The Midnight Diners 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 North Bay Taqueria Is Your New Destination for Late-Night Fried Fish Tacos
Santa Clara’s Tastiest Charcoal-Grilled Korean Barbecue Spot Stays Open Until Midnight
Harry’s Hofbrau Is a Late-Night Throwback for $20 Steak Dinners
In Oakland, This Nigerian Spot Serves Amazing Late-Night Oxtails and Jollof Rice
SF’s Most Legendary Chicken Phở Is Now Available Until 3 a.m.
Revisiting Smokehouse, a Berkeley Classic for Late-Night Burgers and Shakes
This Gas Station Food Truck Serves Amazing Kyrgyz Street Food in Santa Clara
An East Bay Newcomer Slings Hand-Pulled Noodles and XLB Until Midnight
The East Bay’s Best Late-Night Lao Restaurant Is Inside a Bowling Alley
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"slug": "el-tucan-baja-fish-tacos-san-rafael-marin-county-tijuana-late-night",
"title": "This North Bay Taqueria Is Your New Destination for Late-Night Fried Fish Tacos",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988853\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988853\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring a large amount of tacos while seated at a picnic table. In back, string lights and heat lamps are visible.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">El Tucán’s new location in San Rafael has an outdoor patio that looks out over the waterfront and a new menu addition: Baja-style fried fish and fried shrimp tacos. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best tacos I’ve ever eaten in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/marin-county\">Marin County\u003c/a> are tucked away in the warren of warehouses and car dealerships that populate the eastern end of San Rafael. We pulled into the neighborhood at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night because we’d heard that one of our favorite taquerias, El Tucán, had finally opened its long-awaited location here — an outpost the owners had initially planned to debut \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13903359/el-tucan-tijuana-tacos-quesabirria-san-rafael\">all the way back in 2021\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tucantacosandbeer/\">El Tucán Tacos & Beer\u003c/a> is meant to be a swankier, sit-down version of the original taqueria in Richmond. Importantly for our purposes, it stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Technically speaking, both the Richmond taqueria and the even newer El Tucán location \u003ca href=\"https://www.tacoseltucan.com/sf-info.html\">in San Francisco\u003c/a> are more prototypical late-night spots, slinging tacos until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Here in the North Bay, however, the new El Tucán is \u003ca href=\"https://next.kqed.org/arts/13953224/best-late-night-prime-rib-marin-petes-881-club-poker-room\">one of the very few places in town\u003c/a> that stays open late at all. In this particular semi-industrial corner of San Rafael, it was the only restaurant of any kind, open or closed, we saw for blocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As regulars at the original El Tucán, we came with the expectation that we’d be eating some of the tastiest carne asada in the Bay. What we didn’t expect was that the new restaurant would \u003ci>also \u003c/i>fry up the best Baja fish tacos we’ve eaten in a long, long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant is bigger and fancier than it looks from the outside, with a long, gleamingly back-lit bar; trendy wicker light fixtures; and multiple flat-screen TVs for sports-watching. Along one wall there’s one of those cursive neon signs: “You are the salsa to my tacos.” On another, a colorful, very geometric mural of the restaurant’s namesake toucan. Not for nothing in Marin County, every other customer on this busy Friday night appeared to be Latino — a mix of twentysomethings sipping on gaudy, fluorescent-hued margaritas and older gentlemen in work boots. (El Tucán is located in San Rafael’s Canal District, where a dense cluster of apartment complexes houses the bulk of Marin County’s working class Latino population.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988852\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988852\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: a boxy, fairly nondescript-looking restaurant lit up at night. The neon sign reads, \"El Tucán Tacos & Beer,\" with a drawing of a toucan as its logo.' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marin County doesn’t have a lot of notable late-night dining options, but El Tucán is open until 11 p.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The nicest part of the restaurant is the big, expansive deck in the back, adorned with string lights and a flotilla of heat lamps, that faces out toward the San Rafael Creek waterfront. We parked ourselves at one of the sturdy wooden picnic tables and proceeded to order about twice as many tacos as we had any business eating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>El Tucán’s claim to fame is that it was one of the first taquerias to bring \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/12/5/20994943/tacos-el-tucan-tijuana-carne-asada-quesatacos-richmond\">Tijuana-style tacos\u003c/a> to the Bay Area, with its emphasis on meats grilled over fire (instead of on a flat-top), supple handmade tortillas, and the dollop of guacamole that comes on every taco by default. Arguably, the restaurant’s calling card is its quesatacos, which come laced with a thin layer of extremely crispy cheese. What experience has taught me, though, is that those cheesy tacos are too heavy for me to eat more than two or three in one sitting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So for our first meal in San Rafael, we instead started with a round of the standard (cheeseless) asada tacos, which were as phenomenal as we remembered; the steak was chopped finer, and came out so much juicier and more tender, than at your typical taco shop. Topped with a tangle of grilled onions and that big scoop of guacamole, the taco felt luxurious to eat, like a full meal in and of itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13988444,arts_13953224,arts_13963832']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Diners who want to splurge a bit can try one of the premium ($9) specialty tacos, like the arrachera (skirt steak) taco, which puts an entire mini steak on top of a tortilla. We loved how pleasantly chewy and crisp-edged the steak was — though we probably would have been even happier trading it for two more asada tacos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The real highlight of the restaurant, however, was another exemplar of Baja California cuisine: Baja-style fried fish tacos and shrimp tacos, which are only available at the San Rafael location.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of my controversial food opinions is that Baja fish tacos are the \u003ci>only\u003c/i> good fish tacos — you can keep your fussy little grilled fish tacos. But I also rarely order them in the Bay Area. There are so few places here that do them well (hello, \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/cholita-linda-to-bring-fish-tacos-and-eclectic-latin-to-temescal-1/\">Cholita Linda\u003c/a>!), and you wind up paying twice as much for a taco that’s only half as good as what you can get at, say, any random spot in San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m happy to report, then, that the fish tacos at El Tucán are spectacular. They’re pricey, yes, at $8 a pop. But they’re also \u003ci>huge\u003c/i>, with one plump, impeccably fried fillet that’s moist and tender, with an airy-light batter. There’s also limey chipotle crema and a tangle of delicately sliced cabbage and pickled onions. Taken all together, it makes for a flawlessly balanced bite. The Baja shrimp taco, which combines all of the same components with a pile of batter-fried shrimp, is just as good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like every other trend-hopping taqueria in the Bay, El Tucán has jumped on the \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/11/21/20937687/el-garage-quesabirria-birria-taco-richmond-instagram\">quesabirria hype train\u003c/a>, with an assortment of birria-centric menu items that run the gamut from standard quesabirria tacos and consomé-dipped “red tacos” to super-sized birria “pizza.” We tried one of the red tacos with adobada (Tijuana-style al pastor) and found it tasty enough, if a little too heavy and cheesy for how stuffed we already felt at that stage in the meal. What we did enjoy, however, is El Tucán’s take on birria ramen — a rather elegant, stewy version, served with sliced avocado on top. It had a homey warmth to it that was especially nice on a chilly night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, there was a part of us that still preferred the old El Tucán in Richmond, where you stand in line, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, grab a plastic stool on the patio and wolf your food down in the semi-darkness. Certainly, it’s more chaotic, with a certain kind of romance. But if you’ve come with a group of friends and want to kick it for a while, that big deck overlooking the boats on the water is tough to beat. Especially with ice-cold Pacifica on draft and a couple of fish tacos in your belly.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tucantacosandbeer/\">\u003ci>El Tucán Tacos & Beer\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. at 15 Harbor St. in San Rafael.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988853\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988853\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring a large amount of tacos while seated at a picnic table. In back, string lights and heat lamps are visible.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">El Tucán’s new location in San Rafael has an outdoor patio that looks out over the waterfront and a new menu addition: Baja-style fried fish and fried shrimp tacos. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best tacos I’ve ever eaten in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/marin-county\">Marin County\u003c/a> are tucked away in the warren of warehouses and car dealerships that populate the eastern end of San Rafael. We pulled into the neighborhood at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night because we’d heard that one of our favorite taquerias, El Tucán, had finally opened its long-awaited location here — an outpost the owners had initially planned to debut \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13903359/el-tucan-tijuana-tacos-quesabirria-san-rafael\">all the way back in 2021\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tucantacosandbeer/\">El Tucán Tacos & Beer\u003c/a> is meant to be a swankier, sit-down version of the original taqueria in Richmond. Importantly for our purposes, it stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Technically speaking, both the Richmond taqueria and the even newer El Tucán location \u003ca href=\"https://www.tacoseltucan.com/sf-info.html\">in San Francisco\u003c/a> are more prototypical late-night spots, slinging tacos until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Here in the North Bay, however, the new El Tucán is \u003ca href=\"https://next.kqed.org/arts/13953224/best-late-night-prime-rib-marin-petes-881-club-poker-room\">one of the very few places in town\u003c/a> that stays open late at all. In this particular semi-industrial corner of San Rafael, it was the only restaurant of any kind, open or closed, we saw for blocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As regulars at the original El Tucán, we came with the expectation that we’d be eating some of the tastiest carne asada in the Bay. What we didn’t expect was that the new restaurant would \u003ci>also \u003c/i>fry up the best Baja fish tacos we’ve eaten in a long, long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant is bigger and fancier than it looks from the outside, with a long, gleamingly back-lit bar; trendy wicker light fixtures; and multiple flat-screen TVs for sports-watching. Along one wall there’s one of those cursive neon signs: “You are the salsa to my tacos.” On another, a colorful, very geometric mural of the restaurant’s namesake toucan. Not for nothing in Marin County, every other customer on this busy Friday night appeared to be Latino — a mix of twentysomethings sipping on gaudy, fluorescent-hued margaritas and older gentlemen in work boots. (El Tucán is located in San Rafael’s Canal District, where a dense cluster of apartment complexes houses the bulk of Marin County’s working class Latino population.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988852\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988852\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: a boxy, fairly nondescript-looking restaurant lit up at night. The neon sign reads, \"El Tucán Tacos & Beer,\" with a drawing of a toucan as its logo.' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marin County doesn’t have a lot of notable late-night dining options, but El Tucán is open until 11 p.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The nicest part of the restaurant is the big, expansive deck in the back, adorned with string lights and a flotilla of heat lamps, that faces out toward the San Rafael Creek waterfront. We parked ourselves at one of the sturdy wooden picnic tables and proceeded to order about twice as many tacos as we had any business eating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>El Tucán’s claim to fame is that it was one of the first taquerias to bring \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/12/5/20994943/tacos-el-tucan-tijuana-carne-asada-quesatacos-richmond\">Tijuana-style tacos\u003c/a> to the Bay Area, with its emphasis on meats grilled over fire (instead of on a flat-top), supple handmade tortillas, and the dollop of guacamole that comes on every taco by default. Arguably, the restaurant’s calling card is its quesatacos, which come laced with a thin layer of extremely crispy cheese. What experience has taught me, though, is that those cheesy tacos are too heavy for me to eat more than two or three in one sitting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So for our first meal in San Rafael, we instead started with a round of the standard (cheeseless) asada tacos, which were as phenomenal as we remembered; the steak was chopped finer, and came out so much juicier and more tender, than at your typical taco shop. Topped with a tangle of grilled onions and that big scoop of guacamole, the taco felt luxurious to eat, like a full meal in and of itself.\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>Diners who want to splurge a bit can try one of the premium ($9) specialty tacos, like the arrachera (skirt steak) taco, which puts an entire mini steak on top of a tortilla. We loved how pleasantly chewy and crisp-edged the steak was — though we probably would have been even happier trading it for two more asada tacos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The real highlight of the restaurant, however, was another exemplar of Baja California cuisine: Baja-style fried fish tacos and shrimp tacos, which are only available at the San Rafael location.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of my controversial food opinions is that Baja fish tacos are the \u003ci>only\u003c/i> good fish tacos — you can keep your fussy little grilled fish tacos. But I also rarely order them in the Bay Area. There are so few places here that do them well (hello, \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/cholita-linda-to-bring-fish-tacos-and-eclectic-latin-to-temescal-1/\">Cholita Linda\u003c/a>!), and you wind up paying twice as much for a taco that’s only half as good as what you can get at, say, any random spot in San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m happy to report, then, that the fish tacos at El Tucán are spectacular. They’re pricey, yes, at $8 a pop. But they’re also \u003ci>huge\u003c/i>, with one plump, impeccably fried fillet that’s moist and tender, with an airy-light batter. There’s also limey chipotle crema and a tangle of delicately sliced cabbage and pickled onions. Taken all together, it makes for a flawlessly balanced bite. The Baja shrimp taco, which combines all of the same components with a pile of batter-fried shrimp, is just as good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like every other trend-hopping taqueria in the Bay, El Tucán has jumped on the \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/11/21/20937687/el-garage-quesabirria-birria-taco-richmond-instagram\">quesabirria hype train\u003c/a>, with an assortment of birria-centric menu items that run the gamut from standard quesabirria tacos and consomé-dipped “red tacos” to super-sized birria “pizza.” We tried one of the red tacos with adobada (Tijuana-style al pastor) and found it tasty enough, if a little too heavy and cheesy for how stuffed we already felt at that stage in the meal. What we did enjoy, however, is El Tucán’s take on birria ramen — a rather elegant, stewy version, served with sliced avocado on top. It had a homey warmth to it that was especially nice on a chilly night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, there was a part of us that still preferred the old El Tucán in Richmond, where you stand in line, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, grab a plastic stool on the patio and wolf your food down in the semi-darkness. Certainly, it’s more chaotic, with a certain kind of romance. But if you’ve come with a group of friends and want to kick it for a while, that big deck overlooking the boats on the water is tough to beat. Especially with ice-cold Pacifica on draft and a couple of fish tacos in your belly.\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/tucantacosandbeer/\">\u003ci>El Tucán Tacos & Beer\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. at 15 Harbor St. in San Rafael.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "best-korean-barbecue-santa-clara-charcoal-grill-korean-spring-late-night",
"title": "Santa Clara’s Tastiest Charcoal-Grilled Korean Barbecue Spot Stays Open Until Midnight",
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"headTitle": "Santa Clara’s Tastiest Charcoal-Grilled Korean Barbecue Spot Stays Open Until Midnight | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988447\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Korean barbecue while a server attends to the grill.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Santa Clara’s Korean Spring BBQ, the late-night special is a massive $200 barbecue feast. \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 love the moment you first step into a proper \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/korean-food\">Korean\u003c/a> barbecue restaurant: The sweet, smoky smell of charred meat instantly seeps into your clothing. The industrial-size hood vents whir and hum, working overtime. And when the server hustles over to your table to line the edge of the grill with aluminum foil, then lowers a tray of red-hot charcoal into the pit? That’s when you know it’s \u003ci>really\u003c/i> on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such are the charms of Korean Spring BBQ, one of the Bay Area’s last remaining Korean barbecue restaurants where the meat is still grilled over wood charcoal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Located in a busy plaza in Santa Clara’s sprawling, informal Koreatown, Korean Spring doesn’t have the slick branding and Insta-optimized aesthetics of some of the newer high-end KBBQ hotspots and trendy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13965215/all-you-can-eat-wagyu-beef-hot-pot-shabu-shabu-mikiya-santa-clara\">AYCE wagyu purveyors\u003c/a>. Instead, the place has more of an old-school, mom-and-pop vibe. The dining room is all utilitarian metallic surfaces, with minimal decor, and the people who come here seem like they come purely for the love of the meat — and for the clean, smoky char you can never quite get with a gas grill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of particular interest to us? The restaurant stays open until midnight six nights a week, and starting at 9 p.m., they serve a $200 “Midnight Menu” combo set that comes with four different cuts of USDA Prime beef, beef bone soup, a salad and a few other side dishes, plus your choice of soju, beer or soda. It’s a lavish barbecue feast for three or four meat lovers to share — and, as we soon learned, altogether too much food for two greedy midnight diners. Not that we went down without a fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988449\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988449\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: facade of Korean Spring BBQ restaurant, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the busy Kiely Plaza, the restaurant is open until midnight six nights a week. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At half past nine on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was about half full with parties of four or five — all Asians in their twenties and thirties, chatting happily in Mandarin and Korean. This is the kind of Korean barbecue joint where the staff grills the meat for you at the table, not one of those cook-it-yourself setups. Our friendly attendant got to work as soon as we placed our order, deftly flipping the meat on the hot grill and, in some cases, using scissors to cut it down into progressively smaller pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, even experienced Korean barbecue enthusiasts tend to stick with a handful of greatest hits — your ribeye bulgogi, pork belly and L.A. galbi. One nice thing about Korean Spring’s Midnight Menu is that it introduces a number of lesser-known but equally delicious cuts. We started with thinly sliced beef tongue, which was rich and earthy with a fun, snappy texture. Then came the outside skirt, one of our favorites, sliced about as thick as you would cut a steak for stir-fry and astonishingly tender; the flavor was deeply, deeply beefy. The rib finger — the meat between the rib bones, apparently — was the most steak-like of the cuts, with the same satisfying chew and juicy richness you might expect from a nicely grilled ribeye. And the thinly sliced brisket point had a lovely streak of fat in each piece that rendered out while the edges of the meat got nice and crispy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Notably, none of these cuts are marinated, so what you taste is the pure flavor of the Prime-grade beef, with its rich marbling, enhanced by the smoke and char from the charcoal grill. The set comes with a variety of dipping options: doenjang (fermented soybean paste), wasabi, some kind of purple sea salt and, by far our favorite, a slurry of salt, pepper and sesame oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also couldn’t resist ordering the marinated galbi, or short rib, as a $60 add-on. Here, they cut the well-marbled meat off the bone and grill it like thin strips of steak. We weren’t prepared for how soft and buttery this would be, the fatty parts literally melting away in our mouths. Afterwards, our friendly grill guy cut off the bits of meat and cartilage still attached to the bone and grilled those separately for another taste and texture — those crunchy-chewy bits of connective tissue were some of our favorite bites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13988027,arts_13973430,arts_13961328']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the non-barbecue side dishes that come with the set all felt incredibly thoughtful, like they’d been carefully calibrated to balance out our meal. I would never think to order something called “tofu salad w/ almond” at a Korean barbecue restaurant, but this was fantastic — salad greens topped with very soft tofu and sliced almonds, then dressed with a sweet doenjang-based dressing. Every time I felt like all of the meat was getting too rich and heavy, I’d take a bite of salad, and then I’d be ready to keep going. A bowl of cloudy beef bone soup, garnished with green onions and served unseasoned, with salt on the side, served a similar palate-refreshing purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the classic steamed egg, or gyeran-jjim, was one of the best versions I’ve had — immaculately fluffy and light. Too often this dish deflates into a sad pancake as soon as you cut into it, but Korean Spring’s held its shape, and its delectable texture, over the course of the meal. The only side we weren’t a fan of was the cheese fondue; dipping our barbecue in melted cheese was a fun novelty, but not something we wanted to do more than once or twice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken all together, this was more or less our platonic ideal of a Korean barbecue meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Note that Korean Spring isn’t one of those ssam specialists where they give you a half-dozen exotic lettuces to use to wrap your meats. Here, they only offered regular green lettuce — and we had to ask for it. The banchan selection is also pretty limited. Apart from the more substantial side dishes mentioned above, you really only get kimchi, a stack of marinated perilla leaves and a “salad” of pickled onions and jalapeños. But all of it is excellent. In particular, the kimchi is the kind made with whole napa cabbage, cut into bright, crunchy slivers. And I loved wrapping the beef inside the pickled perilla leaves, whose musky tang provided a nice counterpoint to the rich meat. Another essential for any KBBQ connoisseur: slices of raw garlic and jalapeños, refilled quickly and plentifully whenever we asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At $200 before any add-ons, the meal is a bit of a splurge even split between the three or four diners it’s intended to feed. But it’s a worthy splurge if you find yourself in a carnivorous mood and want to treat yourself late at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We dipped and double-dipped our meat in doenjang and sesame oil, wrapped it in lettuce accented with slivers of sharp, pungent garlic. We sipped our broth and then piled more meat on top of rice, reveling in the uniquely Korean pleasures of mixing and matching every bite, and then we went home with a ridiculous amount of leftovers. It was a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Korean Spring BBQ is open Monday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5 p.m.–midnight, and Saturday to Sunday 11 a.m.–midnight at 1062 Kiely Blvd. in Santa Clara. The “Midnight Menu” is available after 9 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988447\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Korean barbecue while a server attends to the grill.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Santa Clara’s Korean Spring BBQ, the late-night special is a massive $200 barbecue feast. \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 love the moment you first step into a proper \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/korean-food\">Korean\u003c/a> barbecue restaurant: The sweet, smoky smell of charred meat instantly seeps into your clothing. The industrial-size hood vents whir and hum, working overtime. And when the server hustles over to your table to line the edge of the grill with aluminum foil, then lowers a tray of red-hot charcoal into the pit? That’s when you know it’s \u003ci>really\u003c/i> on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such are the charms of Korean Spring BBQ, one of the Bay Area’s last remaining Korean barbecue restaurants where the meat is still grilled over wood charcoal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Located in a busy plaza in Santa Clara’s sprawling, informal Koreatown, Korean Spring doesn’t have the slick branding and Insta-optimized aesthetics of some of the newer high-end KBBQ hotspots and trendy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13965215/all-you-can-eat-wagyu-beef-hot-pot-shabu-shabu-mikiya-santa-clara\">AYCE wagyu purveyors\u003c/a>. Instead, the place has more of an old-school, mom-and-pop vibe. The dining room is all utilitarian metallic surfaces, with minimal decor, and the people who come here seem like they come purely for the love of the meat — and for the clean, smoky char you can never quite get with a gas grill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of particular interest to us? The restaurant stays open until midnight six nights a week, and starting at 9 p.m., they serve a $200 “Midnight Menu” combo set that comes with four different cuts of USDA Prime beef, beef bone soup, a salad and a few other side dishes, plus your choice of soju, beer or soda. It’s a lavish barbecue feast for three or four meat lovers to share — and, as we soon learned, altogether too much food for two greedy midnight diners. Not that we went down without a fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988449\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988449\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: facade of Korean Spring BBQ restaurant, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the busy Kiely Plaza, the restaurant is open until midnight six nights a week. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At half past nine on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was about half full with parties of four or five — all Asians in their twenties and thirties, chatting happily in Mandarin and Korean. This is the kind of Korean barbecue joint where the staff grills the meat for you at the table, not one of those cook-it-yourself setups. Our friendly attendant got to work as soon as we placed our order, deftly flipping the meat on the hot grill and, in some cases, using scissors to cut it down into progressively smaller pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, even experienced Korean barbecue enthusiasts tend to stick with a handful of greatest hits — your ribeye bulgogi, pork belly and L.A. galbi. One nice thing about Korean Spring’s Midnight Menu is that it introduces a number of lesser-known but equally delicious cuts. We started with thinly sliced beef tongue, which was rich and earthy with a fun, snappy texture. Then came the outside skirt, one of our favorites, sliced about as thick as you would cut a steak for stir-fry and astonishingly tender; the flavor was deeply, deeply beefy. The rib finger — the meat between the rib bones, apparently — was the most steak-like of the cuts, with the same satisfying chew and juicy richness you might expect from a nicely grilled ribeye. And the thinly sliced brisket point had a lovely streak of fat in each piece that rendered out while the edges of the meat got nice and crispy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Notably, none of these cuts are marinated, so what you taste is the pure flavor of the Prime-grade beef, with its rich marbling, enhanced by the smoke and char from the charcoal grill. The set comes with a variety of dipping options: doenjang (fermented soybean paste), wasabi, some kind of purple sea salt and, by far our favorite, a slurry of salt, pepper and sesame oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also couldn’t resist ordering the marinated galbi, or short rib, as a $60 add-on. Here, they cut the well-marbled meat off the bone and grill it like thin strips of steak. We weren’t prepared for how soft and buttery this would be, the fatty parts literally melting away in our mouths. Afterwards, our friendly grill guy cut off the bits of meat and cartilage still attached to the bone and grilled those separately for another taste and texture — those crunchy-chewy bits of connective tissue were some of our favorite bites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the non-barbecue side dishes that come with the set all felt incredibly thoughtful, like they’d been carefully calibrated to balance out our meal. I would never think to order something called “tofu salad w/ almond” at a Korean barbecue restaurant, but this was fantastic — salad greens topped with very soft tofu and sliced almonds, then dressed with a sweet doenjang-based dressing. Every time I felt like all of the meat was getting too rich and heavy, I’d take a bite of salad, and then I’d be ready to keep going. A bowl of cloudy beef bone soup, garnished with green onions and served unseasoned, with salt on the side, served a similar palate-refreshing purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the classic steamed egg, or gyeran-jjim, was one of the best versions I’ve had — immaculately fluffy and light. Too often this dish deflates into a sad pancake as soon as you cut into it, but Korean Spring’s held its shape, and its delectable texture, over the course of the meal. The only side we weren’t a fan of was the cheese fondue; dipping our barbecue in melted cheese was a fun novelty, but not something we wanted to do more than once or twice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken all together, this was more or less our platonic ideal of a Korean barbecue meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Note that Korean Spring isn’t one of those ssam specialists where they give you a half-dozen exotic lettuces to use to wrap your meats. Here, they only offered regular green lettuce — and we had to ask for it. The banchan selection is also pretty limited. Apart from the more substantial side dishes mentioned above, you really only get kimchi, a stack of marinated perilla leaves and a “salad” of pickled onions and jalapeños. But all of it is excellent. In particular, the kimchi is the kind made with whole napa cabbage, cut into bright, crunchy slivers. And I loved wrapping the beef inside the pickled perilla leaves, whose musky tang provided a nice counterpoint to the rich meat. Another essential for any KBBQ connoisseur: slices of raw garlic and jalapeños, refilled quickly and plentifully whenever we asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At $200 before any add-ons, the meal is a bit of a splurge even split between the three or four diners it’s intended to feed. But it’s a worthy splurge if you find yourself in a carnivorous mood and want to treat yourself late at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We dipped and double-dipped our meat in doenjang and sesame oil, wrapped it in lettuce accented with slivers of sharp, pungent garlic. We sipped our broth and then piled more meat on top of rice, reveling in the uniquely Korean pleasures of mixing and matching every bite, and then we went home with a ridiculous amount of leftovers. It was a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Korean Spring BBQ is open Monday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5 p.m.–midnight, and Saturday to Sunday 11 a.m.–midnight at 1062 Kiely Blvd. in Santa Clara. The “Midnight Menu” is available after 9 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "harrys-hofbrau-late-night-inexpensive-meat-potatoes-san-leandro",
"title": "Harry’s Hofbrau Is a Late-Night Throwback for $20 Steak Dinners",
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"headTitle": "Harry’s Hofbrau Is a Late-Night Throwback for $20 Steak Dinners | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988036\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988036\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Diners point at the dishes they want at a cafeteria-style counter. Chefs in white toques serve them their food.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">With locations in San Leandro and Redwood City, Harry’s Hofbrau is one of the last in a dying breed of cafeteria-style restaurants specializing in freshly carved roasted meats. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, guest artist (and rotisserie chicken enthusiast) \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brianabreaks/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Briana Loewinsohn\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> joined them in the hofbrau line.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s been a couple of decades since I’ve eaten at the EPCOT Center’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/2015/8/26/9192203/epcot-world-showcase-ranked\">themed dining pavilions\u003c/a>. But \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/harryshofbrausanleandro/\">Harry’s Hofbrau\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-leandro\">San Leandro\u003c/a> might be the closest I’ve gotten to its pleasantly cheesy theme-park vibe while dining out in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Harry’s, you’re greeted at the door by a procession of jolly statues (a paunchy, mustachioed chef; a beer chugger in lederhosen), all gussied up in leprechaun green if you come the week before St. Patrick’s Day, as we did. The restaurant is \u003ci>huge\u003c/i>, nostalgically appointed in the style of a German hunting lodge, and perpetually decked out with colorful streamers, balloons and twinkle lights for Christmas, or St. Patty’s, or Thanksgiving. You wait in a long cafeteria queue, and when you finally reach the front, one of the knife-wielding maestros in a jaunty white chef’s toque hands you a plastic tray with a plate piled high with gravy-drenched sliced meats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is perfection, in its way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Above all else, Harry’s is a restaurant that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a proper hofbrau — one of the last in a dying breed of cafeteria-style restaurants, mostly unique to the Bay Area, that specialize in freshly carved roasted meats and inexpensive draft beer. It also happens to be one of the few remaining places in the Bay where you can get a big steak (or roast turkey, or corned-beef-and-cabbage) dinner for around $20.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, of special relevance to our interests, the place stays open late, too — until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said, the crowd at Harry’s, at a little past 9 p.m. on a recent Friday, didn’t exactly \u003ci>feel\u003c/i> like a crowd. There wasn’t much of a line at this late hour, and because the cavernous dining room is so big, only about a third of the tables were occupied. It was one of the more diverse dining rooms I’ve been in for a while, ethnically and racially (an even split between Black, white, Latino and Asian), if not in terms of age. Indeed, apart from one lone table of teens, our middle-aged crew appeared to be the only party in the entire restaurant under the age of 60. One cushy booth was occupied by a group of older ladies in matching custodial uniforms. A number of solo diners quietly ate their plates of roast beef and mashed potatoes by themselves — tired and contemplative at the end of a long workday, it seemed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This, too, is part of the restaurant’s charm. The San Leandro hofbrau — along with the original Redwood City location, which dates back to the 1950s — is one of the few Bay Area restaurants where you can walk in with a group of 10 or 15 at 10 o’clock on a Saturday night and have everyone seated and enjoying a hot meal within a matter of minutes. For a big, casual family reunion, last-minute birthday party or after-work group-decompression session, Harry’s is an easy crowdpleaser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988037\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988037\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men sit in a leather booth over a large spread of roast meats and mashed potatoes.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">There isn’t much of a crowd at Harry’s Hofbrau late at night — which makes is perfect for an impromptu gathering. The restaurant stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The heart of the carvery is the cafeteria-style steam table counter where diners can choose from a dizzying array of roasted meats, the most popular of which are the turkey (for a Thanksgiving anytime vibe), the roast beef and the corned beef — normally a Thursday dinner special, but served all week long in the lead-up to St. Patrick’s Day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most devoted Harry’s loyalist in our group stuck with her usual rotisserie chicken dinner, which she described as being just like the more famous turkey dinner “but cheaper \u003ci>and\u003c/i> tastier.” For about $17, you get a half a chicken, a huge mound of mashed potatoes soaked in your choice of beef or turkey gravy (both excellent), a dinner roll and an additional side of your choosing. While you don’t come to a place like Harry’s expecting complicated spices or pasture-raised birds, the dark meat on that chicken was tender and succulent, the gravy made up for the slight dryness of the breast, and the skin was especially well seasoned and delicious — all in all, several steps up from a Boston Market (or your local equivalent).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The house-cured corned beef and cabbage, meanwhile, was just fine — sliced thick, generously portioned, and tasty enough, especially when drenched in the house au jus. The accompanying cabbage, carrots and potatoes were just plainly boiled, though. You’ll have to doctor them up with salt and butter at the table if you find them bland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13987415,arts_13963093,arts_13953224']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>My favorite, by far, was the Santa Maria–style tri tip — a nod to California’s own homegrown style of barbecue — which Harry’s serves as a special on Friday nights. Even carved off the small nub of the roast left over at the end of the night, the thin slices of beef were still perfectly tender and pink, with a pronounced smoky flavor that lingered on the tongue. It was fantastic soaked in au jus, with a dab of the bottled horseradish cream available on each table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(Pro tip: You can always ask for more au jus or gravy. Don’t make the same mistake I did, confidently walking up to a dispenser in the dining area to pour myself a tub. Those are hot \u003ci>coffee \u003c/i>dispensers, not au jus or gravy dispensers — though I can’t be the only one who’s suggested that those would be an amazing amenity.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant’s other signature is its mashed potatoes, which aren’t “gourmet” in any way, but look just like a version you might see on a 1950s picture postcard, and taste just as rich and nostalgic. While none of the other side dishes we tried were strictly \u003ci>delicious\u003c/i>, the range of hot and cold options on the steam table is another part of what makes the Harry’s experience fun and vaguely buffet-like. For balance, I’d recommend getting some kind of green vegetable: I liked the mixed grilled veggies (exactly like you’d get at a backyard cookout) better than the limp Caesar salad with oddly soft croutons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’ll want to save a little bit of room for dessert too. Even though my tablemates mocked my enthusiasm for the blueberry pie — which they, in their ignorance, deemed too thick-crusted and overly sweet — I can never resist ordering a slice. This night’s specimen was especially perfect-looking, like a cartoon drawing of a slice of pie, with its crinkly sparkly-sugar topping and thick filling of glistening berries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I polished off most of the pie by myself, with a cup of strong hot coffee. Like just about everything else at Harry’s, it tasted like the most pleasant memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/harryshofbrausanleandro/\">\u003ci>Harry’s Hofbrau\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. at 14900 E. 14th St. in San Leandro. The restaurant’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/harryshofbraurwc/\">\u003ci>other location\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, at 1909 El Camino Real in Redwood City, is open until 11 p.m. one additional night, on Thursdays.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Harry’s Hofbrau Is a Late-Night Throwback for $20 Steak Dinners | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988036\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988036\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Diners point at the dishes they want at a cafeteria-style counter. Chefs in white toques serve them their food.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">With locations in San Leandro and Redwood City, Harry’s Hofbrau is one of the last in a dying breed of cafeteria-style restaurants specializing in freshly carved roasted meats. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, guest artist (and rotisserie chicken enthusiast) \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brianabreaks/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Briana Loewinsohn\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> joined them in the hofbrau line.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s been a couple of decades since I’ve eaten at the EPCOT Center’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.eater.com/2015/8/26/9192203/epcot-world-showcase-ranked\">themed dining pavilions\u003c/a>. But \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/harryshofbrausanleandro/\">Harry’s Hofbrau\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-leandro\">San Leandro\u003c/a> might be the closest I’ve gotten to its pleasantly cheesy theme-park vibe while dining out in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Harry’s, you’re greeted at the door by a procession of jolly statues (a paunchy, mustachioed chef; a beer chugger in lederhosen), all gussied up in leprechaun green if you come the week before St. Patrick’s Day, as we did. The restaurant is \u003ci>huge\u003c/i>, nostalgically appointed in the style of a German hunting lodge, and perpetually decked out with colorful streamers, balloons and twinkle lights for Christmas, or St. Patty’s, or Thanksgiving. You wait in a long cafeteria queue, and when you finally reach the front, one of the knife-wielding maestros in a jaunty white chef’s toque hands you a plastic tray with a plate piled high with gravy-drenched sliced meats.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is perfection, in its way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Above all else, Harry’s is a restaurant that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s a proper hofbrau — one of the last in a dying breed of cafeteria-style restaurants, mostly unique to the Bay Area, that specialize in freshly carved roasted meats and inexpensive draft beer. It also happens to be one of the few remaining places in the Bay where you can get a big steak (or roast turkey, or corned-beef-and-cabbage) dinner for around $20.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And, of special relevance to our interests, the place stays open late, too — until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said, the crowd at Harry’s, at a little past 9 p.m. on a recent Friday, didn’t exactly \u003ci>feel\u003c/i> like a crowd. There wasn’t much of a line at this late hour, and because the cavernous dining room is so big, only about a third of the tables were occupied. It was one of the more diverse dining rooms I’ve been in for a while, ethnically and racially (an even split between Black, white, Latino and Asian), if not in terms of age. Indeed, apart from one lone table of teens, our middle-aged crew appeared to be the only party in the entire restaurant under the age of 60. One cushy booth was occupied by a group of older ladies in matching custodial uniforms. A number of solo diners quietly ate their plates of roast beef and mashed potatoes by themselves — tired and contemplative at the end of a long workday, it seemed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This, too, is part of the restaurant’s charm. The San Leandro hofbrau — along with the original Redwood City location, which dates back to the 1950s — is one of the few Bay Area restaurants where you can walk in with a group of 10 or 15 at 10 o’clock on a Saturday night and have everyone seated and enjoying a hot meal within a matter of minutes. For a big, casual family reunion, last-minute birthday party or after-work group-decompression session, Harry’s is an easy crowdpleaser.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988037\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988037\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men sit in a leather booth over a large spread of roast meats and mashed potatoes.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/Harrys_Hofbrau_2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">There isn’t much of a crowd at Harry’s Hofbrau late at night — which makes is perfect for an impromptu gathering. The restaurant stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The heart of the carvery is the cafeteria-style steam table counter where diners can choose from a dizzying array of roasted meats, the most popular of which are the turkey (for a Thanksgiving anytime vibe), the roast beef and the corned beef — normally a Thursday dinner special, but served all week long in the lead-up to St. Patrick’s Day.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The most devoted Harry’s loyalist in our group stuck with her usual rotisserie chicken dinner, which she described as being just like the more famous turkey dinner “but cheaper \u003ci>and\u003c/i> tastier.” For about $17, you get a half a chicken, a huge mound of mashed potatoes soaked in your choice of beef or turkey gravy (both excellent), a dinner roll and an additional side of your choosing. While you don’t come to a place like Harry’s expecting complicated spices or pasture-raised birds, the dark meat on that chicken was tender and succulent, the gravy made up for the slight dryness of the breast, and the skin was especially well seasoned and delicious — all in all, several steps up from a Boston Market (or your local equivalent).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The house-cured corned beef and cabbage, meanwhile, was just fine — sliced thick, generously portioned, and tasty enough, especially when drenched in the house au jus. The accompanying cabbage, carrots and potatoes were just plainly boiled, though. You’ll have to doctor them up with salt and butter at the table if you find them bland.\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 favorite, by far, was the Santa Maria–style tri tip — a nod to California’s own homegrown style of barbecue — which Harry’s serves as a special on Friday nights. Even carved off the small nub of the roast left over at the end of the night, the thin slices of beef were still perfectly tender and pink, with a pronounced smoky flavor that lingered on the tongue. It was fantastic soaked in au jus, with a dab of the bottled horseradish cream available on each table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>(Pro tip: You can always ask for more au jus or gravy. Don’t make the same mistake I did, confidently walking up to a dispenser in the dining area to pour myself a tub. Those are hot \u003ci>coffee \u003c/i>dispensers, not au jus or gravy dispensers — though I can’t be the only one who’s suggested that those would be an amazing amenity.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant’s other signature is its mashed potatoes, which aren’t “gourmet” in any way, but look just like a version you might see on a 1950s picture postcard, and taste just as rich and nostalgic. While none of the other side dishes we tried were strictly \u003ci>delicious\u003c/i>, the range of hot and cold options on the steam table is another part of what makes the Harry’s experience fun and vaguely buffet-like. For balance, I’d recommend getting some kind of green vegetable: I liked the mixed grilled veggies (exactly like you’d get at a backyard cookout) better than the limp Caesar salad with oddly soft croutons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You’ll want to save a little bit of room for dessert too. Even though my tablemates mocked my enthusiasm for the blueberry pie — which they, in their ignorance, deemed too thick-crusted and overly sweet — I can never resist ordering a slice. This night’s specimen was especially perfect-looking, like a cartoon drawing of a slice of pie, with its crinkly sparkly-sugar topping and thick filling of glistening berries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I polished off most of the pie by myself, with a cup of strong hot coffee. Like just about everything else at Harry’s, it tasted like the most pleasant memory.\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/harryshofbrausanleandro/\">\u003ci>Harry’s Hofbrau\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. and Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. at 14900 E. 14th St. in San Leandro. The restaurant’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/harryshofbraurwc/\">\u003ci>other location\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, at 1909 El Camino Real in Redwood City, is open until 11 p.m. one additional night, on Thursdays.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "late-night-nigerian-oakland-oxtails-jollof-9jagrills",
"title": "In Oakland, This Nigerian Spot Serves Amazing Late-Night Oxtails and Jollof Rice",
"publishDate": 1772822900,
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"headTitle": "In Oakland, This Nigerian Spot Serves Amazing Late-Night Oxtails and Jollof Rice | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987423\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987423\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men devouring oxtails and a whole fried fish.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The patio at Oakland’s 9jaGrills is like a permanent backyard party — one with delicious Nigerian oxtails and jollof rice. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/9jagrills/\">9jaGrills\u003c/a>, a newish Nigerian spot near \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/oakland\">Oakland’s\u003c/a> Jack London waterfront, the main dining room follows the standard blueprint for today’s shiny, Instagram-optimized restaurants: the lush faux greenery wall, the neon-lit catchphrase (“Food 🔥, Drinks & Vibes”) in glowing pink cursive. The space is tidy, bright and perfectly pleasant — but, at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, it was also totally empty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, a couple dozen people had crowded out on the small tented patio in back, which was a distinct ecosystem unto itself: a haze of hookah smoke, disco lights, cheap furniture and mystery drinks in red plastic cups. On the big-screen TV, two \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/wannixhandi/?hl=en\">identical twin DJs\u003c/a> from Nigeria spun Afrobeats on stage in Lagos. Everyone else on the patio appeared to be West African, and apart from one table of middle-aged gentlemen dipping fufu into a big bowl of stew, no one else seemed to have come for the food at this hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was more of a backyard party vibe. A kick back with a couple of cold \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/trophylagernigeria/?hl=en\">Trophy Lagers\u003c/a> vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that we were going to let that deter us from our mission. We had made the trip because we had a wicked craving for oxtails, and we’d heard on good authority that this food-truck-turned-brick-and-mortar-lounge was \u003ci>the \u003c/i>spot in Oakland for Nigerian-style oxtails and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13960580/jollof-festival-oakland-west-african-food-competition-nigerian-sierra-leone\">jollof rice\u003c/a> — and maybe the only spot where you can reliably score those dishes until midnight on the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since July of last year, 9jaGrills has one of the broader menus I’ve seen among the East Bay’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13896069/jolly-jolly-nigerian-restaurant-west-oakland-jollof-rice-indomie\">Nigerian restaurants\u003c/a>, running the gamut from classics like pepper soup and suya meat skewers to lesser-known (at least in the U.S.) favorites like stir-fried Indomie instant noodles and a whole stewed goat’s head. The menu is divided up into grilled dishes, jollof rice plates, whole fried fish, and soups and stews meant to be scooped up with “swallows” (i.e. assorted starchy, dough-like rounds). Factor in the large variety of swallows and optional side sauces on offer, and just figuring out what to order might be a little bit intimidating to newcomers to West African cuisine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987424\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987424\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills.jpg\" alt='Illustration: exterior of a Nigerian restaurant at nighttime. The awning reads, \"www.9jagrills.com\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located near the Jack London waterfront, 9jaGrills is open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What I can tell you for certain is that the plate of oxtails and jollof rice is a crowd pleaser. The rice alone was amazing: tomato-tinted and steaming hot, with a luxurious oiliness and a smoky, savory depth of flavor I couldn’t get enough of. It’s jollof so good you’d make a special trip just to eat it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the oxtails were slow-cooked in a dark, well-spiced gravy until they’d achieved just the right level of tenderness. When we sucked on each bone, all of the gelatinous skin and fat came clean off, and the prickle of chili heat in the sauce was incredibly addicting. These are oxtails so tasty that if you don’t watch your dining partner like a hawk, he’ll polish off the last several bones before you have a chance to protest. As a self-proclaimed \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13936332/tchaka-haitian-restaurant-oakland\">scholar of oxtails\u003c/a>, I couldn’t find a single flaw. On the side were some of the best fried plantains I’ve encountered in a long time — crisp and slightly charred on the outside, with an oozy sweetness that helped balance out all of the other heavier, more intense flavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13986949,arts_13982096,arts_13983249']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The oxtail dish by itself satisfied our hunger, but of course we didn’t stop there. We also ordered the whole fried pompano — a flat fish, vaguely flounder-like in appearance, with delicate flesh and a rich, earthy taste. It was incredibly satisfying picking that fish clean — dunking strips of it into the bright, searingly hot housemade pepper sauce, and dipping the eye sockets (don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it) into a tub of suya spice mix. The plate came with a heaping portion of the same excellent jollof and fried plantains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, we dug into the fragrant, spicy, palm oil–based stew known as ayamase, which 9jaGrills’ friendly owner had tried to steer us away from, warning us that it came with a kind of “local” Nigerian rice that Americans don’t tend to like, and asking, with some concern, whether we’d eaten Nigerian food before. With that kind of introduction, of course we had to order it, and it may have been the most memorable dish of the night. Ayamase consists mostly of beef offal: the liver, the intestines and especially the skin, cooked until it’s so tender and slippery that it practically melts in your mouth. The stew was studded with flat, toothsome locust beans and a hard-boiled egg — all delicious when mashed into the sauce, then ladled over the nutty whole-grain ofada rice, which was perfect for soaking up the stew’s oily richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crouched over our feast in the semi-darkness of 9jaGrills’ backyard patio, we shoveled rice into our mouths like we hadn’t eaten for days, and held the oxtail bones in our hands, inspecting each one to make sure we’d picked it clean. Then, utterly stuffed and hyped up on Naija beats, we stumbled back into the bright lights of the restaurant proper, like we’d just woken up from the most beautiful dream.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/9jagrills/\">\u003ci>9jaGrills\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday to Thursday noon–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday noon–midnight, and Sunday 2–10 p.m. at 303 Broadway in Oakland.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The back patio at 9jaGrills is a vibe unto itself.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987423\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987423\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men devouring oxtails and a whole fried fish.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The patio at Oakland’s 9jaGrills is like a permanent backyard party — one with delicious Nigerian oxtails and jollof rice. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/9jagrills/\">9jaGrills\u003c/a>, a newish Nigerian spot near \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/oakland\">Oakland’s\u003c/a> Jack London waterfront, the main dining room follows the standard blueprint for today’s shiny, Instagram-optimized restaurants: the lush faux greenery wall, the neon-lit catchphrase (“Food 🔥, Drinks & Vibes”) in glowing pink cursive. The space is tidy, bright and perfectly pleasant — but, at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, it was also totally empty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, a couple dozen people had crowded out on the small tented patio in back, which was a distinct ecosystem unto itself: a haze of hookah smoke, disco lights, cheap furniture and mystery drinks in red plastic cups. On the big-screen TV, two \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/wannixhandi/?hl=en\">identical twin DJs\u003c/a> from Nigeria spun Afrobeats on stage in Lagos. Everyone else on the patio appeared to be West African, and apart from one table of middle-aged gentlemen dipping fufu into a big bowl of stew, no one else seemed to have come for the food at this hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was more of a backyard party vibe. A kick back with a couple of cold \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/trophylagernigeria/?hl=en\">Trophy Lagers\u003c/a> vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that we were going to let that deter us from our mission. We had made the trip because we had a wicked craving for oxtails, and we’d heard on good authority that this food-truck-turned-brick-and-mortar-lounge was \u003ci>the \u003c/i>spot in Oakland for Nigerian-style oxtails and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13960580/jollof-festival-oakland-west-african-food-competition-nigerian-sierra-leone\">jollof rice\u003c/a> — and maybe the only spot where you can reliably score those dishes until midnight on the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since July of last year, 9jaGrills has one of the broader menus I’ve seen among the East Bay’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13896069/jolly-jolly-nigerian-restaurant-west-oakland-jollof-rice-indomie\">Nigerian restaurants\u003c/a>, running the gamut from classics like pepper soup and suya meat skewers to lesser-known (at least in the U.S.) favorites like stir-fried Indomie instant noodles and a whole stewed goat’s head. The menu is divided up into grilled dishes, jollof rice plates, whole fried fish, and soups and stews meant to be scooped up with “swallows” (i.e. assorted starchy, dough-like rounds). Factor in the large variety of swallows and optional side sauces on offer, and just figuring out what to order might be a little bit intimidating to newcomers to West African cuisine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987424\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987424\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills.jpg\" alt='Illustration: exterior of a Nigerian restaurant at nighttime. The awning reads, \"www.9jagrills.com\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located near the Jack London waterfront, 9jaGrills is open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What I can tell you for certain is that the plate of oxtails and jollof rice is a crowd pleaser. The rice alone was amazing: tomato-tinted and steaming hot, with a luxurious oiliness and a smoky, savory depth of flavor I couldn’t get enough of. It’s jollof so good you’d make a special trip just to eat it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the oxtails were slow-cooked in a dark, well-spiced gravy until they’d achieved just the right level of tenderness. When we sucked on each bone, all of the gelatinous skin and fat came clean off, and the prickle of chili heat in the sauce was incredibly addicting. These are oxtails so tasty that if you don’t watch your dining partner like a hawk, he’ll polish off the last several bones before you have a chance to protest. As a self-proclaimed \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13936332/tchaka-haitian-restaurant-oakland\">scholar of oxtails\u003c/a>, I couldn’t find a single flaw. On the side were some of the best fried plantains I’ve encountered in a long time — crisp and slightly charred on the outside, with an oozy sweetness that helped balance out all of the other heavier, more intense flavors.\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 oxtail dish by itself satisfied our hunger, but of course we didn’t stop there. We also ordered the whole fried pompano — a flat fish, vaguely flounder-like in appearance, with delicate flesh and a rich, earthy taste. It was incredibly satisfying picking that fish clean — dunking strips of it into the bright, searingly hot housemade pepper sauce, and dipping the eye sockets (don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it) into a tub of suya spice mix. The plate came with a heaping portion of the same excellent jollof and fried plantains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, we dug into the fragrant, spicy, palm oil–based stew known as ayamase, which 9jaGrills’ friendly owner had tried to steer us away from, warning us that it came with a kind of “local” Nigerian rice that Americans don’t tend to like, and asking, with some concern, whether we’d eaten Nigerian food before. With that kind of introduction, of course we had to order it, and it may have been the most memorable dish of the night. Ayamase consists mostly of beef offal: the liver, the intestines and especially the skin, cooked until it’s so tender and slippery that it practically melts in your mouth. The stew was studded with flat, toothsome locust beans and a hard-boiled egg — all delicious when mashed into the sauce, then ladled over the nutty whole-grain ofada rice, which was perfect for soaking up the stew’s oily richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crouched over our feast in the semi-darkness of 9jaGrills’ backyard patio, we shoveled rice into our mouths like we hadn’t eaten for days, and held the oxtail bones in our hands, inspecting each one to make sure we’d picked it clean. Then, utterly stuffed and hyped up on Naija beats, we stumbled back into the bright lights of the restaurant proper, like we’d just woken up from the most beautiful dream.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/9jagrills/\">\u003ci>9jaGrills\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday to Thursday noon–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday noon–midnight, and Sunday 2–10 p.m. at 303 Broadway in Oakland.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "turtle-tower-sf-chicken-pho-marina-late-night",
"title": "SF’s Most Legendary Chicken Phở Is Now Available Until 3 a.m.",
"publishDate": 1771619131,
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"headTitle": "SF’s Most Legendary Chicken Phở Is Now Available Until 3 a.m. | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986960\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986960\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1.jpg\" alt=\"A group of me devouring bowls of beef and chicken pho.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turtle Tower, one of San Francisco’s most famous pho restaurants, has a new location in the Marina District. The restaurant is known for its northern-style chicken pho. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d made the mistake of coming to the Marina District at 10 o’clock on a Friday night, and on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/super-bowl\">Super Bowl\u003c/a> weekend, no less. The intersection of Fillmore and Greenwich was even \u003ci>more\u003c/i> chaotic than usual — both sides of the street swarming with half-drunk twentysomething frat-boy and sorority-girl types traveling in packs of six or eight. Everyone was decked out in their tightest skirts and bro-iest muscle shirts to stand in line outside \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/balboa-cafe-bar-sf-19913258.php\">Balboa Cafe\u003c/a> or any of the half-dozen other bars that flank the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the Marina in a nutshell. Depending on your \u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2025/07/21/best-restaurants-bars-marina-sf/\">point of view\u003c/a>, it’s either the best or most obnoxious neighborhood in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe it goes without saying that our dowdy, middle-aged party did not trek to this corner of the Marina for espresso martinis or a night of sweaty, awkward flirtation. Instead, we’d come in search of much unlikelier treasure: the most wholesome bowl of chicken phở in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what we were hoping for, anyway, when we heard that \u003ca href=\"https://www.turtletowersf.com/\">Turtle Tower\u003c/a> had opened a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reels/DToVxp2kt29/\">brand new location on Fillmore\u003c/a> — and, just as exciting, that it was dishing out hot phở until 3 a.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re a serious phở slurper in San Francisco, you’re likely aware of Turtle Tower’s rise and fall and, now, rise again. Probably the most famous and widely beloved phở restaurant in San Francisco during its 25-year run, Turtle Tower operated four locations across the city at its peak. Regulars were understandably devastated, then, when the last location shut its doors in 2023 — and overjoyed when a new ownership group \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2025/3/19/24389523/san-francisco-turtle-tower-pho-restaurant-returns\">revived the business\u003c/a> with a sleek, well-appointed restaurant in the Financial District last spring. Then came the surprise news that Turtle Tower 2.0’s second location would be in the Marina, of all places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986959\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986959\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant. The sign up top reads, \"Turtle Tower.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turtle Tower’s Marina location is open until 3 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Open for about a month now, the new Fillmore Street restaurant has the look and feel of a swanky fusion restaurant, with low-pulsing electronic dance music and an abundance of stylishly backlit tropical greenery. A chic black-and-gold mural of what appears to be the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long spans the back wall. All in all, it’s quite a makeover from the stripped-down, mom-and-pop vibe of the original Larkin Street restaurant, where I used to go for big weekend lunches with my family in the early aughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The worry, of course, with the opening of a “fancier” Turtle Tower in a non-Asian neighborhood, is that the food is going to get whitewashed and watered down. Indeed, the first thing we noticed is that the menu didn’t list the “deluxe” version of the restaurant’s famous chicken phở (listed as “phở gà lòng” in the old days), which came with giblets and skin for a boost of texture and earthy oomph. When we asked our server about it, she smiled sheepishly and explained that, at least for now, they weren’t offering that version. “We weren’t sure if ‘Marina people’ would eat giblets,” she said. Which is, well, fair enough. (She noted, though, that a lot of Asian customers had been asking for them.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout our meal, there were other small signs of the “Marina-fication” of the restaurant: the (non-Asian) waitstaff’s confusion when one of us asked for some vinegar to mix into his dipping sauce for the phở meats. The fact that the phở arrived with only a single lime wedge and the tiniest imaginable pile of sliced jalapeños. (Not-so-pro tip: You just have to ask for more.) And, no surprise, the phở was priced about $5 higher than it was in the Tenderloin days, just a few years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when we actually dug into the food, we put aside all our skepticism. We started with an order of the fresh spring rolls stuffed with both shrimp and thin slices of pork — very light and very delicious, in large part because of the smokiness of the grilled pork, which lingered in our mouths. We also ordered the house-made crab chips (a perfect snack under any circumstance) and a plate of “Hanoi”-style chicken wings, which none of us remembered from any of the previous incarnations of Turtle Tower. These were whole, two-joint wings that we pulled apart with our hands, juicy and succulent, and fried to an attractive, crackly sheen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13961997,arts_13954983,arts_13985780']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Of course the main attraction was the phở itself. Turtle Tower has always specialized in northern-style phở — one of the purest distillations of the form that you can find in the Bay Area. That means the broth is less sweet and incorporates fewer spices and fresh herbs; instead of the giant plate of basil and bean sprouts that you get at southern-style joints, the soup comes topped with just a flurry of chopped scallions and cilantro. What you’re meant to taste is the pure flavor of the chicken or beef itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It had been too long since I’d eaten at the old Turtle Tower for me to say with certainty that the chicken phở was exactly the same. But all it took was one sip of that broth — clear, refined, intensely chicken-y with just a hint of ginger — to be fully satisfied. The noodles were wide and soft and highly slurpable, and even without my precious giblets, I could appreciate the silkiness of the shreds of both dark and white chicken meat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The beef phở, which many of the restaurant’s Vietnamese regulars like even better than the chicken, is similarly minimalistic. Thin slices of rare beef come lightly pounded, in the northern style, for extra tenderness, and the broth, once again, homes in on the pure essence of beef flavor. Both phởs are the very embodiment of a soup that’ll cure what ails you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the new incarnation of Turtle Tower first opened in the Financial District, that location was also open late on weekends and ran a steeply discounted late-night happy hour menu starting at 11 p.m. — $2 oysters, $8 chicken wings, $4 beers and the like. Now that the Marina location is the only one keeping those late-night hours, the happy hour has been discontinued while the restaurant sorts out its liquor license. But once it does, a manager told us, they plan to start those deals up once again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the night, we came away still a bit unsure of exactly what kind of “Marina person” the restaurant is hoping to attract, and how successful that effort has been. At least based on our visit, the crowd is a lot more restrained and low-key than we expected — no party people, just groups of two or three, mostly Asian Americans, quietly enjoying a bowl of phở at the end of the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mostly, everyone just seemed pleased to have found this little oasis of home-cooked goodness — a shelter from all the blustery noise outside. Most of them, I’d dare to venture, seemed like they could handle a bowl of giblets.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/turtletower.sf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Turtle Tower’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> Marina location is open Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–3 a.m. at 3145 Fillmore St. in San Francisco. The restaurant also has a location in the Financial District, at 220 California St., with shorter, non-late-night hours.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986960\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986960\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1.jpg\" alt=\"A group of me devouring bowls of beef and chicken pho.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turtle Tower, one of San Francisco’s most famous pho restaurants, has a new location in the Marina District. The restaurant is known for its northern-style chicken pho. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d made the mistake of coming to the Marina District at 10 o’clock on a Friday night, and on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/super-bowl\">Super Bowl\u003c/a> weekend, no less. The intersection of Fillmore and Greenwich was even \u003ci>more\u003c/i> chaotic than usual — both sides of the street swarming with half-drunk twentysomething frat-boy and sorority-girl types traveling in packs of six or eight. Everyone was decked out in their tightest skirts and bro-iest muscle shirts to stand in line outside \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/wine/article/balboa-cafe-bar-sf-19913258.php\">Balboa Cafe\u003c/a> or any of the half-dozen other bars that flank the block.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s the Marina in a nutshell. Depending on your \u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2025/07/21/best-restaurants-bars-marina-sf/\">point of view\u003c/a>, it’s either the best or most obnoxious neighborhood in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe it goes without saying that our dowdy, middle-aged party did not trek to this corner of the Marina for espresso martinis or a night of sweaty, awkward flirtation. Instead, we’d come in search of much unlikelier treasure: the most wholesome bowl of chicken phở in the city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what we were hoping for, anyway, when we heard that \u003ca href=\"https://www.turtletowersf.com/\">Turtle Tower\u003c/a> had opened a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reels/DToVxp2kt29/\">brand new location on Fillmore\u003c/a> — and, just as exciting, that it was dishing out hot phở until 3 a.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’re a serious phở slurper in San Francisco, you’re likely aware of Turtle Tower’s rise and fall and, now, rise again. Probably the most famous and widely beloved phở restaurant in San Francisco during its 25-year run, Turtle Tower operated four locations across the city at its peak. Regulars were understandably devastated, then, when the last location shut its doors in 2023 — and overjoyed when a new ownership group \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2025/3/19/24389523/san-francisco-turtle-tower-pho-restaurant-returns\">revived the business\u003c/a> with a sleek, well-appointed restaurant in the Financial District last spring. Then came the surprise news that Turtle Tower 2.0’s second location would be in the Marina, of all places.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13986959\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13986959\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant. The sign up top reads, \"Turtle Tower.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/02/turtle-tower-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Turtle Tower’s Marina location is open until 3 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Open for about a month now, the new Fillmore Street restaurant has the look and feel of a swanky fusion restaurant, with low-pulsing electronic dance music and an abundance of stylishly backlit tropical greenery. A chic black-and-gold mural of what appears to be the Imperial Citadel of Thăng Long spans the back wall. All in all, it’s quite a makeover from the stripped-down, mom-and-pop vibe of the original Larkin Street restaurant, where I used to go for big weekend lunches with my family in the early aughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The worry, of course, with the opening of a “fancier” Turtle Tower in a non-Asian neighborhood, is that the food is going to get whitewashed and watered down. Indeed, the first thing we noticed is that the menu didn’t list the “deluxe” version of the restaurant’s famous chicken phở (listed as “phở gà lòng” in the old days), which came with giblets and skin for a boost of texture and earthy oomph. When we asked our server about it, she smiled sheepishly and explained that, at least for now, they weren’t offering that version. “We weren’t sure if ‘Marina people’ would eat giblets,” she said. Which is, well, fair enough. (She noted, though, that a lot of Asian customers had been asking for them.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Throughout our meal, there were other small signs of the “Marina-fication” of the restaurant: the (non-Asian) waitstaff’s confusion when one of us asked for some vinegar to mix into his dipping sauce for the phở meats. The fact that the phở arrived with only a single lime wedge and the tiniest imaginable pile of sliced jalapeños. (Not-so-pro tip: You just have to ask for more.) And, no surprise, the phở was priced about $5 higher than it was in the Tenderloin days, just a few years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But when we actually dug into the food, we put aside all our skepticism. We started with an order of the fresh spring rolls stuffed with both shrimp and thin slices of pork — very light and very delicious, in large part because of the smokiness of the grilled pork, which lingered in our mouths. We also ordered the house-made crab chips (a perfect snack under any circumstance) and a plate of “Hanoi”-style chicken wings, which none of us remembered from any of the previous incarnations of Turtle Tower. These were whole, two-joint wings that we pulled apart with our hands, juicy and succulent, and fried to an attractive, crackly sheen.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Of course the main attraction was the phở itself. Turtle Tower has always specialized in northern-style phở — one of the purest distillations of the form that you can find in the Bay Area. That means the broth is less sweet and incorporates fewer spices and fresh herbs; instead of the giant plate of basil and bean sprouts that you get at southern-style joints, the soup comes topped with just a flurry of chopped scallions and cilantro. What you’re meant to taste is the pure flavor of the chicken or beef itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It had been too long since I’d eaten at the old Turtle Tower for me to say with certainty that the chicken phở was exactly the same. But all it took was one sip of that broth — clear, refined, intensely chicken-y with just a hint of ginger — to be fully satisfied. The noodles were wide and soft and highly slurpable, and even without my precious giblets, I could appreciate the silkiness of the shreds of both dark and white chicken meat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The beef phở, which many of the restaurant’s Vietnamese regulars like even better than the chicken, is similarly minimalistic. Thin slices of rare beef come lightly pounded, in the northern style, for extra tenderness, and the broth, once again, homes in on the pure essence of beef flavor. Both phởs are the very embodiment of a soup that’ll cure what ails you.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the new incarnation of Turtle Tower first opened in the Financial District, that location was also open late on weekends and ran a steeply discounted late-night happy hour menu starting at 11 p.m. — $2 oysters, $8 chicken wings, $4 beers and the like. Now that the Marina location is the only one keeping those late-night hours, the happy hour has been discontinued while the restaurant sorts out its liquor license. But once it does, a manager told us, they plan to start those deals up once again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At the end of the night, we came away still a bit unsure of exactly what kind of “Marina person” the restaurant is hoping to attract, and how successful that effort has been. At least based on our visit, the crowd is a lot more restrained and low-key than we expected — no party people, just groups of two or three, mostly Asian Americans, quietly enjoying a bowl of phở at the end of the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Mostly, everyone just seemed pleased to have found this little oasis of home-cooked goodness — a shelter from all the blustery noise outside. Most of them, I’d dare to venture, seemed like they could handle a bowl of giblets.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/turtletower.sf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Turtle Tower’s\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> Marina location is open Sunday to Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–3 a.m. at 3145 Fillmore St. in San Francisco. The restaurant also has a location in the Financial District, at 220 California St., with shorter, non-late-night hours.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "smokehouse-berkeley-late-night-burgers-hot-dogs-shakes",
"title": "Revisiting Smokehouse, a Berkeley Classic for Late-Night Burgers and Shakes",
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"headTitle": "Revisiting Smokehouse, a Berkeley Classic for Late-Night Burgers and Shakes | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985783\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985783\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smokehouse specializes in fire-grilled burgers and hot dogs. The Berkeley staple stays open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, guest artist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brianabreaks/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Briana Loewinsohn\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> joined the burger party.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lit up like a beacon on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/berkeley\">Berkeley\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/\">Smokehouse\u003c/a> is a picture-postcard image of a classic American burger shack: the big, red, retro diner–style sign; the no-frills menu; the string lights twinkling over the cluster of picnic tables in back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent chilly Friday night, we could smell the smoke and the charred meat from all the way down the block. Jackpot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d come because we were in the mood for a fast food–style char-grilled burger — and, like generations of Berkleyans before us, we knew that Smokehouse was \u003ci>the \u003c/i>spot to satisfy that craving, especially after 10 or 11 o’clock at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since 1951, the restaurant has a frozen-in-time quality that we found incredibly charming. The one of us who’d been a Smokehouse regular as a high schooler in the ’90s spotted only a handful of visible changes: Now, you order outside from a guy manning a tablet set up on a wheelie cart instead of lining up inside the restaurant itself. There’s now an Impossible Burger on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/menu/\">menu\u003c/a>. And, after a \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/11/20/the-smokehouse-berkeley-burger-restaurant-reopening\">post-fire renovation\u003c/a> during the pandemic, the grassy back patio has gotten a nice little makeover — if you come earlier in the day, there are always a bunch of kids running around on the lawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One other gesture to modernity: Smokehouse now has one of those \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/IndustrialDesign/comments/hlr50d/what_you_guys_think_about_this_freestyle_coke/\">Coke Freestyle machines\u003c/a> — a relatively rare sighting in the non-movie-theater wilds — adding 60-some flavors’ worth of whimsy and mad science to your burger shop experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Otherwise, the place feels more or less the same as it always has. Even as the prices have crept up over the years, the burgers and hot dogs are still shockingly inexpensive by Bay Area standards — less than $9, for instance, for a double cheeseburger. Now, as always, the restaurant is the kind of place where \u003ci>everyone \u003c/i>in Berkeley goes. During our visit, we saw a multi-generational Filipino family, a handful of elderly couples who seemed like they lived in the neighborhood, a pack of teens, a couple of professor types, and several college kids enjoying the last gasp of their winter break. It was a nice, welcoming vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985784\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985784\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2.jpg\" alt='Exterior of a burger shack lit up at night. The retro-style red sign reads, \"Smokehouse.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant has been open on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey since 1951. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Let’s be real, though: If you’ve come to Smokehouse, it’s probably because you want to see your food get set on fire. The big sign outside touts the restaurant’s “flame-grilled” hot dogs and burgers, and that’s something the line cooks take seriously. Every minute or so, the entire grill bursts into massive flames, engulfing everything on it. And that’s the taste I crave: The cheeseburgers at Smokehouse are super-simple (my order is lettuce, diced onion, caramelized onion, hold the tomato, add a little tub of cherry peppers on the side), but the deep smoky, charred flavor that they get on the patties is tough to beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13985042,arts_13983249,arts_13954597']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>The fire-grilling also makes for some of the tastiest hot dogs in town — snappy and juicy, but with that extra dimension of smokiness like you get when you cook over a campfire. (Be forewarned that when they ask if you want everything on your hot dog, they really do mean \u003ci>everything \u003c/i>— we probably could have done with a little less relish, onions and ketchup.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it went with the rest of what we ordered. Everything was better, or at least as good, as it needed to be: the thick-cut fries that were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. The extra-crunchy, frizzled onion rings that were cooked perfectly so you could bite through them cleanly. The savory, bean-forward chili with exactly the right texture for adhering to your fries or hot dog. The just-thick-enough straight chocolate shake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a “gourmet” destination meal by any stretch. But on many, many nights, it’s exactly the meal that hits the spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/\">\u003ci>Smokehouse\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Mon. to Thursday 10:30 a.m.–11 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 10:30 a.m.–midnight and Sun. 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m. at 3115 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"title": "Smokehouse Is a Berkeley Classic for Late-Night Burgers and Shakes | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985783\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985783\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smokehouse specializes in fire-grilled burgers and hot dogs. The Berkeley staple stays open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, guest artist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/brianabreaks/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Briana Loewinsohn\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> joined the burger party.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lit up like a beacon on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/berkeley\">Berkeley\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/\">Smokehouse\u003c/a> is a picture-postcard image of a classic American burger shack: the big, red, retro diner–style sign; the no-frills menu; the string lights twinkling over the cluster of picnic tables in back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent chilly Friday night, we could smell the smoke and the charred meat from all the way down the block. Jackpot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’d come because we were in the mood for a fast food–style char-grilled burger — and, like generations of Berkleyans before us, we knew that Smokehouse was \u003ci>the \u003c/i>spot to satisfy that craving, especially after 10 or 11 o’clock at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since 1951, the restaurant has a frozen-in-time quality that we found incredibly charming. The one of us who’d been a Smokehouse regular as a high schooler in the ’90s spotted only a handful of visible changes: Now, you order outside from a guy manning a tablet set up on a wheelie cart instead of lining up inside the restaurant itself. There’s now an Impossible Burger on the \u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/menu/\">menu\u003c/a>. And, after a \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/11/20/the-smokehouse-berkeley-burger-restaurant-reopening\">post-fire renovation\u003c/a> during the pandemic, the grassy back patio has gotten a nice little makeover — if you come earlier in the day, there are always a bunch of kids running around on the lawn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One other gesture to modernity: Smokehouse now has one of those \u003ca href=\"https://www.reddit.com/r/IndustrialDesign/comments/hlr50d/what_you_guys_think_about_this_freestyle_coke/\">Coke Freestyle machines\u003c/a> — a relatively rare sighting in the non-movie-theater wilds — adding 60-some flavors’ worth of whimsy and mad science to your burger shop experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Otherwise, the place feels more or less the same as it always has. Even as the prices have crept up over the years, the burgers and hot dogs are still shockingly inexpensive by Bay Area standards — less than $9, for instance, for a double cheeseburger. Now, as always, the restaurant is the kind of place where \u003ci>everyone \u003c/i>in Berkeley goes. During our visit, we saw a multi-generational Filipino family, a handful of elderly couples who seemed like they lived in the neighborhood, a pack of teens, a couple of professor types, and several college kids enjoying the last gasp of their winter break. It was a nice, welcoming vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985784\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985784\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2.jpg\" alt='Exterior of a burger shack lit up at night. The retro-style red sign reads, \"Smokehouse.\"' width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/01/Smokehouse_2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant has been open on the corner of Telegraph and Woolsey since 1951. \u003ccite>(Briana Loewinsohn)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Let’s be real, though: If you’ve come to Smokehouse, it’s probably because you want to see your food get set on fire. The big sign outside touts the restaurant’s “flame-grilled” hot dogs and burgers, and that’s something the line cooks take seriously. Every minute or so, the entire grill bursts into massive flames, engulfing everything on it. And that’s the taste I crave: The cheeseburgers at Smokehouse are super-simple (my order is lettuce, diced onion, caramelized onion, hold the tomato, add a little tub of cherry peppers on the side), but the deep smoky, charred flavor that they get on the patties is tough to beat.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>The fire-grilling also makes for some of the tastiest hot dogs in town — snappy and juicy, but with that extra dimension of smokiness like you get when you cook over a campfire. (Be forewarned that when they ask if you want everything on your hot dog, they really do mean \u003ci>everything \u003c/i>— we probably could have done with a little less relish, onions and ketchup.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So it went with the rest of what we ordered. Everything was better, or at least as good, as it needed to be: the thick-cut fries that were crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. The extra-crunchy, frizzled onion rings that were cooked perfectly so you could bite through them cleanly. The savory, bean-forward chili with exactly the right texture for adhering to your fries or hot dog. The just-thick-enough straight chocolate shake.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s not a “gourmet” destination meal by any stretch. But on many, many nights, it’s exactly the meal that hits the spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eatsmokehouse.com/\">\u003ci>Smokehouse\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Mon. to Thursday 10:30 a.m.–11 p.m., Fri. and Sat. 10:30 a.m.–midnight and Sun. 10:30 a.m.–10 p.m. at 3115 Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "vostok-kyrgyzstan-halal-street-food-shawarma-gas-station-santa-clara",
"title": "This Gas Station Food Truck Serves Amazing Kyrgyz Street Food in Santa Clara",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985045\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985045\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vostok is one of the only Bay Area food businesses that specializes in the cuisine of Kyrgyzstan: shwarma, plov and wok-fried lagman. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101891054/finding-amazing-food-in-unlikely-places\">Contrary to popular belief\u003c/a>, I don’t purchase \u003ci>all\u003c/i> of my meals from gas station convenience stores and food trucks parked outside of gas stations. But when I do, I’ve experienced close to a 100% rate of deliciousness — immaculately crunchy-skinned \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20190412201350/https://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/the-best-fried-chicken-sf-just-might-be-mission-gas-station\">Cajun fried chicken\u003c/a>, juicy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13950577/halal-king-yemeni-restaurant-gas-station-richmond\">Yemeni scrambled eggs\u003c/a> ladled over hot pita, and behemothic \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/2/11/22275500/tacos-el-rulas-truck-berkeley-quesabirria-torta-cubana-handmade-tortillas\">tortas Cubanas\u003c/a> oozing with melted cheese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Somehow, the dodgier and more middle-of-nowhere the gas station, the tastier the food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were feeling pretty hyped, then, when we pulled into the Platinum gas station in Santa Clara at 9 o’clock on a recent chilly Thursday night to try the cuisine of Kyrgyzstan for the first time in our lives. Tucked behind the gas station mini-mart, hidden in the semi-darkness, was the halal food truck we’d driven an hour to find, its name, “Vostok Gyro & Shawarma,” emblazoned on top in a jaunty, colorful typeface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the grand constellation of Bay Area food trucks, Vostok is a bit of an anomaly, due in part to its unusually long business hours, from noon to 11 p.m. daily. Based on the steady stream of customers we witnessed during our visit, the truck only gets busier as the night gets later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even more notably, Vostok is one of the only dedicated Kyrgyz food businesses in the Bay Area (I’m aware of just \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/dining-out-in-sf/204818/nursel-cuisine-kyrgyzstani-restaurant-peninsula-san-carlos\">one other\u003c/a>). There’s been a small uptick in Central Asian restaurants in the past few years — in places specializing in, say, Uyghur or Uzbek dishes. Afghan food, another cousin of these cuisines, has been a Bay Area staple going back to the ’80s and ’90s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kyrgyzstan, on the other hand, remains widely underrepresented. The country shares a border with Xinjiang, China, to the east, and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the north and west. Its food, likewise, is an amalgamation of all of these regional influences — a kind of culinary middle ground between Russian pelmeni and borscht, Chinese noodles, and the well-spiced shawarma and kebabs that you can find in much of the Arabic-speaking world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985046\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985046\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: A food truck lit up at night. The sign on top reads, \"Vostok Gyro & Shawarma.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the parking lot of a Santa Clara gas station, Vostok is open from noon to 11 p.m. daily. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All of which is to say that the food at Vostok is \u003ci>delicious\u003c/i>, and several degrees more ambitious than what you might expect from a typical food truck, thanks in part to the fact that it’s rigged with both vertical shawarma spits and a wok station. Just about everything on the menu is cooked to order and comes out piping hot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were sold as soon as we had our first taste of the crispy fried pelmeni — tiny, crescent-shaped beef dumplings that burst with meaty juices when we bit in. They were especially tasty dipped in the accompanying tub of dill-infused sour cream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Vostok’s Kyrgyz-style shawarma wraps, which come in regular or “king” size, have their own distinct vibe that sets them apart from the shawarma you might get at a Turkish or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894684/toum-shawarmaji-jordanian-restaurant-oakland-garlic-sauce\">Jordanian\u003c/a> spot. We opted for the beef shawarma, and the meat was both juicier and steakier than we expected. Instead of hitting us with a garlic bomb, the sauce was tangy and dill-forward, with a hint of sweetness. The combination of textures and flavors was fantastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What really won me over, though, was the plov, a casserole-like rice dish flecked with tender stew beef, whole garlic cloves, and slivers of carrot cooked very soft. The main thing is that the long-grain rice comes out slicked brown with the grease and juices from the beef, which makes the whole thing incredibly decadent and delicious — not unlike, say, Afghan Qabili palaw. On the side, you get a little tub of raw onions and tomato to use as a garnish, cutting into the richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the dish I’ll be coming back for again and again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13983739,arts_13973430,arts_13950577']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Finally, we dug into the wok lagman, which is the Kyrgyz and Uyghur take on wok-fried hand-pulled noodles — like a super-premium version of the stir-fried noodles you might get at a Chinese takeout spot. The noodles were thick, chewy and steaming-hot; the beef tender and slightly sweet, like pepper steak. The bowl came loaded with vegetables, too: bell peppers, onions, garlic and crisp wood ear mushrooms. Every part of the dish had that addictive charred, smoky, “wok hei” quality that you only get from high-heat wok cooking. It was the perfect thing to eat on a chilly night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next to the truck, Vostok’s proprietors have set up a little tented dining area, with a patio heater and string lights — or they’re in the process of setting it up, anyway. During our visit, neither lights nor heater were working, but that didn’t stop the small gaggle of middle-aged men who were seated there in the darkness, chatting over shawarma wraps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But most customers took their food to go. Others, who didn’t want to wait, sat inside their cars, opened up their takeout cartons and immediately dug in. A few, like us, simply laid out our feast on the hood of our cars, spilling chalap (a fizzy salted yogurt drink) onto the fender, slurping up the lagman and shoveling plov into our mouths as quickly as we could. The food was so hot and soul-nourishing, we forgot all about the cold.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/vostok_shawarma/\">\u003ci>Vostok Gyro & Shawarma\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open noon–11 p.m. daily at 36 Washington St. in Santa Clara (in the Platinum gas station parking lot).\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985045\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985045\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Vostok is one of the only Bay Area food businesses that specializes in the cuisine of Kyrgyzstan: shwarma, plov and wok-fried lagman. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101891054/finding-amazing-food-in-unlikely-places\">Contrary to popular belief\u003c/a>, I don’t purchase \u003ci>all\u003c/i> of my meals from gas station convenience stores and food trucks parked outside of gas stations. But when I do, I’ve experienced close to a 100% rate of deliciousness — immaculately crunchy-skinned \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20190412201350/https://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/the-best-fried-chicken-sf-just-might-be-mission-gas-station\">Cajun fried chicken\u003c/a>, juicy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13950577/halal-king-yemeni-restaurant-gas-station-richmond\">Yemeni scrambled eggs\u003c/a> ladled over hot pita, and behemothic \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/2/11/22275500/tacos-el-rulas-truck-berkeley-quesabirria-torta-cubana-handmade-tortillas\">tortas Cubanas\u003c/a> oozing with melted cheese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Somehow, the dodgier and more middle-of-nowhere the gas station, the tastier the food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were feeling pretty hyped, then, when we pulled into the Platinum gas station in Santa Clara at 9 o’clock on a recent chilly Thursday night to try the cuisine of Kyrgyzstan for the first time in our lives. Tucked behind the gas station mini-mart, hidden in the semi-darkness, was the halal food truck we’d driven an hour to find, its name, “Vostok Gyro & Shawarma,” emblazoned on top in a jaunty, colorful typeface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Within the grand constellation of Bay Area food trucks, Vostok is a bit of an anomaly, due in part to its unusually long business hours, from noon to 11 p.m. daily. Based on the steady stream of customers we witnessed during our visit, the truck only gets busier as the night gets later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even more notably, Vostok is one of the only dedicated Kyrgyz food businesses in the Bay Area (I’m aware of just \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/dining-out-in-sf/204818/nursel-cuisine-kyrgyzstani-restaurant-peninsula-san-carlos\">one other\u003c/a>). There’s been a small uptick in Central Asian restaurants in the past few years — in places specializing in, say, Uyghur or Uzbek dishes. Afghan food, another cousin of these cuisines, has been a Bay Area staple going back to the ’80s and ’90s.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kyrgyzstan, on the other hand, remains widely underrepresented. The country shares a border with Xinjiang, China, to the east, and Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the north and west. Its food, likewise, is an amalgamation of all of these regional influences — a kind of culinary middle ground between Russian pelmeni and borscht, Chinese noodles, and the well-spiced shawarma and kebabs that you can find in much of the Arabic-speaking world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13985046\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13985046\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: A food truck lit up at night. The sign on top reads, \"Vostok Gyro & Shawarma.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/12/vostok2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the parking lot of a Santa Clara gas station, Vostok is open from noon to 11 p.m. daily. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>All of which is to say that the food at Vostok is \u003ci>delicious\u003c/i>, and several degrees more ambitious than what you might expect from a typical food truck, thanks in part to the fact that it’s rigged with both vertical shawarma spits and a wok station. Just about everything on the menu is cooked to order and comes out piping hot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were sold as soon as we had our first taste of the crispy fried pelmeni — tiny, crescent-shaped beef dumplings that burst with meaty juices when we bit in. They were especially tasty dipped in the accompanying tub of dill-infused sour cream.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Vostok’s Kyrgyz-style shawarma wraps, which come in regular or “king” size, have their own distinct vibe that sets them apart from the shawarma you might get at a Turkish or \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13894684/toum-shawarmaji-jordanian-restaurant-oakland-garlic-sauce\">Jordanian\u003c/a> spot. We opted for the beef shawarma, and the meat was both juicier and steakier than we expected. Instead of hitting us with a garlic bomb, the sauce was tangy and dill-forward, with a hint of sweetness. The combination of textures and flavors was fantastic.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What really won me over, though, was the plov, a casserole-like rice dish flecked with tender stew beef, whole garlic cloves, and slivers of carrot cooked very soft. The main thing is that the long-grain rice comes out slicked brown with the grease and juices from the beef, which makes the whole thing incredibly decadent and delicious — not unlike, say, Afghan Qabili palaw. On the side, you get a little tub of raw onions and tomato to use as a garnish, cutting into the richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the dish I’ll be coming back for again and again.\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>Finally, we dug into the wok lagman, which is the Kyrgyz and Uyghur take on wok-fried hand-pulled noodles — like a super-premium version of the stir-fried noodles you might get at a Chinese takeout spot. The noodles were thick, chewy and steaming-hot; the beef tender and slightly sweet, like pepper steak. The bowl came loaded with vegetables, too: bell peppers, onions, garlic and crisp wood ear mushrooms. Every part of the dish had that addictive charred, smoky, “wok hei” quality that you only get from high-heat wok cooking. It was the perfect thing to eat on a chilly night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Next to the truck, Vostok’s proprietors have set up a little tented dining area, with a patio heater and string lights — or they’re in the process of setting it up, anyway. During our visit, neither lights nor heater were working, but that didn’t stop the small gaggle of middle-aged men who were seated there in the darkness, chatting over shawarma wraps.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But most customers took their food to go. Others, who didn’t want to wait, sat inside their cars, opened up their takeout cartons and immediately dug in. A few, like us, simply laid out our feast on the hood of our cars, spilling chalap (a fizzy salted yogurt drink) onto the fender, slurping up the lagman and shoveling plov into our mouths as quickly as we could. The food was so hot and soul-nourishing, we forgot all about the cold.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/vostok_shawarma/\">\u003ci>Vostok Gyro & Shawarma\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open noon–11 p.m. daily at 36 Washington St. in Santa Clara (in the Platinum gas station parking lot).\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "hand-pulled-chinese-noodles-late-night-dao-artisan-noodle-san-leandro",
"title": "An East Bay Newcomer Slings Hand-Pulled Noodles and XLB Until Midnight",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13983728\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13983728\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devours a bowl of Chinese noodles while his companion prepares to eat a soup dumpling. On the table are other assorted dishes: a cucumber salad, a steamer of soup dumplings, beef pancake, and bowl of salmon fried rice.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A spread of food at Dao Artisan Noodle. The San Leandro restaurant specializes in Lanzhou-style hand-pulled noodles and other dough-based Northern Chinese 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>Tucked away in an unassuming suburban neighborhood in San Leandro, the 88 Manor Market shopping plaza had all but shut down for the night by the time we pulled up at 10:30 p.m. on a recent Friday. The Asian grocery, the chicken phở spot next door, the boba shop, the beauty parlor — all already closed for hours. Just a single storefront was still brightly lit up, bustling with a packed dining room full of hungry customers bent over steamers full of juicy soup dumplings and piping-hot bowls of noodles — an enticing offer as our fall evening grew chillier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant is called \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/daoartisannoodle/\">Dao Artisan Noodle\u003c/a>, and while it’s only been open for a couple of months, it seems to have already established itself as \u003ci>the\u003c/i> place to grab a late-night bite in San Leandro, especially if you’re a noodle-loving Asian American (or other Asian food enthusiast).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have the good fortune to be experiencing something of a noodle renaissance here in the Bay Area, where until recently Chinese restaurants specializing in handmade noodles were a relative rarity. Now, it feels like every few weeks there’s another new restaurant rolling out fresh \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/1/25/22245029/huangcheng-noodle-house-opening-photos-oakland-shanxi-knife-cut-noodles\">Shanxi knife-cut noodles\u003c/a>, spicy \u003ca href=\"https://maps.apple.com/place?place-id=I39F1A23B05035EC0&address=358+11th+St%2C+Oakland%2C+CA++94607%2C+United+States&coordinate=37.8015093%2C-122.2702454&name=Mr+Liu+Noodle+House&_provider=9902\">Chongqing noodles\u003c/a> or the kind of stretchy \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/impression_of_lanzhou/?hl=en\">Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles\u003c/a> that you’ll find at Dao Artisan Noodle. And Dao is the only East Bay spot we’re aware of that’s selling hand-pulled noodles and handmade xiao long bao (XLB) until midnight every night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lanzhou noodles might be the flashiest of the Chinese regional styles — maybe you’ve seen videos of veteran noodle masters acrobatically twisting and stretching the dough, then \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@lanfulanzhoulamian/video/7560248389233855751\">dividing it between their fingertips over and over\u003c/a>, like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_6CtXa1_sA\">Cat’s Cradle virtuosos\u003c/a>, until they’ve formed a pile of bouncy, impossibly thin noodles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the day, the whole song and dance of the noodle-making is one of Dao’s selling points, as diners can watch the chefs make the dumplings and noodles by hand inside the restaurant’s glass-encased show kitchen. By the time we sat down to eat, those uncles and aunties had long gone home, which also meant that the menu options were a little bit more limited. Instead of being able to choose between five different noodle shapes and thicknesses (ranging from “thin” to “knife cut”), only the “regular” round noodles, roughly the shape and thickness of bucatini, were available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what excellent noodles they were, with a Goldilocks-like level of chewiness, neither too soggy nor distractingly al dente — just right for slurping and soaking up the savoriness of the braised beef noodle soup that I ordered. The chunks of meat were tender; the beefy, clean-tasting broth had a pleasant undercurrent heat. It was an ideal bowl of comfort food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also liked the soupless, oil-slicked beef short rib noodles, which had a tongue-tingling mala flavor profile and came with a big, showy hunk of meat on the bone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13983727\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13983727\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant at night. The bright neon-lit sign reads \"Dao Artisan Noodle.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is open until midnight every night. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dao has a broader, more varied menu than your standard noodle shop, though its specialties are its dough-based items. Apart from the noodles, Dao’s biggest selling point is its xiao long bao (aka soup dumplings), which come six to an order and are clearly handmade — thin-skinned and intricately pleated if a little rustic in appearance, and about 30 percent larger and plumper than I expected. None of that weak-hearted XLB-in-a-little-cupcake-sleeve here: These are soup dumplings you can pick up with your chopsticks and jiggle and bounce on your plate without a drop of the broth inside — the hot, savory, perfectly seasoned broth — leaking out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another surprise favorite: Dao’s beef wrap rolls, which look like the same meat-stuffed pancakes you can get at any number of Chinese restaurants in the Bay — except that the hoisin-soaked beef inside is much tenderer and more luxuriously fatty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13983249,arts_13980212,arts_13969092']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Dao’s classic Northern Chinese noodle and dumpling offerings are tasty enough to satisfy the most persnickety traditionalist. But the restaurant also has an edgy, modern streak that adds a dash of fun and whimsy to the menu — uni soft-boiled eggs and bright red, lychee-shaped fried shrimp balls. The cucumber salad we ordered had been drizzled in chili oil, like we expected, but also something sweet (condensed milk??) we couldn’t quite identify — a “secret recipe,” the server told us. Somehow the flavors worked. And one of our favorite dishes was a bowl of subtly earthy crab roe–infused salmon fried rice, which came topped with large chunks of skin-on salmon and a scattering of pleasantly crunchy flying fish eggs — a veritable bargain for $14.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, almost everything on the menu costs less than $15, making it easy to take a chance and try something new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the sidewalk outside, the restaurant had even put out a signboard advertising the soft launch of its newest creation: pistachio-topped \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12060700/dubai-chocolate-recipe-pistachios-climate-change-california\">\u003ci>Dubai chocolate\u003c/i>\u003c/a> xiao long bao. And sure, the whole concept of dessert XLB might be an abomination to the dumpling gods (I am nothing if not a traditionalist in this regard). But everything we’ve eaten at Dao so far has been a hit. In other words, I look forward to one of \u003ci>you\u003c/i> biting the bullet to taste these little bundles of melted chocolate. I can’t wait to hear how they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/daoartisannoodle/\">\u003ci>Dao Artisan Noodle\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 10:30 a.m.–midnight daily at 15032 Farnsworth St. in San Leandro.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13983728\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13983728\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devours a bowl of Chinese noodles while his companion prepares to eat a soup dumpling. On the table are other assorted dishes: a cucumber salad, a steamer of soup dumplings, beef pancake, and bowl of salmon fried rice.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A spread of food at Dao Artisan Noodle. The San Leandro restaurant specializes in Lanzhou-style hand-pulled noodles and other dough-based Northern Chinese 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>Tucked away in an unassuming suburban neighborhood in San Leandro, the 88 Manor Market shopping plaza had all but shut down for the night by the time we pulled up at 10:30 p.m. on a recent Friday. The Asian grocery, the chicken phở spot next door, the boba shop, the beauty parlor — all already closed for hours. Just a single storefront was still brightly lit up, bustling with a packed dining room full of hungry customers bent over steamers full of juicy soup dumplings and piping-hot bowls of noodles — an enticing offer as our fall evening grew chillier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant is called \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/daoartisannoodle/\">Dao Artisan Noodle\u003c/a>, and while it’s only been open for a couple of months, it seems to have already established itself as \u003ci>the\u003c/i> place to grab a late-night bite in San Leandro, especially if you’re a noodle-loving Asian American (or other Asian food enthusiast).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We have the good fortune to be experiencing something of a noodle renaissance here in the Bay Area, where until recently Chinese restaurants specializing in handmade noodles were a relative rarity. Now, it feels like every few weeks there’s another new restaurant rolling out fresh \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2021/1/25/22245029/huangcheng-noodle-house-opening-photos-oakland-shanxi-knife-cut-noodles\">Shanxi knife-cut noodles\u003c/a>, spicy \u003ca href=\"https://maps.apple.com/place?place-id=I39F1A23B05035EC0&address=358+11th+St%2C+Oakland%2C+CA++94607%2C+United+States&coordinate=37.8015093%2C-122.2702454&name=Mr+Liu+Noodle+House&_provider=9902\">Chongqing noodles\u003c/a> or the kind of stretchy \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/impression_of_lanzhou/?hl=en\">Lanzhou hand-pulled noodles\u003c/a> that you’ll find at Dao Artisan Noodle. And Dao is the only East Bay spot we’re aware of that’s selling hand-pulled noodles and handmade xiao long bao (XLB) until midnight every night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lanzhou noodles might be the flashiest of the Chinese regional styles — maybe you’ve seen videos of veteran noodle masters acrobatically twisting and stretching the dough, then \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@lanfulanzhoulamian/video/7560248389233855751\">dividing it between their fingertips over and over\u003c/a>, like \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_6CtXa1_sA\">Cat’s Cradle virtuosos\u003c/a>, until they’ve formed a pile of bouncy, impossibly thin noodles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During the day, the whole song and dance of the noodle-making is one of Dao’s selling points, as diners can watch the chefs make the dumplings and noodles by hand inside the restaurant’s glass-encased show kitchen. By the time we sat down to eat, those uncles and aunties had long gone home, which also meant that the menu options were a little bit more limited. Instead of being able to choose between five different noodle shapes and thicknesses (ranging from “thin” to “knife cut”), only the “regular” round noodles, roughly the shape and thickness of bucatini, were available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But what excellent noodles they were, with a Goldilocks-like level of chewiness, neither too soggy nor distractingly al dente — just right for slurping and soaking up the savoriness of the braised beef noodle soup that I ordered. The chunks of meat were tender; the beefy, clean-tasting broth had a pleasant undercurrent heat. It was an ideal bowl of comfort food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also liked the soupless, oil-slicked beef short rib noodles, which had a tongue-tingling mala flavor profile and came with a big, showy hunk of meat on the bone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13983727\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13983727\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant at night. The bright neon-lit sign reads \"Dao Artisan Noodle.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/daonoodles-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is open until midnight every night. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Dao has a broader, more varied menu than your standard noodle shop, though its specialties are its dough-based items. Apart from the noodles, Dao’s biggest selling point is its xiao long bao (aka soup dumplings), which come six to an order and are clearly handmade — thin-skinned and intricately pleated if a little rustic in appearance, and about 30 percent larger and plumper than I expected. None of that weak-hearted XLB-in-a-little-cupcake-sleeve here: These are soup dumplings you can pick up with your chopsticks and jiggle and bounce on your plate without a drop of the broth inside — the hot, savory, perfectly seasoned broth — leaking out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another surprise favorite: Dao’s beef wrap rolls, which look like the same meat-stuffed pancakes you can get at any number of Chinese restaurants in the Bay — except that the hoisin-soaked beef inside is much tenderer and more luxuriously fatty.\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>Dao’s classic Northern Chinese noodle and dumpling offerings are tasty enough to satisfy the most persnickety traditionalist. But the restaurant also has an edgy, modern streak that adds a dash of fun and whimsy to the menu — uni soft-boiled eggs and bright red, lychee-shaped fried shrimp balls. The cucumber salad we ordered had been drizzled in chili oil, like we expected, but also something sweet (condensed milk??) we couldn’t quite identify — a “secret recipe,” the server told us. Somehow the flavors worked. And one of our favorite dishes was a bowl of subtly earthy crab roe–infused salmon fried rice, which came topped with large chunks of skin-on salmon and a scattering of pleasantly crunchy flying fish eggs — a veritable bargain for $14.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, almost everything on the menu costs less than $15, making it easy to take a chance and try something new.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On the sidewalk outside, the restaurant had even put out a signboard advertising the soft launch of its newest creation: pistachio-topped \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12060700/dubai-chocolate-recipe-pistachios-climate-change-california\">\u003ci>Dubai chocolate\u003c/i>\u003c/a> xiao long bao. And sure, the whole concept of dessert XLB might be an abomination to the dumpling gods (I am nothing if not a traditionalist in this regard). But everything we’ve eaten at Dao so far has been a hit. In other words, I look forward to one of \u003ci>you\u003c/i> biting the bullet to taste these little bundles of melted chocolate. I can’t wait to hear how they are.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/daoartisannoodle/\">\u003ci>Dao Artisan Noodle\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 10:30 a.m.–midnight daily at 15032 Farnsworth St. in San Leandro.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13983253\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13983253\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating a spread of food inside a bowling alley.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located inside the Castro Village Bowl bowling alley, the Lucky Lane 33 Cafe specializes in Lao and Thai dishes like Lao sausage, nam khao (crispy rice ball salad) and papaya salad. \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 graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, guest artist — and competitive league bowler — Raynato Castro joined the fray.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few minutes before 9 o’clock on a recent Saturday night, the line of prospective customers that looped around the Castro Village Bowl parking lot was as long and as energized as any nightclub queue. Inside, a pair of burly armed guards in full tactical gear scanned each person with metal detectors with the brusque efficiency of a TSA screening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once we got past the security checkpoint, though, the vibe could scarcely have been more cheerful and family-friendly — your typical bowling alley mix of young couples, chatty teens and heavy-set dudes in baseball caps. We’d all come for the Castro Valley bowling alley’s Friday and Saturday night “unlimited bowling” promotion: a $20 cover charge, shoe-rental inclusive, to bowl as many games as we could squeeze in between 9 and 11 p.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is, my bowling-conversant friends tell me, about as good a deal as you can find in the Bay Area. And Castro Village Bowl is one of the region’s last remaining independent bowling alleys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we had another mission, too: We’d heard that Lucky Lane 33 Cafe, the snack bar inside the bowling alley, doubles as one of the finest Laotian and Thai restaurants in the East Bay — almost certainly the best that stays open past 10 p.m. most nights. The idea of racking up a slew of strikes while munching on nam khao and funky, fish sauce–spiked papaya salad? Impossible to resist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, we’d miscalculated. As it turns out, Lucky Lane 33 \u003ci>does \u003c/i>stay open late for these weekend unlimited bowling nights. But it stops serving its Lao-Thai menu (the whole reason we’d come!) after 8. There was no turning back, though. We’d already paid the cover charge and picked out our bowling balls. So all we could do was choose from the cafe’s other food offerings — quite a vast selection, it turns out. Lucky Lane is just a concessions window in the middle of the bowling alley, and yes, it sells your obligatory hot dogs, chicken strips, jalapeño poppers and mozzarella sticks. But even without dipping into the Lao specials, we were able to order a mostly Asian-leaning spread that far exceeded our expectations for bowling alley food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13983254\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13983254\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A customer ordering at the food window inside a bowling alley.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucky Lane 33 looks like a typical bowling alley concession stand — albeit one with an unusually large menu. \u003ccite>(Raynato Castro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Who knew, for instance, that crab rangoon makes for an ideal hand-held bowling snack? Yes, these fried wontons are purely an \u003ca href=\"https://www.foodrepublic.com/1494147/chinese-american-origin-story-crab-rangoon/\">American invention\u003c/a>, but something about the crunch of the wrappers and the burst of hot, savory cream cheese filling hit just right when we gobbled these down between frames. And while the pork skewers we ordered were a bit bland and dry, I feel confident declaring that the Thai angel wings were the best chicken wings I’ve ever had at a bowling alley — bite-sized but plump and super-crispy, coated with a sweet and spicy glaze that satisfied our craving for fish sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe because we’d seemed so sad about not being able to order off the Lao menu, the owner did offer us a plate of homemade, sesame seed–flecked Lao-style beef jerky, which was as crunchy as thick potato chip shards. Also proffered: a bag of Thai lotus cookies shaped like beautiful flowers — nutty, sesame seed–tinged, incredibly tasty flowers — at least until I dropped the entire bag onto the ground and they all shattered into a hundred tiny pieces. We also ordered a sleeve of tater tots because why not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But all this was just a teaser. The good news is that Lucky Lane 33 serves its more specialized Lao-Thai menu until closing time every other night — as late as 10:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, for instance. So when we came back again the following week, we were able to eat our fill of all those pungent, spicy Lao flavors we’d been craving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We knew the place was legit when we ordered the Lao-style papaya salad and the owner asked us not just how spicy we wanted it, but exactly how many chilies we wanted. Three, it turns out, was the perfect number — right at the limit of our tolerance, and hot enough to light up all of the pleasure synapses in our brains. On the owner’s suggestion, we ordered a bag of chicken cracklings to eat with the salad, and the combination of flavors and textures was as wonderful as she’d promised.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13982096,arts_13974383,arts_13968142']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>On and on went the parade of deliciousness. Nam khao, aka crispy rice ball salad, was a bright and limey delight, generously studded with pork skin and squishy, pink fermented pork sausage. The khao piak sen, a clear-brothed chicken noodle soup, tasted like something a home cook would whip up to cure your hangover. And my favorite, the Lao sausages, were thick, snappy, well-charred specimens — coarse-ground and lemongrassy, delicious over white rice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We asked the owner if they happened to have any jeow som, the famously habit-forming, spicy-funky Lao condiment, and it turns out Lucky Lane makes its own in-house — it’s not on the menu, but Thai and Laotian customers know to ask for it. She handed us a tub, and it was amazing: bright, tangy heat balanced against a deep fish sauce funk, with an extra hit of ginger for good measure. Delicious as a dip for the sausages and the beef jerky, or as a topping for plain rice — for anything, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the actual bowling, our night went the predetermined way you might expect it to go, given that one of us had brought his own bowling shoes and a bag of five (!) bowling balls, and started the evening by giving an extended lecture about “radius of gyration.” The rest of us, who’d learned everything we knew from bowling anime and children’s birthday parties, didn’t fare quite as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, we kept getting up there, with fish sauce on our breath and a sense of hope and promise in our hearts. Because the thing about bowling is there’s always the next frame. There’s always a second ball. And if that doesn’t work out, a bite of Lao sausage and jeow som will ease even the most miserable performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Lucky Lane 33 Cafe is located inside Castro Village Bowl at 3501 Village Dr. in Castro Valley. The restaurant is open Mondays and Tuesdays 4–9 p.m., Wednesday through Friday 4–10:30 p.m., Saturday 1–10:30 p.m. and Sunday 1–9 p.m. On Friday and Saturday nights, when the bowling alley has its late-night “unlimited bowling” promotion, the kitchen stops serving its Lao and Thai menu after 8 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13983253\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13983253\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eating a spread of food inside a bowling alley.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2-Eating-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located inside the Castro Village Bowl bowling alley, the Lucky Lane 33 Cafe specializes in Lao and Thai dishes like Lao sausage, nam khao (crispy rice ball salad) and papaya salad. \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 graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week, guest artist — and competitive league bowler — Raynato Castro joined the fray.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few minutes before 9 o’clock on a recent Saturday night, the line of prospective customers that looped around the Castro Village Bowl parking lot was as long and as energized as any nightclub queue. Inside, a pair of burly armed guards in full tactical gear scanned each person with metal detectors with the brusque efficiency of a TSA screening.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Once we got past the security checkpoint, though, the vibe could scarcely have been more cheerful and family-friendly — your typical bowling alley mix of young couples, chatty teens and heavy-set dudes in baseball caps. We’d all come for the Castro Valley bowling alley’s Friday and Saturday night “unlimited bowling” promotion: a $20 cover charge, shoe-rental inclusive, to bowl as many games as we could squeeze in between 9 and 11 p.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is, my bowling-conversant friends tell me, about as good a deal as you can find in the Bay Area. And Castro Village Bowl is one of the region’s last remaining independent bowling alleys.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we had another mission, too: We’d heard that Lucky Lane 33 Cafe, the snack bar inside the bowling alley, doubles as one of the finest Laotian and Thai restaurants in the East Bay — almost certainly the best that stays open past 10 p.m. most nights. The idea of racking up a slew of strikes while munching on nam khao and funky, fish sauce–spiked papaya salad? Impossible to resist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, we’d miscalculated. As it turns out, Lucky Lane 33 \u003ci>does \u003c/i>stay open late for these weekend unlimited bowling nights. But it stops serving its Lao-Thai menu (the whole reason we’d come!) after 8. There was no turning back, though. We’d already paid the cover charge and picked out our bowling balls. So all we could do was choose from the cafe’s other food offerings — quite a vast selection, it turns out. Lucky Lane is just a concessions window in the middle of the bowling alley, and yes, it sells your obligatory hot dogs, chicken strips, jalapeño poppers and mozzarella sticks. But even without dipping into the Lao specials, we were able to order a mostly Asian-leaning spread that far exceeded our expectations for bowling alley food.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13983254\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13983254\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: A customer ordering at the food window inside a bowling alley.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"2000\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/1-Ordering-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Lucky Lane 33 looks like a typical bowling alley concession stand — albeit one with an unusually large menu. \u003ccite>(Raynato Castro)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Who knew, for instance, that crab rangoon makes for an ideal hand-held bowling snack? Yes, these fried wontons are purely an \u003ca href=\"https://www.foodrepublic.com/1494147/chinese-american-origin-story-crab-rangoon/\">American invention\u003c/a>, but something about the crunch of the wrappers and the burst of hot, savory cream cheese filling hit just right when we gobbled these down between frames. And while the pork skewers we ordered were a bit bland and dry, I feel confident declaring that the Thai angel wings were the best chicken wings I’ve ever had at a bowling alley — bite-sized but plump and super-crispy, coated with a sweet and spicy glaze that satisfied our craving for fish sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Maybe because we’d seemed so sad about not being able to order off the Lao menu, the owner did offer us a plate of homemade, sesame seed–flecked Lao-style beef jerky, which was as crunchy as thick potato chip shards. Also proffered: a bag of Thai lotus cookies shaped like beautiful flowers — nutty, sesame seed–tinged, incredibly tasty flowers — at least until I dropped the entire bag onto the ground and they all shattered into a hundred tiny pieces. We also ordered a sleeve of tater tots because why not.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But all this was just a teaser. The good news is that Lucky Lane 33 serves its more specialized Lao-Thai menu until closing time every other night — as late as 10:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and Thursdays, for instance. So when we came back again the following week, we were able to eat our fill of all those pungent, spicy Lao flavors we’d been craving.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We knew the place was legit when we ordered the Lao-style papaya salad and the owner asked us not just how spicy we wanted it, but exactly how many chilies we wanted. Three, it turns out, was the perfect number — right at the limit of our tolerance, and hot enough to light up all of the pleasure synapses in our brains. On the owner’s suggestion, we ordered a bag of chicken cracklings to eat with the salad, and the combination of flavors and textures was as wonderful as she’d promised.\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>On and on went the parade of deliciousness. Nam khao, aka crispy rice ball salad, was a bright and limey delight, generously studded with pork skin and squishy, pink fermented pork sausage. The khao piak sen, a clear-brothed chicken noodle soup, tasted like something a home cook would whip up to cure your hangover. And my favorite, the Lao sausages, were thick, snappy, well-charred specimens — coarse-ground and lemongrassy, delicious over white rice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We asked the owner if they happened to have any jeow som, the famously habit-forming, spicy-funky Lao condiment, and it turns out Lucky Lane makes its own in-house — it’s not on the menu, but Thai and Laotian customers know to ask for it. She handed us a tub, and it was amazing: bright, tangy heat balanced against a deep fish sauce funk, with an extra hit of ginger for good measure. Delicious as a dip for the sausages and the beef jerky, or as a topping for plain rice — for anything, really.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for the actual bowling, our night went the predetermined way you might expect it to go, given that one of us had brought his own bowling shoes and a bag of five (!) bowling balls, and started the evening by giving an extended lecture about “radius of gyration.” The rest of us, who’d learned everything we knew from bowling anime and children’s birthday parties, didn’t fare quite as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, we kept getting up there, with fish sauce on our breath and a sense of hope and promise in our hearts. Because the thing about bowling is there’s always the next frame. There’s always a second ball. And if that doesn’t work out, a bite of Lao sausage and jeow som will ease even the most miserable performance.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Lucky Lane 33 Cafe is located inside Castro Village Bowl at 3501 Village Dr. in Castro Valley. The restaurant is open Mondays and Tuesdays 4–9 p.m., Wednesday through Friday 4–10:30 p.m., Saturday 1–10:30 p.m. and Sunday 1–9 p.m. On Friday and Saturday nights, when the bowling alley has its late-night “unlimited bowling” promotion, the kitchen stops serving its Lao and Thai menu after 8 p.m.\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": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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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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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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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.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"radiolab": {
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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},
"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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},
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"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
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},
"snap-judgment": {
"id": "snap-judgment",
"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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