sandwich.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No surprise, all those small plates can add up to a bit of a hefty bill if you’re eating \u003ci>dinner\u003c/i> dinner. But for a fancy late-night snack at the bar? Considering that we were the only people ordering food at that hour, everything was so much more ambitious and better-tasting than it really needed to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many of the Bay Area’s other after-hours spots are notable because of how crowded and bustling they are even late into the night, but Nokori’s virtues run in the opposite direction, appealing to anyone looking for a more chill and quiet late-night experience. This is the kind of elegant hotel bar where you might imagine yourself striking up a conversation with a beautiful stranger, or maybe your side-piece — or, if luck isn’t on your side, a couple of unkempt food writer types.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tetrahotelsv.com/dining/nokori/\">\u003ci>Nokori\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open daily from 3 p.m. to midnight inside TETRA Hotel (400 W. Java Dr., Sunnyvale); the kitchen is open 4–11 p.m. If you park in the hotel parking garage, Nokori will validate your parking.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Nokori's highballs and Japanese small plates are some of the South Bay’s best-kept secrets.",
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"title": "Sunnyvale’s Secret Japanese Whisky Bar Serves Killer Late-Night Karaage | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957148\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957148\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a man shovels scallops into his mouth while sitting at an elegant bar. On the counter are tidy lobster sandwiches and fizzy cocktails in highball glasses.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Nokori is a Japanese whisky highball bar hidden inside Sunnyvale’s TETRA Hotel. \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>Here in the Bay Area, the search for late-night food is mostly a matter of excavating the unexpected gems that are hiding in plain sight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To wit: In order to get to \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/nokori-sunnyvale\">Nokori\u003c/a>, an elegant Japanese whisky bar in Sunnyvale that most Sunnyvaleans haven’t even heard of, you first have to navigate the city’s maze of identical high-tech office parks. Sandwiched between a couple of these anonymous tech campuses sits a \u003ca href=\"https://www.marriott.com/en-us/hotels/sjcva-tetra-hotel-autograph-collection/overview/\">stylish boutique hotel\u003c/a>. And inside that hotel, after you walk through the cool, minimalistic lobby, past the shiny gold leaves dangling from the ceiling, you’ll spot this very chic, very Japanese little cocktail bar — with room for no more than seven or eight people at the counter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When we sidled up to that counter at around 10 o’clock on a recent Friday, there was only one other gentleman there, nursing a cocktail and watching the Japanese F1 race on the TV with the volume turned off. So it really felt like we had stumbled on a secret spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we had come because we’d heard Nokori was open until midnight every night, and that it served a concise, appealing menu of fancy izakaya-style small plates until the kitchen did its last call at 11. And also because the bar specializes in the Japanese whisky highball, which happens to be my favorite drink.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A basic highball is just Japanese whisky, soda water and ice, but Nokori is one of a handful of bars around the Bay Area that has installed a \u003ca href=\"https://punchdrink.com/articles/toki-japanese-whisky-highball-machine-has-been-hacked/\">special soda dispenser\u003c/a> from Japan that makes the soda water extra-extra fizzy — so much so that the bubbles look visibly angry. The bar serves a whopping nine different highballs, and it uses the expensive kind of ice that’s just one long, perfectly clear cuboid in your glass. All of which to say: My yuzu highball was fantastic. Cold and refreshing as could be. Subtly citrusy. Sneakily strong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13957149\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13957149\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: An elegant hotel lobby with modern, minimalist couches and an elegant bar at one end of the room, with sparkly gold leaves dangling from the ceiling.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/05/Nokori-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">For late-night diners looking for a more quiet and chill experience. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>It was the food, however, that will bring me back. We ordered torched Hokkaido scallops that were served in a style you might expect to find at one of the Bay Area’s buzzier, Asian-inflected fine dining restaurants. The mostly raw scallops had a zippy leche de tigre dressing and were artfully garnished with algae, rice puffs and briny sea grapes that burst in your mouth — a fun pop-and-crunch effect.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>I also had one of the tastiest versions of Japanese karaage-style fried chicken that I’ve eaten in months — just impeccably crispy, well-seasoned and juicy thighs, no bells and whistles other than the little bowl of watery onion salsa that you could spoon over the chicken for a bit of brightness. And, perhaps most decadently, there were furikake-topped lobster grilled cheese sandwiches, served on bouncy Japanese milk bread. (Could I \u003ci>really\u003c/i> taste that it was lobster, instead of some less rarefied protein, under all that cheese? Maybe not. But I did want to dunk everything on the table into the savory miso aioli that came with the sandwich.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>No surprise, all those small plates can add up to a bit of a hefty bill if you’re eating \u003ci>dinner\u003c/i> dinner. But for a fancy late-night snack at the bar? Considering that we were the only people ordering food at that hour, everything was so much more ambitious and better-tasting than it really needed to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So many of the Bay Area’s other after-hours spots are notable because of how crowded and bustling they are even late into the night, but Nokori’s virtues run in the opposite direction, appealing to anyone looking for a more chill and quiet late-night experience. This is the kind of elegant hotel bar where you might imagine yourself striking up a conversation with a beautiful stranger, or maybe your side-piece — or, if luck isn’t on your side, a couple of unkempt food writer types.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tetrahotelsv.com/dining/nokori/\">\u003ci>Nokori\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open daily from 3 p.m. to midnight inside TETRA Hotel (400 W. Java Dr., Sunnyvale); the kitchen is open 4–11 p.m. If you park in the hotel parking garage, Nokori will validate your parking.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Bay Area’s Great American Diner Is a 24-Hour Filipino Casino Restaurant",
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"headTitle": "The Bay Area’s Great American Diner Is a 24-Hour Filipino Casino Restaurant | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956692\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956692\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration of three men devouring halo-halo and other Filipino food at a diner counter.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located inside Lucky Chances Casino in Colma, Cafe Colma serves tasty Filipino dishes 24/7. \u003ccite>(Raynato Castro)\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 artist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week’s guest artist is local dentist (and \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13915387/amateur-bbq-competition-comic-dentist-pleasant-hill\">\u003ci>barbecue champion\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>) Raynato Castro.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Generally speaking, there are two types of people in the Bay Area. Those who have never been to our region’s only 24-hour Filipino restaurant. And those for whom \u003ca href=\"https://www.luckychances.com/dining.aspx\">Cafe Colma\u003c/a> — the frenetic, perpetually crowded diner located inside the Lucky Chances Casino — is nothing short of a local icon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To put it this way: Ever since we started this project, I’ve been jonesing for the kind of nostalgic late-night diner that I grew up loving on the East Coast. You know the kind, with the laminated placemat menus, the milkshakes and Monte Cristos, and endless 24-hour breakfast options that hit just right at 2 a.m. Who knew the closest thing to capturing that vibe would be this Filipino casino cafe?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like any proper diner, Cafe Colma is the place you’d go for brunch with your mom and your siblings, or where the entire extended family might swing by after picking someone up from SFO. It’s also the last stop you’d make after a long night of dancing and/or drunken foolishness — for local Filipinos, that might be after the Asian rave lets out at Temple Nightclub (which is closing soon, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/soma-nightclub-permanently-close-19398549.php\">R.I.P.\u003c/a>). It’s no coincidence that the lines at the restaurant hit their peak at around 2 or 3 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was only about a 15-minute wait when we rolled in at around 11 o’clock on a recent Friday night, which gave us time to walk around the card room proper, with its bright lights, solemn pai gow tables and 90% Asian crowd. Every so often, a bleary-eyed poker player would turn around and inhale several spoonfuls of fried rice from the little wheeled cart placed next to the table for that purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Viewed in that light, the existence of Cafe Colma is purely practical: fuel to keep the most degenerate gamblers going deep into the night. But if we came in expecting a meal of cheap, okay-enough carbs, what we found instead was surprisingly homey and comforting food — and, honestly, the most enjoyable Filipino meal we’d had in months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956693\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956693\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4.jpg\" alt=\"In a brightly lit casino room, players sit around a card table. One is eating fried rice off of a little cart behind him.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">You can eat garlic fried rice while you’re gambling. \u003ccite>(Raynato Castro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The menu is equal parts Chinese, Filipino and diner-style American, so whether you’re craving pancakes, prime rib or stir-fried bitter melon with scrambled eggs, Cafe Colma has got you covered. At its heart, though, this is a Filipino spot. When we ordered way too much from that section of the menu, we were rewarded with hit after hit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The be-all and end-all is the kare-kare, a version of the classic oxtail and peanut sauce dish that tasted like someone’s grandma made it. The oxtails and beef tripe were impossibly tender and savory, bathed in a creamy peanut sauce that’s spiked with salty, pungent bagoong (fermented shrimp paste) for extra oomph. If you’re a lover of soft, squishy foods — of picking up bones and sucking them clean — this is your Platonic ideal of a dish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13955884,arts_13956218,arts_13953224']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Filipino food is a perfect late-night food because it’s cuisine that understands how to use vinegar to cut into a heavy meal of fried meats. All told, we must have had at least three or four different vinegars on the table. There was a pink one to dress the tokwa’t baboy, a very Filipino “salad” of sorts, made up of boiled pig ears and fried tofu. And then two different vinegar-based sauces for the crispy pata — a positively prehistoric-looking pork leg with the kind of thick, impeccably crunchy skin that every serious pork lover craves. We made quick work of the pata with our bare hands, but the sauces were what made the dish: the bright and spicy vinegar spiked with chilies and raw garlic, and the thicker one that was earthy and slightly sweet, made with pork liver.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we couldn’t leave without trying two of Cafe Colma’s most famous signatures — first, its buttery silogs, or garlic rice breakfast plates, served with fried eggs and your choice of meat. We opted for a surf-and-turf combination of bangus (aka milkfish) and pork chop, and both were fried to juicy, full-flavored perfection. Finally, to finish, who could resist the siren call of ube ice cream–topped halo-halo served in big sundae cups, especially when offered to us after midnight? “You’d better make that two orders,” we said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I used to be one of those food purists who believed that there was some objective measure of deliciousness you could use to judge restaurants, and that nothing else particularly mattered — not the atmosphere or the service or the time of day. But look: There are other Filipino restaurants that serve fried pork and garlic rice that’s better, or at least as good, as Cafe Colma’s. But sitting there at the counter as we spooned up the last bits of red bean and condensed milk from our halo-halo, a little drunk on nostalgia and the prospect of hitting a lucky run at the blackjack table, that prospect was hard to imagine.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.luckychances.com/dining.aspx\">\u003ci>Cafe Colma\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 24/7 inside \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/luckychancescasino/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Lucky Chances Casino\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> at 1700 Hillside Blvd. in Colma.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956692\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956692\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration of three men devouring halo-halo and other Filipino food at a diner counter.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Cafe-Colma-Eating-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located inside Lucky Chances Casino in Colma, Cafe Colma serves tasty Filipino dishes 24/7. \u003ccite>(Raynato Castro)\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 artist Thien Pham. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week’s guest artist is local dentist (and \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13915387/amateur-bbq-competition-comic-dentist-pleasant-hill\">\u003ci>barbecue champion\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>) Raynato Castro.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Generally speaking, there are two types of people in the Bay Area. Those who have never been to our region’s only 24-hour Filipino restaurant. And those for whom \u003ca href=\"https://www.luckychances.com/dining.aspx\">Cafe Colma\u003c/a> — the frenetic, perpetually crowded diner located inside the Lucky Chances Casino — is nothing short of a local icon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To put it this way: Ever since we started this project, I’ve been jonesing for the kind of nostalgic late-night diner that I grew up loving on the East Coast. You know the kind, with the laminated placemat menus, the milkshakes and Monte Cristos, and endless 24-hour breakfast options that hit just right at 2 a.m. Who knew the closest thing to capturing that vibe would be this Filipino casino cafe?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like any proper diner, Cafe Colma is the place you’d go for brunch with your mom and your siblings, or where the entire extended family might swing by after picking someone up from SFO. It’s also the last stop you’d make after a long night of dancing and/or drunken foolishness — for local Filipinos, that might be after the Asian rave lets out at Temple Nightclub (which is closing soon, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/soma-nightclub-permanently-close-19398549.php\">R.I.P.\u003c/a>). It’s no coincidence that the lines at the restaurant hit their peak at around 2 or 3 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There was only about a 15-minute wait when we rolled in at around 11 o’clock on a recent Friday night, which gave us time to walk around the card room proper, with its bright lights, solemn pai gow tables and 90% Asian crowd. Every so often, a bleary-eyed poker player would turn around and inhale several spoonfuls of fried rice from the little wheeled cart placed next to the table for that purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Viewed in that light, the existence of Cafe Colma is purely practical: fuel to keep the most degenerate gamblers going deep into the night. But if we came in expecting a meal of cheap, okay-enough carbs, what we found instead was surprisingly homey and comforting food — and, honestly, the most enjoyable Filipino meal we’d had in months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13956693\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13956693\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4.jpg\" alt=\"In a brightly lit casino room, players sit around a card table. One is eating fried rice off of a little cart behind him.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/Lucky-Chances-Card-Room-v4-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">You can eat garlic fried rice while you’re gambling. \u003ccite>(Raynato Castro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The menu is equal parts Chinese, Filipino and diner-style American, so whether you’re craving pancakes, prime rib or stir-fried bitter melon with scrambled eggs, Cafe Colma has got you covered. At its heart, though, this is a Filipino spot. When we ordered way too much from that section of the menu, we were rewarded with hit after hit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The be-all and end-all is the kare-kare, a version of the classic oxtail and peanut sauce dish that tasted like someone’s grandma made it. The oxtails and beef tripe were impossibly tender and savory, bathed in a creamy peanut sauce that’s spiked with salty, pungent bagoong (fermented shrimp paste) for extra oomph. If you’re a lover of soft, squishy foods — of picking up bones and sucking them clean — this is your Platonic ideal of a dish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Filipino food is a perfect late-night food because it’s cuisine that understands how to use vinegar to cut into a heavy meal of fried meats. All told, we must have had at least three or four different vinegars on the table. There was a pink one to dress the tokwa’t baboy, a very Filipino “salad” of sorts, made up of boiled pig ears and fried tofu. And then two different vinegar-based sauces for the crispy pata — a positively prehistoric-looking pork leg with the kind of thick, impeccably crunchy skin that every serious pork lover craves. We made quick work of the pata with our bare hands, but the sauces were what made the dish: the bright and spicy vinegar spiked with chilies and raw garlic, and the thicker one that was earthy and slightly sweet, made with pork liver.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we couldn’t leave without trying two of Cafe Colma’s most famous signatures — first, its buttery silogs, or garlic rice breakfast plates, served with fried eggs and your choice of meat. We opted for a surf-and-turf combination of bangus (aka milkfish) and pork chop, and both were fried to juicy, full-flavored perfection. Finally, to finish, who could resist the siren call of ube ice cream–topped halo-halo served in big sundae cups, especially when offered to us after midnight? “You’d better make that two orders,” we said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I used to be one of those food purists who believed that there was some objective measure of deliciousness you could use to judge restaurants, and that nothing else particularly mattered — not the atmosphere or the service or the time of day. But look: There are other Filipino restaurants that serve fried pork and garlic rice that’s better, or at least as good, as Cafe Colma’s. But sitting there at the counter as we spooned up the last bits of red bean and condensed milk from our halo-halo, a little drunk on nostalgia and the prospect of hitting a lucky run at the blackjack table, that prospect was hard to imagine.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.luckychances.com/dining.aspx\">\u003ci>Cafe Colma\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 24/7 inside \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/luckychancescasino/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Lucky Chances Casino\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> at 1700 Hillside Blvd. in Colma.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
"title": "Radiolab",
"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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},
"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"order": 16
},
"link": "/podcasts/rightnowish",
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