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.
The East Bay’s Best Late-Night Lao Restaurant Is Inside a Bowling Alley
This Ethiopian Dive Bar’s Most Surprising Hit Is Its All-You-Can-Eat Veggie Combo
SF’s Famous Chicken Garage Is a Late-Night Korean Classic
Where Chinese Hamburgers Meet ‘Texas’ Barbecue
Keith’s Chicken N Waffles Slings Some of the Bay’s Crunchiest Fried Chicken
Mama Go’s Serves the Best Late-Night Airport Food at SFO
This British Pub in San Mateo Is a Riot of Late-Night Karaoke and Fish and Chips
This Buzzy Late-Night Restaurant in Chinatown Lives Up to All the Hype
A Yemeni Coffee Shop Keeps the Masses Well Caffeinated Until Midnight
This Union Square Ramen Shop Slings Pure Ocean Umami Until 3:30 a.m.
This Classic Oakland Chinatown Restaurant Hits the Spot at 3 a.m.
Korean Spicy Raw Crabs Are the Best Late-Night Snack
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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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"slug": "club-waziema-ethiopian-dive-bar-san-francisco-all-you-can-eat-veggie-combo-late-night",
"title": "This Ethiopian Dive Bar’s Most Surprising Hit Is Its All-You-Can-Eat Veggie Combo",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13982101\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13982101\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men sit at a bar counter devouring plates of Ethiopian food.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mostly known as a friendly neighborhood dive bar, Club Waziema also serves solid Ethiopian food — including an all-you-can-eat veggie combo. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You wouldn’t think \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/clubwaziema/?hl=en\">Club Waziema\u003c/a> even serves \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/food\">food\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We rolled up to the ancient Divisadero Street watering hole at a little past nine o’clock on a Friday night, drawn by Waziema’s reputation as San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/club-waziema-dive-bar-19473205.php\">best and only Ethiopian dive bar\u003c/a>. Inside the crowded, dimly lit room, the jukebox blared the opening chords of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” while a gaggle of half-tipsy twentysomethings ordered “whatever red wine” and three vodka cranberries at the long, curved bar. (“Perfect order,” the bartender quipped.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The place has that homey, lived-in quality that all the best dive bars have, with its gorgeous, red-velvet damask wallpaper, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Club-Waziema-San-Francisco-s-finest-Ethiopian-13207234.php\">rumored to date back to the 1940s\u003c/a>. Framed photos of legends like Louis Armstrong and Marvin Gaye who played there during the bar’s heyday as a jazz club in the ’60s and ’70s, when it was called Club Morocco, line the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, Club Waziema isn’t really a jazz club anymore (though it does host a lot of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/clubwaziema/?hl=en\">trendy underground DJ shows\u003c/a>). A busy pool table occupies the elevated stage area where B.B. King once sang the blues. But like a proper neighborhood dive, the whole place buzzes with laughter and loud conversation, everyone throwing back Red Stripes and decently cheap cocktails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only when we looked carefully did we notice that a handful of customers were bent over heaping mounds of Ethiopian food, served, charmingly, on those red, \u003ca href=\"https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/chinese-plate-design-history\">swirly-patterned melamine plates\u003c/a> you can find in every Chinese American household.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, as it turns out, Waziema is also one of the best-loved Ethiopian restaurants in the city, though it doesn’t much advertise that fact. There’s no obvious signage — no mention of food on the chalkboard drinks menu. But if you ask about it, a bartender will hand you a laminated menu, noting helpfully that the last call for food is at 10 p.m. (The bar itself stays open until 2 a.m.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About that food menu: It’s probably the most concise that I’ve encountered in the Bay Area’s venerable \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13978846/new-ethiopian-eritrean-restaurants-bay-area-san-francisco-oakland\">Ethiopian restaurant scene\u003c/a> — but also, to be fair, the most extensive Ethiopian menu I’ve seen at a dive bar. All told, there are nine dishes listed, but it’s really more like four, since the entire vegetarian side of the menu comes included in the $18 veggie combo. It’s hard to see why you wouldn’t just order that — \u003ci>especially\u003c/i> since it turns out to be ALL YOU CAN EAT. (Though again, there’s nothing on the menu to indicate this.) We ordered one of those and one meat combo — which came with our choice of two out of three meat offerings — and we’d essentially ordered the entire menu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13982103\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13982103\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a bar with a crowd of people outside. The sign says, \"Cocktails\".' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In a former life, Club Waziema was a legendary jazz club called Club Morocco. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Our favorite was the berbere-tinged beef stew (aka sega wot), which was wonderfully tender and rich. There was also a solid version of lamb tibs, that killer combination of seared lamb and sauteed onions that goes so perfectly with soft, tangy injera. On the veggie combo side, we loved the atakilt wat, listed on the menu as “veggie stew,” even though it was all potatoes; somehow the cabbage and carrots had gone missing. What amazing potatoes, though — perfectly cooked, sauce-slicked, incredibly tasty. We also loved the softly stewed red lentils (misir wot), which was the most spice-forward and aggressively seasoned dish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look, you can find Ethiopian food in Oakland or San Jose that has brighter flavors and more intense, intricate spicing. The kitchen definitely goes easy on the heat, even in that misir wot, to keep things accessible for Club Waziema’s multiethnic, largely non-Ethiopian crowd.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13981034,arts_13977177,arts_13972197']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>But the food is \u003ci>good\u003c/i>, and not just unexpectedly good for what you can get at a dive bar at 10 o’clock at night, though it certainly is that. The stews come out piping hot, piled atop a half-round of house-made injera on one of those Chinese plates. The extra injera on the side is fresh and still slightly warm, not cold and clammy like you get sometimes even at much fancier Ethiopian restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than anything, the spread reminded me of home food — the kind of casual, generous plate an auntie might hand you when you visit her at her house, a bottle of honey wine already uncorked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We got even more of that home feeling when we asked for seconds — because again, that veggie combo is \u003ci>all you can eat\u003c/i>. When the owner, Nebiat, came over to check on us toward the end of the night, we asked if we could have some more of the red lentils and the potatoes we’d so thoroughly enjoyed. When she came back, she apologized that they were already all out of the potatoes, but she’d ladled an extra-large scoop of lentils onto our plate — something cozy and belly-warming to fill us up before we headed back out into the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/clubwaziema/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Club Waziema\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Tuesday through Saturday, 6 p.m.–2 a.m., at 543 Divisadero St. in San Francisco. Last call for food is at 10 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Club Waziema is one of SF’s classic neighborhood dives — and serves great misir wat and beef stew too.",
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"title": "Club Waziema's Late-Night AYCE Ethiopian Veggie Combo in SF | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13982101\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13982101\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men sit at a bar counter devouring plates of Ethiopian food.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mostly known as a friendly neighborhood dive bar, Club Waziema also serves solid Ethiopian food — including an all-you-can-eat veggie combo. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You wouldn’t think \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/clubwaziema/?hl=en\">Club Waziema\u003c/a> even serves \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/food\">food\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We rolled up to the ancient Divisadero Street watering hole at a little past nine o’clock on a Friday night, drawn by Waziema’s reputation as San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/club-waziema-dive-bar-19473205.php\">best and only Ethiopian dive bar\u003c/a>. Inside the crowded, dimly lit room, the jukebox blared the opening chords of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” while a gaggle of half-tipsy twentysomethings ordered “whatever red wine” and three vodka cranberries at the long, curved bar. (“Perfect order,” the bartender quipped.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The place has that homey, lived-in quality that all the best dive bars have, with its gorgeous, red-velvet damask wallpaper, \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Club-Waziema-San-Francisco-s-finest-Ethiopian-13207234.php\">rumored to date back to the 1940s\u003c/a>. Framed photos of legends like Louis Armstrong and Marvin Gaye who played there during the bar’s heyday as a jazz club in the ’60s and ’70s, when it was called Club Morocco, line the walls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, Club Waziema isn’t really a jazz club anymore (though it does host a lot of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/clubwaziema/?hl=en\">trendy underground DJ shows\u003c/a>). A busy pool table occupies the elevated stage area where B.B. King once sang the blues. But like a proper neighborhood dive, the whole place buzzes with laughter and loud conversation, everyone throwing back Red Stripes and decently cheap cocktails.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Only when we looked carefully did we notice that a handful of customers were bent over heaping mounds of Ethiopian food, served, charmingly, on those red, \u003ca href=\"https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/chinese-plate-design-history\">swirly-patterned melamine plates\u003c/a> you can find in every Chinese American household.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, as it turns out, Waziema is also one of the best-loved Ethiopian restaurants in the city, though it doesn’t much advertise that fact. There’s no obvious signage — no mention of food on the chalkboard drinks menu. But if you ask about it, a bartender will hand you a laminated menu, noting helpfully that the last call for food is at 10 p.m. (The bar itself stays open until 2 a.m.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About that food menu: It’s probably the most concise that I’ve encountered in the Bay Area’s venerable \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13978846/new-ethiopian-eritrean-restaurants-bay-area-san-francisco-oakland\">Ethiopian restaurant scene\u003c/a> — but also, to be fair, the most extensive Ethiopian menu I’ve seen at a dive bar. All told, there are nine dishes listed, but it’s really more like four, since the entire vegetarian side of the menu comes included in the $18 veggie combo. It’s hard to see why you wouldn’t just order that — \u003ci>especially\u003c/i> since it turns out to be ALL YOU CAN EAT. (Though again, there’s nothing on the menu to indicate this.) We ordered one of those and one meat combo — which came with our choice of two out of three meat offerings — and we’d essentially ordered the entire menu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13982103\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13982103\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a bar with a crowd of people outside. The sign says, \"Cocktails\".' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/ClubWaziema-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In a former life, Club Waziema was a legendary jazz club called Club Morocco. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Our favorite was the berbere-tinged beef stew (aka sega wot), which was wonderfully tender and rich. There was also a solid version of lamb tibs, that killer combination of seared lamb and sauteed onions that goes so perfectly with soft, tangy injera. On the veggie combo side, we loved the atakilt wat, listed on the menu as “veggie stew,” even though it was all potatoes; somehow the cabbage and carrots had gone missing. What amazing potatoes, though — perfectly cooked, sauce-slicked, incredibly tasty. We also loved the softly stewed red lentils (misir wot), which was the most spice-forward and aggressively seasoned dish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Look, you can find Ethiopian food in Oakland or San Jose that has brighter flavors and more intense, intricate spicing. The kitchen definitely goes easy on the heat, even in that misir wot, to keep things accessible for Club Waziema’s multiethnic, largely non-Ethiopian crowd.\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>But the food is \u003ci>good\u003c/i>, and not just unexpectedly good for what you can get at a dive bar at 10 o’clock at night, though it certainly is that. The stews come out piping hot, piled atop a half-round of house-made injera on one of those Chinese plates. The extra injera on the side is fresh and still slightly warm, not cold and clammy like you get sometimes even at much fancier Ethiopian restaurants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than anything, the spread reminded me of home food — the kind of casual, generous plate an auntie might hand you when you visit her at her house, a bottle of honey wine already uncorked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We got even more of that home feeling when we asked for seconds — because again, that veggie combo is \u003ci>all you can eat\u003c/i>. When the owner, Nebiat, came over to check on us toward the end of the night, we asked if we could have some more of the red lentils and the potatoes we’d so thoroughly enjoyed. When she came back, she apologized that they were already all out of the potatoes, but she’d ladled an extra-large scoop of lentils onto our plate — something cozy and belly-warming to fill us up before we headed back out into the night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/clubwaziema/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Club Waziema\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Tuesday through Saturday, 6 p.m.–2 a.m., at 543 Divisadero St. in San Francisco. Last call for food is at 10 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "toyose-korean-chicken-garage-late-night-san-francisco",
"title": "SF’s Famous Chicken Garage Is a Late-Night Korean Classic",
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"headTitle": "SF’s Famous Chicken Garage Is a Late-Night Korean Classic | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13981038\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13981038\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devours stretchy cheesy corn while looking over a table crammed full of Korean pub food; his dining companion fills a mug with beer.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toyose is one of San Francisco’s most popular late-night restaurants, serving classic Korean pub food until 2 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a little past 9 on a recent Friday night, we pulled up to what mostly looked like an ordinary house in the Outer Sunset, a few blocks from Ocean Beach. An angry cartoon chicken, lit up like a beacon next to the unmarked garage door, was the only real indication that this was a restaurant — let alone the most famous \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/late-night\">late-night dining\u003c/a> spot in the neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As soon as we stepped inside the converted garage restaurant, it was easy to see the charm. The dim, cramped dining room was vaguely reminiscent of the hold of an old-timey ship — ropes coiled around wooden beams, half-enebriated diners wobbling their way to the restroom, like they hadn’t quite gotten their sea legs yet. Every table had a big pitcher of Korean lager or a bottle of soju, and a mountainous spread of steaming hot dishes: fiery, gochujang-stained rice cakes; crispy chicken wings; and burbling stone cauldrons of kimchi and soybean paste soup — the kind of simple, satisfying meal you’d expect to find at a classic Korean soju pub.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003cb>\u003cstrong>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13980212,arts_13961328,arts_13973430']\u003c/span>\u003c/strong>\u003c/b>\u003c/span>Even though it was our first time at Toyose, I’d been hearing about the place for years, sometimes by name, or just as often as “the Korean chicken garage” or simply The Garage. Over the years, no other Korean restaurant in the city had been recommended to me more frequently or more enthusiastically — and almost always by non-Koreans. That sounds like shade, though I don’t mean it that way: As far as I can tell, Toyose and Dan Sung Sa (aka Porno Palace, in Oakland) were two of the first restaurants to bring the spicy, soju-and-OB-fueled pleasures of \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/the-pub-life-korean-style-1/\">Korean pub life\u003c/a> to the Bay Area mainstream in the early aughts. And if the diverse, jam-packed and \u003ci>extremely happy\u003c/i> dining room we encountered during our meal at Toyose was any indication, the restaurant’s popularity has simply extended far beyond its original niche audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is to say, Toyose belongs to all of San Francisco now. Or maybe it always has. And even after all these years, the restaurant is still cranking out huge portions of hot comfort food until 2 a.m. on the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13981039\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13981039\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of Toyose restaurant at night. A sign with a cartoon bird is lit up next to an unmarked garage door.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located just blocks away from Ocean Beach, the restaurant has been an Outer Sunset staple since 2001. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The restaurant doesn’t really have a signature dish, though popular standards like its kimchi fried rice and seafood pancakes each have their legion of loyalists, quick to proclaim Toyose’s version the best in the city. My personal list of must-order items starts with the whole fried chicken, or tongdak — an entire bird cut up into big, bone-in pieces and then deep-fried. This is the OG style of Korean fried chicken, predating today’s more ubiquitous sweet and spicy sauce-slathered versions (though it’s still a staple \u003ca href=\"https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/sijang-tongdak\">at traditional markets\u003c/a> in Korea). Toyose’s tongdak is a sight to behold — a mountain of fried chicken! — and comes to the table scorchingly hot, with a thin, extra-crispy batter that shatters when you take a bite. It’s especially delicious dipped into the little dish of pepper salt that comes on the side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Toyose’s \u003ca href=\"https://496af86d-33ba-475e-bbdb-31e2a5abb6f7.filesusr.com/ugd/50518f_7d7113e602464ca1a01097eb9b493650.pdf\">menu\u003c/a> isn’t so different from what you’ll find at other soju bangs around the Bay, but the food comes out fast and it’s all solidly prepared — the stretchy, golden-brown cheese corn; the puffed-up steamed egg that tastes so juicy and savory spooned over white rice. We were especially fond of a spicy-sweet calamari stir-fry noodle dish, wherein the squid tentacle segments mirrored the thickness and bouncy chew of the accompanying udon noodles. And we were surprised by how rustic and homey the vegetable and seafood–laden doenjang (fermented soybean paste) stew was — a soothing counterpoint when everything else you’ve ordered is spicy or deep-fried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Really, though, where Toyose shines is in its atmosphere, which only gets more raucous and high-energy later into the night. If you want to have a quiet chat, you can grab one of the partitioned-off booths in front, which even have roll-down bamboo blinds for extra privacy. But the whole back of the restaurant \u003ci>feels\u003c/i> like you’re packed inside a friend’s crowded basement or garage, all the tables jammed right next to each other, the volume of everyone’s collective conversations loud enough that you need to raise your voice to be heard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time we left, at around 11, every table was filled. And while it’s true that the diners at the table nearest to us didn’t appear to be Korean, or even Asian American, they’d done admirable work on a big pot of budae jjigae and a plate of spicy stir-fried pork. They, too, were having a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/toyose_sf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Toyose\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday through Thursday, 6 p.m.–midnight, and Fridays and Saturdays 6 p.m.–2 a.m., at 3814 Noriega St. in San Francisco. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13981038\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13981038\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devours stretchy cheesy corn while looking over a table crammed full of Korean pub food; his dining companion fills a mug with beer.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Toyose is one of San Francisco’s most popular late-night restaurants, serving classic Korean pub food until 2 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a little past 9 on a recent Friday night, we pulled up to what mostly looked like an ordinary house in the Outer Sunset, a few blocks from Ocean Beach. An angry cartoon chicken, lit up like a beacon next to the unmarked garage door, was the only real indication that this was a restaurant — let alone the most famous \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/late-night\">late-night dining\u003c/a> spot in the neighborhood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As soon as we stepped inside the converted garage restaurant, it was easy to see the charm. The dim, cramped dining room was vaguely reminiscent of the hold of an old-timey ship — ropes coiled around wooden beams, half-enebriated diners wobbling their way to the restroom, like they hadn’t quite gotten their sea legs yet. Every table had a big pitcher of Korean lager or a bottle of soju, and a mountainous spread of steaming hot dishes: fiery, gochujang-stained rice cakes; crispy chicken wings; and burbling stone cauldrons of kimchi and soybean paste soup — the kind of simple, satisfying meal you’d expect to find at a classic Korean soju pub.\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>Even though it was our first time at Toyose, I’d been hearing about the place for years, sometimes by name, or just as often as “the Korean chicken garage” or simply The Garage. Over the years, no other Korean restaurant in the city had been recommended to me more frequently or more enthusiastically — and almost always by non-Koreans. That sounds like shade, though I don’t mean it that way: As far as I can tell, Toyose and Dan Sung Sa (aka Porno Palace, in Oakland) were two of the first restaurants to bring the spicy, soju-and-OB-fueled pleasures of \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/the-pub-life-korean-style-1/\">Korean pub life\u003c/a> to the Bay Area mainstream in the early aughts. And if the diverse, jam-packed and \u003ci>extremely happy\u003c/i> dining room we encountered during our meal at Toyose was any indication, the restaurant’s popularity has simply extended far beyond its original niche audience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which is to say, Toyose belongs to all of San Francisco now. Or maybe it always has. And even after all these years, the restaurant is still cranking out huge portions of hot comfort food until 2 a.m. on the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13981039\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13981039\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of Toyose restaurant at night. A sign with a cartoon bird is lit up next to an unmarked garage door.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/Toyose-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located just blocks away from Ocean Beach, the restaurant has been an Outer Sunset staple since 2001. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The restaurant doesn’t really have a signature dish, though popular standards like its kimchi fried rice and seafood pancakes each have their legion of loyalists, quick to proclaim Toyose’s version the best in the city. My personal list of must-order items starts with the whole fried chicken, or tongdak — an entire bird cut up into big, bone-in pieces and then deep-fried. This is the OG style of Korean fried chicken, predating today’s more ubiquitous sweet and spicy sauce-slathered versions (though it’s still a staple \u003ca href=\"https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/sijang-tongdak\">at traditional markets\u003c/a> in Korea). Toyose’s tongdak is a sight to behold — a mountain of fried chicken! — and comes to the table scorchingly hot, with a thin, extra-crispy batter that shatters when you take a bite. It’s especially delicious dipped into the little dish of pepper salt that comes on the side.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Toyose’s \u003ca href=\"https://496af86d-33ba-475e-bbdb-31e2a5abb6f7.filesusr.com/ugd/50518f_7d7113e602464ca1a01097eb9b493650.pdf\">menu\u003c/a> isn’t so different from what you’ll find at other soju bangs around the Bay, but the food comes out fast and it’s all solidly prepared — the stretchy, golden-brown cheese corn; the puffed-up steamed egg that tastes so juicy and savory spooned over white rice. We were especially fond of a spicy-sweet calamari stir-fry noodle dish, wherein the squid tentacle segments mirrored the thickness and bouncy chew of the accompanying udon noodles. And we were surprised by how rustic and homey the vegetable and seafood–laden doenjang (fermented soybean paste) stew was — a soothing counterpoint when everything else you’ve ordered is spicy or deep-fried.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Really, though, where Toyose shines is in its atmosphere, which only gets more raucous and high-energy later into the night. If you want to have a quiet chat, you can grab one of the partitioned-off booths in front, which even have roll-down bamboo blinds for extra privacy. But the whole back of the restaurant \u003ci>feels\u003c/i> like you’re packed inside a friend’s crowded basement or garage, all the tables jammed right next to each other, the volume of everyone’s collective conversations loud enough that you need to raise your voice to be heard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time we left, at around 11, every table was filled. And while it’s true that the diners at the table nearest to us didn’t appear to be Korean, or even Asian American, they’d done admirable work on a big pot of budae jjigae and a plate of spicy stir-fried pork. They, too, were having a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/toyose_sf/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Toyose\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday through Thursday, 6 p.m.–midnight, and Fridays and Saturdays 6 p.m.–2 a.m., at 3814 Noriega St. in San Francisco. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "chinese-hamburger-barbecue-z-one-kitchen-san-bruno-rou-jia-mo",
"title": "Where Chinese Hamburgers Meet ‘Texas’ Barbecue",
"publishDate": 1755214574,
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"headTitle": "Where Chinese Hamburgers Meet ‘Texas’ Barbecue | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13980220\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13980220\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devour\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the last two years, San Bruno’s Z-One Kitchen has added ‘Texas’-style barbecue to its menu of Shaanxi drinking food. \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>As we pulled into a cramped plaza in San Bruno, the bilingual sign above a modest-looking Chinese restaurant promised an ultra-rare, perhaps never-before-heard-of combination: “岐山肉夹馍 & Texas BBQ.” In other words, Xi’an-style rou jia mo (aka “Chinese hamburgers”) served alongside heaping stacks of Texas ’cue. What?!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turns out, the “Texas” part of the formula at Z-One Kitchen, as the restaurant is called, really stretches the limits of creative marketing. But that didn’t stop us from having an intensely meaty, rollicking good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We arrived at around 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, our curiosity piqued by online reports of this unusual fusion cuisine. The place closes up shop at 10:30 — decently late, even if it isn’t on the extreme end of the late-night dining spectrum. (Curiously, it doesn’t appear to have any connection to the similarly named A-One Kitchen — another \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13951914/dungeness-crab-garlic-noodles-san-bruno-late-night\">Midnight Diners’ favorite\u003c/a> — just a mile up the road.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in terms of rowdy, slightly chaotic late-night vibes, Z-One has the part down to a tee, starting with the crowded parking lot, where a suped-up Volkswagen Beetle was gunning its engine. The dining room — a clutter of mismatched furniture and empty Tsingtao beer bottles — was loud, and so busy that we had to share a six-top booth with another party. The workers were all big, burly Chinese guys with Northern accents. After getting vague, slightly brusque responses to our questions about the menu, I finally interjected in Mandarin, prompting our server to cry out (also in Mandarin), “If you speak Chinese, why didn’t you just say so to begin with!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The overall effect was like we’d stumbled onto the kind of roadside food stand you might find somewhere in rural China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13980221\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13980221\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2.jpg\" alt=\"The exterior of a Chinese restaurant lit up at night. The sign above advertises 'Texas BBQ.'\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Though it’s only open until 10:30 p.m., the restaurant has its rowdy, slightly chaotic late-night vibes down to a tee. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As the restaurant’s signage and branding suggest, the menu is divided into two halves: one side has all the “Texas barbecue”; the other side is a mishmash of Chinese drinking food, most of it specific to Shaanxi province. For the barbecue, there’s a $35 all-you-can-eat option (!), or you can order a plate that comes with your choice of meat and two dishes for as little as $16 — not unlike the meat-and-two format you’d find at a classic barbecue joint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only difference? The spices, the seasoning, the flavor profile and probably the entirety of the cooking process. None of the meats we tried had seen the inside of a smoker. Instead, they appeared to have been braised in some soy sauce–based concoction, then finished on the grill. They tasted not Texan (you should just eliminate that expectation entirely) but rather wholly Chinese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which isn’t to say this take on barbecue wasn’t tasty in its own right. The flavor reminded me of Chinese beef jerky more than anything else — savory with a whisper of honeyed sweetness. We especially loved the beef spare ribs, which were luscious and slightly sticky, with tender meat that pulled right off the bone. We also ordered slippery, gelatinous pigs’ feet and, our least favorite, pork ribs that came out a bit too dry. Next time we might just get three orders of beef ribs. You can also choose from an assortment of cumin-dusted meat skewers, similar to what you’ll find at other \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13951382/chinese-skewers-are-the-last-bastion-of-late-night-dining-in-the-bay\">Chinese barbecue restaurants\u003c/a> around the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13979460,arts_13978355,arts_13976695']In truth, the sides are probably the most fusion-y part of Z-One’s menu, allowing you to pair the meats with, say, potato salad (creamy and surprisingly addicting) and a satisfyingly greasy, soy sauce–drenched version of egg fried rice. We loved them both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apparently, when Z-One first opened in 2020, it was a straightforward Shaanxi restaurant, specializing in the northwestern Chinese regional cuisine that gained some mainstream prominence in the U.S. after \u003ca href=\"https://ny.eater.com/2018/6/8/17442082/xian-famous-foods-jason-wang-anthony-bourdain\">the rise of Xi’an Famous Foods\u003c/a>, in New York, in the late aughts. So while the barbecue is worth trying, Z-One’s real sweet spot is its Shaanxi food, especially those so-called “Chinese hamburgers.” These, too, aren’t a fusion thing; rou jia mo has a \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230508-roujiamo-chinas-2200-year-old-burger\">2,200-year history in China\u003c/a>. The burger comparison comes from the well-seasoned meat stuffed inside a crisp flatbread — more akin to a paratha or an extra-thin English muffin than a burger bun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Z-One’s classic pork rou jia mo came crammed full of saucy, finely shredded meat. It was extraordinarily juicy and well-seasoned, with an occasional jolt of fresh chili heat. I liked the version stuffed with grilled cumin lamb and sliced onions even better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a warm summer night, the sandwiches pair perfectly with an order of liangpi — wide, crinkly cold noodles tossed in a spicy, tangy sesame sauce. Even better: Z-One serves one of the better versions of fried stinky tofu I’ve found in the Bay Area. The tofu cubes were expertly fried, super-crisp without getting dried out, served in a pool of deliciously garlicky chili sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everything Z-One serves goes exceptionally well with cold beer, so it came as no surprise that guys at the table next to us were three or four Tsingtaos in. They kept calling out to the owner (“Lao ban! Lao ban!”), teasing him half-nonsensically. We were feeling a little bit giddy too by the end of the night, even though we hadn’t been drinking. Instead, we left with full bellies — the smell of cumin and garlic heavy on our breath, with two big boxes of leftovers to tote home — feeling like we’d been taken on an unexpected journey. Not to Texas, certainly. But somewhere we hadn’t been before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Z-One Kitchen is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–10:30 p.m., at 130 El Camino Real Ste. C in San Bruno.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13980220\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13980220\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devour\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-1-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In the last two years, San Bruno’s Z-One Kitchen has added ‘Texas’-style barbecue to its menu of Shaanxi drinking food. \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>As we pulled into a cramped plaza in San Bruno, the bilingual sign above a modest-looking Chinese restaurant promised an ultra-rare, perhaps never-before-heard-of combination: “岐山肉夹馍 & Texas BBQ.” In other words, Xi’an-style rou jia mo (aka “Chinese hamburgers”) served alongside heaping stacks of Texas ’cue. What?!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As it turns out, the “Texas” part of the formula at Z-One Kitchen, as the restaurant is called, really stretches the limits of creative marketing. But that didn’t stop us from having an intensely meaty, rollicking good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We arrived at around 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, our curiosity piqued by online reports of this unusual fusion cuisine. The place closes up shop at 10:30 — decently late, even if it isn’t on the extreme end of the late-night dining spectrum. (Curiously, it doesn’t appear to have any connection to the similarly named A-One Kitchen — another \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13951914/dungeness-crab-garlic-noodles-san-bruno-late-night\">Midnight Diners’ favorite\u003c/a> — just a mile up the road.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But in terms of rowdy, slightly chaotic late-night vibes, Z-One has the part down to a tee, starting with the crowded parking lot, where a suped-up Volkswagen Beetle was gunning its engine. The dining room — a clutter of mismatched furniture and empty Tsingtao beer bottles — was loud, and so busy that we had to share a six-top booth with another party. The workers were all big, burly Chinese guys with Northern accents. After getting vague, slightly brusque responses to our questions about the menu, I finally interjected in Mandarin, prompting our server to cry out (also in Mandarin), “If you speak Chinese, why didn’t you just say so to begin with!”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The overall effect was like we’d stumbled onto the kind of roadside food stand you might find somewhere in rural China.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13980221\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13980221\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2.jpg\" alt=\"The exterior of a Chinese restaurant lit up at night. The sign above advertises 'Texas BBQ.'\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/Untitled_Artwork-2-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Though it’s only open until 10:30 p.m., the restaurant has its rowdy, slightly chaotic late-night vibes down to a tee. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>As the restaurant’s signage and branding suggest, the menu is divided into two halves: one side has all the “Texas barbecue”; the other side is a mishmash of Chinese drinking food, most of it specific to Shaanxi province. For the barbecue, there’s a $35 all-you-can-eat option (!), or you can order a plate that comes with your choice of meat and two dishes for as little as $16 — not unlike the meat-and-two format you’d find at a classic barbecue joint.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only difference? The spices, the seasoning, the flavor profile and probably the entirety of the cooking process. None of the meats we tried had seen the inside of a smoker. Instead, they appeared to have been braised in some soy sauce–based concoction, then finished on the grill. They tasted not Texan (you should just eliminate that expectation entirely) but rather wholly Chinese.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Which isn’t to say this take on barbecue wasn’t tasty in its own right. The flavor reminded me of Chinese beef jerky more than anything else — savory with a whisper of honeyed sweetness. We especially loved the beef spare ribs, which were luscious and slightly sticky, with tender meat that pulled right off the bone. We also ordered slippery, gelatinous pigs’ feet and, our least favorite, pork ribs that came out a bit too dry. Next time we might just get three orders of beef ribs. You can also choose from an assortment of cumin-dusted meat skewers, similar to what you’ll find at other \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13951382/chinese-skewers-are-the-last-bastion-of-late-night-dining-in-the-bay\">Chinese barbecue restaurants\u003c/a> around the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In truth, the sides are probably the most fusion-y part of Z-One’s menu, allowing you to pair the meats with, say, potato salad (creamy and surprisingly addicting) and a satisfyingly greasy, soy sauce–drenched version of egg fried rice. We loved them both.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Apparently, when Z-One first opened in 2020, it was a straightforward Shaanxi restaurant, specializing in the northwestern Chinese regional cuisine that gained some mainstream prominence in the U.S. after \u003ca href=\"https://ny.eater.com/2018/6/8/17442082/xian-famous-foods-jason-wang-anthony-bourdain\">the rise of Xi’an Famous Foods\u003c/a>, in New York, in the late aughts. So while the barbecue is worth trying, Z-One’s real sweet spot is its Shaanxi food, especially those so-called “Chinese hamburgers.” These, too, aren’t a fusion thing; rou jia mo has a \u003ca href=\"https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230508-roujiamo-chinas-2200-year-old-burger\">2,200-year history in China\u003c/a>. The burger comparison comes from the well-seasoned meat stuffed inside a crisp flatbread — more akin to a paratha or an extra-thin English muffin than a burger bun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Z-One’s classic pork rou jia mo came crammed full of saucy, finely shredded meat. It was extraordinarily juicy and well-seasoned, with an occasional jolt of fresh chili heat. I liked the version stuffed with grilled cumin lamb and sliced onions even better.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a warm summer night, the sandwiches pair perfectly with an order of liangpi — wide, crinkly cold noodles tossed in a spicy, tangy sesame sauce. Even better: Z-One serves one of the better versions of fried stinky tofu I’ve found in the Bay Area. The tofu cubes were expertly fried, super-crisp without getting dried out, served in a pool of deliciously garlicky chili sauce.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Everything Z-One serves goes exceptionally well with cold beer, so it came as no surprise that guys at the table next to us were three or four Tsingtaos in. They kept calling out to the owner (“Lao ban! Lao ban!”), teasing him half-nonsensically. We were feeling a little bit giddy too by the end of the night, even though we hadn’t been drinking. Instead, we left with full bellies — the smell of cumin and garlic heavy on our breath, with two big boxes of leftovers to tote home — feeling like we’d been taken on an unexpected journey. Not to Texas, certainly. But somewhere we hadn’t been before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "keiths-chicken-waffles-crunchiest-fried-chicken-daly-city-late-night",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13979465\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13979465\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1.jpeg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men devour fried chicken and waffles inside a restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1.jpeg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1-160x160.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1-768x768.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1-1536x1536.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The fried chicken at Keith’s Chicken N Waffles is extraordinarily crunchy and flavorful. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a sparse, vaguely industrial stretch of Daly City, tucked among a cluster of auto body shops, a tiny storefront sells some of the best fried chicken in the Bay Area — dollar for dollar, almost certainly the best you can get your hands on at 10 o’clock on a Wednesday night, which is when we were inducted into the cult of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/keithschickennwaffles/?hl=en\">Keith’s Chicken N Waffles\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keith’s came onto our radar a few months ago, when it \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DEk_2lDzRty/?hl=en\">extended its hours\u003c/a> to midnight four nights a week. But for the longest time afterward, we couldn’t find any online evidence of anyone ever actually eating there late at night: No one picked up the phone the dozen or so times I called, and the one time we showed up, hungry, on a Friday night, the place was closed. No sign on the door or anything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So we were thrilled to confirm firsthand that you \u003ci>can\u003c/i> score a plate of top-notch chicken and waffles in Daly City until midnight — or at least 11:30 p.m., when the shop puts in its last call for orders. (The hours are a little wonky, though, so if you’re trekking from the other side of the Bay, you should double-check the \u003ca href=\"https://keithschickennwaffles.com/menu\">restaurant website\u003c/a> to make sure they are in fact open and accepting orders before heading out.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shop itself looks like your standard corner soul food joint — a bit cramped and well-worn, with black and white checkerboard-tile flooring and a jaunty, muscle-bound cartoon rooster painted on the facade. A few framed paintings of Bob Marley and Tupac hang on the walls, and a hand-written sign next to the counter reads: “Don’t stare. After you order please sit your ass down.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13979468\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13979468\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2.jpeg\" alt=\"Exterior of a chicken and waffles restaurant lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2.jpeg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2-160x160.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2-768x768.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2-1536x1536.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Keith’s is now open late — until midnight — Wednesday through Saturday. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You will have to wait a little while, at least. One of the restaurant’s hallmarks is that the cooks fry every batch of chicken to order; there are no heat lamps to speak of. The chicken comes out burn-your-tongue hot, with a thin, well-bronzed, shatteringly crisp sheath. This was the crunchiest fried chicken I’ve eaten in recent memory, and some of the most flavorful too. I don’t know what they put in their seasoning mix, but every piece is seasoned extraordinarily well down to the last nook, cranny and crevice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the shop’s quirks is that the chicken pieces come in a range of sizes — we received a big, ample thigh, a slightly smaller one, and a rather diminutive drumstick. It didn’t bother us. If anything, the nonuniformity underscored Keith’s Chicken N Waffles’ status as a homegrown, made-from-scratch operation, not some cookie-cutter McNugget factory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you happen to be more of a chicken tender connoisseur, Keith’s still has you covered. The tenders here are plump, moist and uncommonly large — and, again, seasoned so aggressively well that you can enjoy them straight-up. (Though I did like the orange-gold, Carolina-style, honey-based barbecue sauce that the shop provided.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One remarkable thing about Keith’s is how reasonable the prices are. Combo meals — all named after rappers (the DMX, the Rick Ross and so on) — start at around $12 and come with waffles, sides, soda, the whole nine yards, and there’s always a bargain-priced daily special too (say, three wings and a waffle for $10). The upshot is you wind up paying cheaper-than-fast-food prices — I’m looking at you, Popeyes and Raising Cane’s — for fresher, more generous portions of chicken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the soul food side dishes (soupy, well-spiced collard greens, proper Southern-style mac and cheese, and more) were all better than solid, and we decided to save the saucy party wings and promising-looking fried chicken sandwich for our next visit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13978355,arts_13956683,arts_13969092']Of course at Keith’s Chicken N Waffles, the chicken is only half the story. In much of the Bay Area, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/food/1337630/chicken\">fried chicken and waffles\u003c/a> is strictly a brunch-time treat, so it’s a rare pleasure to be able to score a good waffle late at night. And the waffles at Keith’s are very good, and available in a variety of flavors and sizes. We liked the standard Belgian waffle best: light, yeasty and super-buttery, with crisp edges, topped with a huge dollop of even more soft butter. It’s tasty enough that you don’t even really need to add syrup — though it’s hard to resist when the restaurant offers serve-yourself syrup, dispensed out of a gigantic coffee urn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyone with a sweet tooth should also try the mini waffle trio, which comes with a pint-sized version of the standard waffle, plus a richly chocolatey (and surprisingly not-too-sweet) red velvet waffle and a waffle topped with candied yams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the union of the chicken and the waffles — of savory and sweet — is, of course, what has long made breakfast for dinner (or breakfast for a midnight snack) one of life’s most deeply pleasurable indulgences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That alone makes Keith’s well worth a visit. It might not be the most vibey or bustling of the late-night food destinations we’ve frequented — when we visited, it seemed to be doing all takeout business past 9 p.m., as hungry teens and twentysomethings pulled up to pick up buckets of chicken and waffles before heading out into the night. But who needs vibe when the cooking is this good? The air hung thick with the smell of sweet syrup and hot fryer oil. A match, honestly, made in heaven.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://keithschickennwaffles.com/\">\u003ci>Keith’s Chicken N Waffles\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m.–midnight, Sunday 11 a.m.–6 p.m. and Mondays and Tuesdays 11 a.m.–8 p.m. at 270 San Pedro Rd. in Daly City. It’s within walking distance of the Colma BART station.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13979465\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13979465\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1.jpeg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men devour fried chicken and waffles inside a restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1.jpeg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1-160x160.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1-768x768.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-1-1536x1536.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The fried chicken at Keith’s Chicken N Waffles is extraordinarily crunchy and flavorful. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a sparse, vaguely industrial stretch of Daly City, tucked among a cluster of auto body shops, a tiny storefront sells some of the best fried chicken in the Bay Area — dollar for dollar, almost certainly the best you can get your hands on at 10 o’clock on a Wednesday night, which is when we were inducted into the cult of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/keithschickennwaffles/?hl=en\">Keith’s Chicken N Waffles\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Keith’s came onto our radar a few months ago, when it \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DEk_2lDzRty/?hl=en\">extended its hours\u003c/a> to midnight four nights a week. But for the longest time afterward, we couldn’t find any online evidence of anyone ever actually eating there late at night: No one picked up the phone the dozen or so times I called, and the one time we showed up, hungry, on a Friday night, the place was closed. No sign on the door or anything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So we were thrilled to confirm firsthand that you \u003ci>can\u003c/i> score a plate of top-notch chicken and waffles in Daly City until midnight — or at least 11:30 p.m., when the shop puts in its last call for orders. (The hours are a little wonky, though, so if you’re trekking from the other side of the Bay, you should double-check the \u003ca href=\"https://keithschickennwaffles.com/menu\">restaurant website\u003c/a> to make sure they are in fact open and accepting orders before heading out.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The shop itself looks like your standard corner soul food joint — a bit cramped and well-worn, with black and white checkerboard-tile flooring and a jaunty, muscle-bound cartoon rooster painted on the facade. A few framed paintings of Bob Marley and Tupac hang on the walls, and a hand-written sign next to the counter reads: “Don’t stare. After you order please sit your ass down.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13979468\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13979468\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2.jpeg\" alt=\"Exterior of a chicken and waffles restaurant lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2.jpeg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2-160x160.jpeg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2-768x768.jpeg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/keiths-2-1536x1536.jpeg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Keith’s is now open late — until midnight — Wednesday through Saturday. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>You will have to wait a little while, at least. One of the restaurant’s hallmarks is that the cooks fry every batch of chicken to order; there are no heat lamps to speak of. The chicken comes out burn-your-tongue hot, with a thin, well-bronzed, shatteringly crisp sheath. This was the crunchiest fried chicken I’ve eaten in recent memory, and some of the most flavorful too. I don’t know what they put in their seasoning mix, but every piece is seasoned extraordinarily well down to the last nook, cranny and crevice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the shop’s quirks is that the chicken pieces come in a range of sizes — we received a big, ample thigh, a slightly smaller one, and a rather diminutive drumstick. It didn’t bother us. If anything, the nonuniformity underscored Keith’s Chicken N Waffles’ status as a homegrown, made-from-scratch operation, not some cookie-cutter McNugget factory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you happen to be more of a chicken tender connoisseur, Keith’s still has you covered. The tenders here are plump, moist and uncommonly large — and, again, seasoned so aggressively well that you can enjoy them straight-up. (Though I did like the orange-gold, Carolina-style, honey-based barbecue sauce that the shop provided.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One remarkable thing about Keith’s is how reasonable the prices are. Combo meals — all named after rappers (the DMX, the Rick Ross and so on) — start at around $12 and come with waffles, sides, soda, the whole nine yards, and there’s always a bargain-priced daily special too (say, three wings and a waffle for $10). The upshot is you wind up paying cheaper-than-fast-food prices — I’m looking at you, Popeyes and Raising Cane’s — for fresher, more generous portions of chicken.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the soul food side dishes (soupy, well-spiced collard greens, proper Southern-style mac and cheese, and more) were all better than solid, and we decided to save the saucy party wings and promising-looking fried chicken sandwich for our next visit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Of course at Keith’s Chicken N Waffles, the chicken is only half the story. In much of the Bay Area, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/food/1337630/chicken\">fried chicken and waffles\u003c/a> is strictly a brunch-time treat, so it’s a rare pleasure to be able to score a good waffle late at night. And the waffles at Keith’s are very good, and available in a variety of flavors and sizes. We liked the standard Belgian waffle best: light, yeasty and super-buttery, with crisp edges, topped with a huge dollop of even more soft butter. It’s tasty enough that you don’t even really need to add syrup — though it’s hard to resist when the restaurant offers serve-yourself syrup, dispensed out of a gigantic coffee urn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anyone with a sweet tooth should also try the mini waffle trio, which comes with a pint-sized version of the standard waffle, plus a richly chocolatey (and surprisingly not-too-sweet) red velvet waffle and a waffle topped with candied yams.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the union of the chicken and the waffles — of savory and sweet — is, of course, what has long made breakfast for dinner (or breakfast for a midnight snack) one of life’s most deeply pleasurable indulgences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That alone makes Keith’s well worth a visit. It might not be the most vibey or bustling of the late-night food destinations we’ve frequented — when we visited, it seemed to be doing all takeout business past 9 p.m., as hungry teens and twentysomethings pulled up to pick up buckets of chicken and waffles before heading out into the night. But who needs vibe when the cooking is this good? The air hung thick with the smell of sweet syrup and hot fryer oil. A match, honestly, made in heaven.\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://keithschickennwaffles.com/\">\u003ci>Keith’s Chicken N Waffles\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday through Saturday 11 a.m.–midnight, Sunday 11 a.m.–6 p.m. and Mondays and Tuesdays 11 a.m.–8 p.m. at 270 San Pedro Rd. in Daly City. It’s within walking distance of the Colma BART station.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "mama-gos-filipino-food-sfo-airport-late-night-san-francisco",
"title": "Mama Go’s Serves the Best Late-Night Airport Food at SFO",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13978358\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13978358\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos.jpg\" alt=\"Two men devour trays of Filipino food out of cafeteria-style trays. Behind them, travelers pull carry-on suitcases in the background. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the Harvey Milk Terminal concourse at SFO, Mama Go’s serves a real rarity: home-style Filipino food at the airport. \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 stepped off the airplane and onto the gleaming white \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/harvey-milk\">Harvey Milk\u003c/a> Terminal concourse with a rumbling in our stomachs and beef kaldereta on our minds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was nearly 10 o’clock on a Sunday night, when the options for late-night dining in San Francisco are even slimmer than usual. But we were lucky: We’d heard that \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mamagos_filipino/?hl=en\">Mama Go’s\u003c/a>, located just outside our gate, serves its menu of home-style Filipino classics until 11:30 p.m. every night. As we soon learned, it’s probably the best restaurant in the entire airport.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were hardly the only folks on our flight who made a beeline directly toward Mama Go’s, joining other travelers grabbing a quick bite before boarding their redeyes. The shared dining area encompassed a wide spectrum of late-night airport life: An off-shift ground crew member waited for his boba order. An older white guy in a neatly pressed dress shirt tucked a napkin bib into his collar, opened up the newspaper, and proceeded to dig into a big bowl of pancit bihon. A Gen Z Filipina absentmindedly picked at a plate of garlic rice while scrolling her phone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kiosk is set up similarly to the dozens of turo-turo (“point-point”) steam table restaurants you can find scattered throughout the Bay, except with slightly (but not outrageously) higher prices and a more tightly curated selection of pre-cooked dishes. During our visit, a couple of hours before close, the restaurant had sold out of a few a la carte offerings like its arroz caldo and grilled chicken skewers. In any case, the highlight of the menu at Mama Go’s by far is its array of homey, slow-cooked stews, which you can order as part of a two- or three-item combo plate for around $20 — easily the best bang for your buck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Airport food or not, all of the meaty stews we tried were showstoppers, as comforting and compulsively eatable as anything you’d find at a Daly City or Vallejo neighborhood Filipino spot. Take that beef kaldereta, for instance. I’ve eaten slightly more elaborate versions made with oxtail and studded with green olives. But the airport kiosk’s take on the classic beef stew was as satisfying as any I’ve had — generous chunks of exquisitely tender meat, soft potatoes, and bell peppers in a rich, velvety brown gravy that tasted amazing over garlic rice. I could have eaten three bowls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bicol express might have been even better. It featured cubes of tender, fatty pork bathed in a creamy coconut sauce with a surprising chili kick and a jolt of funky shrimp paste umami — the kind of flavor-packed dish I’d expect to find at a Filipino family potluck instead of just steps away from the airport’s children’s play area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant also sells a very solid version of chicken adobo — boneless, skinless thigh meat to make things easier for the on-the-go crowd, but as lovingly slow-cooked as the other stews, with a bright vinegar tang that perked up our palates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The combo plates all come with a side dish (we went with the cigar-shaped lumpia Shanghai, naturally), a choice of rice or noodles, and a bowl of sibuya soup topped with crispy onions that went soft after soaking up the clear, hot broth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13978359\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13978359\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2.jpg\" alt=\"A busy food kiosk inside an airport. The sign overhead reads, "Mama Go's Filipino Cuisine."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The kiosk is open until 11:30 p.m. each night — and then it opens again at 3:30 a.m. for Filipino breakfast. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13977177,arts_13956683,arts_13966812']Mama Go’s claims to be the first Filipino restaurant to open at any airport in the United States, and there’s something so fitting and poetic about chicken adobo, garlic rice and lumpia being a traveler’s first and/or last taste of San Francisco. In fact, we only had a chance to experience one end of the restaurant’s late-night clutchness. Mama Go’s closes for just a few hours each night before opening again at 3:30 a.m. (!) to serve a full slate of Filipino breakfast dishes — silog plates with eggs, garlic rice, and your choice of grilled meat (or vegan patty) — to predawn travelers getting ready to board the earliest flights of the day. (When I flew back from the East Coast earlier this week, the prospect of a silog tempted me to \u003ci>not \u003c/i>reschedule a flight that was delayed so much I would have landed at SFO after 3 a.m. Sadly, Mrs. Midnight Diners was not amused.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What really makes Mama Go’s stand out, however, is the way it offers a counterpoint to the inhumanity of commercial airline travel today — the shrinking legroom and overhead compartments, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/4/17/18412450/tsa-airport-full-body-scanners-racist\">racial profiling\u003c/a>, the fee-ification of every last aspect of the travel experience. Even at SFO, which has better food than the bulk of American airports, almost all of the options are blandly corporate to the utmost degree: fast-casual fried chicken ordered from a touch-screen, overpriced chain restaurant banh mi, or a celebrity chef’s 28th or 29th new pizza franchise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Against that backdrop, a home-style meal from Mama Go’s feels particularly special. To be sure, the restaurant’s parent company has its own \u003ca href=\"https://ladyluckgourmet.com/about-us/our-team/\">corporate hierarchy\u003c/a> — but for now, at least, the SFO kiosk is the only location in the world. The staff is warm and welcoming. And there is something wonderful and incredibly human about eating a meal like this at the airport. Luxuriating in a hearty stew (or two or three) and a mound of garlic rice. Sipping from a bowl of hot broth between bites. Just taking a minute to breathe.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://mamagos.com/\">\u003ci>Mama Go’s Filipino Cuisine\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 3:30 a.m.–11:30 p.m. daily in Terminal 1 of the San Francisco International Airport, near Gate B18.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13978358\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13978358\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos.jpg\" alt=\"Two men devour trays of Filipino food out of cafeteria-style trays. Behind them, travelers pull carry-on suitcases in the background. \" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the Harvey Milk Terminal concourse at SFO, Mama Go’s serves a real rarity: home-style Filipino food at the airport. \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 stepped off the airplane and onto the gleaming white \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/harvey-milk\">Harvey Milk\u003c/a> Terminal concourse with a rumbling in our stomachs and beef kaldereta on our minds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was nearly 10 o’clock on a Sunday night, when the options for late-night dining in San Francisco are even slimmer than usual. But we were lucky: We’d heard that \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/mamagos_filipino/?hl=en\">Mama Go’s\u003c/a>, located just outside our gate, serves its menu of home-style Filipino classics until 11:30 p.m. every night. As we soon learned, it’s probably the best restaurant in the entire airport.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We were hardly the only folks on our flight who made a beeline directly toward Mama Go’s, joining other travelers grabbing a quick bite before boarding their redeyes. The shared dining area encompassed a wide spectrum of late-night airport life: An off-shift ground crew member waited for his boba order. An older white guy in a neatly pressed dress shirt tucked a napkin bib into his collar, opened up the newspaper, and proceeded to dig into a big bowl of pancit bihon. A Gen Z Filipina absentmindedly picked at a plate of garlic rice while scrolling her phone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kiosk is set up similarly to the dozens of turo-turo (“point-point”) steam table restaurants you can find scattered throughout the Bay, except with slightly (but not outrageously) higher prices and a more tightly curated selection of pre-cooked dishes. During our visit, a couple of hours before close, the restaurant had sold out of a few a la carte offerings like its arroz caldo and grilled chicken skewers. In any case, the highlight of the menu at Mama Go’s by far is its array of homey, slow-cooked stews, which you can order as part of a two- or three-item combo plate for around $20 — easily the best bang for your buck.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Airport food or not, all of the meaty stews we tried were showstoppers, as comforting and compulsively eatable as anything you’d find at a Daly City or Vallejo neighborhood Filipino spot. Take that beef kaldereta, for instance. I’ve eaten slightly more elaborate versions made with oxtail and studded with green olives. But the airport kiosk’s take on the classic beef stew was as satisfying as any I’ve had — generous chunks of exquisitely tender meat, soft potatoes, and bell peppers in a rich, velvety brown gravy that tasted amazing over garlic rice. I could have eaten three bowls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Bicol express might have been even better. It featured cubes of tender, fatty pork bathed in a creamy coconut sauce with a surprising chili kick and a jolt of funky shrimp paste umami — the kind of flavor-packed dish I’d expect to find at a Filipino family potluck instead of just steps away from the airport’s children’s play area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant also sells a very solid version of chicken adobo — boneless, skinless thigh meat to make things easier for the on-the-go crowd, but as lovingly slow-cooked as the other stews, with a bright vinegar tang that perked up our palates.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The combo plates all come with a side dish (we went with the cigar-shaped lumpia Shanghai, naturally), a choice of rice or noodles, and a bowl of sibuya soup topped with crispy onions that went soft after soaking up the clear, hot broth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13978359\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13978359\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2.jpg\" alt=\"A busy food kiosk inside an airport. The sign overhead reads, "Mama Go's Filipino Cuisine."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/07/Mama-Gos2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The kiosk is open until 11:30 p.m. each night — and then it opens again at 3:30 a.m. for Filipino breakfast. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Mama Go’s claims to be the first Filipino restaurant to open at any airport in the United States, and there’s something so fitting and poetic about chicken adobo, garlic rice and lumpia being a traveler’s first and/or last taste of San Francisco. In fact, we only had a chance to experience one end of the restaurant’s late-night clutchness. Mama Go’s closes for just a few hours each night before opening again at 3:30 a.m. (!) to serve a full slate of Filipino breakfast dishes — silog plates with eggs, garlic rice, and your choice of grilled meat (or vegan patty) — to predawn travelers getting ready to board the earliest flights of the day. (When I flew back from the East Coast earlier this week, the prospect of a silog tempted me to \u003ci>not \u003c/i>reschedule a flight that was delayed so much I would have landed at SFO after 3 a.m. Sadly, Mrs. Midnight Diners was not amused.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What really makes Mama Go’s stand out, however, is the way it offers a counterpoint to the inhumanity of commercial airline travel today — the shrinking legroom and overhead compartments, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/4/17/18412450/tsa-airport-full-body-scanners-racist\">racial profiling\u003c/a>, the fee-ification of every last aspect of the travel experience. Even at SFO, which has better food than the bulk of American airports, almost all of the options are blandly corporate to the utmost degree: fast-casual fried chicken ordered from a touch-screen, overpriced chain restaurant banh mi, or a celebrity chef’s 28th or 29th new pizza franchise.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Against that backdrop, a home-style meal from Mama Go’s feels particularly special. To be sure, the restaurant’s parent company has its own \u003ca href=\"https://ladyluckgourmet.com/about-us/our-team/\">corporate hierarchy\u003c/a> — but for now, at least, the SFO kiosk is the only location in the world. The staff is warm and welcoming. And there is something wonderful and incredibly human about eating a meal like this at the airport. Luxuriating in a hearty stew (or two or three) and a mound of garlic rice. Sipping from a bowl of hot broth between bites. Just taking a minute to breathe.\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://mamagos.com/\">\u003ci>Mama Go’s Filipino Cuisine\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 3:30 a.m.–11:30 p.m. daily in Terminal 1 of the San Francisco International Airport, near Gate B18.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "This British Pub in San Mateo Is a Riot of Late-Night Karaoke and Fish and Chips",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13977180\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13977180\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: In a dimly lit room, two men devour fish and chips and bangers and mash while a woman sings karaoke in the front of the room. "When we're hungry, love will keep us alive," she sings.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Foodwise, The Swingin’ Door is best known for its excellent fish and chips. The British-style pub in San Mateo is open until 2 a.m. every night. \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 a little past 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, we were seated beneath a deer head in a crowded dive bar in San Mateo while a Polynesian woman with flowers in her hair swayed in front of the karaoke machine, belting out the sweetest version of the Eagles’ “Love Will Keep Us Alive” you could imagine. Behind us, the faint smell of piss and weed emanated from the vicinity of the bathroom. In front of us, a steaming-hot plate of fish and chips so impeccably fried, we devoured the whole plate in minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of that about sums up \u003ca href=\"https://theswingindoor.com/\">The Swingin’ Door\u003c/a> experience. This is a British pub on the edge of Silicon Valley that stays open until 2 a.m. every night, and is probably the most enjoyable, neighborhood-y dive bar you can find on the Peninsula. It was easily the most fun we had all week, in any case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even just pulling up to the building, we started to fall in love with the place — the weathered red-brick facade, the multiple coats of arms, the big neon sign blaring “FISH AND CHIPS” in bright white letters, the solemn King’s Guard soldier painted next to the door. Three flags were painted on top: American, British and (probably) the Irish tricolor, faded enough that I mistook it for France.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Swingin’ Door hosts karaoke nights four days a week, and during our visit, almost everyone in the packed house was there to sing or to watch their friends sing. It made for a fun juxtaposition — the handsome taxidermy, dark paisley wallpaper and framed black-and-white photos of a London dock strike on the one hand; the grown men and women dancing around with a toy electric guitar on the other. There’s also a quieter bar area upstairs and a sweet garden patio in back for smokers, pool players, and anyone who wants to have a conversation without having to shout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13977179\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13977179\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The exterior of a British-style pub. The sign reads, "The Swingin' Door." Inside, someone is singing, "Now you've given me the will to survive."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The bar runs a lively karaoke night four days a week. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Of course, we’d come to eat. The menu here consists of your standard selection of (mostly American) pub food, with just a handful of Britishisms. This isn’t the kind of hardcore pub where you’ll find deeper cuts like steak and kidney pies, haggis or a Scotch egg. But it \u003ci>is\u003c/i> one of a small handful of spots on the Peninsula where you can get a solid, real-deal plate of bangers and mash — the sausages charred and blistered until the casings are deliciously crispy, a scoop of Heinz Beanz on the side for good measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the main reason to make a special trip to The Swingin’ Door, if you’re there for the food, is for those fish and chips, which is about as good a version as I’ve had in the Bay. Actually, what we ordered was the seafood platter for two — a low-key bargain at $30 for a whole mess of fried seafood: fat, briny little oysters, breaded scallops and shrimp, and a big pile of pleasantly chewy clam strips, in addition to two hefty pieces of batter-fried fish. The chips were thick steak fries and not especially memorable, but that fish? It blew away everything else on the plate, the audible crunch of its beer batter giving way to white flesh that was shockingly juicy and tender. I would have happily eaten a double order of just the fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the more audacious late-night diner, the pub is also known for its variety of spicy and \u003ci>extremely\u003c/i> spicy hamburgers — the kind they put your name on a “Wall of Flame” for finishing. (We weren’t in the mood to test our middle-aged digestive tracts quite so late in the evening, but we promised to cover ourselves in glory on some future occasion.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13976695,arts_13971532,arts_13968142']Truth be told, The Swingin’ Door has more than enough charm to merit a visit even if you don’t plan on eating — and most of the folks in that packed room didn’t order much more than a basket of fries or onion rings with their pints of cold beer. Most of them, it turns out, were serious karaoke practitioners, and by God, they had come to \u003ci>sing\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13968142/karaoke-south-san-francisco-hong-kong-late-night-restaurant-noodles-e-plus\">I’ve noted before\u003c/a> how I’ve always been too shy to participate in anything other than private-room karaoke. But I respect a well-run bar-style karaoke night, and The Swingin’ Door’s is one of the best I’ve seen. (Apparently, the renowned cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DKH5PG6pP2L/?hl=en\">used to be a regular\u003c/a> back in the day.) Part of what makes the vibe so appealing is how diverse a crowd it draws. Instead of your prototypical techie Silicon Valley demographic, the regulars who’d come out on this particular Friday night were a surprising mix of swaggy Polynesians, older Latinos, white Boomers in crisp button-down shirts, and sure, a couple of young startup worker types.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We watched a mild-mannered Latina lady hit every soulful note of Duffy’s “Mercy,” and then a bearded bloke built like an offensive lineman blew our mind with the smoothest, silkiest rendition of “Tennessee Whiskey.” (His buddies in the back screaming the whole time, “That’s my boy!!”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time a crowd favorite named Sumo Joe took his turn in the spotlight with his big sunglasses and Hawaiian shirt, and brought the house down with the most high-energy, Polynesian-inflected version of “Achy-Breaky Heart” I’ve ever heard, we were already thinking about who we might bring with us next time — and, after we’d eaten our fill of fish and chips and thrown back some liquid courage, what we might sign up to sing.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/theswingindoor/?hl=en\">\u003ci>The Swingin’ Door\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 11:30 a.m.–2 a.m. daily at 106 E. 25th Ave. in San Mateo. Karaoke goes from 9:30 p.m.–1:30 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13977180\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13977180\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: In a dimly lit room, two men devour fish and chips and bangers and mash while a woman sings karaoke in the front of the room. "When we're hungry, love will keep us alive," she sings.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Foodwise, The Swingin’ Door is best known for its excellent fish and chips. The British-style pub in San Mateo is open until 2 a.m. every night. \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 a little past 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, we were seated beneath a deer head in a crowded dive bar in San Mateo while a Polynesian woman with flowers in her hair swayed in front of the karaoke machine, belting out the sweetest version of the Eagles’ “Love Will Keep Us Alive” you could imagine. Behind us, the faint smell of piss and weed emanated from the vicinity of the bathroom. In front of us, a steaming-hot plate of fish and chips so impeccably fried, we devoured the whole plate in minutes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All of that about sums up \u003ca href=\"https://theswingindoor.com/\">The Swingin’ Door\u003c/a> experience. This is a British pub on the edge of Silicon Valley that stays open until 2 a.m. every night, and is probably the most enjoyable, neighborhood-y dive bar you can find on the Peninsula. It was easily the most fun we had all week, in any case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even just pulling up to the building, we started to fall in love with the place — the weathered red-brick facade, the multiple coats of arms, the big neon sign blaring “FISH AND CHIPS” in bright white letters, the solemn King’s Guard soldier painted next to the door. Three flags were painted on top: American, British and (probably) the Irish tricolor, faded enough that I mistook it for France.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Swingin’ Door hosts karaoke nights four days a week, and during our visit, almost everyone in the packed house was there to sing or to watch their friends sing. It made for a fun juxtaposition — the handsome taxidermy, dark paisley wallpaper and framed black-and-white photos of a London dock strike on the one hand; the grown men and women dancing around with a toy electric guitar on the other. There’s also a quieter bar area upstairs and a sweet garden patio in back for smokers, pool players, and anyone who wants to have a conversation without having to shout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13977179\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13977179\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: The exterior of a British-style pub. The sign reads, "The Swingin' Door." Inside, someone is singing, "Now you've given me the will to survive."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/06/swingin-door-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The bar runs a lively karaoke night four days a week. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Of course, we’d come to eat. The menu here consists of your standard selection of (mostly American) pub food, with just a handful of Britishisms. This isn’t the kind of hardcore pub where you’ll find deeper cuts like steak and kidney pies, haggis or a Scotch egg. But it \u003ci>is\u003c/i> one of a small handful of spots on the Peninsula where you can get a solid, real-deal plate of bangers and mash — the sausages charred and blistered until the casings are deliciously crispy, a scoop of Heinz Beanz on the side for good measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the main reason to make a special trip to The Swingin’ Door, if you’re there for the food, is for those fish and chips, which is about as good a version as I’ve had in the Bay. Actually, what we ordered was the seafood platter for two — a low-key bargain at $30 for a whole mess of fried seafood: fat, briny little oysters, breaded scallops and shrimp, and a big pile of pleasantly chewy clam strips, in addition to two hefty pieces of batter-fried fish. The chips were thick steak fries and not especially memorable, but that fish? It blew away everything else on the plate, the audible crunch of its beer batter giving way to white flesh that was shockingly juicy and tender. I would have happily eaten a double order of just the fish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the more audacious late-night diner, the pub is also known for its variety of spicy and \u003ci>extremely\u003c/i> spicy hamburgers — the kind they put your name on a “Wall of Flame” for finishing. (We weren’t in the mood to test our middle-aged digestive tracts quite so late in the evening, but we promised to cover ourselves in glory on some future occasion.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Truth be told, The Swingin’ Door has more than enough charm to merit a visit even if you don’t plan on eating — and most of the folks in that packed room didn’t order much more than a basket of fries or onion rings with their pints of cold beer. Most of them, it turns out, were serious karaoke practitioners, and by God, they had come to \u003ci>sing\u003c/i>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13968142/karaoke-south-san-francisco-hong-kong-late-night-restaurant-noodles-e-plus\">I’ve noted before\u003c/a> how I’ve always been too shy to participate in anything other than private-room karaoke. But I respect a well-run bar-style karaoke night, and The Swingin’ Door’s is one of the best I’ve seen. (Apparently, the renowned cookbook author J. Kenji López-Alt \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DKH5PG6pP2L/?hl=en\">used to be a regular\u003c/a> back in the day.) Part of what makes the vibe so appealing is how diverse a crowd it draws. Instead of your prototypical techie Silicon Valley demographic, the regulars who’d come out on this particular Friday night were a surprising mix of swaggy Polynesians, older Latinos, white Boomers in crisp button-down shirts, and sure, a couple of young startup worker types.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We watched a mild-mannered Latina lady hit every soulful note of Duffy’s “Mercy,” and then a bearded bloke built like an offensive lineman blew our mind with the smoothest, silkiest rendition of “Tennessee Whiskey.” (His buddies in the back screaming the whole time, “That’s my boy!!”)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the time a crowd favorite named Sumo Joe took his turn in the spotlight with his big sunglasses and Hawaiian shirt, and brought the house down with the most high-energy, Polynesian-inflected version of “Achy-Breaky Heart” I’ve ever heard, we were already thinking about who we might bring with us next time — and, after we’d eaten our fill of fish and chips and thrown back some liquid courage, what we might sign up to sing.\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/theswingindoor/?hl=en\">\u003ci>The Swingin’ Door\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 11:30 a.m.–2 a.m. daily at 106 E. 25th Ave. in San Mateo. Karaoke goes from 9:30 p.m.–1:30 a.m. Wednesday through Saturday.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976699\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976699\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring a table full of Cantonese dishes, including roast squab, fried soft-shell crabs, and a pork chop rice bowl.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Part of the excitement at Four Kings comes from covering the table with an abundance of dishes. The new-school Cantonese restaurant is open until 11 p.m. on the weekends in SF Chinatown. \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 buzziest, most popular restaurant in San Francisco today sits in the heart of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/chinatown\">Chinatown\u003c/a>, in a cheerful alleyway festooned with red lanterns, directly downstairs from a Kumon (as the restaurant’s young, first-gen Cantonese proprietors are fond of \u003ca href=\"https://www.itsfourkings.com/about\">pointing out\u003c/a>). In that way, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/fourkings__/?hl=en\">Four Kings\u003c/a> feels a little bit like some metaphor for millennial Asian America, or maybe just the setting for a novel I’d like to read — one whose plot hinges on the re-creation of some particularly decadent and nostalgic version of claypot rice or Hong Kong pepper steak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we had come to this bustling Hong Kong–inspired diner late on a Friday night because we’d heard it stays open, and fully packed, until 11 p.m. on weekends — and because we finally wanted to see for ourselves if the place lived up to all the hype.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a year after the restaurant’s feverishly anticipated debut, Four Kings \u003ci>still \u003c/i>gets booked up weeks in advance. Luckily for night owls, 9:30 p.m. is the most likely time you might be able to land a last-minute reservation. That’s also the best time to just show up and get in line, as we did, hoping to snag one of the tables they save for walk-ins. (We only had to wait about half an hour.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even apart from the food, Four Kings comes advertised as a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/four-kings-cantonese-chinatown-19431105.php\">rollicking good time\u003c/a>, and the vibes are indeed excellent from the moment you walk in: Posters of ’80s and ’90s Cantopop idols decorate the walls, and their songs provide a boisterous, deeply nostalgic \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7m5GmSTmYNqJ0VpZFyPG6A?si=c8282f11eef64212&nd=1&dlsi=d4a6f3ea1bdf4a88\">soundtrack\u003c/a> for your meal — lots of moody, sentimental rock ballads with sick guitar riffs. The counter is lined with Polaroids, lucky cat dolls and shochu bottles, and everyone is talking loudly, waving around their chopsticks, throwing back Tsingtao lagers and almond-milk highballs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we loved about the place, even before we’d taken a bite of the food, was how casual and low-key it was compared to other similarly trendy, acclaimed Bay Area restaurants. The one-page menu is peppered with little cartoon drawings and doesn’t feel the need to name-check any farm or fine-dining technique (despite the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962284/four-kings-hong-kong-restaurant-san-francisco-chinatown-hella-hungry-interview\">chefs’ fancy pedigrees\u003c/a>). And while Four Kings isn’t an inexpensive restaurant, the kitchen’s bells and whistles don’t call attention to themselves, so even the most exciting dishes just feel like really, really good versions of classic Cantonese cuisine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976700\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976700\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1.jpg\" alt='Illustration: The exterior of a restaurant in Chinatown. The sign about says \"Kumon.\" And there are red lanterns strung up overhead.' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is downstairs from a Kumon. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The chefs \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962284/four-kings-hong-kong-restaurant-san-francisco-chinatown-hella-hungry-interview\">have said\u003c/a> they designed the menu to consist mostly shareable small plates, not much bigger than a standard dim sum, because of the narrowness of their dining room. Budget-minded diners might complain about the price-to-portion-size ratio, but if you order prudently, you can eat really well for about $50 a person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said: We didn’t order prudently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best and worst thing about Four Kings is that there are so many amazing-sounding dishes, on both the regular menu and the handwritten specials board, that you really have to restrain yourself from ordering way too much food. (We could have assembled a whole feast out of dishes we lusted after but weren’t able to make room for this time: mapo spaghetti and Singaporean chili crab, clams with black bean sauce and whole fried petrale sole, and and and…)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The net effect was that we wound up filling our table with an abundance of little and not-so-little dishes, one after another. First the complimentary peanuts (roasted with bits of seaweed) and garlicky smacked cucumbers. Then, a sinus-clearing salad of hot mustard jellyfish, cut thick so they resembled udon noodles, but with a pleasing, cartilaginous crunch. Chili crisp pig’s head, cut into thin, fat-speckled rounds and topped with chrysanthemum greens. One perfect butter-seared scallop served on the half-shell over a nest of umami-drenched vermicelli.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID='arts_13975908,arts_13967564,arts_13962759']If Four Kings has a signature dish, it’s probably the fried squab (i.e., young pigeon), which comes cut into succulent quarters, claws still attached, tiny head staring back at you on the plate. The bird’s bronzed, glistening skin was immaculately crisp, giving away to a burst of soft fat when we bit in. The pink meat was rich and earthy, like duck with an extra bit of oomph. We tore the squab apart with our hands, squeezing lemon over top and dipping each morsel into a dish of tongue-tingling Sichuan-pepper-salt. If you’re bold and willing to work at it a little, even the head makes for good eating — the bits of crispy skin and the sweet, creamy brain in the center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prospect of 10 p.m. squab alone makes Four Kings an elite late-night dining destination, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that it wasn’t even our favorite dish of the night. That title goes to the “typhoon shelter” soft-shell crab, one of the daily specials. Popularized by a genre of floating restaurant that used to hold court in Hong Kong’s typhoon-safe protective harbors, the “typhoon shelter” style refers to seafood that’s batter-fried and topped with a ton of crispy fried garlic and, in this particular version, fried basil. To make the dish even more outlandishly luxurious, Four Kings also places the crunchy crustaceans on top of a layer of aioli — another rich counterpoint to the tender, sweet flesh inside the shell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there was so much more. A hefty fried pork chop rice bowl with sweet onions and velvety tomato-egg gravy. Water spinach electried with the pungent jolt of fermented shrimp paste. For dessert, mango pudding with tangy strawberry sorbet, served in a pool of liquified almond tofu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We ate and we ate until we couldn’t possibly take another bite, and then we packed up our leftovers, leaning back ruefully, our hands on our bellies. That’s the kind of energy that Four Kings inspires: At almost every table, people were hunched over four or five different plates at once, crossing chopsticks, double-dipping, letting all those big flavors mingle together. Who’s going to stop you if you decide to dip a morsel of fried squab in the pig head chili oil? What’s to keep you from drizzling some of the fermented shrimp sauce from the ong choy over your pork chop rice?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We didn’t regret any of it. And walking back out into the crisp Chinatown night, we were already dreaming about all those dishes we couldn’t wait to try next time.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/fourkings__/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Four Kings\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Thursday through Saturday 6–11 p.m. and Sunday to Monday 6–10:30 p.m. at 710 Commercial St. in San Francisco. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976699\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976699\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring a table full of Cantonese dishes, including roast squab, fried soft-shell crabs, and a pork chop rice bowl.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Part of the excitement at Four Kings comes from covering the table with an abundance of dishes. The new-school Cantonese restaurant is open until 11 p.m. on the weekends in SF Chinatown. \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 buzziest, most popular restaurant in San Francisco today sits in the heart of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/chinatown\">Chinatown\u003c/a>, in a cheerful alleyway festooned with red lanterns, directly downstairs from a Kumon (as the restaurant’s young, first-gen Cantonese proprietors are fond of \u003ca href=\"https://www.itsfourkings.com/about\">pointing out\u003c/a>). In that way, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/fourkings__/?hl=en\">Four Kings\u003c/a> feels a little bit like some metaphor for millennial Asian America, or maybe just the setting for a novel I’d like to read — one whose plot hinges on the re-creation of some particularly decadent and nostalgic version of claypot rice or Hong Kong pepper steak.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, we had come to this bustling Hong Kong–inspired diner late on a Friday night because we’d heard it stays open, and fully packed, until 11 p.m. on weekends — and because we finally wanted to see for ourselves if the place lived up to all the hype.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>More than a year after the restaurant’s feverishly anticipated debut, Four Kings \u003ci>still \u003c/i>gets booked up weeks in advance. Luckily for night owls, 9:30 p.m. is the most likely time you might be able to land a last-minute reservation. That’s also the best time to just show up and get in line, as we did, hoping to snag one of the tables they save for walk-ins. (We only had to wait about half an hour.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even apart from the food, Four Kings comes advertised as a \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/four-kings-cantonese-chinatown-19431105.php\">rollicking good time\u003c/a>, and the vibes are indeed excellent from the moment you walk in: Posters of ’80s and ’90s Cantopop idols decorate the walls, and their songs provide a boisterous, deeply nostalgic \u003ca href=\"https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7m5GmSTmYNqJ0VpZFyPG6A?si=c8282f11eef64212&nd=1&dlsi=d4a6f3ea1bdf4a88\">soundtrack\u003c/a> for your meal — lots of moody, sentimental rock ballads with sick guitar riffs. The counter is lined with Polaroids, lucky cat dolls and shochu bottles, and everyone is talking loudly, waving around their chopsticks, throwing back Tsingtao lagers and almond-milk highballs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What we loved about the place, even before we’d taken a bite of the food, was how casual and low-key it was compared to other similarly trendy, acclaimed Bay Area restaurants. The one-page menu is peppered with little cartoon drawings and doesn’t feel the need to name-check any farm or fine-dining technique (despite the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962284/four-kings-hong-kong-restaurant-san-francisco-chinatown-hella-hungry-interview\">chefs’ fancy pedigrees\u003c/a>). And while Four Kings isn’t an inexpensive restaurant, the kitchen’s bells and whistles don’t call attention to themselves, so even the most exciting dishes just feel like really, really good versions of classic Cantonese cuisine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13976700\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13976700\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1.jpg\" alt='Illustration: The exterior of a restaurant in Chinatown. The sign about says \"Kumon.\" And there are red lanterns strung up overhead.' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/4-kings1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is downstairs from a Kumon. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The chefs \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962284/four-kings-hong-kong-restaurant-san-francisco-chinatown-hella-hungry-interview\">have said\u003c/a> they designed the menu to consist mostly shareable small plates, not much bigger than a standard dim sum, because of the narrowness of their dining room. Budget-minded diners might complain about the price-to-portion-size ratio, but if you order prudently, you can eat really well for about $50 a person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That said: We didn’t order prudently.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best and worst thing about Four Kings is that there are so many amazing-sounding dishes, on both the regular menu and the handwritten specials board, that you really have to restrain yourself from ordering way too much food. (We could have assembled a whole feast out of dishes we lusted after but weren’t able to make room for this time: mapo spaghetti and Singaporean chili crab, clams with black bean sauce and whole fried petrale sole, and and and…)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The net effect was that we wound up filling our table with an abundance of little and not-so-little dishes, one after another. First the complimentary peanuts (roasted with bits of seaweed) and garlicky smacked cucumbers. Then, a sinus-clearing salad of hot mustard jellyfish, cut thick so they resembled udon noodles, but with a pleasing, cartilaginous crunch. Chili crisp pig’s head, cut into thin, fat-speckled rounds and topped with chrysanthemum greens. One perfect butter-seared scallop served on the half-shell over a nest of umami-drenched vermicelli.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>If Four Kings has a signature dish, it’s probably the fried squab (i.e., young pigeon), which comes cut into succulent quarters, claws still attached, tiny head staring back at you on the plate. The bird’s bronzed, glistening skin was immaculately crisp, giving away to a burst of soft fat when we bit in. The pink meat was rich and earthy, like duck with an extra bit of oomph. We tore the squab apart with our hands, squeezing lemon over top and dipping each morsel into a dish of tongue-tingling Sichuan-pepper-salt. If you’re bold and willing to work at it a little, even the head makes for good eating — the bits of crispy skin and the sweet, creamy brain in the center.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prospect of 10 p.m. squab alone makes Four Kings an elite late-night dining destination, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that it wasn’t even our favorite dish of the night. That title goes to the “typhoon shelter” soft-shell crab, one of the daily specials. Popularized by a genre of floating restaurant that used to hold court in Hong Kong’s typhoon-safe protective harbors, the “typhoon shelter” style refers to seafood that’s batter-fried and topped with a ton of crispy fried garlic and, in this particular version, fried basil. To make the dish even more outlandishly luxurious, Four Kings also places the crunchy crustaceans on top of a layer of aioli — another rich counterpoint to the tender, sweet flesh inside the shell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And there was so much more. A hefty fried pork chop rice bowl with sweet onions and velvety tomato-egg gravy. Water spinach electried with the pungent jolt of fermented shrimp paste. For dessert, mango pudding with tangy strawberry sorbet, served in a pool of liquified almond tofu.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We ate and we ate until we couldn’t possibly take another bite, and then we packed up our leftovers, leaning back ruefully, our hands on our bellies. That’s the kind of energy that Four Kings inspires: At almost every table, people were hunched over four or five different plates at once, crossing chopsticks, double-dipping, letting all those big flavors mingle together. Who’s going to stop you if you decide to dip a morsel of fried squab in the pig head chili oil? What’s to keep you from drizzling some of the fermented shrimp sauce from the ong choy over your pork chop rice?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We didn’t regret any of it. And walking back out into the crisp Chinatown night, we were already dreaming about all those dishes we couldn’t wait to try next time.\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/fourkings__/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Four Kings\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Thursday through Saturday 6–11 p.m. and Sunday to Monday 6–10:30 p.m. at 710 Commercial St. in San Francisco. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975912\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975912\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In Berkeley, Heyma Yemeni Coffee combines both traditional and contemporary aspects of Yemeni coffee culture. \u003ccite>(Wahab Algarmi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week they were joined by guest artist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/wahabalg/\">\u003ci>Wahab Algarmi\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, whose debut middle grade graphic novel, \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/almost-sunset-wahab-algarmi?variant=42563431989282\">Almost Sunset\u003c/a>\u003ci>, is available in bookstores now. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a college town like Berkeley, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/coffee-shops\">coffee shop\u003c/a> open past 10 o’clock at night is a precious commodity. These days, night owl students looking for a place to caffeinate and park their laptops for a couple of hours are more than likely to find themselves at one type of cafe in particular: a Yemeni coffee house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when we dropped by \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heymacoffee/\">Heyma Yemeni Coffee\u003c/a> on a late Sunday night shortly before finals week at UC Berkeley, it was both surprising and completely \u003ci>unsurprising\u003c/i> to see how packed the place was, with a throng of undergrads waiting in line to buy blistering-hot cups of coffee infused with cardamom and maybe a honey-soaked pastry for good measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve been paying attention to the local coffee scene, you might know that Heyma is one of the dozen or so \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/yemeni-coffee-shop-cafe-18270887.php\">Yemeni coffee shops\u003c/a> that have opened in the Bay Area, all in the past three years, at a rate that only seems to be accelerating. They all have a similar vibe, with their Arab design elements and menus heavy on spiced coffees and the same handful of Yemeni pastries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Heyma, the design is the first thing you notice — the cozy little alcoves lined with black-and-gold arabesque and, in the center of the room, the traditional U-shaped Majlis sofa, where a couple of college kids were sprawled out with their MacBooks. Still, at first glance, you might mistake the place for any other trendy Gen Z cafe or boba shop. The emphasis of the branding and the menu is skewed toward the kinds of flashy drinks and desserts currently popular on TikTok and Instagram: There are matcha lattes and Redbull mojitos, and we spotted at least three or four variations on \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/dining/dubai-chocolate-cant-get-knafeh-it.html\">Dubai chocolate\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975914\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975914\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: The exterior of a busy coffee shop lit up at night. The sign says, \"Heyma Coffee & Tea\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heyma stays open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Wahab Algarmi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the same time, it’s clear that this is a place of real cultural pride. Just inside the entrance, a large sign summarizes the long history of coffee in Yemen, where 15th century Sufi monks were believed to be the \u003ca href=\"https://www.undp.org/stories/yemeni-coffee-personal-us\">first people to cultivate it\u003c/a> as a beverage. Above the counter, a poem in untranslated Arabic — “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxDY8jIpCE\">Love and Coffee\u003c/a>,” by the Yemeni poet Mutaher Ali Al-Eryani — celebrates the joy of the coffee harvest. At the bottom of the digital menu board, it says simply, “Free Palestine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The demographics of the shop’s clientele reflects this mix of influences. During our visit, about half the customers were the same laptop-toting college kids you’ll find at any late-night cafe in Berkeley. The other half consisted of Arab Americans of all ages just hanging out, including one big family that came in at around 10 o’clock, kids clambering over the sofa, everyone dressed up as though they’d just come from the symphony. They ordered such a big spread of food, the staff brought it out in a wooden crate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Arabic speaker in our group asked one of the shop’s young Yemeni American baristas whether they sell any drinks that are uniquely Yemeni, he was quick to recommend an off-menu limeade — just lime juice, water and sugar (perhaps a little bit of cream?), whirred in a blender until light and frothy. It’s the same drink you’ll find on any street corner in Yemen, we were told. And it was incredibly refreshing, easily the best drink we had all night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13975308,arts_13954597,arts_13966812']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the most striking of the pastries was the honeycomb: dough balls stuffed with cream cheese, arranged into a pleasingly geometric cake-slice shape, drizzled with honey, and then blasted in the oven until everything puffs up golden-brown. It was fun pulling the balls apart at the table, like monkey bread; each bite struck a nice balance between sweet and savory. If you want a toasty carb bomb that’s purely savory, the oniony beef sambusas and boat-shaped cheese manakish both hit the spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heyma also goes straight to the top of the list of places I’ll hit up when I’m in the mood for cake at 11 o’clock at night (which for me is at least two or three nights a week). Among the many Dubai chocolate riffs on the menu, we wound up ordering a slice of green and black Dubai chocolate cheesecake, which was as tasty as it was aesthetically pleasing (if perhaps not as pistachio-y as we would have liked). My favorite, though, was the saffron milk cake — one of the many tres-leches-like cakes that the shop sells. It came soaked through with milk and sweet condensed milk and topped with a layer of whipped cream, and was so impossibly moist and airy-light, I would have happily eaten two more slices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, you can’t talk about a Yemeni coffee shop without trying the coffee itself, even if it is 11 p.m. on a work night. And here’s where I have to admit my own hubris: In my desire to try a swath of the menu, I ordered — and finished — not one but two of Heyma’s coffee drinks. First, I had the cardamom and cinnamon–infused Heyma Latte, whose spiced sweetness reminded me of drinks I’ve had at other second-generation diasporic Yemeni and Palestinian cafes. And then the mufawaar, a more traditional medium-roast coffee brewed with cardamom and cream. It was wonderfully fragrant and, as it turns out, very, very strong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I enjoyed both drinks very much at the time. And I enjoyed reminiscing about them, too, a little while later, when I lay in bed wide awake at 3 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heymacoffee/\">\u003ci>Heyma Yemeni Coffee\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m.–11:30 p.m., Friday 7:30 a.m.–midnight, Saturday 8 a.m.-midnight, and Sunday 8 a.m.–11 p.m. at 1122 University Ave. in Berkeley. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975912\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975912\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In Berkeley, Heyma Yemeni Coffee combines both traditional and contemporary aspects of Yemeni coffee culture. \u003ccite>(Wahab Algarmi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. This week they were joined by guest artist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/wahabalg/\">\u003ci>Wahab Algarmi\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>, whose debut middle grade graphic novel, \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.harpercollins.com/products/almost-sunset-wahab-algarmi?variant=42563431989282\">Almost Sunset\u003c/a>\u003ci>, is available in bookstores now. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a college town like Berkeley, a \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/coffee-shops\">coffee shop\u003c/a> open past 10 o’clock at night is a precious commodity. These days, night owl students looking for a place to caffeinate and park their laptops for a couple of hours are more than likely to find themselves at one type of cafe in particular: a Yemeni coffee house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So when we dropped by \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/heymacoffee/\">Heyma Yemeni Coffee\u003c/a> on a late Sunday night shortly before finals week at UC Berkeley, it was both surprising and completely \u003ci>unsurprising\u003c/i> to see how packed the place was, with a throng of undergrads waiting in line to buy blistering-hot cups of coffee infused with cardamom and maybe a honey-soaked pastry for good measure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you’ve been paying attention to the local coffee scene, you might know that Heyma is one of the dozen or so \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/yemeni-coffee-shop-cafe-18270887.php\">Yemeni coffee shops\u003c/a> that have opened in the Bay Area, all in the past three years, at a rate that only seems to be accelerating. They all have a similar vibe, with their Arab design elements and menus heavy on spiced coffees and the same handful of Yemeni pastries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Heyma, the design is the first thing you notice — the cozy little alcoves lined with black-and-gold arabesque and, in the center of the room, the traditional U-shaped Majlis sofa, where a couple of college kids were sprawled out with their MacBooks. Still, at first glance, you might mistake the place for any other trendy Gen Z cafe or boba shop. The emphasis of the branding and the menu is skewed toward the kinds of flashy drinks and desserts currently popular on TikTok and Instagram: There are matcha lattes and Redbull mojitos, and we spotted at least three or four variations on \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/dining/dubai-chocolate-cant-get-knafeh-it.html\">Dubai chocolate\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975914\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975914\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: The exterior of a busy coffee shop lit up at night. The sign says, \"Heyma Coffee & Tea\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/05/heyma-2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Heyma stays open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Wahab Algarmi)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At the same time, it’s clear that this is a place of real cultural pride. Just inside the entrance, a large sign summarizes the long history of coffee in Yemen, where 15th century Sufi monks were believed to be the \u003ca href=\"https://www.undp.org/stories/yemeni-coffee-personal-us\">first people to cultivate it\u003c/a> as a beverage. Above the counter, a poem in untranslated Arabic — “\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNxDY8jIpCE\">Love and Coffee\u003c/a>,” by the Yemeni poet Mutaher Ali Al-Eryani — celebrates the joy of the coffee harvest. At the bottom of the digital menu board, it says simply, “Free Palestine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The demographics of the shop’s clientele reflects this mix of influences. During our visit, about half the customers were the same laptop-toting college kids you’ll find at any late-night cafe in Berkeley. The other half consisted of Arab Americans of all ages just hanging out, including one big family that came in at around 10 o’clock, kids clambering over the sofa, everyone dressed up as though they’d just come from the symphony. They ordered such a big spread of food, the staff brought it out in a wooden crate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When the Arabic speaker in our group asked one of the shop’s young Yemeni American baristas whether they sell any drinks that are uniquely Yemeni, he was quick to recommend an off-menu limeade — just lime juice, water and sugar (perhaps a little bit of cream?), whirred in a blender until light and frothy. It’s the same drink you’ll find on any street corner in Yemen, we were told. And it was incredibly refreshing, easily the best drink we had all night.\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 most striking of the pastries was the honeycomb: dough balls stuffed with cream cheese, arranged into a pleasingly geometric cake-slice shape, drizzled with honey, and then blasted in the oven until everything puffs up golden-brown. It was fun pulling the balls apart at the table, like monkey bread; each bite struck a nice balance between sweet and savory. If you want a toasty carb bomb that’s purely savory, the oniony beef sambusas and boat-shaped cheese manakish both hit the spot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Heyma also goes straight to the top of the list of places I’ll hit up when I’m in the mood for cake at 11 o’clock at night (which for me is at least two or three nights a week). Among the many Dubai chocolate riffs on the menu, we wound up ordering a slice of green and black Dubai chocolate cheesecake, which was as tasty as it was aesthetically pleasing (if perhaps not as pistachio-y as we would have liked). My favorite, though, was the saffron milk cake — one of the many tres-leches-like cakes that the shop sells. It came soaked through with milk and sweet condensed milk and topped with a layer of whipped cream, and was so impossibly moist and airy-light, I would have happily eaten two more slices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course, you can’t talk about a Yemeni coffee shop without trying the coffee itself, even if it is 11 p.m. on a work night. And here’s where I have to admit my own hubris: In my desire to try a swath of the menu, I ordered — and finished — not one but two of Heyma’s coffee drinks. First, I had the cardamom and cinnamon–infused Heyma Latte, whose spiced sweetness reminded me of drinks I’ve had at other second-generation diasporic Yemeni and Palestinian cafes. And then the mufawaar, a more traditional medium-roast coffee brewed with cardamom and cream. It was wonderfully fragrant and, as it turns out, very, very strong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I enjoyed both drinks very much at the time. And I enjoyed reminiscing about them, too, a little while later, when I lay in bed wide awake at 3 a.m.\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/heymacoffee/\">\u003ci>Heyma Yemeni Coffee\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Monday through Thursday 7:30 a.m.–11:30 p.m., Friday 7:30 a.m.–midnight, Saturday 8 a.m.-midnight, and Sunday 8 a.m.–11 p.m. at 1122 University Ave. in Berkeley. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "This Union Square Ramen Shop Slings Pure Ocean Umami Until 3:30 a.m.",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975312\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975312\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men slurp bowls of ramen inside a crowded restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hinodeya Ramen’s Union Square location is known for its late hours and its seafood-based dashi broth. \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 11 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the busiest restaurant in Union Square wasn’t a pizza joint or all-night diner, but instead a tiny ramen shop specializing in a relatively undersung, niche soup style. That about sums up \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> food culture in a nutshell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The noodle shop in question is \u003ca href=\"https://hinodeyaramen.com/\">Hinodeya Ramen\u003c/a>, which first brought its vaunted dashi ramen to San Francisco from Japan’s \u003ca href=\"https://tabelog.com/en/saitama/A1104/A110402/11030891/\">Saitama prefecture\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2016/11/15/13644518/hinodeya-dashi-ramen-japantown-san-francisco\">2016\u003c/a>. Its owners made the bold move of opening a new late-night Union Square outpost in 2022 — in the thick of the pandemic, when the vibes downtown were perhaps at their \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-union-square-alliance-17321368.php\">lowest point\u003c/a>. It’s one of just a small handful of restaurants in the neighborhood that are open past midnight. In fact, on weekends you can still get a bowl of steaming-hot ramen as late as 3:30 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course thousands of words have been written about downtown San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13939383/downtown-san-francisco-doom-spiral-sucka-flea-market-holiday-spirit\">retail apocalypse\u003c/a> and the slow-simmering \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/union-square-macys-18693950.php?utm_content=hed&sid=616ef88e1a685b526a1e6649&ss=A&st_rid=661447bf-9cf8-473c-87cb-db1dea567b1c&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_morningfix\">demise of Union Square\u003c/a>. But at least within the tight, noisy confines of this pint-sized ramen restaurant, you would never guess any of that. During the entirety of our visit, the dining room was filled to capacity — more than 30 ramen eaters crammed practically shoulder to shoulder — with what looked to be an equal mix of SF locals and tourists. At the table next to us: a smiley college-age Latino couple on a date. A few tables down: a big, multi-generational Asian American family, including an 80-plus-year-old grandma with her face mask pulled down for ease of slurping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our server told us they get one big rush of customers from around 10 p.m. to midnight, and then another at 2 a.m., when the bars let out. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may have heard that in Japan, ramen is considered fast food, which isn’t a statement on quality but a matter of pure speed and accessibility. Hinodeya stays true to that spirit: Even though there were five or six parties ahead of us in line when we first stepped through the restaurant’s curtained doorway at a little past 10 o’clock, we were seated within minutes. The food also came out in a flash, just minutes after I buzzed in our QR code orders on my phone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975314\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975314\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a ramen restaurant at night. The sign reads \"Hinodeya Ramen Bar.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Open since 2022, the Union Square shop is open until 3:30 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In comparison to other top ramen shops, the noodles, chashu, soft-boiled egg and other toppings at Hinodeya are all perfectly adequate. But the shop’s be-all end-all is its dashi broth — especially for ramen enthusiasts tired of the thick, creamy, extra fatty tonkotsu style that’s so pervasive in the Bay Area. Instead of just boiling bones to smithereens, the basis of Hinodeya’s standard house ramen is a relatively light, clear soup that’s all balance and nuance, oriented around the umami of the sea: kombu, bonito flakes and scallop bouillon. The dried scallop, in particular, gives the broth an incredible depth of oceanic flavor, and a touch of pork fat adds just the right amount of luxurious richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dashi broth is low-key one of my favorite ramen broths in the Bay; it’s the kind of soup I could slurp down once or twice a week without ever getting tired of it. It feels frankly preposterous to have access to something this good, served this quickly, at 2 or 3 in the morning — right smack in the middle of Union Square, no less.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13974383,arts_13973430,arts_13972197']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Hinodeya also offers a bunch of special ramens, available in limited quantities, like a sukiyaki beef ramen and a ramen topped with fried pork cutlet. And so the other nice thing about the Union Square shop is that, at least during our visit, all of the specials were still available even at 11 p.m. In keeping with the ocean umami theme, we went with the shop’s other signature dish, the hamaguri ramen, which comes topped with a couple dozen sweet littleneck clams in their shells. Here, Hinodeya’s standard dashi soup gets doctored up with a hit of fresh garlic and, of course, all of the clams’ briny juices. This is the ramen for you if you’re a linguine alle vongole lover — if your favorite part of an order of steamed Quahogs is sipping the clam liquor at the bottom of the bowl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The non-ramen dishes at Hinodeya are equally well calibrated for late-night enjoyment, like the juicy, crisp-bottomed gyoza, which come with a side of salty concentrated dashi broth — the ideal dipping sauce, it turns out. If you’re feeling extra hungry, you can finish off the meal with a big ol’ bowl of rice. We opted for the gyudon, a hearty rice bowl that comes topped with thin slices of tender, soy-sauce-simmered beef and a runny-yolked poached egg. But plain white rice would also hit the spot, especially for \u003ca href=\"https://jewidiarta.medium.com/tetsu-kariya-akira-hanasaki-oishinbo-a-la-carte-ramen-gyoza-f69d4bb812e3\">connoisseurs who know the pleasures\u003c/a> of using rice to soak up the last dregs of your leftover ramen broth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We saved just enough room for one last, not-too-sweet bite for dessert: a little square bowl of jello-like matcha pudding topped with a dollop of whipped cream. And just like that, about an hour after we sat down, even having taken our time, we were back out on the street, our bellies full, the taste of the ocean on our tongues. Up above us, the glittering lights of the big Union Square hotels shined just as brightly as they ever did.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Hinodeya Ramen’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hinodeya-unionsquare.square.site/\">\u003ci>Union Square location\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 10 a.m.–3:30 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 10 a.m.–1:30 p.m. the rest of the week at 219 O’Farrell St. in San Francisco. The restaurant also has locations in Japantown, the Financial District, Newark and San Jose.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975312\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975312\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men slurp bowls of ramen inside a crowded restaurant.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hinodeya Ramen’s Union Square location is known for its late hours and its seafood-based dashi broth. \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 11 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the busiest restaurant in Union Square wasn’t a pizza joint or all-night diner, but instead a tiny ramen shop specializing in a relatively undersung, niche soup style. That about sums up \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> food culture in a nutshell.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The noodle shop in question is \u003ca href=\"https://hinodeyaramen.com/\">Hinodeya Ramen\u003c/a>, which first brought its vaunted dashi ramen to San Francisco from Japan’s \u003ca href=\"https://tabelog.com/en/saitama/A1104/A110402/11030891/\">Saitama prefecture\u003c/a> in \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2016/11/15/13644518/hinodeya-dashi-ramen-japantown-san-francisco\">2016\u003c/a>. Its owners made the bold move of opening a new late-night Union Square outpost in 2022 — in the thick of the pandemic, when the vibes downtown were perhaps at their \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sf-union-square-alliance-17321368.php\">lowest point\u003c/a>. It’s one of just a small handful of restaurants in the neighborhood that are open past midnight. In fact, on weekends you can still get a bowl of steaming-hot ramen as late as 3:30 a.m.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of course thousands of words have been written about downtown San Francisco’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13939383/downtown-san-francisco-doom-spiral-sucka-flea-market-holiday-spirit\">retail apocalypse\u003c/a> and the slow-simmering \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/union-square-macys-18693950.php?utm_content=hed&sid=616ef88e1a685b526a1e6649&ss=A&st_rid=661447bf-9cf8-473c-87cb-db1dea567b1c&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=headlines&utm_campaign=sfc_morningfix\">demise of Union Square\u003c/a>. But at least within the tight, noisy confines of this pint-sized ramen restaurant, you would never guess any of that. During the entirety of our visit, the dining room was filled to capacity — more than 30 ramen eaters crammed practically shoulder to shoulder — with what looked to be an equal mix of SF locals and tourists. At the table next to us: a smiley college-age Latino couple on a date. A few tables down: a big, multi-generational Asian American family, including an 80-plus-year-old grandma with her face mask pulled down for ease of slurping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our server told us they get one big rush of customers from around 10 p.m. to midnight, and then another at 2 a.m., when the bars let out. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You may have heard that in Japan, ramen is considered fast food, which isn’t a statement on quality but a matter of pure speed and accessibility. Hinodeya stays true to that spirit: Even though there were five or six parties ahead of us in line when we first stepped through the restaurant’s curtained doorway at a little past 10 o’clock, we were seated within minutes. The food also came out in a flash, just minutes after I buzzed in our QR code orders on my phone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13975314\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13975314\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a ramen restaurant at night. The sign reads \"Hinodeya Ramen Bar.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/hinodeya2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Open since 2022, the Union Square shop is open until 3:30 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In comparison to other top ramen shops, the noodles, chashu, soft-boiled egg and other toppings at Hinodeya are all perfectly adequate. But the shop’s be-all end-all is its dashi broth — especially for ramen enthusiasts tired of the thick, creamy, extra fatty tonkotsu style that’s so pervasive in the Bay Area. Instead of just boiling bones to smithereens, the basis of Hinodeya’s standard house ramen is a relatively light, clear soup that’s all balance and nuance, oriented around the umami of the sea: kombu, bonito flakes and scallop bouillon. The dried scallop, in particular, gives the broth an incredible depth of oceanic flavor, and a touch of pork fat adds just the right amount of luxurious richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The dashi broth is low-key one of my favorite ramen broths in the Bay; it’s the kind of soup I could slurp down once or twice a week without ever getting tired of it. It feels frankly preposterous to have access to something this good, served this quickly, at 2 or 3 in the morning — right smack in the middle of Union Square, no less.\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>Hinodeya also offers a bunch of special ramens, available in limited quantities, like a sukiyaki beef ramen and a ramen topped with fried pork cutlet. And so the other nice thing about the Union Square shop is that, at least during our visit, all of the specials were still available even at 11 p.m. In keeping with the ocean umami theme, we went with the shop’s other signature dish, the hamaguri ramen, which comes topped with a couple dozen sweet littleneck clams in their shells. Here, Hinodeya’s standard dashi soup gets doctored up with a hit of fresh garlic and, of course, all of the clams’ briny juices. This is the ramen for you if you’re a linguine alle vongole lover — if your favorite part of an order of steamed Quahogs is sipping the clam liquor at the bottom of the bowl.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The non-ramen dishes at Hinodeya are equally well calibrated for late-night enjoyment, like the juicy, crisp-bottomed gyoza, which come with a side of salty concentrated dashi broth — the ideal dipping sauce, it turns out. If you’re feeling extra hungry, you can finish off the meal with a big ol’ bowl of rice. We opted for the gyudon, a hearty rice bowl that comes topped with thin slices of tender, soy-sauce-simmered beef and a runny-yolked poached egg. But plain white rice would also hit the spot, especially for \u003ca href=\"https://jewidiarta.medium.com/tetsu-kariya-akira-hanasaki-oishinbo-a-la-carte-ramen-gyoza-f69d4bb812e3\">connoisseurs who know the pleasures\u003c/a> of using rice to soak up the last dregs of your leftover ramen broth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We saved just enough room for one last, not-too-sweet bite for dessert: a little square bowl of jello-like matcha pudding topped with a dollop of whipped cream. And just like that, about an hour after we sat down, even having taken our time, we were back out on the street, our bellies full, the taste of the ocean on our tongues. Up above us, the glittering lights of the big Union Square hotels shined just as brightly as they ever did.\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>Hinodeya Ramen’s \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://hinodeya-unionsquare.square.site/\">\u003ci>Union Square location\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open 10 a.m.–3:30 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 10 a.m.–1:30 p.m. the rest of the week at 219 O’Farrell St. in San Francisco. The restaurant also has locations in Japantown, the Financial District, Newark and San Jose.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974388\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974388\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal.jpg\" alt=\"Two men devour a table full of Cantonese dishes, including chow mein and fried pork chops.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New Gold Medal has been a local favorite for homey Cantonese food in Oakland Chinatown since 2007 \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>Even in the days when everyone would complain about how nothing in Oakland was open past midnight (which is to say, literally the entire time I lived in Oakland), there was always New Gold Medal — the one no-frills Cantonese spot in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/chinatown\">Chinatown\u003c/a> where you could get a steaming-hot plate of beef chow fun or a bowl of wonton soup until 3 o’clock in the morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How many of us have rolled in through those doors, slightly hammered, with a crew seven or eight deep after the bars and clubs let out, or solo after getting off a late work shift, or halfway through an all-night study session? If you live in the East Bay and have ever gotten extremely, extremely hungry in the middle of the night these past two decades, it’s even odds that New Gold Medal has saved your life at least once or twice. (Going even further back, \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/the-hungry-insomniac-1/\">Sun Hong Kong\u003c/a> held court at the same 8th Street location, with a similar menu and late-night hours, starting in the ’80s.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news is that New Gold Medal is still around, \u003ci>still \u003c/i>open until 3 a.m. It still sits in the same classic Chinatown building with the tall, narrow windows and glazed tile eaves — still has the same picturesque tableau of glistening, well-bronzed ducks hanging in the window above a fat stack of fried dough sticks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most importantly? The food is just as good as it ever was and still hits perfectly when eaten at or around midnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Admittedly, \u003ci>some \u003c/i>things have changed. For one, at least during our visit at around 11 o’clock on a weeknight, the crowd was a lot more subdued than I remember — less party time and more tired gig workers enjoying a late dinner before going home to crash for the night. If anything, this made for even more satisfying people-watching: There was an older Cantonese family — a lady with a walker hunched over a bowl of soup, a severe-looking gentleman with a black sport coat and tidy, slicked-back hair. The whole group of them looked like they’d be stone-cold killers at the mahjong table. In the corner, a middle-aged South Asian guy had ordered two dishes and a tureen of soup all for himself and was absolutely going to town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another change: I regret to inform you that the days of the $6.50 rice plate and $16 whole roast duck — staples of my 2010s initiation as an NGM devotee — are long gone. The prices have gone up here just like they have everywhere in the Bay, so these days most items on the menu will run you $15 to $20. But the portions are still as generous as they ever were, so the upshot is that you can drop about $60 on three dishes and a big tub of rice, eat until you’re stuffed, and go home happy and full, with plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day. Not exactly something to complain about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974391\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974391\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2.jpg\" alt='Exterior facade of a Chinese restaurant at night. The sign reads, \"New Gold Medal.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is one of just a handful of Chinatown spots that’s open late — until 3 a.m. most nights. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>New Gold Medal isn’t the kind of destination restaurant that has some rare specialty dish it’s famous for. But if you like homey Cantonese food, its vast menu covers all of the standards — and does almost all of them exceptionally well. It might be best known for its Cantonese-style barbecue, and on a good day, the crispy-skinned roast pork is as tasty as any version you can find in the East Bay. It can be hit or miss, though — and if you’re coming late at night, chances are, the only cuts left in the case will be sad and dry. We went instead with the duck, which is reliably juicy and succulent at all hours, roasted slowly until the fat renders down to a particularly luscious texture. I have to stop myself from eating half a bird all by myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13973430,arts_13972834,arts_13956218']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>On this visit, we also devoured a plate of the Gold Medal chow mein, a crispy nest of fried noodles topped with a slurry of assorted meats, seafood and enough bok choy and shiitake mushrooms to make you feel like you got your meal’s worth of veggies. The salt-and-pepper fried pork chops came out tremendously hot and crispy, sprinkled with sliced garlic and jalapeños, and cut into hefty pieces that were super satisfying to gnaw off the bone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it almost doesn’t matter what you order. Every regular has their own favorites, running the gamut from war wonton soup to the assortment of clay pot rice dishes and stir-fried noodles. My own personal favorite is the stir-fried shrimp and eggs, a dish I’ve ordered at at least a dozen other restaurants in the Bay. But the scallion-flecked eggs never come out as light and fluffy as they do here — slippery enough to make the dish all the more comforting when you scoop it up over a big bowl of white rice. For me, no trip to New Gold Medal is complete without this dish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a couple of middle-aged ladies who’ve been at the restaurant forever run the place with efficiency and good humor, cracking jokes with regulars — equally adept, it seems, in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, and probably several other dialects I’m not aware of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, all we hear about is how the Bay Area’s Chinatowns are dying, and how Oakland Chinatown, in particular, was killed off by the COVID era and its aftermath. All the more reason to celebrate the survivors, then — to give thanks that even now, you can stumble into New Gold Medal at 3 a.m. and eat probably the best meal you’ll eat all week.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>New Gold Medal is open 9 a.m.–3 a.m. daily except for Tuesdays, when it closes at midnight. The restaurant is located at 389 8th St. in Oakland.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974388\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974388\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal.jpg\" alt=\"Two men devour a table full of Cantonese dishes, including chow mein and fried pork chops.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">New Gold Medal has been a local favorite for homey Cantonese food in Oakland Chinatown since 2007 \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>Even in the days when everyone would complain about how nothing in Oakland was open past midnight (which is to say, literally the entire time I lived in Oakland), there was always New Gold Medal — the one no-frills Cantonese spot in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/chinatown\">Chinatown\u003c/a> where you could get a steaming-hot plate of beef chow fun or a bowl of wonton soup until 3 o’clock in the morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How many of us have rolled in through those doors, slightly hammered, with a crew seven or eight deep after the bars and clubs let out, or solo after getting off a late work shift, or halfway through an all-night study session? If you live in the East Bay and have ever gotten extremely, extremely hungry in the middle of the night these past two decades, it’s even odds that New Gold Medal has saved your life at least once or twice. (Going even further back, \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/the-hungry-insomniac-1/\">Sun Hong Kong\u003c/a> held court at the same 8th Street location, with a similar menu and late-night hours, starting in the ’80s.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The good news is that New Gold Medal is still around, \u003ci>still \u003c/i>open until 3 a.m. It still sits in the same classic Chinatown building with the tall, narrow windows and glazed tile eaves — still has the same picturesque tableau of glistening, well-bronzed ducks hanging in the window above a fat stack of fried dough sticks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Most importantly? The food is just as good as it ever was and still hits perfectly when eaten at or around midnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Admittedly, \u003ci>some \u003c/i>things have changed. For one, at least during our visit at around 11 o’clock on a weeknight, the crowd was a lot more subdued than I remember — less party time and more tired gig workers enjoying a late dinner before going home to crash for the night. If anything, this made for even more satisfying people-watching: There was an older Cantonese family — a lady with a walker hunched over a bowl of soup, a severe-looking gentleman with a black sport coat and tidy, slicked-back hair. The whole group of them looked like they’d be stone-cold killers at the mahjong table. In the corner, a middle-aged South Asian guy had ordered two dishes and a tureen of soup all for himself and was absolutely going to town.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another change: I regret to inform you that the days of the $6.50 rice plate and $16 whole roast duck — staples of my 2010s initiation as an NGM devotee — are long gone. The prices have gone up here just like they have everywhere in the Bay, so these days most items on the menu will run you $15 to $20. But the portions are still as generous as they ever were, so the upshot is that you can drop about $60 on three dishes and a big tub of rice, eat until you’re stuffed, and go home happy and full, with plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day. Not exactly something to complain about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13974391\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13974391\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2.jpg\" alt='Exterior facade of a Chinese restaurant at night. The sign reads, \"New Gold Medal.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/newgoldmedal2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is one of just a handful of Chinatown spots that’s open late — until 3 a.m. most nights. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>New Gold Medal isn’t the kind of destination restaurant that has some rare specialty dish it’s famous for. But if you like homey Cantonese food, its vast menu covers all of the standards — and does almost all of them exceptionally well. It might be best known for its Cantonese-style barbecue, and on a good day, the crispy-skinned roast pork is as tasty as any version you can find in the East Bay. It can be hit or miss, though — and if you’re coming late at night, chances are, the only cuts left in the case will be sad and dry. We went instead with the duck, which is reliably juicy and succulent at all hours, roasted slowly until the fat renders down to a particularly luscious texture. I have to stop myself from eating half a bird all by myself.\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>On this visit, we also devoured a plate of the Gold Medal chow mein, a crispy nest of fried noodles topped with a slurry of assorted meats, seafood and enough bok choy and shiitake mushrooms to make you feel like you got your meal’s worth of veggies. The salt-and-pepper fried pork chops came out tremendously hot and crispy, sprinkled with sliced garlic and jalapeños, and cut into hefty pieces that were super satisfying to gnaw off the bone.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But it almost doesn’t matter what you order. Every regular has their own favorites, running the gamut from war wonton soup to the assortment of clay pot rice dishes and stir-fried noodles. My own personal favorite is the stir-fried shrimp and eggs, a dish I’ve ordered at at least a dozen other restaurants in the Bay. But the scallion-flecked eggs never come out as light and fluffy as they do here — slippery enough to make the dish all the more comforting when you scoop it up over a big bowl of white rice. For me, no trip to New Gold Medal is complete without this dish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a couple of middle-aged ladies who’ve been at the restaurant forever run the place with efficiency and good humor, cracking jokes with regulars — equally adept, it seems, in English, Cantonese and Mandarin, and probably several other dialects I’m not aware of.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These days, all we hear about is how the Bay Area’s Chinatowns are dying, and how Oakland Chinatown, in particular, was killed off by the COVID era and its aftermath. All the more reason to celebrate the survivors, then — to give thanks that even now, you can stumble into New Gold Medal at 3 a.m. and eat probably the best meal you’ll eat all week.\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>New Gold Medal is open 9 a.m.–3 a.m. daily except for Tuesdays, when it closes at midnight. The restaurant is located at 389 8th St. in Oakland.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13973438\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13973438\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a man devours a crab dripping with red sauce (with red stains all over his shirt) while his companion looks on.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of Ondam’s signature dishes is its spicy raw marinated crab. Located in Santa Clara, the Korean restaurant is open until 1 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It looked like the scene of an unspeakable crime. I pulled off my red-stained plastic gloves and surveyed the damage: the pile of crimson-soaked carcasses, limbs torn off, bits of raw flesh oozing out from open crevices. My hands were sticky (and a little bit sweet??) underneath the gloves, my pants also spattered bright blood red and possibly ruined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, it was just an average night at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/?hl=en\">Ondam\u003c/a>, a newish late-night Korean restaurant in Santa Clara. We’d come in search of a rare delicacy, \u003ca href=\"https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/yangnyeom-gejang\">yangnyeom gejang\u003c/a>, or spicy raw marinated crabs — delicious victims of the aforementioned carnage. The dish has been a \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@hoemgirl/video/7218383423558257962\">viral hit\u003c/a> on Korean American TikTok and Instagram for a few years now, but has only recently started to appear on \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/crab-korean-k-banchan-18615070.php\">a handful of Bay Area menus\u003c/a>, often at restaurants, like Ondam, that specialize in booze-friendly fare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was jam-packed with Asian American twenty- and thirtysomethings, many of them chatting amiably in Korean. Even though about a dozen diners were ahead of us in line, we were seated quickly. The place is a model of efficiency, with a brisk, no-nonsense approach to service and iPad menus on every table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the raw marinated crabs are one of Ondam’s most \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/ondam-santa-clara?q=crab\">popular\u003c/a>, attention-grabbing dishes, we only saw them on a couple other tables. That’s probably because they’re a whole commitment, and you need to come properly prepared, ready to give them your full attention. At $35 a pop, they actually feel like a bargain because the portion size is tremendous — a giant Jenga tower of saucy, chili-stained blue crabs stacked high on the plate. There were so many that we lost count, but I must have eaten eight or 10 of the little crustaceans all by myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The marinade consisted of gochugaru (Korean chili powder), garlic, fresh chilies and soy sauce, which combined with the crab’s juices to form a spicy-sweet paste. The shells were soft enough that you could bite right through to get at the meat inside. What I like to do, though, is put on those plastic gloves and use both hands to smoosh the crab until its soft, gelatinous flesh oozes out over a bowl of hot rice. What a treat it was to luxuriate in the natural sweetness of the raw crab, whose taste and jelly-like texture were reminiscent of really fresh shrimp sashimi. Mixed with the (mildly) fiery kick of that bright red sauce, it was almost impossible to stop eating. And even wearing gloves, you’re bound to make a mess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Would my doctor advise me to eat this at 11 o’clock at night on the regular? If this was wrong, I didn’t want to be right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13973440\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13973440\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: the exterior of a restaurant at night. The sign reads \"Ondam Korean Restaurant.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is a late-night hotspot, especially for Korean Americans in the Santa Clara area. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even if you’re squeamish about the idea of eating raw crab, Ondam serves some of the tastiest Korean food we’ve had in the Bay Area in quite some time. In fact, most of the tables around us were ordering more typical Korean pub standards — fried chicken, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13961328/bay-pocha-late-night-korean-pub-bossam-army-stew-sf\">army stew\u003c/a> and tteokbokki. Based on our initial exploration of the menu, this is a restaurant that does the classics well. The complimentary banchan spread, for instance, was nothing but bangers: a tangle of soft, uncommonly savory potato matchsticks; perfectly seasoned sauteed spinach; a mound of creamy (and surprisingly addicting!) macaroni salad flecked with sweet corn kernels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the restaurant also boasts a wealth of dishes that are harder to find in the Bay Area. For instance, it has an extensive selection of kalguksu, or Korean noodle soups featuring handmade knife-cut noodles. The clam kalguksu we ordered came overloaded with clams and mussels, and the broth had a wonderfully deep and soothing flavor, having extracted all of the shellfish’s briny sweetness. On a cold night, it warmed us up from the inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13972834,arts_13957143,arts_13965215']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>There was a sweet, garlicky version of yukhoe, or Korean beef tartare, crowned with a golden egg yolk and served with crunchy slivers of Asian pear. And there was a whole menu of sotbap, a rice dish that’s a lesser known cousin of bibimbap, where all of the ingredients get cooked together in one pot. The steak sotbap turned out to be one of the most luxurious dishes of the night. The steak itself was cut into large, substantial chunks that were seared to a perfect, extraordinarily juicy medium-rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saved for a future visit: the six different jeongol (hot pot) dishes, and the elaborate spread of raw meats or seafood that get \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/p/C3zRYBLuCUo/\">cooked gently in a cypress wood steamer\u003c/a> and served with an array of dipping sauces — a preparation I haven’t seen at any other Korean restaurant in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might find one or two of these lesser-known items from Ondam’s menu at Korean restaurants in Oakland or San Francisco, but \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20181212124912/https://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/different-kind-of-koreatown\">only in Santa Clara\u003c/a> is it typical to find such a wide array. And based on how crowded the dining room was during our visit, right now Ondam is \u003ci>the\u003c/i> place to be in Santa Clara, at least if you’re looking for a late-night feast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Do learn from our mistakes, though, especially if the raw crabs are at the top of your agenda. Don’t wear any clothing you wouldn’t want getting dirty. And consider ordering just one or two dishes to start out, so you can focus on working your way through those crabs before the table gets cluttered and overcrowded. At that point, every bowl and utensil on the table might already be stained red, and one false move will send your sauce-splattered chopsticks flying through the air … and onto your favorite trousers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that we wouldn’t do it all again in a second.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Ondam\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m.–midnight, and Friday through Saturday 11 a.m.–1 a.m. at 2450 El Camino Real in Santa Clara.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13973438\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13973438\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a man devours a crab dripping with red sauce (with red stains all over his shirt) while his companion looks on.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of Ondam’s signature dishes is its spicy raw marinated crab. Located in Santa Clara, the Korean restaurant is open until 1 a.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It looked like the scene of an unspeakable crime. I pulled off my red-stained plastic gloves and surveyed the damage: the pile of crimson-soaked carcasses, limbs torn off, bits of raw flesh oozing out from open crevices. My hands were sticky (and a little bit sweet??) underneath the gloves, my pants also spattered bright blood red and possibly ruined.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All in all, it was just an average night at \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/?hl=en\">Ondam\u003c/a>, a newish late-night Korean restaurant in Santa Clara. We’d come in search of a rare delicacy, \u003ca href=\"https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/yangnyeom-gejang\">yangnyeom gejang\u003c/a>, or spicy raw marinated crabs — delicious victims of the aforementioned carnage. The dish has been a \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@hoemgirl/video/7218383423558257962\">viral hit\u003c/a> on Korean American TikTok and Instagram for a few years now, but has only recently started to appear on \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/crab-korean-k-banchan-18615070.php\">a handful of Bay Area menus\u003c/a>, often at restaurants, like Ondam, that specialize in booze-friendly fare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Late on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was jam-packed with Asian American twenty- and thirtysomethings, many of them chatting amiably in Korean. Even though about a dozen diners were ahead of us in line, we were seated quickly. The place is a model of efficiency, with a brisk, no-nonsense approach to service and iPad menus on every table.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the raw marinated crabs are one of Ondam’s most \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/ondam-santa-clara?q=crab\">popular\u003c/a>, attention-grabbing dishes, we only saw them on a couple other tables. That’s probably because they’re a whole commitment, and you need to come properly prepared, ready to give them your full attention. At $35 a pop, they actually feel like a bargain because the portion size is tremendous — a giant Jenga tower of saucy, chili-stained blue crabs stacked high on the plate. There were so many that we lost count, but I must have eaten eight or 10 of the little crustaceans all by myself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The marinade consisted of gochugaru (Korean chili powder), garlic, fresh chilies and soy sauce, which combined with the crab’s juices to form a spicy-sweet paste. The shells were soft enough that you could bite right through to get at the meat inside. What I like to do, though, is put on those plastic gloves and use both hands to smoosh the crab until its soft, gelatinous flesh oozes out over a bowl of hot rice. What a treat it was to luxuriate in the natural sweetness of the raw crab, whose taste and jelly-like texture were reminiscent of really fresh shrimp sashimi. Mixed with the (mildly) fiery kick of that bright red sauce, it was almost impossible to stop eating. And even wearing gloves, you’re bound to make a mess.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Would my doctor advise me to eat this at 11 o’clock at night on the regular? If this was wrong, I didn’t want to be right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13973440\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13973440\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: the exterior of a restaurant at night. The sign reads \"Ondam Korean Restaurant.\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-800x800.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-1020x1020.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/03/ONDAM2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The restaurant is a late-night hotspot, especially for Korean Americans in the Santa Clara area. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Even if you’re squeamish about the idea of eating raw crab, Ondam serves some of the tastiest Korean food we’ve had in the Bay Area in quite some time. In fact, most of the tables around us were ordering more typical Korean pub standards — fried chicken, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13961328/bay-pocha-late-night-korean-pub-bossam-army-stew-sf\">army stew\u003c/a> and tteokbokki. Based on our initial exploration of the menu, this is a restaurant that does the classics well. The complimentary banchan spread, for instance, was nothing but bangers: a tangle of soft, uncommonly savory potato matchsticks; perfectly seasoned sauteed spinach; a mound of creamy (and surprisingly addicting!) macaroni salad flecked with sweet corn kernels.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the restaurant also boasts a wealth of dishes that are harder to find in the Bay Area. For instance, it has an extensive selection of kalguksu, or Korean noodle soups featuring handmade knife-cut noodles. The clam kalguksu we ordered came overloaded with clams and mussels, and the broth had a wonderfully deep and soothing flavor, having extracted all of the shellfish’s briny sweetness. On a cold night, it warmed us up from the inside.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>There was a sweet, garlicky version of yukhoe, or Korean beef tartare, crowned with a golden egg yolk and served with crunchy slivers of Asian pear. And there was a whole menu of sotbap, a rice dish that’s a lesser known cousin of bibimbap, where all of the ingredients get cooked together in one pot. The steak sotbap turned out to be one of the most luxurious dishes of the night. The steak itself was cut into large, substantial chunks that were seared to a perfect, extraordinarily juicy medium-rare.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saved for a future visit: the six different jeongol (hot pot) dishes, and the elaborate spread of raw meats or seafood that get \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ondam_official/p/C3zRYBLuCUo/\">cooked gently in a cypress wood steamer\u003c/a> and served with an array of dipping sauces — a preparation I haven’t seen at any other Korean restaurant in the Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You might find one or two of these lesser-known items from Ondam’s menu at Korean restaurants in Oakland or San Francisco, but \u003ca href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20181212124912/https://www.modernluxury.com/san-francisco/story/different-kind-of-koreatown\">only in Santa Clara\u003c/a> is it typical to find such a wide array. And based on how crowded the dining room was during our visit, right now Ondam is \u003ci>the\u003c/i> place to be in Santa Clara, at least if you’re looking for a late-night feast.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Do learn from our mistakes, though, especially if the raw crabs are at the top of your agenda. Don’t wear any clothing you wouldn’t want getting dirty. And consider ordering just one or two dishes to start out, so you can focus on working your way through those crabs before the table gets cluttered and overcrowded. At that point, every bowl and utensil on the table might already be stained red, and one false move will send your sauce-splattered chopsticks flying through the air … and onto your favorite trousers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that we wouldn’t do it all again in a second.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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