In Redwood City, a Great Taco Is Always Just a Few Blocks Away — Even at Midnight
Nobuya Brings Elegant Late-Night Sushi Boxes to the East Bay Suburbs
One of San José’s Best Phở Restaurants Slings Flame-Torched Wagyu Past Midnight
Y’s Choice Is a Haven of Late-Night Soul Food in Oakland
Fat Cat x The Mantis Is Serving Up the Most Exciting Vietnamese Food in SF
This Late-Night Noodle House Slings the South Bay’s Tastiest Roast Duck
The Exuberant Joy of an Indian Ice Cream Shop at 11 PM
This Late-Night Filipino Diner in Downtown Oakland Is Hidden in Plain Sight
June’s Pizza Is Oakland’s Favorite Late-Night Slice Shop
This North Bay Taqueria Is Your New Destination for Late-Night Fried Fish Tacos
Santa Clara’s Tastiest Charcoal-Grilled Korean Barbecue Spot Stays Open Until Midnight
In Oakland, This Nigerian Spot Serves Amazing Late-Night Oxtails and Jollof Rice
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"slug": "redwood-city-late-night-tacos-el-grullense-el-paisa-los-gemelos",
"title": "In Redwood City, a Great Taco Is Always Just a Few Blocks Away — Even at Midnight",
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"headTitle": "In Redwood City, a Great Taco Is Always Just a Few Blocks Away — Even at Midnight | KQED",
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"content": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a triplicate of images of two men running around while devouring tacos.\" class=\"wp-image-13994640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In Redwood City, each late-night taco spot has its own specialties: lengua and al pastor at El Paisa by Los Alegres, barbacoa on handmade tortillas at Tacos Los Gemelos, and tripitas with red salsa at Tacos El Grullense E&E. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cruising down 101 at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, we were hit with that most Bay Area of cravings. We needed oil-slicked tortillas and crisp-edged carnitas. Carne asada served hot off the plancha. In other words, we were hungry for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/tacos\">tacos\u003c/a> — a whole clutch of them, shoved down our gullets, posthaste. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At this point in the night, we would typically hit up one of our usual after-hours haunts on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13963832/tacos-el-rulas-richmond-late-night-taqueria-midnight-diners\">Richmond’s\u003c/a> 23rd street taco corridor, or in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13954112/orale-taco-truck-san-jose-late-night-pancakes-midnight-diners\">Eastside San José\u003c/a>. But we’d been hearing about a legendary Peninsula taco scene we hadn’t yet properly explored. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so we headed to Redwood City for a good old-fashioned late-night taco crawl.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In 2008, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/09/30/redwood-city-center-of-the-taco-universe/\">\u003cem>San Jose Mercury News\u003c/em>\u003c/a> called Redwood City “the center of the taco universe,” citing a density of taquerias — at the time, 49 of them in a city with a population of 74,000 — that seemed higher than just about anywhere else in California, if not the entire United States. Individual shops have come and gone in the 18 years since, but the scene remains incredibly robust. Just last year, no lesser authority than the president of Mexico herself, Claudia Sheinbaum, \u003ca href=\"https://abc7news.com/post/mexico-president-claudia-sheinbaum-says-best-pork-fried-carnitas-are-made-redwood-city-mexican-immigrants/17828906/\">shouted out Redwood City\u003c/a> for having the best Mexican food in the Bay Area, thanks in part to its unusually high influx of immigrants from the city of \u003ca href=\"https://new.thecity.redwoodcity.org/pub/onbase/siredl.ashx?fileid=235425\">Aguililla, Michoacán\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On one three-block stretch of Middlefield Road, we must have spotted a dozen taquerias, four or five taco trucks and a handful of informal roadside tents that had set up trompos to sell fresh-sliced al pastor. And across the city, a decent chunk of the shops stay open until midnight on weekends, if not later. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For our first stop, we pulled into a big Costco and Outdoor Supply Hardware parking lot on Middlefield Road. Parked right in front of the hardware store, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elpaisabylosalegres/\">El Paisa by Los Alegres\u003c/a> is one of the newer taco trucks that cropped up in Redwood City during the pandemic, specializing in Mexico City–style tacos. At this late hour, the truck still drew a steady stream of customers — mostly groups of middle-aged Latino men who made quick work of their tacos in the tented dining area.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men trace a path as they run from one taco shop to another.\" class=\"wp-image-13994644\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Redwood City has one of the Bay Area’s densest concentrations of taco shops, many of them open until midnight or later. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If Redwood City’s taquerias share a collective theme, it’s that they tend toward old-school simplicity — honest street tacos unadorned with anything more than a dollop of salsa and a flurry of chopped onions and cilantro. El Paisa is the only spot we visited that offered any of the flashier dishes trendy on social media these days: decadently overloaded baked potatoes, alambres (a kind of sizzling, cheesy meat skillet) and so forth.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As tempting as those sounded, we had a long night of taco eating ahead, and needed to pace ourselves. So we ordered a sampling of the truck’s workmanlike street tacos, served on a double layer of fragrant corn tortillas. Every one of them was a winner. There was juicy, well-caramelized Mexico City–style al pastor dotted with chunks of tangy-sweet pineapple; rich, steaky chunks of suadero; and cabeza (pig’s head) that was a dynamo of soft, slippery, gelatinous textures. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One of the most memorable bites was the beef lengua, which had been cut into the thickest, widest slabs I’d ever seen on a taco. The overall effect was like biting into a buttery, impossibly soft piece of steak — extra delicious topped with some spicy pickled onions from the truck’s self-serve salsa bar. Meanwhile, the sope, served open-faced with shredded lettuce, crema and choice of meat, was simply extraordinary. We loved the extra-thick masa base, which had a chewy-crisp texture and a beautifully smoky, charred flavor from the grill. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Our next stop was \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacolosgemelos/\">Tacos Los Gemelos\u003c/a>, a lively sit-down taqueria on El Camino Real, less than five minutes away and still doing brisk business at almost 11 p.m. The vibe was an interesting mish-mash of past and present. There was the old-fashioned picture menu board, the kitschy rooster-themed artwork, the quaint blue-and-white gingham pattern laminated on the tabletops. On the other hand, a more recent layer of AI-generated signage had been plastered everywhere, bleating out the same cartoonish font you see at so many other restaurants. (“We are selling FLAN as a dessert!” one of them read.) \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The food, on the other hand, tasted altogether homey. The plush handmade tortillas were wonderfully soft and aromatic. The Michoacán-style carnitas were moist and tender, rather than crispy. And the shrimp had been diced into cubes before getting a hard sear on the griddle, which imbued them with the texture and subtle smokiness of grilled octopus. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Best of all was the specialty of the house: juicy, impeccably tender slow-cooked barbacoa, which you can order with a side of consomé. I suppose you could dip your barbacoa taco in the hot broth if you aren’t afraid of making a mess. We simply sipped it at the end of our meal, Chinese-style. A perfect final bite. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At this point in our journey, we were pretty well stuffed. But we couldn’t call it a night without visiting an outpost of El Grullense, easily Redwood City’s most well known and beloved taco chain. So we loosened our pants and made a beeline for the 5th Avenue location of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullense_ee/\">Tacos El Grullense E&E\u003c/a>, which is really just a window attached to a Mobil gas station mini mart. It’s a bare-bones, cash-only operation without any seating to speak of. The best play is to simply lay your spread of tacos out on the hood of your car before digging in.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Might this be the most quintessential Redwood City taco experience? The carne asada had crisp, well-charred edges, and the tripitas (beef intestines) were the tastiest I’ve had in a long time — not over-fried, but with a crispy-chewy, slightly squishy texture that was incredibly addicting. They burst with hot, meaty juices as soon as we bit in. We tried another sope, topped with al pastor, and it was wonderful here too — the pork deeply savory, the shredded lettuce particularly fresh and crisp. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Tying everything together was El Grullense’s hallmark item: red salsa with a slight smokiness, a sneaky heat and an incredible depth of flavor. We couldn’t get enough of it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As full as we were, we wound up polishing off every bite, barely bothering to wipe the grease stains off the hood of the car before we drove off into the night. All we knew is that there were still at least another dozen taquerias we still wanted to check out the next time we came through this part of the Peninsula. Hours later, when I woke up in the middle of the night, my fingers still smelled faintly of masa and meat juices.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"/>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elpaisabylosalegres/\">\u003cem>El Paisa by Los Alegres\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. at 2110 Middlefield Rd. in Redwood City. The truck is usually parked in front of the Outdoor Supply Hardware. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacolosgemelos/\">\u003cem>Tacos Los Gemelos\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Wednesday through Monday 9:30 a.m.–midnight at 1630 El Camino Real.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullense_ee/\">\u003cem>Tacos El Grullense E&E\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open 9 a.m.–midnight daily at 795 5th Ave. Cash only. Attached to a Mobil gas station mini-mart, the taqueria is one of four \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tacoselgrullenseee.com/new-page-1\">\u003cem>El Grullense E&E locations\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> in Redwood City — and one of at least eight loosely affiliated restaurants on the Peninsula that bear the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullenseno.1\">\u003cem>El Grullense\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>name. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a triplicate of images of two men running around while devouring tacos.\" class=\"wp-image-13994640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In Redwood City, each late-night taco spot has its own specialties: lengua and al pastor at El Paisa by Los Alegres, barbacoa on handmade tortillas at Tacos Los Gemelos, and tripitas with red salsa at Tacos El Grullense E&E.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a triplicate of images of two men running around while devouring tacos.\" class=\"wp-image-13994640\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In Redwood City, each late-night taco spot has its own specialties: lengua and al pastor at El Paisa by Los Alegres, barbacoa on handmade tortillas at Tacos Los Gemelos, and tripitas with red salsa at Tacos El Grullense E&E.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Cruising down 101 at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, we were hit with that most Bay Area of cravings. We needed oil-slicked tortillas and crisp-edged carnitas. Carne asada served hot off the plancha. In other words, we were hungry for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/tacos\">tacos\u003c/a> — a whole clutch of them, shoved down our gullets, posthaste. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Cruising down 101 at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, we were hit with that most Bay Area of cravings. We needed oil-slicked tortillas and crisp-edged carnitas. Carne asada served hot off the plancha. In other words, we were hungry for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/tacos\">tacos\u003c/a> — a whole clutch of them, shoved down our gullets, posthaste. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>At this point in the night, we would typically hit up one of our usual after-hours haunts on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13963832/tacos-el-rulas-richmond-late-night-taqueria-midnight-diners\">Richmond’s\u003c/a> 23rd street taco corridor, or in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13954112/orale-taco-truck-san-jose-late-night-pancakes-midnight-diners\">Eastside San José\u003c/a>. But we’d been hearing about a legendary Peninsula taco scene we hadn’t yet properly explored. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>At this point in the night, we would typically hit up one of our usual after-hours haunts on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13963832/tacos-el-rulas-richmond-late-night-taqueria-midnight-diners\">Richmond’s\u003c/a> 23rd street taco corridor, or in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13954112/orale-taco-truck-san-jose-late-night-pancakes-midnight-diners\">Eastside San José\u003c/a>. But we’d been hearing about a legendary Peninsula taco scene we hadn’t yet properly explored. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And so we headed to Redwood City for a good old-fashioned late-night taco crawl.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And so we headed to Redwood City for a good old-fashioned late-night taco crawl.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In 2008, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/09/30/redwood-city-center-of-the-taco-universe/\">\u003cem>San Jose Mercury News\u003c/em>\u003c/a> called Redwood City “the center of the taco universe,” citing a density of taquerias — at the time, 49 of them in a city with a population of 74,000 — that seemed higher than just about anywhere else in California, if not the entire United States. Individual shops have come and gone in the 18 years since, but the scene remains incredibly robust. Just last year, no lesser authority than the president of Mexico herself, Claudia Sheinbaum, \u003ca href=\"https://abc7news.com/post/mexico-president-claudia-sheinbaum-says-best-pork-fried-carnitas-are-made-redwood-city-mexican-immigrants/17828906/\">shouted out Redwood City\u003c/a> for having the best Mexican food in the Bay Area, thanks in part to its unusually high influx of immigrants from the city of \u003ca href=\"https://new.thecity.redwoodcity.org/pub/onbase/siredl.ashx?fileid=235425\">Aguililla, Michoacán\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In 2008, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/09/30/redwood-city-center-of-the-taco-universe/\">\u003cem>San Jose Mercury News\u003c/em>\u003c/a> called Redwood City “the center of the taco universe,” citing a density of taquerias — at the time, 49 of them in a city with a population of 74,000 — that seemed higher than just about anywhere else in California, if not the entire United States. Individual shops have come and gone in the 18 years since, but the scene remains incredibly robust. Just last year, no lesser authority than the president of Mexico herself, Claudia Sheinbaum, \u003ca href=\"https://abc7news.com/post/mexico-president-claudia-sheinbaum-says-best-pork-fried-carnitas-are-made-redwood-city-mexican-immigrants/17828906/\">shouted out Redwood City\u003c/a> for having the best Mexican food in the Bay Area, thanks in part to its unusually high influx of immigrants from the city of \u003ca href=\"https://new.thecity.redwoodcity.org/pub/onbase/siredl.ashx?fileid=235425\">Aguililla, Michoacán\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>On one three-block stretch of Middlefield Road, we must have spotted a dozen taquerias, four or five taco trucks and a handful of informal roadside tents that had set up trompos to sell fresh-sliced al pastor. And across the city, a decent chunk of the shops stay open until midnight on weekends, if not later. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>On one three-block stretch of Middlefield Road, we must have spotted a dozen taquerias, four or five taco trucks and a handful of informal roadside tents that had set up trompos to sell fresh-sliced al pastor. And across the city, a decent chunk of the shops stay open until midnight on weekends, if not later. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>For our first stop, we pulled into a big Costco and Outdoor Supply Hardware parking lot on Middlefield Road. Parked right in front of the hardware store, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elpaisabylosalegres/\">El Paisa by Los Alegres\u003c/a> is one of the newer taco trucks that cropped up in Redwood City during the pandemic, specializing in Mexico City–style tacos. At this late hour, the truck still drew a steady stream of customers — mostly groups of middle-aged Latino men who made quick work of their tacos in the tented dining area.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>For our first stop, we pulled into a big Costco and Outdoor Supply Hardware parking lot on Middlefield Road. Parked right in front of the hardware store, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elpaisabylosalegres/\">El Paisa by Los Alegres\u003c/a> is one of the newer taco trucks that cropped up in Redwood City during the pandemic, specializing in Mexico City–style tacos. At this late hour, the truck still drew a steady stream of customers — mostly groups of middle-aged Latino men who made quick work of their tacos in the tented dining area.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men trace a path as they run from one taco shop to another.\" class=\"wp-image-13994644\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Redwood City has one of the Bay Area’s densest concentrations of taco shops, many of them open until midnight or later.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men trace a path as they run from one taco shop to another.\" class=\"wp-image-13994644\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Redwood City has one of the Bay Area’s densest concentrations of taco shops, many of them open until midnight or later.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If Redwood City’s taquerias share a collective theme, it’s that they tend toward old-school simplicity — honest street tacos unadorned with anything more than a dollop of salsa and a flurry of chopped onions and cilantro. El Paisa is the only spot we visited that offered any of the flashier dishes trendy on social media these days: decadently overloaded baked potatoes, alambres (a kind of sizzling, cheesy meat skillet) and so forth.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If Redwood City’s taquerias share a collective theme, it’s that they tend toward old-school simplicity — honest street tacos unadorned with anything more than a dollop of salsa and a flurry of chopped onions and cilantro. El Paisa is the only spot we visited that offered any of the flashier dishes trendy on social media these days: decadently overloaded baked potatoes, alambres (a kind of sizzling, cheesy meat skillet) and so forth.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>As tempting as those sounded, we had a long night of taco eating ahead, and needed to pace ourselves. So we ordered a sampling of the truck’s workmanlike street tacos, served on a double layer of fragrant corn tortillas. Every one of them was a winner. There was juicy, well-caramelized Mexico City–style al pastor dotted with chunks of tangy-sweet pineapple; rich, steaky chunks of suadero; and cabeza (pig’s head) that was a dynamo of soft, slippery, gelatinous textures. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>As tempting as those sounded, we had a long night of taco eating ahead, and needed to pace ourselves. So we ordered a sampling of the truck’s workmanlike street tacos, served on a double layer of fragrant corn tortillas. Every one of them was a winner. There was juicy, well-caramelized Mexico City–style al pastor dotted with chunks of tangy-sweet pineapple; rich, steaky chunks of suadero; and cabeza (pig’s head) that was a dynamo of soft, slippery, gelatinous textures. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>One of the most memorable bites was the beef lengua, which had been cut into the thickest, widest slabs I’d ever seen on a taco. The overall effect was like biting into a buttery, impossibly soft piece of steak — extra delicious topped with some spicy pickled onions from the truck’s self-serve salsa bar. Meanwhile, the sope, served open-faced with shredded lettuce, crema and choice of meat, was simply extraordinary. We loved the extra-thick masa base, which had a chewy-crisp texture and a beautifully smoky, charred flavor from the grill. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>One of the most memorable bites was the beef lengua, which had been cut into the thickest, widest slabs I’d ever seen on a taco. The overall effect was like biting into a buttery, impossibly soft piece of steak — extra delicious topped with some spicy pickled onions from the truck’s self-serve salsa bar. Meanwhile, the sope, served open-faced with shredded lettuce, crema and choice of meat, was simply extraordinary. We loved the extra-thick masa base, which had a chewy-crisp texture and a beautifully smoky, charred flavor from the grill. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Our next stop was \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacolosgemelos/\">Tacos Los Gemelos\u003c/a>, a lively sit-down taqueria on El Camino Real, less than five minutes away and still doing brisk business at almost 11 p.m. The vibe was an interesting mish-mash of past and present. There was the old-fashioned picture menu board, the kitschy rooster-themed artwork, the quaint blue-and-white gingham pattern laminated on the tabletops. On the other hand, a more recent layer of AI-generated signage had been plastered everywhere, bleating out the same cartoonish font you see at so many other restaurants. (“We are selling FLAN as a dessert!” one of them read.) \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Our next stop was \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacolosgemelos/\">Tacos Los Gemelos\u003c/a>, a lively sit-down taqueria on El Camino Real, less than five minutes away and still doing brisk business at almost 11 p.m. The vibe was an interesting mish-mash of past and present. There was the old-fashioned picture menu board, the kitschy rooster-themed artwork, the quaint blue-and-white gingham pattern laminated on the tabletops. On the other hand, a more recent layer of AI-generated signage had been plastered everywhere, bleating out the same cartoonish font you see at so many other restaurants. (“We are selling FLAN as a dessert!” one of them read.) \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The food, on the other hand, tasted altogether homey. The plush handmade tortillas were wonderfully soft and aromatic. The Michoacán-style carnitas were moist and tender, rather than crispy. And the shrimp had been diced into cubes before getting a hard sear on the griddle, which imbued them with the texture and subtle smokiness of grilled octopus. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The food, on the other hand, tasted altogether homey. The plush handmade tortillas were wonderfully soft and aromatic. The Michoacán-style carnitas were moist and tender, rather than crispy. And the shrimp had been diced into cubes before getting a hard sear on the griddle, which imbued them with the texture and subtle smokiness of grilled octopus. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Best of all was the specialty of the house: juicy, impeccably tender slow-cooked barbacoa, which you can order with a side of consomé. I suppose you could dip your barbacoa taco in the hot broth if you aren’t afraid of making a mess. We simply sipped it at the end of our meal, Chinese-style. A perfect final bite. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Best of all was the specialty of the house: juicy, impeccably tender slow-cooked barbacoa, which you can order with a side of consomé. I suppose you could dip your barbacoa taco in the hot broth if you aren’t afraid of making a mess. We simply sipped it at the end of our meal, Chinese-style. A perfect final bite. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>At this point in our journey, we were pretty well stuffed. But we couldn’t call it a night without visiting an outpost of El Grullense, easily Redwood City’s most well known and beloved taco chain. So we loosened our pants and made a beeline for the 5th Avenue location of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullense_ee/\">Tacos El Grullense E&E\u003c/a>, which is really just a window attached to a Mobil gas station mini mart. It’s a bare-bones, cash-only operation without any seating to speak of. The best play is to simply lay your spread of tacos out on the hood of your car before digging in.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>At this point in our journey, we were pretty well stuffed. But we couldn’t call it a night without visiting an outpost of El Grullense, easily Redwood City’s most well known and beloved taco chain. So we loosened our pants and made a beeline for the 5th Avenue location of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullense_ee/\">Tacos El Grullense E&E\u003c/a>, which is really just a window attached to a Mobil gas station mini mart. It’s a bare-bones, cash-only operation without any seating to speak of. The best play is to simply lay your spread of tacos out on the hood of your car before digging in.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Might this be the most quintessential Redwood City taco experience? The carne asada had crisp, well-charred edges, and the tripitas (beef intestines) were the tastiest I’ve had in a long time — not over-fried, but with a crispy-chewy, slightly squishy texture that was incredibly addicting. They burst with hot, meaty juices as soon as we bit in. We tried another sope, topped with al pastor, and it was wonderful here too — the pork deeply savory, the shredded lettuce particularly fresh and crisp. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Might this be the most quintessential Redwood City taco experience? The carne asada had crisp, well-charred edges, and the tripitas (beef intestines) were the tastiest I’ve had in a long time — not over-fried, but with a crispy-chewy, slightly squishy texture that was incredibly addicting. They burst with hot, meaty juices as soon as we bit in. We tried another sope, topped with al pastor, and it was wonderful here too — the pork deeply savory, the shredded lettuce particularly fresh and crisp. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Tying everything together was El Grullense’s hallmark item: red salsa with a slight smokiness, a sneaky heat and an incredible depth of flavor. We couldn’t get enough of it.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Tying everything together was El Grullense’s hallmark item: red salsa with a slight smokiness, a sneaky heat and an incredible depth of flavor. We couldn’t get enough of it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>As full as we were, we wound up polishing off every bite, barely bothering to wipe the grease stains off the hood of the car before we drove off into the night. All we knew is that there were still at least another dozen taquerias we still wanted to check out the next time we came through this part of the Peninsula. Hours later, when I woke up in the middle of the night, my fingers still smelled faintly of masa and meat juices.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>As full as we were, we wound up polishing off every bite, barely bothering to wipe the grease stains off the hood of the car before we drove off into the night. All we knew is that there were still at least another dozen taquerias we still wanted to check out the next time we came through this part of the Peninsula. Hours later, when I woke up in the middle of the night, my fingers still smelled faintly of masa and meat juices.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elpaisabylosalegres/\">\u003cem>El Paisa by Los Alegres\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. at 2110 Middlefield Rd. in Redwood City. The truck is usually parked in front of the Outdoor Supply Hardware. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elpaisabylosalegres/\">\u003cem>El Paisa by Los Alegres\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. at 2110 Middlefield Rd. in Redwood City. The truck is usually parked in front of the Outdoor Supply Hardware. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacolosgemelos/\">\u003cem>Tacos Los Gemelos\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Wednesday through Monday 9:30 a.m.–midnight at 1630 El Camino Real.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacolosgemelos/\">\u003cem>Tacos Los Gemelos\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Wednesday through Monday 9:30 a.m.–midnight at 1630 El Camino Real.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullense_ee/\">\u003cem>Tacos El Grullense E&E\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open 9 a.m.–midnight daily at 795 5th Ave. Cash only. Attached to a Mobil gas station mini-mart, the taqueria is one of four \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tacoselgrullenseee.com/new-page-1\">\u003cem>El Grullense E&E locations\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> in Redwood City — and one of at least eight loosely affiliated restaurants on the Peninsula that bear the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullenseno.1\">\u003cem>El Grullense\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>name. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullense_ee/\">\u003cem>Tacos El Grullense E&E\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open 9 a.m.–midnight daily at 795 5th Ave. Cash only. Attached to a Mobil gas station mini-mart, the taqueria is one of four \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tacoselgrullenseee.com/new-page-1\">\u003cem>El Grullense E&E locations\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> in Redwood City — and one of at least eight loosely affiliated restaurants on the Peninsula that bear the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullenseno.1\">\u003cem>El Grullense\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>name. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a triplicate of images of two men running around while devouring tacos.\" class=\"wp-image-13994640\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos-8d236d66-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In Redwood City, each late-night taco spot has its own specialties: lengua and al pastor at El Paisa by Los Alegres, barbacoa on handmade tortillas at Tacos Los Gemelos, and tripitas with red salsa at Tacos El Grullense E&E. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cruising down 101 at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, we were hit with that most Bay Area of cravings. We needed oil-slicked tortillas and crisp-edged carnitas. Carne asada served hot off the plancha. In other words, we were hungry for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/tacos\">tacos\u003c/a> — a whole clutch of them, shoved down our gullets, posthaste. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At this point in the night, we would typically hit up one of our usual after-hours haunts on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13963832/tacos-el-rulas-richmond-late-night-taqueria-midnight-diners\">Richmond’s\u003c/a> 23rd street taco corridor, or in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13954112/orale-taco-truck-san-jose-late-night-pancakes-midnight-diners\">Eastside San José\u003c/a>. But we’d been hearing about a legendary Peninsula taco scene we hadn’t yet properly explored. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so we headed to Redwood City for a good old-fashioned late-night taco crawl.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In 2008, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2008/09/30/redwood-city-center-of-the-taco-universe/\">\u003cem>San Jose Mercury News\u003c/em>\u003c/a> called Redwood City “the center of the taco universe,” citing a density of taquerias — at the time, 49 of them in a city with a population of 74,000 — that seemed higher than just about anywhere else in California, if not the entire United States. Individual shops have come and gone in the 18 years since, but the scene remains incredibly robust. Just last year, no lesser authority than the president of Mexico herself, Claudia Sheinbaum, \u003ca href=\"https://abc7news.com/post/mexico-president-claudia-sheinbaum-says-best-pork-fried-carnitas-are-made-redwood-city-mexican-immigrants/17828906/\">shouted out Redwood City\u003c/a> for having the best Mexican food in the Bay Area, thanks in part to its unusually high influx of immigrants from the city of \u003ca href=\"https://new.thecity.redwoodcity.org/pub/onbase/siredl.ashx?fileid=235425\">Aguililla, Michoacán\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On one three-block stretch of Middlefield Road, we must have spotted a dozen taquerias, four or five taco trucks and a handful of informal roadside tents that had set up trompos to sell fresh-sliced al pastor. And across the city, a decent chunk of the shops stay open until midnight on weekends, if not later. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For our first stop, we pulled into a big Costco and Outdoor Supply Hardware parking lot on Middlefield Road. Parked right in front of the hardware store, \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elpaisabylosalegres/\">El Paisa by Los Alegres\u003c/a> is one of the newer taco trucks that cropped up in Redwood City during the pandemic, specializing in Mexico City–style tacos. At this late hour, the truck still drew a steady stream of customers — mostly groups of middle-aged Latino men who made quick work of their tacos in the tented dining area.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men trace a path as they run from one taco shop to another.\" class=\"wp-image-13994644\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/10/redwoodcitytacos2-9903f989-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Redwood City has one of the Bay Area’s densest concentrations of taco shops, many of them open until midnight or later. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If Redwood City’s taquerias share a collective theme, it’s that they tend toward old-school simplicity — honest street tacos unadorned with anything more than a dollop of salsa and a flurry of chopped onions and cilantro. El Paisa is the only spot we visited that offered any of the flashier dishes trendy on social media these days: decadently overloaded baked potatoes, alambres (a kind of sizzling, cheesy meat skillet) and so forth.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As tempting as those sounded, we had a long night of taco eating ahead, and needed to pace ourselves. So we ordered a sampling of the truck’s workmanlike street tacos, served on a double layer of fragrant corn tortillas. Every one of them was a winner. There was juicy, well-caramelized Mexico City–style al pastor dotted with chunks of tangy-sweet pineapple; rich, steaky chunks of suadero; and cabeza (pig’s head) that was a dynamo of soft, slippery, gelatinous textures. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One of the most memorable bites was the beef lengua, which had been cut into the thickest, widest slabs I’d ever seen on a taco. The overall effect was like biting into a buttery, impossibly soft piece of steak — extra delicious topped with some spicy pickled onions from the truck’s self-serve salsa bar. Meanwhile, the sope, served open-faced with shredded lettuce, crema and choice of meat, was simply extraordinary. We loved the extra-thick masa base, which had a chewy-crisp texture and a beautifully smoky, charred flavor from the grill. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Our next stop was \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacolosgemelos/\">Tacos Los Gemelos\u003c/a>, a lively sit-down taqueria on El Camino Real, less than five minutes away and still doing brisk business at almost 11 p.m. The vibe was an interesting mish-mash of past and present. There was the old-fashioned picture menu board, the kitschy rooster-themed artwork, the quaint blue-and-white gingham pattern laminated on the tabletops. On the other hand, a more recent layer of AI-generated signage had been plastered everywhere, bleating out the same cartoonish font you see at so many other restaurants. (“We are selling FLAN as a dessert!” one of them read.) \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The food, on the other hand, tasted altogether homey. The plush handmade tortillas were wonderfully soft and aromatic. The Michoacán-style carnitas were moist and tender, rather than crispy. And the shrimp had been diced into cubes before getting a hard sear on the griddle, which imbued them with the texture and subtle smokiness of grilled octopus. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Best of all was the specialty of the house: juicy, impeccably tender slow-cooked barbacoa, which you can order with a side of consomé. I suppose you could dip your barbacoa taco in the hot broth if you aren’t afraid of making a mess. We simply sipped it at the end of our meal, Chinese-style. A perfect final bite. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At this point in our journey, we were pretty well stuffed. But we couldn’t call it a night without visiting an outpost of El Grullense, easily Redwood City’s most well known and beloved taco chain. So we loosened our pants and made a beeline for the 5th Avenue location of \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullense_ee/\">Tacos El Grullense E&E\u003c/a>, which is really just a window attached to a Mobil gas station mini mart. It’s a bare-bones, cash-only operation without any seating to speak of. The best play is to simply lay your spread of tacos out on the hood of your car before digging in.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Might this be the most quintessential Redwood City taco experience? The carne asada had crisp, well-charred edges, and the tripitas (beef intestines) were the tastiest I’ve had in a long time — not over-fried, but with a crispy-chewy, slightly squishy texture that was incredibly addicting. They burst with hot, meaty juices as soon as we bit in. We tried another sope, topped with al pastor, and it was wonderful here too — the pork deeply savory, the shredded lettuce particularly fresh and crisp. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Tying everything together was El Grullense’s hallmark item: red salsa with a slight smokiness, a sneaky heat and an incredible depth of flavor. We couldn’t get enough of it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As full as we were, we wound up polishing off every bite, barely bothering to wipe the grease stains off the hood of the car before we drove off into the night. All we knew is that there were still at least another dozen taquerias we still wanted to check out the next time we came through this part of the Peninsula. Hours later, when I woke up in the middle of the night, my fingers still smelled faintly of masa and meat juices.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"/>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/elpaisabylosalegres/\">\u003cem>El Paisa by Los Alegres\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday through Thursday 11 a.m.–10 p.m. at 2110 Middlefield Rd. in Redwood City. The truck is usually parked in front of the Outdoor Supply Hardware. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacolosgemelos/\">\u003cem>Tacos Los Gemelos\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Wednesday through Monday 9:30 a.m.–midnight at 1630 El Camino Real.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullense_ee/\">\u003cem>Tacos El Grullense E&E\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open 9 a.m.–midnight daily at 795 5th Ave. Cash only. Attached to a Mobil gas station mini-mart, the taqueria is one of four \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tacoselgrullenseee.com/new-page-1\">\u003cem>El Grullense E&E locations\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> in Redwood City — and one of at least eight loosely affiliated restaurants on the Peninsula that bear the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tacoselgrullenseno.1\">\u003cem>El Grullense\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>name. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "nobuya-late-night-sushi-boxes-izakaya-pleasant-hill",
"title": "Nobuya Brings Elegant Late-Night Sushi Boxes to the East Bay Suburbs",
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"content": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men seated at a sushi bar devouring large quantities of sashimi served in elegant wooden boxes.\" class=\"wp-image-13994005\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nobuya, a newish izakaya and sushi restaurant in Pleasant Hill, is known for its elegant sushi boxes. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Everything about \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/nobuya.sushi/\">Nobuya\u003c/a> is a bit of a surprise. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Start with the restaurant’s location on a quiet, semi-residential stretch of Pleasant Hill. We hadn’t previously found \u003cem>any\u003c/em> late-night dining in this particular swath of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/contra-costa-county\">Contra Costa County\u003c/a> suburbs, so when we heard about this newish sushi spot and izakaya, we were surprised to learn that it stays open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends. When we pulled up at a little before 10 on a recent Friday night, we were struck by the casual elegance of the dining room — all paper lanterns and light wood partitions, with quaint little nooks to sit in should you want some privacy. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The crowd, at least at this hour, skewed toward older couples and groups of middle-aged businessmen, but the atmosphere — aided by an upbeat \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_pop\">city pop\u003c/a> soundtrack — felt lively and fun.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We made a beeline for the sushi counter, where our server immediately dropped off two bowls of piping hot miso soup. The main reason we’d made the trek out to Pleasant Hill is because Nobuya specializes in the kind of ornate wooden sushi boxes that are trendy now on social media — glistening, jewel-like slabs of sashimi, each one artfully arranged in its own little compartment. Here in the Bay Area, we’ve mostly only seen these boxes at higher-end Japanese restaurants in San Francisco or down on the Peninsula. To be able to snag one this far away from the big city at this hour of the night? We knew we had to try it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, our gregarious sushi chef, Carlos, turned out to be a one-man orchestrator of good vibes. He chatted amiably in Spanish with the middle-aged couple seated next to us, then slid enough free bites across the counter — a raw oyster topped with flying fish roe and citrusy soy, a baked scallop in a pool of lemon cream sauce — that we started to worry we’d been recognized. In the end, he really did just come across as an uncommonly friendly dude, eager to chat about his favorite East Bay sushi joints (\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/utzutzu/\">Utzutzu\u003c/a> in Alameda and \u003ca href=\"https://www.sushi-sho.com/\">Sushi Sho\u003c/a> in El Cerrito — both deep cuts that made it clear that he knew ball).\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of a sushi restaurant lit up at night. The sign above reads, "Nobuya."\" class=\"wp-image-13994008\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The rare late-night restaurant in the Pleasant Hill area, Nobuya is open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Nobuya isn’t an overly precious sushi restaurant. It doesn’t offer traditional omakase service, and you can do well for yourself whether your raw fish indulgence of choice is simple nigiri or saucy, over-the-top Americanized rolls (the “Chuck Norris” seems to be a popular choice). We started with a Snow Cracker appetizer from the “Today’s Special” section of the menu, where the most interesting izakaya-style small plates are listed. This was the perfect little appetizer, proving that the kitchen doesn’t take itself too seriously: one big jalapeño stuffed with snow crab and cream cheese, coated in panko, deep-fried and cut into bite-size segments, like a tiki bar’s take on a jalapeño popper.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The main event was not one but two different, but equally excellent, sushi boxes. First came the Omakase Box, whose nine compartments each contained three generous slices of sashimi: hirame (fluke), sea bream, chutoro, maguro, hamachi, salmon, amaebi (sweet shrimp), uni-topped scallops and, in the center, a mound of roe-topped sushi rice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Every cut was delicious — the clean bite of the hirame, the heavy ocean umami of the sea bream, the delicate sweetness of the shrimp. We were given an unlimited supply of toasted seaweed to make little wraps with, and, since the box included the shrimp, the chef served their deep-fried heads on the side so we could enjoy their pungent crunch. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the end, my favorite item in the box was the one I normally find the most boring: the lean maguro, which came in thick slabs topped with a dab of yuzu kosho pepper paste, and had an impossibly smooth texture and clean, savory flavor.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At $69, the box is a bit of a splurge, but I’ve definitely paid more for smaller portions of lower-quality sushi. The same was true of the kaisen box ($59), which embodied a different form of luxury. For this set, a layer of sushi rice was topped with a whole row of uni. Next to that, a row of ikura, a row of sweet scallops and, finally, a whole row of sliced toro, with little flowers scattered on top to make it pretty. You could stir everything together and eat it \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986360/yaichi-kaisendon-japanese-seafood-bowls-udon-milpitas\">like a rice bowl\u003c/a>, but we opted to pile a bit of this ‘n’ that onto the sheets of nori, rolling the whole thing up and eating it in one bite.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Either of the sushi boxes would be easily shareable, just like the oden (fish cake soup) we ordered as a finishing dish. I loved sipping on the rich, peppery broth between bites of sushi to cleanse my palate.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Add it all up, and Nobuya really ought to be \u003cem>the\u003c/em> late-night hotspot for this corner of the East Bay suburbs. But the restaurant was nearly half empty for the duration of our visit, and more and more so as the hour crept past 10 p.m.. For now, it seems, the vast majority of Nobuya’s clientele are locals from Pleasant Hill and its immediate surroundings (who all tend to be in bed by 9 o’clock, Carlos confided with a chuckle). The place has yet to be discovered by the legion of twenty- and thirtysomething food influencers always on the lookout for a new spot to hype up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As good as the food at Nobuya is, that almost certainly won’t be the case for much longer. In the meantime, I’m going to relish the opportunity to walk in at 10 o’clock, without a reservation or any prior planning, and luxuriate in one of the most satisfying late-night sashimi dinners in the Bay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"/>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/nobuya.sushi/\">Nobuya\u003c/a> is open Monday through Thursday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–10:15 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–11:30 p.m. at 1428 Contra Costa Blvd. in Pleasant Hill.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Start with the restaurant’s location on a quiet, semi-residential stretch of Pleasant Hill. We hadn’t previously found \u003cem>any\u003c/em> late-night dining in this particular swath of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/contra-costa-county\">Contra Costa County\u003c/a> suburbs, so when we heard about this newish sushi spot and izakaya, we were surprised to learn that it stays open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends. When we pulled up at a little before 10 on a recent Friday night, we were struck by the casual elegance of the dining room — all paper lanterns and light wood partitions, with quaint little nooks to sit in should you want some privacy. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Start with the restaurant’s location on a quiet, semi-residential stretch of Pleasant Hill. We hadn’t previously found \u003cem>any\u003c/em> late-night dining in this particular swath of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/contra-costa-county\">Contra Costa County\u003c/a> suburbs, so when we heard about this newish sushi spot and izakaya, we were surprised to learn that it stays open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends. When we pulled up at a little before 10 on a recent Friday night, we were struck by the casual elegance of the dining room — all paper lanterns and light wood partitions, with quaint little nooks to sit in should you want some privacy. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The crowd, at least at this hour, skewed toward older couples and groups of middle-aged businessmen, but the atmosphere — aided by an upbeat \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_pop\">city pop\u003c/a> soundtrack — felt lively and fun.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>The crowd, at least at this hour, skewed toward older couples and groups of middle-aged businessmen, but the atmosphere — aided by an upbeat \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_pop\">city pop\u003c/a> soundtrack — felt lively and fun.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We made a beeline for the sushi counter, where our server immediately dropped off two bowls of piping hot miso soup. The main reason we’d made the trek out to Pleasant Hill is because Nobuya specializes in the kind of ornate wooden sushi boxes that are trendy now on social media — glistening, jewel-like slabs of sashimi, each one artfully arranged in its own little compartment. Here in the Bay Area, we’ve mostly only seen these boxes at higher-end Japanese restaurants in San Francisco or down on the Peninsula. To be able to snag one this far away from the big city at this hour of the night? We knew we had to try it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We made a beeline for the sushi counter, where our server immediately dropped off two bowls of piping hot miso soup. The main reason we’d made the trek out to Pleasant Hill is because Nobuya specializes in the kind of ornate wooden sushi boxes that are trendy now on social media — glistening, jewel-like slabs of sashimi, each one artfully arranged in its own little compartment. Here in the Bay Area, we’ve mostly only seen these boxes at higher-end Japanese restaurants in San Francisco or down on the Peninsula. To be able to snag one this far away from the big city at this hour of the night? We knew we had to try it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, our gregarious sushi chef, Carlos, turned out to be a one-man orchestrator of good vibes. He chatted amiably in Spanish with the middle-aged couple seated next to us, then slid enough free bites across the counter — a raw oyster topped with flying fish roe and citrusy soy, a baked scallop in a pool of lemon cream sauce — that we started to worry we’d been recognized. In the end, he really did just come across as an uncommonly friendly dude, eager to chat about his favorite East Bay sushi joints (\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/utzutzu/\">Utzutzu\u003c/a> in Alameda and \u003ca href=\"https://www.sushi-sho.com/\">Sushi Sho\u003c/a> in El Cerrito — both deep cuts that made it clear that he knew ball).\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, our gregarious sushi chef, Carlos, turned out to be a one-man orchestrator of good vibes. He chatted amiably in Spanish with the middle-aged couple seated next to us, then slid enough free bites across the counter — a raw oyster topped with flying fish roe and citrusy soy, a baked scallop in a pool of lemon cream sauce — that we started to worry we’d been recognized. In the end, he really did just come across as an uncommonly friendly dude, eager to chat about his favorite East Bay sushi joints (\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/utzutzu/\">Utzutzu\u003c/a> in Alameda and \u003ca href=\"https://www.sushi-sho.com/\">Sushi Sho\u003c/a> in El Cerrito — both deep cuts that made it clear that he knew ball).\u003c/p>\n"
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"alt": "Illustration: Exterior of a sushi restaurant lit up at night. The sign above reads, \"Nobuya.\"",
"srcset": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-600x600.jpg 600w",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of a sushi restaurant lit up at night. The sign above reads, "Nobuya."\" class=\"wp-image-13994008\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The rare late-night restaurant in the Pleasant Hill area, Nobuya is open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of a sushi restaurant lit up at night. The sign above reads, "Nobuya."\" class=\"wp-image-13994008\"/>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The rare late-night restaurant in the Pleasant Hill area, Nobuya is open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Nobuya isn’t an overly precious sushi restaurant. It doesn’t offer traditional omakase service, and you can do well for yourself whether your raw fish indulgence of choice is simple nigiri or saucy, over-the-top Americanized rolls (the “Chuck Norris” seems to be a popular choice). We started with a Snow Cracker appetizer from the “Today’s Special” section of the menu, where the most interesting izakaya-style small plates are listed. This was the perfect little appetizer, proving that the kitchen doesn’t take itself too seriously: one big jalapeño stuffed with snow crab and cream cheese, coated in panko, deep-fried and cut into bite-size segments, like a tiki bar’s take on a jalapeño popper.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Nobuya isn’t an overly precious sushi restaurant. It doesn’t offer traditional omakase service, and you can do well for yourself whether your raw fish indulgence of choice is simple nigiri or saucy, over-the-top Americanized rolls (the “Chuck Norris” seems to be a popular choice). We started with a Snow Cracker appetizer from the “Today’s Special” section of the menu, where the most interesting izakaya-style small plates are listed. This was the perfect little appetizer, proving that the kitchen doesn’t take itself too seriously: one big jalapeño stuffed with snow crab and cream cheese, coated in panko, deep-fried and cut into bite-size segments, like a tiki bar’s take on a jalapeño popper.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The main event was not one but two different, but equally excellent, sushi boxes. First came the Omakase Box, whose nine compartments each contained three generous slices of sashimi: hirame (fluke), sea bream, chutoro, maguro, hamachi, salmon, amaebi (sweet shrimp), uni-topped scallops and, in the center, a mound of roe-topped sushi rice. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>The main event was not one but two different, but equally excellent, sushi boxes. First came the Omakase Box, whose nine compartments each contained three generous slices of sashimi: hirame (fluke), sea bream, chutoro, maguro, hamachi, salmon, amaebi (sweet shrimp), uni-topped scallops and, in the center, a mound of roe-topped sushi rice. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Every cut was delicious — the clean bite of the hirame, the heavy ocean umami of the sea bream, the delicate sweetness of the shrimp. We were given an unlimited supply of toasted seaweed to make little wraps with, and, since the box included the shrimp, the chef served their deep-fried heads on the side so we could enjoy their pungent crunch. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Every cut was delicious — the clean bite of the hirame, the heavy ocean umami of the sea bream, the delicate sweetness of the shrimp. We were given an unlimited supply of toasted seaweed to make little wraps with, and, since the box included the shrimp, the chef served their deep-fried heads on the side so we could enjoy their pungent crunch. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In the end, my favorite item in the box was the one I normally find the most boring: the lean maguro, which came in thick slabs topped with a dab of yuzu kosho pepper paste, and had an impossibly smooth texture and clean, savory flavor.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In the end, my favorite item in the box was the one I normally find the most boring: the lean maguro, which came in thick slabs topped with a dab of yuzu kosho pepper paste, and had an impossibly smooth texture and clean, savory flavor.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>At $69, the box is a bit of a splurge, but I’ve definitely paid more for smaller portions of lower-quality sushi. The same was true of the kaisen box ($59), which embodied a different form of luxury. For this set, a layer of sushi rice was topped with a whole row of uni. Next to that, a row of ikura, a row of sweet scallops and, finally, a whole row of sliced toro, with little flowers scattered on top to make it pretty. You could stir everything together and eat it \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986360/yaichi-kaisendon-japanese-seafood-bowls-udon-milpitas\">like a rice bowl\u003c/a>, but we opted to pile a bit of this ‘n’ that onto the sheets of nori, rolling the whole thing up and eating it in one bite.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>At $69, the box is a bit of a splurge, but I’ve definitely paid more for smaller portions of lower-quality sushi. The same was true of the kaisen box ($59), which embodied a different form of luxury. For this set, a layer of sushi rice was topped with a whole row of uni. Next to that, a row of ikura, a row of sweet scallops and, finally, a whole row of sliced toro, with little flowers scattered on top to make it pretty. You could stir everything together and eat it \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986360/yaichi-kaisendon-japanese-seafood-bowls-udon-milpitas\">like a rice bowl\u003c/a>, but we opted to pile a bit of this ‘n’ that onto the sheets of nori, rolling the whole thing up and eating it in one bite.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Either of the sushi boxes would be easily shareable, just like the oden (fish cake soup) we ordered as a finishing dish. I loved sipping on the rich, peppery broth between bites of sushi to cleanse my palate.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Either of the sushi boxes would be easily shareable, just like the oden (fish cake soup) we ordered as a finishing dish. I loved sipping on the rich, peppery broth between bites of sushi to cleanse my palate.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Add it all up, and Nobuya really ought to be \u003cem>the\u003c/em> late-night hotspot for this corner of the East Bay suburbs. But the restaurant was nearly half empty for the duration of our visit, and more and more so as the hour crept past 10 p.m.. For now, it seems, the vast majority of Nobuya’s clientele are locals from Pleasant Hill and its immediate surroundings (who all tend to be in bed by 9 o’clock, Carlos confided with a chuckle). The place has yet to be discovered by the legion of twenty- and thirtysomething food influencers always on the lookout for a new spot to hype up. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Add it all up, and Nobuya really ought to be \u003cem>the\u003c/em> late-night hotspot for this corner of the East Bay suburbs. But the restaurant was nearly half empty for the duration of our visit, and more and more so as the hour crept past 10 p.m.. For now, it seems, the vast majority of Nobuya’s clientele are locals from Pleasant Hill and its immediate surroundings (who all tend to be in bed by 9 o’clock, Carlos confided with a chuckle). The place has yet to be discovered by the legion of twenty- and thirtysomething food influencers always on the lookout for a new spot to hype up. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>As good as the food at Nobuya is, that almost certainly won’t be the case for much longer. In the meantime, I’m going to relish the opportunity to walk in at 10 o’clock, without a reservation or any prior planning, and luxuriate in one of the most satisfying late-night sashimi dinners in the Bay. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>As good as the food at Nobuya is, that almost certainly won’t be the case for much longer. In the meantime, I’m going to relish the opportunity to walk in at 10 o’clock, without a reservation or any prior planning, and luxuriate in one of the most satisfying late-night sashimi dinners in the Bay. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/nobuya.sushi/\">Nobuya\u003c/a> is open Monday through Thursday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–10:15 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–11:30 p.m. at 1428 Contra Costa Blvd. in Pleasant Hill.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/nobuya.sushi/\">Nobuya\u003c/a> is open Monday through Thursday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–10:15 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–11:30 p.m. at 1428 Contra Costa Blvd. in Pleasant Hill.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "Pleasant Hill finally has a destination for excellent sushi until 11:30 p.m. on weekends. ",
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"title": "Nobuya Brings Elegant Late-Night Sushi Boxes to the East Bay Suburbs | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men seated at a sushi bar devouring large quantities of sashimi served in elegant wooden boxes.\" class=\"wp-image-13994005\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nobuya, a newish izakaya and sushi restaurant in Pleasant Hill, is known for its elegant sushi boxes. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Everything about \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/nobuya.sushi/\">Nobuya\u003c/a> is a bit of a surprise. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Start with the restaurant’s location on a quiet, semi-residential stretch of Pleasant Hill. We hadn’t previously found \u003cem>any\u003c/em> late-night dining in this particular swath of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/contra-costa-county\">Contra Costa County\u003c/a> suburbs, so when we heard about this newish sushi spot and izakaya, we were surprised to learn that it stays open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends. When we pulled up at a little before 10 on a recent Friday night, we were struck by the casual elegance of the dining room — all paper lanterns and light wood partitions, with quaint little nooks to sit in should you want some privacy. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The crowd, at least at this hour, skewed toward older couples and groups of middle-aged businessmen, but the atmosphere — aided by an upbeat \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_pop\">city pop\u003c/a> soundtrack — felt lively and fun.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We made a beeline for the sushi counter, where our server immediately dropped off two bowls of piping hot miso soup. The main reason we’d made the trek out to Pleasant Hill is because Nobuya specializes in the kind of ornate wooden sushi boxes that are trendy now on social media — glistening, jewel-like slabs of sashimi, each one artfully arranged in its own little compartment. Here in the Bay Area, we’ve mostly only seen these boxes at higher-end Japanese restaurants in San Francisco or down on the Peninsula. To be able to snag one this far away from the big city at this hour of the night? We knew we had to try it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, our gregarious sushi chef, Carlos, turned out to be a one-man orchestrator of good vibes. He chatted amiably in Spanish with the middle-aged couple seated next to us, then slid enough free bites across the counter — a raw oyster topped with flying fish roe and citrusy soy, a baked scallop in a pool of lemon cream sauce — that we started to worry we’d been recognized. In the end, he really did just come across as an uncommonly friendly dude, eager to chat about his favorite East Bay sushi joints (\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/utzutzu/\">Utzutzu\u003c/a> in Alameda and \u003ca href=\"https://www.sushi-sho.com/\">Sushi Sho\u003c/a> in El Cerrito — both deep cuts that made it clear that he knew ball).\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of a sushi restaurant lit up at night. The sign above reads, "Nobuya."\" class=\"wp-image-13994008\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/nobuya-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The rare late-night restaurant in the Pleasant Hill area, Nobuya is open until 11:30 p.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Nobuya isn’t an overly precious sushi restaurant. It doesn’t offer traditional omakase service, and you can do well for yourself whether your raw fish indulgence of choice is simple nigiri or saucy, over-the-top Americanized rolls (the “Chuck Norris” seems to be a popular choice). We started with a Snow Cracker appetizer from the “Today’s Special” section of the menu, where the most interesting izakaya-style small plates are listed. This was the perfect little appetizer, proving that the kitchen doesn’t take itself too seriously: one big jalapeño stuffed with snow crab and cream cheese, coated in panko, deep-fried and cut into bite-size segments, like a tiki bar’s take on a jalapeño popper.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The main event was not one but two different, but equally excellent, sushi boxes. First came the Omakase Box, whose nine compartments each contained three generous slices of sashimi: hirame (fluke), sea bream, chutoro, maguro, hamachi, salmon, amaebi (sweet shrimp), uni-topped scallops and, in the center, a mound of roe-topped sushi rice. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Every cut was delicious — the clean bite of the hirame, the heavy ocean umami of the sea bream, the delicate sweetness of the shrimp. We were given an unlimited supply of toasted seaweed to make little wraps with, and, since the box included the shrimp, the chef served their deep-fried heads on the side so we could enjoy their pungent crunch. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the end, my favorite item in the box was the one I normally find the most boring: the lean maguro, which came in thick slabs topped with a dab of yuzu kosho pepper paste, and had an impossibly smooth texture and clean, savory flavor.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At $69, the box is a bit of a splurge, but I’ve definitely paid more for smaller portions of lower-quality sushi. The same was true of the kaisen box ($59), which embodied a different form of luxury. For this set, a layer of sushi rice was topped with a whole row of uni. Next to that, a row of ikura, a row of sweet scallops and, finally, a whole row of sliced toro, with little flowers scattered on top to make it pretty. You could stir everything together and eat it \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986360/yaichi-kaisendon-japanese-seafood-bowls-udon-milpitas\">like a rice bowl\u003c/a>, but we opted to pile a bit of this ‘n’ that onto the sheets of nori, rolling the whole thing up and eating it in one bite.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Either of the sushi boxes would be easily shareable, just like the oden (fish cake soup) we ordered as a finishing dish. I loved sipping on the rich, peppery broth between bites of sushi to cleanse my palate.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Add it all up, and Nobuya really ought to be \u003cem>the\u003c/em> late-night hotspot for this corner of the East Bay suburbs. But the restaurant was nearly half empty for the duration of our visit, and more and more so as the hour crept past 10 p.m.. For now, it seems, the vast majority of Nobuya’s clientele are locals from Pleasant Hill and its immediate surroundings (who all tend to be in bed by 9 o’clock, Carlos confided with a chuckle). The place has yet to be discovered by the legion of twenty- and thirtysomething food influencers always on the lookout for a new spot to hype up. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As good as the food at Nobuya is, that almost certainly won’t be the case for much longer. In the meantime, I’m going to relish the opportunity to walk in at 10 o’clock, without a reservation or any prior planning, and luxuriate in one of the most satisfying late-night sashimi dinners in the Bay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"/>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/nobuya.sushi/\">Nobuya\u003c/a> is open Monday through Thursday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–10:15 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m. and 5–11:30 p.m. at 1428 Contra Costa Blvd. in Pleasant Hill.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "best-pho-san-jose-torched-kobe-wagyu-duoi-bo-oxtails",
"title": "One of San José’s Best Phở Restaurants Slings Flame-Torched Wagyu Past Midnight",
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"headTitle": "One of San José’s Best Phở Restaurants Slings Flame-Torched Wagyu Past Midnight | KQED",
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"content": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring bowls of pho with a ferocity that verges on being frightening.\" class=\"wp-image-13993627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">While Phở Đuôi Bò is best known for its blowtorched wagyu beef, the East San José restaurant’s phở itself is worth seeking out in its own right. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When we pulled into the strip mall parking lot in Eastside \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a> at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the whole plaza had mostly shut down for the night: the beauty salon, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986806/dzui-favorite-durian-dessert-shop-san-jose-banh-pia\">durian dessert shop\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13905293/vietnamese-tofu-capital-san-jose\">vegan tofu deli\u003c/a>. The one restaurant still open, a neon-lit beacon in the night, was Phở Đuôi Bò, where about a dozen would-be diners mingled on the curb outside, waiting for a table.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Their goal? To snag one of the city’s most talked-about bowls of phở — and, especially, for its blowtorched wagyu beef, served on top.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Both of us had eaten at Đuôi Bò before and liked it enough to return on multiple occasions, families in tow. But the restaurant hit our radar again this summer when it put up a neon “LATE NIGHT EATS” sign and extended its hours past midnight — a rarity in a city whose excellent phở shops mostly close by 8 or 9 p.m. Đuôi Bò, on the other hand, is now open from 9 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. every day of the week: breakfast, lunch, dinner \u003cem>and \u003c/em>second dinner. The shop’s hours are so long, we got dizzy just imagining the size of their stock pot.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The crowd is largely Vietnamese (with other assorted Asians), but less overwhelmingly so than at many of San José’s other top phở spots. There were at least two or three tables’ worth of diverse, non-Asian twentysomethings who’d waited in line like everyone else — evidence, perhaps, of the restaurant’s recent popularity among the South Bay’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phoduoibo/reels/\">food influencer class\u003c/a>. A lot of times you can tell how good an Asian restaurant is by its cross-generational appeal. Even at 9 p.m., there seemed to be as many 70-year-old Vietnamese aunties and uncles lining up for a hot bowl of phở as there were big groups of college kids. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When Phở Đuôi Bò first opened in 2024, the restaurant captured the attention of local phở lovers by offering flame-blasted Kobe beef as a topping option, sizzling the well-marbled slices of meat with a mini blowtorch tableside: the very definition of a gimmicky, Insta-viral offering. As it turns out, the torched beef (not really “\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef\">Kobe\u003c/a>,” as it’s listed on the menu, but American wagyu from Snake River Farms) is delicious (more on that in a second). \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But beyond the flashy pyrotechnics, the core of the restaurant is a lot more rustic and homey. During our visit, the soundtrack was a mix of smooth jazz and old Vietnamese love ballads. In this age of tacky AI-generated wall art, the handpainted murals that line Đuôi Bò’s dining room depict Vietnamese countryside scenes — a bull rearing up in a grassy plain, a resplendently garnished bowl of phở. Nothing about the place reads as overtly “cool” or trendy. And nothing tastes homier than the phở broth itself. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2.jpg\" alt=\"Storefront of a pho restaurant lit up at night. Illustration: The yellow lettering of the sign overhead reads "Pho Duoi Bo."\" class=\"wp-image-13993629\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The restaurant recently extended its hours, which means its phở is now available until 12;30 a.m. daily. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The name “đuôi bò” means oxtail, so of course we decided to order the deluxe oxtail phở, which comes with all the meats you’d get in a bowl of đặc biệt (“special”) phở, plus a big, meaty tailbone that we happily gnawed clean. Here’s our pro tip, though: The reason the restaurant has that name is because it uses dozens of oxtails to make the broth itself, through hours upon hours of slow simmering. The end result is that those tails wind up rather chewy, and all of the flavor has gone into the broth, which is some of the richest and most flavorful we’ve had in the Bay. It’s loaded with collagen and big, glistening droplets of fat, but also clean and light on the palate. And that’s the same broth you get no matter which phở you order. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For our second bowl, then, we stuck with our usual favorites: raw steak (served on the side so we could poach it in the hot soup at the last minute), the soft tendons, the fatty brisket and bouncy meatballs. We opted for the wider, springier fresh noodles, and doctored up a little dipping sauce for our meats: some fish sauce and Sriracha, a clutch of vinegared onions (available as a $1 side), a squeeze of lime. Đuôi Bò also offers Chinese fried crullers as a side dish. Fresh out of the deep fryer, these make an excellent addition to a bowl of phở; the contrast between their crunchiness and the bit of sogginess they pick up after they’ve bobbed around in the soup for a minute is just sublime.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>All of this adds up to something approaching our Platonic ideal for phở, easily ranking as one of our top two or three favorite bowls in the Bay. The fact that we could have it at midnight on a random Tuesday night almost seems too good to be true. And all that before we’ve even really talked about the restaurant’s claim to fame — that flame-torched wagyu. Which is definitely worth getting as a side order to share. (We found it too heavy for one person to finish on their own.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re a fan of dramatics, as we are, you can ask the staff to torch the meat at the table, but in our experience, these days they usually decline that request and instead wield the flameflower at the back of the dining room, right before bringing the meat to your table. What we love is how the torching gives the fatty meat these wonderfully crisp edges and infuses it with a deep smoky flavor, which adds a new dimension to the phở-slurping experience. You can dump the plate of torched wagyu directly into your soup, but we liked eating it on its own, between sips of broth, dunking the meat in our makeshift vinegar dip to cut into the richness.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The rest of Đuôi Bò’s menu is incredibly spare and basic — just some spring rolls and crispy chicken wings as appetizers. In a sign that they understand their audience, or maybe just the Instagram algorithm, they’ve also started blow-torching marrow bones, which were sold out during our visit. We couldn’t figure out how exactly those were meant to complement the phở — but we were here already, why wouldn’t we give it a try? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By the time we walked out of the restaurant, full beyond the point of comfort, it was close to 11 p.m., and the line of customers waiting outside showed no sign of diminishing. The crowd had started to skew a little bit younger and more fashionably dressed. But as we watched them staring longingly at the menu posted in the window, there was no mistake about it: They were here to \u003cem>eat\u003c/em>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phoduoibo/\">\u003cem>Phở Đuôi Bò\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open 9 a.m.–12:30 a.m. daily at 2465 Alvin Ave. in San José.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring bowls of pho with a ferocity that verges on being frightening.\" class=\"wp-image-13993627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">While Phở Đuôi Bò is best known for its blowtorched wagyu beef, the East San José restaurant’s phở itself is worth seeking out in its own right. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring bowls of pho with a ferocity that verges on being frightening.\" class=\"wp-image-13993627\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">While Phở Đuôi Bò is best known for its blowtorched wagyu beef, the East San José restaurant’s phở itself is worth seeking out in its own right. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>When we pulled into the strip mall parking lot in Eastside \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a> at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the whole plaza had mostly shut down for the night: the beauty salon, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986806/dzui-favorite-durian-dessert-shop-san-jose-banh-pia\">durian dessert shop\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13905293/vietnamese-tofu-capital-san-jose\">vegan tofu deli\u003c/a>. The one restaurant still open, a neon-lit beacon in the night, was Phở Đuôi Bò, where about a dozen would-be diners mingled on the curb outside, waiting for a table.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>When we pulled into the strip mall parking lot in Eastside \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a> at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the whole plaza had mostly shut down for the night: the beauty salon, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986806/dzui-favorite-durian-dessert-shop-san-jose-banh-pia\">durian dessert shop\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13905293/vietnamese-tofu-capital-san-jose\">vegan tofu deli\u003c/a>. The one restaurant still open, a neon-lit beacon in the night, was Phở Đuôi Bò, where about a dozen would-be diners mingled on the curb outside, waiting for a table.\u003c/p>\n"
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"\n\u003cp>Their goal? To snag one of the city’s most talked-about bowls of phở — and, especially, for its blowtorched wagyu beef, served on top.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Both of us had eaten at Đuôi Bò before and liked it enough to return on multiple occasions, families in tow. But the restaurant hit our radar again this summer when it put up a neon “LATE NIGHT EATS” sign and extended its hours past midnight — a rarity in a city whose excellent phở shops mostly close by 8 or 9 p.m. Đuôi Bò, on the other hand, is now open from 9 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. every day of the week: breakfast, lunch, dinner \u003cem>and \u003c/em>second dinner. The shop’s hours are so long, we got dizzy just imagining the size of their stock pot.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Both of us had eaten at Đuôi Bò before and liked it enough to return on multiple occasions, families in tow. But the restaurant hit our radar again this summer when it put up a neon “LATE NIGHT EATS” sign and extended its hours past midnight — a rarity in a city whose excellent phở shops mostly close by 8 or 9 p.m. Đuôi Bò, on the other hand, is now open from 9 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. every day of the week: breakfast, lunch, dinner \u003cem>and \u003c/em>second dinner. The shop’s hours are so long, we got dizzy just imagining the size of their stock pot.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The crowd is largely Vietnamese (with other assorted Asians), but less overwhelmingly so than at many of San José’s other top phở spots. There were at least two or three tables’ worth of diverse, non-Asian twentysomethings who’d waited in line like everyone else — evidence, perhaps, of the restaurant’s recent popularity among the South Bay’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phoduoibo/reels/\">food influencer class\u003c/a>. A lot of times you can tell how good an Asian restaurant is by its cross-generational appeal. Even at 9 p.m., there seemed to be as many 70-year-old Vietnamese aunties and uncles lining up for a hot bowl of phở as there were big groups of college kids. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The crowd is largely Vietnamese (with other assorted Asians), but less overwhelmingly so than at many of San José’s other top phở spots. There were at least two or three tables’ worth of diverse, non-Asian twentysomethings who’d waited in line like everyone else — evidence, perhaps, of the restaurant’s recent popularity among the South Bay’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phoduoibo/reels/\">food influencer class\u003c/a>. A lot of times you can tell how good an Asian restaurant is by its cross-generational appeal. Even at 9 p.m., there seemed to be as many 70-year-old Vietnamese aunties and uncles lining up for a hot bowl of phở as there were big groups of college kids. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>When Phở Đuôi Bò first opened in 2024, the restaurant captured the attention of local phở lovers by offering flame-blasted Kobe beef as a topping option, sizzling the well-marbled slices of meat with a mini blowtorch tableside: the very definition of a gimmicky, Insta-viral offering. As it turns out, the torched beef (not really “\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef\">Kobe\u003c/a>,” as it’s listed on the menu, but American wagyu from Snake River Farms) is delicious (more on that in a second). \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>When Phở Đuôi Bò first opened in 2024, the restaurant captured the attention of local phở lovers by offering flame-blasted Kobe beef as a topping option, sizzling the well-marbled slices of meat with a mini blowtorch tableside: the very definition of a gimmicky, Insta-viral offering. As it turns out, the torched beef (not really “\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef\">Kobe\u003c/a>,” as it’s listed on the menu, but American wagyu from Snake River Farms) is delicious (more on that in a second). \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But beyond the flashy pyrotechnics, the core of the restaurant is a lot more rustic and homey. During our visit, the soundtrack was a mix of smooth jazz and old Vietnamese love ballads. In this age of tacky AI-generated wall art, the handpainted murals that line Đuôi Bò’s dining room depict Vietnamese countryside scenes — a bull rearing up in a grassy plain, a resplendently garnished bowl of phở. Nothing about the place reads as overtly “cool” or trendy. And nothing tastes homier than the phở broth itself. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But beyond the flashy pyrotechnics, the core of the restaurant is a lot more rustic and homey. During our visit, the soundtrack was a mix of smooth jazz and old Vietnamese love ballads. In this age of tacky AI-generated wall art, the handpainted murals that line Đuôi Bò’s dining room depict Vietnamese countryside scenes — a bull rearing up in a grassy plain, a resplendently garnished bowl of phở. Nothing about the place reads as overtly “cool” or trendy. And nothing tastes homier than the phở broth itself. \u003c/p>\n"
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"alt": "Storefront of a pho restaurant lit up at night. Illustration: The yellow lettering of the sign overhead reads \"Pho Duoi Bo.\"",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2.jpg\" alt=\"Storefront of a pho restaurant lit up at night. Illustration: The yellow lettering of the sign overhead reads "Pho Duoi Bo."\" class=\"wp-image-13993629\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The restaurant recently extended its hours, which means its phở is now available until 12;30 a.m. daily.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2.jpg\" alt=\"Storefront of a pho restaurant lit up at night. Illustration: The yellow lettering of the sign overhead reads "Pho Duoi Bo."\" class=\"wp-image-13993629\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The restaurant recently extended its hours, which means its phở is now available until 12;30 a.m. daily.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The name “đuôi bò” means oxtail, so of course we decided to order the deluxe oxtail phở, which comes with all the meats you’d get in a bowl of đặc biệt (“special”) phở, plus a big, meaty tailbone that we happily gnawed clean. Here’s our pro tip, though: The reason the restaurant has that name is because it uses dozens of oxtails to make the broth itself, through hours upon hours of slow simmering. The end result is that those tails wind up rather chewy, and all of the flavor has gone into the broth, which is some of the richest and most flavorful we’ve had in the Bay. It’s loaded with collagen and big, glistening droplets of fat, but also clean and light on the palate. And that’s the same broth you get no matter which phở you order. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The name “đuôi bò” means oxtail, so of course we decided to order the deluxe oxtail phở, which comes with all the meats you’d get in a bowl of đặc biệt (“special”) phở, plus a big, meaty tailbone that we happily gnawed clean. Here’s our pro tip, though: The reason the restaurant has that name is because it uses dozens of oxtails to make the broth itself, through hours upon hours of slow simmering. The end result is that those tails wind up rather chewy, and all of the flavor has gone into the broth, which is some of the richest and most flavorful we’ve had in the Bay. It’s loaded with collagen and big, glistening droplets of fat, but also clean and light on the palate. And that’s the same broth you get no matter which phở you order. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>For our second bowl, then, we stuck with our usual favorites: raw steak (served on the side so we could poach it in the hot soup at the last minute), the soft tendons, the fatty brisket and bouncy meatballs. We opted for the wider, springier fresh noodles, and doctored up a little dipping sauce for our meats: some fish sauce and Sriracha, a clutch of vinegared onions (available as a $1 side), a squeeze of lime. Đuôi Bò also offers Chinese fried crullers as a side dish. Fresh out of the deep fryer, these make an excellent addition to a bowl of phở; the contrast between their crunchiness and the bit of sogginess they pick up after they’ve bobbed around in the soup for a minute is just sublime.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>For our second bowl, then, we stuck with our usual favorites: raw steak (served on the side so we could poach it in the hot soup at the last minute), the soft tendons, the fatty brisket and bouncy meatballs. We opted for the wider, springier fresh noodles, and doctored up a little dipping sauce for our meats: some fish sauce and Sriracha, a clutch of vinegared onions (available as a $1 side), a squeeze of lime. Đuôi Bò also offers Chinese fried crullers as a side dish. Fresh out of the deep fryer, these make an excellent addition to a bowl of phở; the contrast between their crunchiness and the bit of sogginess they pick up after they’ve bobbed around in the soup for a minute is just sublime.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>All of this adds up to something approaching our Platonic ideal for phở, easily ranking as one of our top two or three favorite bowls in the Bay. The fact that we could have it at midnight on a random Tuesday night almost seems too good to be true. And all that before we’ve even really talked about the restaurant’s claim to fame — that flame-torched wagyu. Which is definitely worth getting as a side order to share. (We found it too heavy for one person to finish on their own.)\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>All of this adds up to something approaching our Platonic ideal for phở, easily ranking as one of our top two or three favorite bowls in the Bay. The fact that we could have it at midnight on a random Tuesday night almost seems too good to be true. And all that before we’ve even really talked about the restaurant’s claim to fame — that flame-torched wagyu. Which is definitely worth getting as a side order to share. (We found it too heavy for one person to finish on their own.)\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you’re a fan of dramatics, as we are, you can ask the staff to torch the meat at the table, but in our experience, these days they usually decline that request and instead wield the flameflower at the back of the dining room, right before bringing the meat to your table. What we love is how the torching gives the fatty meat these wonderfully crisp edges and infuses it with a deep smoky flavor, which adds a new dimension to the phở-slurping experience. You can dump the plate of torched wagyu directly into your soup, but we liked eating it on its own, between sips of broth, dunking the meat in our makeshift vinegar dip to cut into the richness.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you’re a fan of dramatics, as we are, you can ask the staff to torch the meat at the table, but in our experience, these days they usually decline that request and instead wield the flameflower at the back of the dining room, right before bringing the meat to your table. What we love is how the torching gives the fatty meat these wonderfully crisp edges and infuses it with a deep smoky flavor, which adds a new dimension to the phở-slurping experience. You can dump the plate of torched wagyu directly into your soup, but we liked eating it on its own, between sips of broth, dunking the meat in our makeshift vinegar dip to cut into the richness.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The rest of Đuôi Bò’s menu is incredibly spare and basic — just some spring rolls and crispy chicken wings as appetizers. In a sign that they understand their audience, or maybe just the Instagram algorithm, they’ve also started blow-torching marrow bones, which were sold out during our visit. We couldn’t figure out how exactly those were meant to complement the phở — but we were here already, why wouldn’t we give it a try? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The rest of Đuôi Bò’s menu is incredibly spare and basic — just some spring rolls and crispy chicken wings as appetizers. In a sign that they understand their audience, or maybe just the Instagram algorithm, they’ve also started blow-torching marrow bones, which were sold out during our visit. We couldn’t figure out how exactly those were meant to complement the phở — but we were here already, why wouldn’t we give it a try? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>By the time we walked out of the restaurant, full beyond the point of comfort, it was close to 11 p.m., and the line of customers waiting outside showed no sign of diminishing. The crowd had started to skew a little bit younger and more fashionably dressed. But as we watched them staring longingly at the menu posted in the window, there was no mistake about it: They were here to \u003cem>eat\u003c/em>. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>By the time we walked out of the restaurant, full beyond the point of comfort, it was close to 11 p.m., and the line of customers waiting outside showed no sign of diminishing. The crowd had started to skew a little bit younger and more fashionably dressed. But as we watched them staring longingly at the menu posted in the window, there was no mistake about it: They were here to \u003cem>eat\u003c/em>. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phoduoibo/\">\u003cem>Phở Đuôi Bò\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open 9 a.m.–12:30 a.m. daily at 2465 Alvin Ave. in San José.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phoduoibo/\">\u003cem>Phở Đuôi Bò\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open 9 a.m.–12:30 a.m. daily at 2465 Alvin Ave. in San José.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "Come to Phở Đuôi Bò for the flashy pyrotechnics. Stay for the soul-nourishing broth.",
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"title": "One of San José’s Best Pho Restaurants Slings Flame-Torched Wagyu Past Midnight | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring bowls of pho with a ferocity that verges on being frightening.\" class=\"wp-image-13993627\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">While Phở Đuôi Bò is best known for its blowtorched wagyu beef, the East San José restaurant’s phở itself is worth seeking out in its own right. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When we pulled into the strip mall parking lot in Eastside \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/san-jose\">San José\u003c/a> at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, the whole plaza had mostly shut down for the night: the beauty salon, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13986806/dzui-favorite-durian-dessert-shop-san-jose-banh-pia\">durian dessert shop\u003c/a>, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13905293/vietnamese-tofu-capital-san-jose\">vegan tofu deli\u003c/a>. The one restaurant still open, a neon-lit beacon in the night, was Phở Đuôi Bò, where about a dozen would-be diners mingled on the curb outside, waiting for a table.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Their goal? To snag one of the city’s most talked-about bowls of phở — and, especially, for its blowtorched wagyu beef, served on top.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Both of us had eaten at Đuôi Bò before and liked it enough to return on multiple occasions, families in tow. But the restaurant hit our radar again this summer when it put up a neon “LATE NIGHT EATS” sign and extended its hours past midnight — a rarity in a city whose excellent phở shops mostly close by 8 or 9 p.m. Đuôi Bò, on the other hand, is now open from 9 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. every day of the week: breakfast, lunch, dinner \u003cem>and \u003c/em>second dinner. The shop’s hours are so long, we got dizzy just imagining the size of their stock pot.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The crowd is largely Vietnamese (with other assorted Asians), but less overwhelmingly so than at many of San José’s other top phở spots. There were at least two or three tables’ worth of diverse, non-Asian twentysomethings who’d waited in line like everyone else — evidence, perhaps, of the restaurant’s recent popularity among the South Bay’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phoduoibo/reels/\">food influencer class\u003c/a>. A lot of times you can tell how good an Asian restaurant is by its cross-generational appeal. Even at 9 p.m., there seemed to be as many 70-year-old Vietnamese aunties and uncles lining up for a hot bowl of phở as there were big groups of college kids. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When Phở Đuôi Bò first opened in 2024, the restaurant captured the attention of local phở lovers by offering flame-blasted Kobe beef as a topping option, sizzling the well-marbled slices of meat with a mini blowtorch tableside: the very definition of a gimmicky, Insta-viral offering. As it turns out, the torched beef (not really “\u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_beef\">Kobe\u003c/a>,” as it’s listed on the menu, but American wagyu from Snake River Farms) is delicious (more on that in a second). \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But beyond the flashy pyrotechnics, the core of the restaurant is a lot more rustic and homey. During our visit, the soundtrack was a mix of smooth jazz and old Vietnamese love ballads. In this age of tacky AI-generated wall art, the handpainted murals that line Đuôi Bò’s dining room depict Vietnamese countryside scenes — a bull rearing up in a grassy plain, a resplendently garnished bowl of phở. Nothing about the place reads as overtly “cool” or trendy. And nothing tastes homier than the phở broth itself. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2.jpg\" alt=\"Storefront of a pho restaurant lit up at night. Illustration: The yellow lettering of the sign overhead reads "Pho Duoi Bo."\" class=\"wp-image-13993629\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/PhoDuoiBo2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The restaurant recently extended its hours, which means its phở is now available until 12;30 a.m. daily. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The name “đuôi bò” means oxtail, so of course we decided to order the deluxe oxtail phở, which comes with all the meats you’d get in a bowl of đặc biệt (“special”) phở, plus a big, meaty tailbone that we happily gnawed clean. Here’s our pro tip, though: The reason the restaurant has that name is because it uses dozens of oxtails to make the broth itself, through hours upon hours of slow simmering. The end result is that those tails wind up rather chewy, and all of the flavor has gone into the broth, which is some of the richest and most flavorful we’ve had in the Bay. It’s loaded with collagen and big, glistening droplets of fat, but also clean and light on the palate. And that’s the same broth you get no matter which phở you order. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For our second bowl, then, we stuck with our usual favorites: raw steak (served on the side so we could poach it in the hot soup at the last minute), the soft tendons, the fatty brisket and bouncy meatballs. We opted for the wider, springier fresh noodles, and doctored up a little dipping sauce for our meats: some fish sauce and Sriracha, a clutch of vinegared onions (available as a $1 side), a squeeze of lime. Đuôi Bò also offers Chinese fried crullers as a side dish. Fresh out of the deep fryer, these make an excellent addition to a bowl of phở; the contrast between their crunchiness and the bit of sogginess they pick up after they’ve bobbed around in the soup for a minute is just sublime.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>All of this adds up to something approaching our Platonic ideal for phở, easily ranking as one of our top two or three favorite bowls in the Bay. The fact that we could have it at midnight on a random Tuesday night almost seems too good to be true. And all that before we’ve even really talked about the restaurant’s claim to fame — that flame-torched wagyu. Which is definitely worth getting as a side order to share. (We found it too heavy for one person to finish on their own.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re a fan of dramatics, as we are, you can ask the staff to torch the meat at the table, but in our experience, these days they usually decline that request and instead wield the flameflower at the back of the dining room, right before bringing the meat to your table. What we love is how the torching gives the fatty meat these wonderfully crisp edges and infuses it with a deep smoky flavor, which adds a new dimension to the phở-slurping experience. You can dump the plate of torched wagyu directly into your soup, but we liked eating it on its own, between sips of broth, dunking the meat in our makeshift vinegar dip to cut into the richness.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The rest of Đuôi Bò’s menu is incredibly spare and basic — just some spring rolls and crispy chicken wings as appetizers. In a sign that they understand their audience, or maybe just the Instagram algorithm, they’ve also started blow-torching marrow bones, which were sold out during our visit. We couldn’t figure out how exactly those were meant to complement the phở — but we were here already, why wouldn’t we give it a try? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By the time we walked out of the restaurant, full beyond the point of comfort, it was close to 11 p.m., and the line of customers waiting outside showed no sign of diminishing. The crowd had started to skew a little bit younger and more fashionably dressed. But as we watched them staring longingly at the menu posted in the window, there was no mistake about it: They were here to \u003cem>eat\u003c/em>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" />\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/phoduoibo/\">\u003cem>Phở Đuôi Bò\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open 9 a.m.–12:30 a.m. daily at 2465 Alvin Ave. in San José.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "ys-choice-soul-food-oxtails-oakland-late-night",
"title": "Y’s Choice Is a Haven of Late-Night Soul Food in Oakland",
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"content": "\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration Two men dig into an abundant spread of braised oxtails and other soul food dishes.\" class=\"wp-image-13993078\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Y’s Choice, a soul food restaurant in Uptown Oakland, specializes in braised oxtails and other classic soul food dishes. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A late-night hankering for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/soul-food\">soul food\u003c/a> brings us to an unobtrusive building on a relatively quiet block on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, just down the street from the Fox Theater. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Y’s Choice” reads the neon sign outside — after chef-owner “Y” Ahmed, \u003ca href=\"https://www.yschoice.space/our-story\">we later learn\u003c/a>. The restaurant stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends, and at a little past 9 on a Friday night, the bustling dining room smells of garlic, butter and spice. A steady stream of old \u003cem>Martin \u003c/em>episodes plays on the flatscreen TV in the corner. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Already, we feel like we’ve made a good decision coming here. (“Make A Wise Choice,” the sign behind the bar counter reads; I finally get the pun in the restaurant’s name after re-reading it five or six times.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On the night of our visit, the crowd is roughly 90% Black women. One big, exuberant group of twentysomethings is dressed to the nines, maybe only just kicking off their night out on the town. At the table next to ours, a pair of middle-aged ladies is having a cozy chat in sweatshirts and mom jeans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2.jpg\" alt=\"Exterior of a restaurant at nighttime. The sign outside reads, "Y's Choice."\" class=\"wp-image-13993080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Located about a block away from the Fox Theater, the restaurant is open until 11 p.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We make ourselves comfortable too. The menu at Y’s covers a fairly wide range of diasporic cuisines — soul food classics and fried seafood, but also Jamaican dishes and African dishes. We start with a couple of the oxtail sambusas, one of a handful of East African–inspired dishes that nod to the chef’s Sudanese roots. After one bite, we know we’re in good hands. These are chonky, square-edged specimens stuffed to the brim with tender, luscious shreds of spice-tinged braised oxtail. The thin, crispy wrappers taste, improbably, just like Chinese \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtiao\">youtiao\u003c/a>, fresh out of the fryer. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And because we’re constitutionally incapable of resisting when we see any form of braised oxtails on a menu, we doubled up with a full entree order. At Y’s Choice, these are served like stew over a big bowl of gravy-soaked rice that tastes strongly of mushrooms — wildly delicious in its own right. The tails themselves are meaty and succulent, with soft nubs of fat and collagen we sucked clean off the bone. (The dish’s soupy, slow-cooked quality is so wonderful, we immediately make plans to come back to try the gumbo.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>All of the soul food dishes come with a choice of two sides, and as soon as we taste the green beans and the mac and cheese, I give myself a round of applause for choosing well: The savory green beans have been stewed with smoked turkey until they’re falling-apart soft; the mac and cheese has just the right level of cheddar sharpness and ooze. It’s like we’re eating some holy trinity of soul food. Alternating bites between the oxtails, the green beans and the cheesy pasta shells, everything works together in perfect, complementary balance. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It is worth noting that Y’s Choice isn’t necessarily an inexpensive restaurant. There are a couple of sandwich- and chicken wing–type options for less than $20, but if you splurge on a soul food plate or one of the big “Y’s Special” seafood or surf ’n’ turf combinations — the kind of stacked plates folks like to show off on Instagram — chances are you’ll be dropping at least $40 or $50 on the entree alone. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What you get in exchange, though, is a whole lot of food. The least expensive of the specials, the Lil Sis ($40), comes with grilled lamb chops (a bit overcooked but fatty and aggressively seasoned, just how I like them), thickly battered fried prawns and a big bed of sweet, buttery \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13900855/garlic-noodles-sf-bay-area-iconic-foods-thanh-long-smellys\">garlic noodles\u003c/a>. Tasty as it all is, we manage to finish maybe half the plate before waving the white flag.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Also delicious (despite us having ordered way too many carbs): Y’s take on rasta pasta — a huge, and incredibly addicting, portion of creamy, jerk-spiced penne for $15. And for dessert, there’s peach cobbler. Their version comes out looking like an oozy puddle on the plate, but in the best way: soft, syrupy peach chunks with shards of soft, buttery crust mixed in, all topped with a dollop of whipped cream. Full as we are, we hoover up every last bite.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Busy as it is, even past 10 o’clock, the restaurant is big enough and quiet enough to allow for quiet conversation. Before we’d even placed our orders, our friendly server had told us that because everything is cooked to order, it can take a bit of time for the food to come out. It’s a good place to catch up with a friend over a long, languorous meal — not somewhere you go when you’re in a hurry. But the food is delicious enough, and the atmosphere has enough of a whiff of elegance, to make the restaurant feel celebratory. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We feel that, especially when that one long table of decked-out twentysomethings breaks into the happy birthday song not once but twice. As soon as they finish their second rendition, the servers distribute what looks to be about five dozen takeout cartons. Like us, it seems, the ladies found the portions so abundant that they — very happily — had several meals’ worth of leftovers to take home.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ys_choice_/\">\u003cem>Y’s Choice\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday to Tuesday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. at 1825 San Pablo Ave. in Oakland.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration Two men dig into an abundant spread of braised oxtails and other soul food dishes.\" class=\"wp-image-13993078\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Y’s Choice, a soul food restaurant in Uptown Oakland, specializes in braised oxtails and other classic soul food dishes.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>A late-night hankering for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/soul-food\">soul food\u003c/a> brings us to an unobtrusive building on a relatively quiet block on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, just down the street from the Fox Theater. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>A late-night hankering for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/soul-food\">soul food\u003c/a> brings us to an unobtrusive building on a relatively quiet block on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, just down the street from the Fox Theater. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Y’s Choice” reads the neon sign outside — after chef-owner “Y” Ahmed, \u003ca href=\"https://www.yschoice.space/our-story\">we later learn\u003c/a>. The restaurant stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends, and at a little past 9 on a Friday night, the bustling dining room smells of garlic, butter and spice. A steady stream of old \u003cem>Martin \u003c/em>episodes plays on the flatscreen TV in the corner. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>“Y’s Choice” reads the neon sign outside — after chef-owner “Y” Ahmed, \u003ca href=\"https://www.yschoice.space/our-story\">we later learn\u003c/a>. The restaurant stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends, and at a little past 9 on a Friday night, the bustling dining room smells of garlic, butter and spice. A steady stream of old \u003cem>Martin \u003c/em>episodes plays on the flatscreen TV in the corner. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Already, we feel like we’ve made a good decision coming here. (“Make A Wise Choice,” the sign behind the bar counter reads; I finally get the pun in the restaurant’s name after re-reading it five or six times.)\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Already, we feel like we’ve made a good decision coming here. (“Make A Wise Choice,” the sign behind the bar counter reads; I finally get the pun in the restaurant’s name after re-reading it five or six times.)\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>On the night of our visit, the crowd is roughly 90% Black women. One big, exuberant group of twentysomethings is dressed to the nines, maybe only just kicking off their night out on the town. At the table next to ours, a pair of middle-aged ladies is having a cozy chat in sweatshirts and mom jeans.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>On the night of our visit, the crowd is roughly 90% Black women. One big, exuberant group of twentysomethings is dressed to the nines, maybe only just kicking off their night out on the town. At the table next to ours, a pair of middle-aged ladies is having a cozy chat in sweatshirts and mom jeans.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2.jpg\" alt=\"Exterior of a restaurant at nighttime. The sign outside reads, "Y's Choice."\" class=\"wp-image-13993080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Located about a block away from the Fox Theater, the restaurant is open until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2.jpg\" alt=\"Exterior of a restaurant at nighttime. The sign outside reads, "Y's Choice."\" class=\"wp-image-13993080\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Located about a block away from the Fox Theater, the restaurant is open until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We make ourselves comfortable too. The menu at Y’s covers a fairly wide range of diasporic cuisines — soul food classics and fried seafood, but also Jamaican dishes and African dishes. We start with a couple of the oxtail sambusas, one of a handful of East African–inspired dishes that nod to the chef’s Sudanese roots. After one bite, we know we’re in good hands. These are chonky, square-edged specimens stuffed to the brim with tender, luscious shreds of spice-tinged braised oxtail. The thin, crispy wrappers taste, improbably, just like Chinese \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtiao\">youtiao\u003c/a>, fresh out of the fryer. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We make ourselves comfortable too. The menu at Y’s covers a fairly wide range of diasporic cuisines — soul food classics and fried seafood, but also Jamaican dishes and African dishes. We start with a couple of the oxtail sambusas, one of a handful of East African–inspired dishes that nod to the chef’s Sudanese roots. After one bite, we know we’re in good hands. These are chonky, square-edged specimens stuffed to the brim with tender, luscious shreds of spice-tinged braised oxtail. The thin, crispy wrappers taste, improbably, just like Chinese \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtiao\">youtiao\u003c/a>, fresh out of the fryer. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And because we’re constitutionally incapable of resisting when we see any form of braised oxtails on a menu, we doubled up with a full entree order. At Y’s Choice, these are served like stew over a big bowl of gravy-soaked rice that tastes strongly of mushrooms — wildly delicious in its own right. The tails themselves are meaty and succulent, with soft nubs of fat and collagen we sucked clean off the bone. (The dish’s soupy, slow-cooked quality is so wonderful, we immediately make plans to come back to try the gumbo.)\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And because we’re constitutionally incapable of resisting when we see any form of braised oxtails on a menu, we doubled up with a full entree order. At Y’s Choice, these are served like stew over a big bowl of gravy-soaked rice that tastes strongly of mushrooms — wildly delicious in its own right. The tails themselves are meaty and succulent, with soft nubs of fat and collagen we sucked clean off the bone. (The dish’s soupy, slow-cooked quality is so wonderful, we immediately make plans to come back to try the gumbo.)\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>All of the soul food dishes come with a choice of two sides, and as soon as we taste the green beans and the mac and cheese, I give myself a round of applause for choosing well: The savory green beans have been stewed with smoked turkey until they’re falling-apart soft; the mac and cheese has just the right level of cheddar sharpness and ooze. It’s like we’re eating some holy trinity of soul food. Alternating bites between the oxtails, the green beans and the cheesy pasta shells, everything works together in perfect, complementary balance. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>All of the soul food dishes come with a choice of two sides, and as soon as we taste the green beans and the mac and cheese, I give myself a round of applause for choosing well: The savory green beans have been stewed with smoked turkey until they’re falling-apart soft; the mac and cheese has just the right level of cheddar sharpness and ooze. It’s like we’re eating some holy trinity of soul food. Alternating bites between the oxtails, the green beans and the cheesy pasta shells, everything works together in perfect, complementary balance. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>It is worth noting that Y’s Choice isn’t necessarily an inexpensive restaurant. There are a couple of sandwich- and chicken wing–type options for less than $20, but if you splurge on a soul food plate or one of the big “Y’s Special” seafood or surf ’n’ turf combinations — the kind of stacked plates folks like to show off on Instagram — chances are you’ll be dropping at least $40 or $50 on the entree alone. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>It is worth noting that Y’s Choice isn’t necessarily an inexpensive restaurant. There are a couple of sandwich- and chicken wing–type options for less than $20, but if you splurge on a soul food plate or one of the big “Y’s Special” seafood or surf ’n’ turf combinations — the kind of stacked plates folks like to show off on Instagram — chances are you’ll be dropping at least $40 or $50 on the entree alone. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>What you get in exchange, though, is a whole lot of food. The least expensive of the specials, the Lil Sis ($40), comes with grilled lamb chops (a bit overcooked but fatty and aggressively seasoned, just how I like them), thickly battered fried prawns and a big bed of sweet, buttery \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13900855/garlic-noodles-sf-bay-area-iconic-foods-thanh-long-smellys\">garlic noodles\u003c/a>. Tasty as it all is, we manage to finish maybe half the plate before waving the white flag.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>What you get in exchange, though, is a whole lot of food. The least expensive of the specials, the Lil Sis ($40), comes with grilled lamb chops (a bit overcooked but fatty and aggressively seasoned, just how I like them), thickly battered fried prawns and a big bed of sweet, buttery \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13900855/garlic-noodles-sf-bay-area-iconic-foods-thanh-long-smellys\">garlic noodles\u003c/a>. Tasty as it all is, we manage to finish maybe half the plate before waving the white flag.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Also delicious (despite us having ordered way too many carbs): Y’s take on rasta pasta — a huge, and incredibly addicting, portion of creamy, jerk-spiced penne for $15. And for dessert, there’s peach cobbler. Their version comes out looking like an oozy puddle on the plate, but in the best way: soft, syrupy peach chunks with shards of soft, buttery crust mixed in, all topped with a dollop of whipped cream. Full as we are, we hoover up every last bite.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Also delicious (despite us having ordered way too many carbs): Y’s take on rasta pasta — a huge, and incredibly addicting, portion of creamy, jerk-spiced penne for $15. And for dessert, there’s peach cobbler. Their version comes out looking like an oozy puddle on the plate, but in the best way: soft, syrupy peach chunks with shards of soft, buttery crust mixed in, all topped with a dollop of whipped cream. Full as we are, we hoover up every last bite.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Busy as it is, even past 10 o’clock, the restaurant is big enough and quiet enough to allow for quiet conversation. Before we’d even placed our orders, our friendly server had told us that because everything is cooked to order, it can take a bit of time for the food to come out. It’s a good place to catch up with a friend over a long, languorous meal — not somewhere you go when you’re in a hurry. But the food is delicious enough, and the atmosphere has enough of a whiff of elegance, to make the restaurant feel celebratory. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Busy as it is, even past 10 o’clock, the restaurant is big enough and quiet enough to allow for quiet conversation. Before we’d even placed our orders, our friendly server had told us that because everything is cooked to order, it can take a bit of time for the food to come out. It’s a good place to catch up with a friend over a long, languorous meal — not somewhere you go when you’re in a hurry. But the food is delicious enough, and the atmosphere has enough of a whiff of elegance, to make the restaurant feel celebratory. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We feel that, especially when that one long table of decked-out twentysomethings breaks into the happy birthday song not once but twice. As soon as they finish their second rendition, the servers distribute what looks to be about five dozen takeout cartons. Like us, it seems, the ladies found the portions so abundant that they — very happily — had several meals’ worth of leftovers to take home.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We feel that, especially when that one long table of decked-out twentysomethings breaks into the happy birthday song not once but twice. As soon as they finish their second rendition, the servers distribute what looks to be about five dozen takeout cartons. Like us, it seems, the ladies found the portions so abundant that they — very happily — had several meals’ worth of leftovers to take home.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ys_choice_/\">\u003cem>Y’s Choice\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday to Tuesday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. at 1825 San Pablo Ave. in Oakland.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ys_choice_/\">\u003cem>Y’s Choice\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday to Tuesday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. at 1825 San Pablo Ave. in Oakland.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "Braised oxtails, in both sambusa and soupy rice bowl form, are the star of this San Pablo Avenue gem.",
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"title": "Y’s Choice Is a Haven of Late-Night Soul Food in Oakland | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration Two men dig into an abundant spread of braised oxtails and other soul food dishes.\" class=\"wp-image-13993078\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Y’s Choice, a soul food restaurant in Uptown Oakland, specializes in braised oxtails and other classic soul food dishes. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A late-night hankering for \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/soul-food\">soul food\u003c/a> brings us to an unobtrusive building on a relatively quiet block on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, just down the street from the Fox Theater. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Y’s Choice” reads the neon sign outside — after chef-owner “Y” Ahmed, \u003ca href=\"https://www.yschoice.space/our-story\">we later learn\u003c/a>. The restaurant stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends, and at a little past 9 on a Friday night, the bustling dining room smells of garlic, butter and spice. A steady stream of old \u003cem>Martin \u003c/em>episodes plays on the flatscreen TV in the corner. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Already, we feel like we’ve made a good decision coming here. (“Make A Wise Choice,” the sign behind the bar counter reads; I finally get the pun in the restaurant’s name after re-reading it five or six times.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On the night of our visit, the crowd is roughly 90% Black women. One big, exuberant group of twentysomethings is dressed to the nines, maybe only just kicking off their night out on the town. At the table next to ours, a pair of middle-aged ladies is having a cozy chat in sweatshirts and mom jeans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2.jpg\" alt=\"Exterior of a restaurant at nighttime. The sign outside reads, "Y's Choice."\" class=\"wp-image-13993080\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/yschoice2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Located about a block away from the Fox Theater, the restaurant is open until 11 p.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We make ourselves comfortable too. The menu at Y’s covers a fairly wide range of diasporic cuisines — soul food classics and fried seafood, but also Jamaican dishes and African dishes. We start with a couple of the oxtail sambusas, one of a handful of East African–inspired dishes that nod to the chef’s Sudanese roots. After one bite, we know we’re in good hands. These are chonky, square-edged specimens stuffed to the brim with tender, luscious shreds of spice-tinged braised oxtail. The thin, crispy wrappers taste, improbably, just like Chinese \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youtiao\">youtiao\u003c/a>, fresh out of the fryer. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And because we’re constitutionally incapable of resisting when we see any form of braised oxtails on a menu, we doubled up with a full entree order. At Y’s Choice, these are served like stew over a big bowl of gravy-soaked rice that tastes strongly of mushrooms — wildly delicious in its own right. The tails themselves are meaty and succulent, with soft nubs of fat and collagen we sucked clean off the bone. (The dish’s soupy, slow-cooked quality is so wonderful, we immediately make plans to come back to try the gumbo.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>All of the soul food dishes come with a choice of two sides, and as soon as we taste the green beans and the mac and cheese, I give myself a round of applause for choosing well: The savory green beans have been stewed with smoked turkey until they’re falling-apart soft; the mac and cheese has just the right level of cheddar sharpness and ooze. It’s like we’re eating some holy trinity of soul food. Alternating bites between the oxtails, the green beans and the cheesy pasta shells, everything works together in perfect, complementary balance. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It is worth noting that Y’s Choice isn’t necessarily an inexpensive restaurant. There are a couple of sandwich- and chicken wing–type options for less than $20, but if you splurge on a soul food plate or one of the big “Y’s Special” seafood or surf ’n’ turf combinations — the kind of stacked plates folks like to show off on Instagram — chances are you’ll be dropping at least $40 or $50 on the entree alone. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What you get in exchange, though, is a whole lot of food. The least expensive of the specials, the Lil Sis ($40), comes with grilled lamb chops (a bit overcooked but fatty and aggressively seasoned, just how I like them), thickly battered fried prawns and a big bed of sweet, buttery \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13900855/garlic-noodles-sf-bay-area-iconic-foods-thanh-long-smellys\">garlic noodles\u003c/a>. Tasty as it all is, we manage to finish maybe half the plate before waving the white flag.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Also delicious (despite us having ordered way too many carbs): Y’s take on rasta pasta — a huge, and incredibly addicting, portion of creamy, jerk-spiced penne for $15. And for dessert, there’s peach cobbler. Their version comes out looking like an oozy puddle on the plate, but in the best way: soft, syrupy peach chunks with shards of soft, buttery crust mixed in, all topped with a dollop of whipped cream. Full as we are, we hoover up every last bite.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Busy as it is, even past 10 o’clock, the restaurant is big enough and quiet enough to allow for quiet conversation. Before we’d even placed our orders, our friendly server had told us that because everything is cooked to order, it can take a bit of time for the food to come out. It’s a good place to catch up with a friend over a long, languorous meal — not somewhere you go when you’re in a hurry. But the food is delicious enough, and the atmosphere has enough of a whiff of elegance, to make the restaurant feel celebratory. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We feel that, especially when that one long table of decked-out twentysomethings breaks into the happy birthday song not once but twice. As soon as they finish their second rendition, the servers distribute what looks to be about five dozen takeout cartons. Like us, it seems, the ladies found the portions so abundant that they — very happily — had several meals’ worth of leftovers to take home.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/ys_choice_/\">\u003cem>Y’s Choice\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday to Tuesday 11 a.m.–9 p.m. at 1825 San Pablo Ave. in Oakland.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "fat-cat-mantis-vietnamese-food-wine-bar-review-late-night-sf-bernal-heights",
"title": "Fat Cat x The Mantis Is Serving Up the Most Exciting Vietnamese Food in SF",
"publishDate": 1786063460,
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"headTitle": "Fat Cat x The Mantis Is Serving Up the Most Exciting Vietnamese Food in SF | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1.jpg\" alt=\"Three men at a restaurant hunched over a huge spread of Vietnamese dishes.\" class=\"wp-image-13992493\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Vietnamese-inspired dishes at Fat Cat x The Mantis are at once deeply nostalgic and like nothiing you’ve ever tasted. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fatcatsf.com/\">Fat Cat\u003c/a> x \u003ca href=\"https://www.fatmantis.com/\">The Mantis\u003c/a> sounds like one of those deep-cut comic book crossovers — a collector’s edition for anyone who’s ever wondered how two of their favorite super-villains might fare against each other in an intergalactic fist fight. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re a food lover in San Francisco, however, the real Fat Cat x The Mantis is something even better, and perhaps just as surprising: a wildly creative \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/vietnamese-food\">Vietnamese American restaurant\u003c/a> (The Mantis) that shares a space in Bernal Heights with one of the city’s friendliest and most accessible new wine bars (Fat Cat). \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It’s a roommate situation that came about in part because of mundane San Francisco reasons (i.e. “\u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/19/buzzy-vietnamese-pop-cult-favorite-wine-club-take-former-pinball-bar/\">it’s so damn expensive out here\u003c/a>”). But the collaboration really works. The restaurant is serving some of the most thrilling, delicious Vietnamese food we’ve had in SF, and makes for one of the city’s most enjoyable late-night (ish) dining experiences.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>To be clear, the wine bar isn’t necessarily oriented for the extreme night owl: The kitchen closes at 10 p.m., and servers usually put out a last call for food orders at around 9:30. Still, the bar itself is open until 11 on weekends, and during our visit, plenty of diners were still polishing off the last bites of their dessert at well past 10.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2.jpg\" alt=\"Neon-lit exterior of a restaurant at night time.\" class=\"wp-image-13992492\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The wine bar is open until 11 p.m. on weekends, though the kitchen usually stops taking orders after 9:30. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The moment we pull up on a recent Friday night, we get a clear sense of the aesthetic. Unlike the bulk of the city’s trendy bars, Fat Cat eschews dim mood lighting in favor of a cheerfully bright, pink-and-mint-green living room vibe. A bandana mounted on the wall depicts a skateboarding, rice-paddy-hat-wearing granny pulling an ollie. The chopstick caddy on our table features a photo of Tuan An, aka “\u003ca href=\"https://vietceleb.blogspot.com/2015/05/tuan-anh.html?m=1\">the Vietnamese Boy George\u003c/a>,” the flamboyantly coiffed icon from the ’80s and ’90s heyday of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/new-wave-elizabeth-ai-19847502.php\">Vietnamese New Wave\u003c/a> music scene. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The food straddles a similar line between nostalgia and envelope-pushing. We’d been fans of chef Kevin Tang’s inventive Vietnamese American cooking since his days at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962759/viridian-asian-american-cocktail-bar-late-night-food-oakland\">Viridian\u003c/a> in Oakland. At first glance, the menu at The Mantis doesn’t read as \u003cem>especially\u003c/em> Vietnamese. The dishes all sound like something you might find at a French wine bistro, with one or two Vietnamese ingredients added to every dish. There’s pâté, oysters on the half shell, a crudo, a big platter of steak frites. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>All it took was our first slurp of a Miyagi oyster, though, for us to be astounded by just how distinctly Vietnamese — and also how new and unexpected — the food tasted. Each oyster came topped with a tangle of crispy fried shallots, a shiso leaf, diced pluot and, most amazing, a dab of green muối ớt xanh — a zippy, salsa-like sauce made by blending green chilies, lime leaves and sweet condensed milk that Vietnamese restaurants often serve with grilled seafood. Paired with the briny salinity of the raw oysters, the combination of flavors and textures were a delightful shock to our taste buds.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Dish after dish elicited a similar reaction. Ricotta and bún riêu tomato jam (!) spread on good sourdough. Confit chicken and taro croquettes topped with slivers of fish sauce–laced green mango, served over a smear of calamansi-chili aioli. (That one was like a Viet-coded take on dim sum taro dumplings. Or, as the table next to ours enthused, “like an egg roll and a crab cake had a son.”)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a plate of fried eggplant came with butterbean miso, whipped tofu, Sungold tomatoes, Thai basil and lemongrass chili jam, according to the menu description. Just reading the list of ingredients set our heads to spinning. But once we bit in, we were sold. The eggplant was astonishingly crunchy on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside. Taken all together, the sweetness of the tomatoes, the creaminess of the tofu, and the subtle heat of the chili jam made for the perfect bite. We immediately declared the dish our favorite. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Our favorite, that is, until the server brought out the steak frites. This is the chef’s take on bò kho, or Vietnamese-style beef stew: thick slices of medium-rare strip loin drenched in a pool of velvety beef gravy that was so addictively savory, it begged for a big bowl of white rice (which our server was happy to supply). The dish is emblematic of the cooking at The Mantis — at once deeply nostalgic and like nothing you’ve had before. We couldn’t stop thinking about it — and that’s even before accounting for the side of extra-crispy, extra-fluffy double-fried Kennebec potato fries, which were amazing in their own right. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Service, meanwhile, was universally warm and enthusiastic. Never before have we received so much affirmation for ordering a Diet Coke — the ideal beverage to pair with Vietnamese food, we posited. (“Fucking bomb!” our server agreed.) On the night of our visit, the bar was packed from end to end, with diners and bar patrons spread out between the bar counter and the cluster of leather banquettes in the back. (There’d been a two-hour wait to get a seat a couple hours before we arrived, our server told us.) \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The crowd skews a little bit young and maybe half Asian, and everyone’s a little smooshed together so it’s easy to wind up striking up conversations with your neighbors. Like us, the group of twenty- or thirty-somethings at the table next to ours had ordered nearly everything on the menu, so we spent the evening exchanging rave reviews and, at the end, a round of high fives. We’d been on something of a journey together, it felt like. And we couldn’t wait to do it again. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fatmantis.com/\">\u003cem>Fat Cat x The Mantis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open for dinner service Friday to Monday 5–10 p.m. at 3215 Mission St. in San Francisco. Last call for food orders is typically at around 9:30 p.m. The wine bar itself is open until 11 p.m. on weekends, and serves hot dogs and cheese plates when The Mantis isn’t open. On Sundays and Mondays, The Mantis also offers a $75 tasting menu option. Walk-ins only.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1.jpg\" alt=\"Three men at a restaurant hunched over a huge spread of Vietnamese dishes.\" class=\"wp-image-13992493\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Vietnamese-inspired dishes at Fat Cat x The Mantis are at once deeply nostalgic and like nothiing you’ve ever tasted.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1.jpg\" alt=\"Three men at a restaurant hunched over a huge spread of Vietnamese dishes.\" class=\"wp-image-13992493\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Vietnamese-inspired dishes at Fat Cat x The Mantis are at once deeply nostalgic and like nothiing you’ve ever tasted.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fatcatsf.com/\">Fat Cat\u003c/a> x \u003ca href=\"https://www.fatmantis.com/\">The Mantis\u003c/a> sounds like one of those deep-cut comic book crossovers — a collector’s edition for anyone who’s ever wondered how two of their favorite super-villains might fare against each other in an intergalactic fist fight. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fatcatsf.com/\">Fat Cat\u003c/a> x \u003ca href=\"https://www.fatmantis.com/\">The Mantis\u003c/a> sounds like one of those deep-cut comic book crossovers — a collector’s edition for anyone who’s ever wondered how two of their favorite super-villains might fare against each other in an intergalactic fist fight. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you’re a food lover in San Francisco, however, the real Fat Cat x The Mantis is something even better, and perhaps just as surprising: a wildly creative \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/vietnamese-food\">Vietnamese American restaurant\u003c/a> (The Mantis) that shares a space in Bernal Heights with one of the city’s friendliest and most accessible new wine bars (Fat Cat). \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you’re a food lover in San Francisco, however, the real Fat Cat x The Mantis is something even better, and perhaps just as surprising: a wildly creative \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/vietnamese-food\">Vietnamese American restaurant\u003c/a> (The Mantis) that shares a space in Bernal Heights with one of the city’s friendliest and most accessible new wine bars (Fat Cat). \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>It’s a roommate situation that came about in part because of mundane San Francisco reasons (i.e. “\u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/19/buzzy-vietnamese-pop-cult-favorite-wine-club-take-former-pinball-bar/\">it’s so damn expensive out here\u003c/a>”). But the collaboration really works. The restaurant is serving some of the most thrilling, delicious Vietnamese food we’ve had in SF, and makes for one of the city’s most enjoyable late-night (ish) dining experiences.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>It’s a roommate situation that came about in part because of mundane San Francisco reasons (i.e. “\u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/19/buzzy-vietnamese-pop-cult-favorite-wine-club-take-former-pinball-bar/\">it’s so damn expensive out here\u003c/a>”). But the collaboration really works. The restaurant is serving some of the most thrilling, delicious Vietnamese food we’ve had in SF, and makes for one of the city’s most enjoyable late-night (ish) dining experiences.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>To be clear, the wine bar isn’t necessarily oriented for the extreme night owl: The kitchen closes at 10 p.m., and servers usually put out a last call for food orders at around 9:30. Still, the bar itself is open until 11 on weekends, and during our visit, plenty of diners were still polishing off the last bites of their dessert at well past 10.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>To be clear, the wine bar isn’t necessarily oriented for the extreme night owl: The kitchen closes at 10 p.m., and servers usually put out a last call for food orders at around 9:30. Still, the bar itself is open until 11 on weekends, and during our visit, plenty of diners were still polishing off the last bites of their dessert at well past 10.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2.jpg\" alt=\"Neon-lit exterior of a restaurant at night time.\" class=\"wp-image-13992492\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The wine bar is open until 11 p.m. on weekends, though the kitchen usually stops taking orders after 9:30.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2.jpg\" alt=\"Neon-lit exterior of a restaurant at night time.\" class=\"wp-image-13992492\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The wine bar is open until 11 p.m. on weekends, though the kitchen usually stops taking orders after 9:30.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The moment we pull up on a recent Friday night, we get a clear sense of the aesthetic. Unlike the bulk of the city’s trendy bars, Fat Cat eschews dim mood lighting in favor of a cheerfully bright, pink-and-mint-green living room vibe. A bandana mounted on the wall depicts a skateboarding, rice-paddy-hat-wearing granny pulling an ollie. The chopstick caddy on our table features a photo of Tuan An, aka “\u003ca href=\"https://vietceleb.blogspot.com/2015/05/tuan-anh.html?m=1\">the Vietnamese Boy George\u003c/a>,” the flamboyantly coiffed icon from the ’80s and ’90s heyday of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/new-wave-elizabeth-ai-19847502.php\">Vietnamese New Wave\u003c/a> music scene. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The moment we pull up on a recent Friday night, we get a clear sense of the aesthetic. Unlike the bulk of the city’s trendy bars, Fat Cat eschews dim mood lighting in favor of a cheerfully bright, pink-and-mint-green living room vibe. A bandana mounted on the wall depicts a skateboarding, rice-paddy-hat-wearing granny pulling an ollie. The chopstick caddy on our table features a photo of Tuan An, aka “\u003ca href=\"https://vietceleb.blogspot.com/2015/05/tuan-anh.html?m=1\">the Vietnamese Boy George\u003c/a>,” the flamboyantly coiffed icon from the ’80s and ’90s heyday of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/new-wave-elizabeth-ai-19847502.php\">Vietnamese New Wave\u003c/a> music scene. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The food straddles a similar line between nostalgia and envelope-pushing. We’d been fans of chef Kevin Tang’s inventive Vietnamese American cooking since his days at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962759/viridian-asian-american-cocktail-bar-late-night-food-oakland\">Viridian\u003c/a> in Oakland. At first glance, the menu at The Mantis doesn’t read as \u003cem>especially\u003c/em> Vietnamese. The dishes all sound like something you might find at a French wine bistro, with one or two Vietnamese ingredients added to every dish. There’s pâté, oysters on the half shell, a crudo, a big platter of steak frites. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>The food straddles a similar line between nostalgia and envelope-pushing. We’d been fans of chef Kevin Tang’s inventive Vietnamese American cooking since his days at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962759/viridian-asian-american-cocktail-bar-late-night-food-oakland\">Viridian\u003c/a> in Oakland. At first glance, the menu at The Mantis doesn’t read as \u003cem>especially\u003c/em> Vietnamese. The dishes all sound like something you might find at a French wine bistro, with one or two Vietnamese ingredients added to every dish. There’s pâté, oysters on the half shell, a crudo, a big platter of steak frites. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>All it took was our first slurp of a Miyagi oyster, though, for us to be astounded by just how distinctly Vietnamese — and also how new and unexpected — the food tasted. Each oyster came topped with a tangle of crispy fried shallots, a shiso leaf, diced pluot and, most amazing, a dab of green muối ớt xanh — a zippy, salsa-like sauce made by blending green chilies, lime leaves and sweet condensed milk that Vietnamese restaurants often serve with grilled seafood. Paired with the briny salinity of the raw oysters, the combination of flavors and textures were a delightful shock to our taste buds.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>All it took was our first slurp of a Miyagi oyster, though, for us to be astounded by just how distinctly Vietnamese — and also how new and unexpected — the food tasted. Each oyster came topped with a tangle of crispy fried shallots, a shiso leaf, diced pluot and, most amazing, a dab of green muối ớt xanh — a zippy, salsa-like sauce made by blending green chilies, lime leaves and sweet condensed milk that Vietnamese restaurants often serve with grilled seafood. Paired with the briny salinity of the raw oysters, the combination of flavors and textures were a delightful shock to our taste buds.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Dish after dish elicited a similar reaction. Ricotta and bún riêu tomato jam (!) spread on good sourdough. Confit chicken and taro croquettes topped with slivers of fish sauce–laced green mango, served over a smear of calamansi-chili aioli. (That one was like a Viet-coded take on dim sum taro dumplings. Or, as the table next to ours enthused, “like an egg roll and a crab cake had a son.”)\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Dish after dish elicited a similar reaction. Ricotta and bún riêu tomato jam (!) spread on good sourdough. Confit chicken and taro croquettes topped with slivers of fish sauce–laced green mango, served over a smear of calamansi-chili aioli. (That one was like a Viet-coded take on dim sum taro dumplings. Or, as the table next to ours enthused, “like an egg roll and a crab cake had a son.”)\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a plate of fried eggplant came with butterbean miso, whipped tofu, Sungold tomatoes, Thai basil and lemongrass chili jam, according to the menu description. Just reading the list of ingredients set our heads to spinning. But once we bit in, we were sold. The eggplant was astonishingly crunchy on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside. Taken all together, the sweetness of the tomatoes, the creaminess of the tofu, and the subtle heat of the chili jam made for the perfect bite. We immediately declared the dish our favorite. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a plate of fried eggplant came with butterbean miso, whipped tofu, Sungold tomatoes, Thai basil and lemongrass chili jam, according to the menu description. Just reading the list of ingredients set our heads to spinning. But once we bit in, we were sold. The eggplant was astonishingly crunchy on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside. Taken all together, the sweetness of the tomatoes, the creaminess of the tofu, and the subtle heat of the chili jam made for the perfect bite. We immediately declared the dish our favorite. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Our favorite, that is, until the server brought out the steak frites. This is the chef’s take on bò kho, or Vietnamese-style beef stew: thick slices of medium-rare strip loin drenched in a pool of velvety beef gravy that was so addictively savory, it begged for a big bowl of white rice (which our server was happy to supply). The dish is emblematic of the cooking at The Mantis — at once deeply nostalgic and like nothing you’ve had before. We couldn’t stop thinking about it — and that’s even before accounting for the side of extra-crispy, extra-fluffy double-fried Kennebec potato fries, which were amazing in their own right. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Service, meanwhile, was universally warm and enthusiastic. Never before have we received so much affirmation for ordering a Diet Coke — the ideal beverage to pair with Vietnamese food, we posited. (“Fucking bomb!” our server agreed.) On the night of our visit, the bar was packed from end to end, with diners and bar patrons spread out between the bar counter and the cluster of leather banquettes in the back. (There’d been a two-hour wait to get a seat a couple hours before we arrived, our server told us.) \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Service, meanwhile, was universally warm and enthusiastic. Never before have we received so much affirmation for ordering a Diet Coke — the ideal beverage to pair with Vietnamese food, we posited. (“Fucking bomb!” our server agreed.) On the night of our visit, the bar was packed from end to end, with diners and bar patrons spread out between the bar counter and the cluster of leather banquettes in the back. (There’d been a two-hour wait to get a seat a couple hours before we arrived, our server told us.) \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The crowd skews a little bit young and maybe half Asian, and everyone’s a little smooshed together so it’s easy to wind up striking up conversations with your neighbors. Like us, the group of twenty- or thirty-somethings at the table next to ours had ordered nearly everything on the menu, so we spent the evening exchanging rave reviews and, at the end, a round of high fives. We’d been on something of a journey together, it felt like. And we couldn’t wait to do it again. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The crowd skews a little bit young and maybe half Asian, and everyone’s a little smooshed together so it’s easy to wind up striking up conversations with your neighbors. Like us, the group of twenty- or thirty-somethings at the table next to ours had ordered nearly everything on the menu, so we spent the evening exchanging rave reviews and, at the end, a round of high fives. We’d been on something of a journey together, it felt like. And we couldn’t wait to do it again. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fatmantis.com/\">\u003cem>Fat Cat x The Mantis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open for dinner service Friday to Monday 5–10 p.m. at 3215 Mission St. in San Francisco. Last call for food orders is typically at around 9:30 p.m. The wine bar itself is open until 11 p.m. on weekends, and serves hot dogs and cheese plates when The Mantis isn’t open. On Sundays and Mondays, The Mantis also offers a $75 tasting menu option. Walk-ins only.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fatmantis.com/\">\u003cem>Fat Cat x The Mantis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open for dinner service Friday to Monday 5–10 p.m. at 3215 Mission St. in San Francisco. Last call for food orders is typically at around 9:30 p.m. The wine bar itself is open until 11 p.m. on weekends, and serves hot dogs and cheese plates when The Mantis isn’t open. On Sundays and Mondays, The Mantis also offers a $75 tasting menu option. Walk-ins only.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "The Bernal Heights wine bar’s steak frites and herb-topped oysters pack a flavorful wallop.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1.jpg\" alt=\"Three men at a restaurant hunched over a huge spread of Vietnamese dishes.\" class=\"wp-image-13992493\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Vietnamese-inspired dishes at Fat Cat x The Mantis are at once deeply nostalgic and like nothiing you’ve ever tasted. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fatcatsf.com/\">Fat Cat\u003c/a> x \u003ca href=\"https://www.fatmantis.com/\">The Mantis\u003c/a> sounds like one of those deep-cut comic book crossovers — a collector’s edition for anyone who’s ever wondered how two of their favorite super-villains might fare against each other in an intergalactic fist fight. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re a food lover in San Francisco, however, the real Fat Cat x The Mantis is something even better, and perhaps just as surprising: a wildly creative \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/vietnamese-food\">Vietnamese American restaurant\u003c/a> (The Mantis) that shares a space in Bernal Heights with one of the city’s friendliest and most accessible new wine bars (Fat Cat). \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>It’s a roommate situation that came about in part because of mundane San Francisco reasons (i.e. “\u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2026/03/19/buzzy-vietnamese-pop-cult-favorite-wine-club-take-former-pinball-bar/\">it’s so damn expensive out here\u003c/a>”). But the collaboration really works. The restaurant is serving some of the most thrilling, delicious Vietnamese food we’ve had in SF, and makes for one of the city’s most enjoyable late-night (ish) dining experiences.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>To be clear, the wine bar isn’t necessarily oriented for the extreme night owl: The kitchen closes at 10 p.m., and servers usually put out a last call for food orders at around 9:30. Still, the bar itself is open until 11 on weekends, and during our visit, plenty of diners were still polishing off the last bites of their dessert at well past 10.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2.jpg\" alt=\"Neon-lit exterior of a restaurant at night time.\" class=\"wp-image-13992492\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/08/ClawsoftheMantis2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The wine bar is open until 11 p.m. on weekends, though the kitchen usually stops taking orders after 9:30. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The moment we pull up on a recent Friday night, we get a clear sense of the aesthetic. Unlike the bulk of the city’s trendy bars, Fat Cat eschews dim mood lighting in favor of a cheerfully bright, pink-and-mint-green living room vibe. A bandana mounted on the wall depicts a skateboarding, rice-paddy-hat-wearing granny pulling an ollie. The chopstick caddy on our table features a photo of Tuan An, aka “\u003ca href=\"https://vietceleb.blogspot.com/2015/05/tuan-anh.html?m=1\">the Vietnamese Boy George\u003c/a>,” the flamboyantly coiffed icon from the ’80s and ’90s heyday of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/article/new-wave-elizabeth-ai-19847502.php\">Vietnamese New Wave\u003c/a> music scene. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The food straddles a similar line between nostalgia and envelope-pushing. We’d been fans of chef Kevin Tang’s inventive Vietnamese American cooking since his days at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13962759/viridian-asian-american-cocktail-bar-late-night-food-oakland\">Viridian\u003c/a> in Oakland. At first glance, the menu at The Mantis doesn’t read as \u003cem>especially\u003c/em> Vietnamese. The dishes all sound like something you might find at a French wine bistro, with one or two Vietnamese ingredients added to every dish. There’s pâté, oysters on the half shell, a crudo, a big platter of steak frites. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>All it took was our first slurp of a Miyagi oyster, though, for us to be astounded by just how distinctly Vietnamese — and also how new and unexpected — the food tasted. Each oyster came topped with a tangle of crispy fried shallots, a shiso leaf, diced pluot and, most amazing, a dab of green muối ớt xanh — a zippy, salsa-like sauce made by blending green chilies, lime leaves and sweet condensed milk that Vietnamese restaurants often serve with grilled seafood. Paired with the briny salinity of the raw oysters, the combination of flavors and textures were a delightful shock to our taste buds.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Dish after dish elicited a similar reaction. Ricotta and bún riêu tomato jam (!) spread on good sourdough. Confit chicken and taro croquettes topped with slivers of fish sauce–laced green mango, served over a smear of calamansi-chili aioli. (That one was like a Viet-coded take on dim sum taro dumplings. Or, as the table next to ours enthused, “like an egg roll and a crab cake had a son.”)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, a plate of fried eggplant came with butterbean miso, whipped tofu, Sungold tomatoes, Thai basil and lemongrass chili jam, according to the menu description. Just reading the list of ingredients set our heads to spinning. But once we bit in, we were sold. The eggplant was astonishingly crunchy on the outside, soft and creamy on the inside. Taken all together, the sweetness of the tomatoes, the creaminess of the tofu, and the subtle heat of the chili jam made for the perfect bite. We immediately declared the dish our favorite. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Our favorite, that is, until the server brought out the steak frites. This is the chef’s take on bò kho, or Vietnamese-style beef stew: thick slices of medium-rare strip loin drenched in a pool of velvety beef gravy that was so addictively savory, it begged for a big bowl of white rice (which our server was happy to supply). The dish is emblematic of the cooking at The Mantis — at once deeply nostalgic and like nothing you’ve had before. We couldn’t stop thinking about it — and that’s even before accounting for the side of extra-crispy, extra-fluffy double-fried Kennebec potato fries, which were amazing in their own right. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Service, meanwhile, was universally warm and enthusiastic. Never before have we received so much affirmation for ordering a Diet Coke — the ideal beverage to pair with Vietnamese food, we posited. (“Fucking bomb!” our server agreed.) On the night of our visit, the bar was packed from end to end, with diners and bar patrons spread out between the bar counter and the cluster of leather banquettes in the back. (There’d been a two-hour wait to get a seat a couple hours before we arrived, our server told us.) \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The crowd skews a little bit young and maybe half Asian, and everyone’s a little smooshed together so it’s easy to wind up striking up conversations with your neighbors. Like us, the group of twenty- or thirty-somethings at the table next to ours had ordered nearly everything on the menu, so we spent the evening exchanging rave reviews and, at the end, a round of high fives. We’d been on something of a journey together, it felt like. And we couldn’t wait to do it again. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.fatmantis.com/\">\u003cem>Fat Cat x The Mantis\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open for dinner service Friday to Monday 5–10 p.m. at 3215 Mission St. in San Francisco. Last call for food orders is typically at around 9:30 p.m. The wine bar itself is open until 11 p.m. on weekends, and serves hot dogs and cheese plates when The Mantis isn’t open. On Sundays and Mondays, The Mantis also offers a $75 tasting menu option. Walk-ins only.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "cupertino-cantonese-roast-duck-changsha-noodle-late-night",
"title": "This Late-Night Noodle House Slings the South Bay’s Tastiest Roast Duck",
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"content": "\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Chinese roast duck and rice noodles.\" class=\"wp-image-13991073\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">At Changshan Rice Noodles, the star of the menu is the Cantonese-style roast duck. The Cupertino restaurant is open until midnight most nights. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’ve ever wondered where all the young Asian Americans in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/cupertino\">Cupertino\u003c/a> hang out late at night, all you need to do is visit the Cupertino Village shopping plaza. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At around 9:15 on a recent Friday night, the entire plaza was positively swarming with Asian teens and twentysomethings. On one side of the parking lot, a swanky hip-hop dance studio and a Mandarin-friendly board game club hosting a Dungeons & Dragons night each attracted their own particular flavor of Asian youth culture. On the other side was one of the longest lines that I’ve \u003cem>ever\u003c/em> seen queued up outside a boba shop. (The new Charlie’s Tea was running a buy-one-get-one special for its grand opening, it turns out.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’d come in search of a late-night Chinese feast, but what we found wasn’t just one solitary restaurant that happened to stay open late. Instead, the whole shopping center buzzed with youthful energy and excitement. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Our intended destination, Changsha Rice Noodles, aka \u003ca href=\"https://changsha-mifen.com/\">Changsha Mifen\u003c/a> (长沙米粉) — or “Jade Tea BBQ,” according to the restaurant’s only sign in English — stays open until midnight most nights, tucked away on the far end of the busy plaza. It’s part of a crop of newer, semi-mysterious Chinese restaurants in the South Bay that always seem to be in the middle of a rebrand. In Changsha’s case, it seems the folks who run Jade Tea Garden, the Cantonese banquet hall on the other side of the building, decided last fall to try their hand at Hunan-style street noodles. The two restaurants share a big kitchen in the middle — hence the confusing signage and hodgepodge menu combining two regional cuisines that don’t normally have much to do with each other. Certainly it’s the only place I know of that specializes in Hunan rice noodles \u003cem>and \u003c/em>Cantonese barbecue. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant lit up at night. The sign reads \"Jade Tea BBQ.\"' class=\"wp-image-13991072\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Also known as “Jade Tea BBQ,” the restaurant is located in the Cupertino Village shopping plaza — a hugely popular late-night hangout spot for young Asian Americans. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>My suggestion? They may want to consider renaming the restaurant “Jade Duck House,” because the duck is the one must-order dish — the thing that stands out as soon as you walk in the door. In back, dozens of the birds dangled from metal hooks, some already roasted to a gorgeously well-burnished golden brown. Many more hung in various stages of an air-drying process calibrated to yield the crispiest possible skin. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During our visit, Changsha was running an incredible special — $15 for half a “Guangzhou roast duck” (discounted from $22). This was some of the tastiest Cantonese-style roast duck I’ve had anywhere in the United States. The skin was outrageously crispy without being greasy; the layer of flavorful fat had rendered down to soft, melty nubs. The meat itself? Impossibly tender and juicy. On the plate, a nice little “jus” of sweet soy sauce mixed with the duck’s fatty drippings made for a heavenly dipping sauce.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The duck is so good, all you really need to add is a bowl of white rice to assemble a satisfying meal. But the restaurant’s other specialty — rice noodles prepared in the style associated with Changsha, Hunan’s capital city — is also worth trying. These come in a variety of both soupy and dry versions. We thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant’s solid, flavorful take on beef noodle soup, which came topped with mustard greens and a scattering of raw chopped garlic. A dry version topped with scrambled eggs, pickled mustard stems and chopped chilies had its own homey, rustic kind of charm. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In both dishes, the rice noodles themselves were the most memorable component: round and white like spaghetti and cooked just shy of soggy, but with a pleasant, chewy bite in the center. They were very, very slurpable.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Really, though, everything we ordered was incredibly tasty — the bright and vinegary cucumber salad; the big, fleshy grilled oysters; the fried black stinky tofu, which had a delightfully squishy texture that helped soak up all the juices from the accompanying mala sauce. If there’s any running theme to the menu, it’s that the kitchen uses a metric ton of raw garlic, chopping it up small or into big chunks, tossing it willy-nilly, it feels like, into almost every dish. We loved it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Changsha Rice Noodles is one of those spots where you order via QR code, and the service is brusque and impersonal if not actively unfriendly. But the food itself is \u003cem>full\u003c/em> of soul. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And based on the jam-packed dining room we encountered, it’s clear they’ve struck on a winning combination. Even well past 10 p.m., the restaurant felt every bit as busy and rambunctious as any of the other Asian hangout spots in Cupertino Village. There were families with kids out past their bedtime. Lovey-dovey Gen Z couples doing that cutesy thing you see young couples do in Asia, sitting next to each other on the same side of the table even though they’re only a party of two. As far as we could tell, everyone was Chinese.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Of course, everyone had ordered the duck. And, just like us, they all cleaned their plates.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/changshamifen/\">\u003cem>Changsha Rice Noodles\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Monday to Saturday 11 a.m.–2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.–midnight, and Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4:30–9 p.m. at 10911 N. Wolfe Rd. Ste. B (in the Cupertino Village shopping plaza).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n",
"blocks": [
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Chinese roast duck and rice noodles.\" class=\"wp-image-13991073\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">At Changshan Rice Noodles, the star of the menu is the Cantonese-style roast duck. The Cupertino restaurant is open until midnight most nights.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Chinese roast duck and rice noodles.\" class=\"wp-image-13991073\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">At Changshan Rice Noodles, the star of the menu is the Cantonese-style roast duck. The Cupertino restaurant is open until midnight most nights.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you’ve ever wondered where all the young Asian Americans in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/cupertino\">Cupertino\u003c/a> hang out late at night, all you need to do is visit the Cupertino Village shopping plaza. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you’ve ever wondered where all the young Asian Americans in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/cupertino\">Cupertino\u003c/a> hang out late at night, all you need to do is visit the Cupertino Village shopping plaza. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>At around 9:15 on a recent Friday night, the entire plaza was positively swarming with Asian teens and twentysomethings. On one side of the parking lot, a swanky hip-hop dance studio and a Mandarin-friendly board game club hosting a Dungeons & Dragons night each attracted their own particular flavor of Asian youth culture. On the other side was one of the longest lines that I’ve \u003cem>ever\u003c/em> seen queued up outside a boba shop. (The new Charlie’s Tea was running a buy-one-get-one special for its grand opening, it turns out.)\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>At around 9:15 on a recent Friday night, the entire plaza was positively swarming with Asian teens and twentysomethings. On one side of the parking lot, a swanky hip-hop dance studio and a Mandarin-friendly board game club hosting a Dungeons & Dragons night each attracted their own particular flavor of Asian youth culture. On the other side was one of the longest lines that I’ve \u003cem>ever\u003c/em> seen queued up outside a boba shop. (The new Charlie’s Tea was running a buy-one-get-one special for its grand opening, it turns out.)\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We’d come in search of a late-night Chinese feast, but what we found wasn’t just one solitary restaurant that happened to stay open late. Instead, the whole shopping center buzzed with youthful energy and excitement. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We’d come in search of a late-night Chinese feast, but what we found wasn’t just one solitary restaurant that happened to stay open late. Instead, the whole shopping center buzzed with youthful energy and excitement. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Our intended destination, Changsha Rice Noodles, aka \u003ca href=\"https://changsha-mifen.com/\">Changsha Mifen\u003c/a> (长沙米粉) — or “Jade Tea BBQ,” according to the restaurant’s only sign in English — stays open until midnight most nights, tucked away on the far end of the busy plaza. It’s part of a crop of newer, semi-mysterious Chinese restaurants in the South Bay that always seem to be in the middle of a rebrand. In Changsha’s case, it seems the folks who run Jade Tea Garden, the Cantonese banquet hall on the other side of the building, decided last fall to try their hand at Hunan-style street noodles. The two restaurants share a big kitchen in the middle — hence the confusing signage and hodgepodge menu combining two regional cuisines that don’t normally have much to do with each other. Certainly it’s the only place I know of that specializes in Hunan rice noodles \u003cem>and \u003c/em>Cantonese barbecue. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Our intended destination, Changsha Rice Noodles, aka \u003ca href=\"https://changsha-mifen.com/\">Changsha Mifen\u003c/a> (长沙米粉) — or “Jade Tea BBQ,” according to the restaurant’s only sign in English — stays open until midnight most nights, tucked away on the far end of the busy plaza. It’s part of a crop of newer, semi-mysterious Chinese restaurants in the South Bay that always seem to be in the middle of a rebrand. In Changsha’s case, it seems the folks who run Jade Tea Garden, the Cantonese banquet hall on the other side of the building, decided last fall to try their hand at Hunan-style street noodles. The two restaurants share a big kitchen in the middle — hence the confusing signage and hodgepodge menu combining two regional cuisines that don’t normally have much to do with each other. Certainly it’s the only place I know of that specializes in Hunan rice noodles \u003cem>and \u003c/em>Cantonese barbecue. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant lit up at night. The sign reads "Jade Tea BBQ."\" class=\"wp-image-13991072\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Also known as “Jade Tea BBQ,” the restaurant is located in the Cupertino Village shopping plaza — a hugely popular late-night hangout spot for young Asian Americans.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant lit up at night. The sign reads "Jade Tea BBQ."\" class=\"wp-image-13991072\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Also known as “Jade Tea BBQ,” the restaurant is located in the Cupertino Village shopping plaza — a hugely popular late-night hangout spot for young Asian Americans.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>My suggestion? They may want to consider renaming the restaurant “Jade Duck House,” because the duck is the one must-order dish — the thing that stands out as soon as you walk in the door. In back, dozens of the birds dangled from metal hooks, some already roasted to a gorgeously well-burnished golden brown. Many more hung in various stages of an air-drying process calibrated to yield the crispiest possible skin. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>My suggestion? They may want to consider renaming the restaurant “Jade Duck House,” because the duck is the one must-order dish — the thing that stands out as soon as you walk in the door. In back, dozens of the birds dangled from metal hooks, some already roasted to a gorgeously well-burnished golden brown. Many more hung in various stages of an air-drying process calibrated to yield the crispiest possible skin. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>During our visit, Changsha was running an incredible special — $15 for half a “Guangzhou roast duck” (discounted from $22). This was some of the tastiest Cantonese-style roast duck I’ve had anywhere in the United States. The skin was outrageously crispy without being greasy; the layer of flavorful fat had rendered down to soft, melty nubs. The meat itself? Impossibly tender and juicy. On the plate, a nice little “jus” of sweet soy sauce mixed with the duck’s fatty drippings made for a heavenly dipping sauce.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>During our visit, Changsha was running an incredible special — $15 for half a “Guangzhou roast duck” (discounted from $22). This was some of the tastiest Cantonese-style roast duck I’ve had anywhere in the United States. The skin was outrageously crispy without being greasy; the layer of flavorful fat had rendered down to soft, melty nubs. The meat itself? Impossibly tender and juicy. On the plate, a nice little “jus” of sweet soy sauce mixed with the duck’s fatty drippings made for a heavenly dipping sauce.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The duck is so good, all you really need to add is a bowl of white rice to assemble a satisfying meal. But the restaurant’s other specialty — rice noodles prepared in the style associated with Changsha, Hunan’s capital city — is also worth trying. These come in a variety of both soupy and dry versions. We thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant’s solid, flavorful take on beef noodle soup, which came topped with mustard greens and a scattering of raw chopped garlic. A dry version topped with scrambled eggs, pickled mustard stems and chopped chilies had its own homey, rustic kind of charm. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The duck is so good, all you really need to add is a bowl of white rice to assemble a satisfying meal. But the restaurant’s other specialty — rice noodles prepared in the style associated with Changsha, Hunan’s capital city — is also worth trying. These come in a variety of both soupy and dry versions. We thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant’s solid, flavorful take on beef noodle soup, which came topped with mustard greens and a scattering of raw chopped garlic. A dry version topped with scrambled eggs, pickled mustard stems and chopped chilies had its own homey, rustic kind of charm. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In both dishes, the rice noodles themselves were the most memorable component: round and white like spaghetti and cooked just shy of soggy, but with a pleasant, chewy bite in the center. They were very, very slurpable.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In both dishes, the rice noodles themselves were the most memorable component: round and white like spaghetti and cooked just shy of soggy, but with a pleasant, chewy bite in the center. They were very, very slurpable.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Really, though, everything we ordered was incredibly tasty — the bright and vinegary cucumber salad; the big, fleshy grilled oysters; the fried black stinky tofu, which had a delightfully squishy texture that helped soak up all the juices from the accompanying mala sauce. If there’s any running theme to the menu, it’s that the kitchen uses a metric ton of raw garlic, chopping it up small or into big chunks, tossing it willy-nilly, it feels like, into almost every dish. We loved it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Really, though, everything we ordered was incredibly tasty — the bright and vinegary cucumber salad; the big, fleshy grilled oysters; the fried black stinky tofu, which had a delightfully squishy texture that helped soak up all the juices from the accompanying mala sauce. If there’s any running theme to the menu, it’s that the kitchen uses a metric ton of raw garlic, chopping it up small or into big chunks, tossing it willy-nilly, it feels like, into almost every dish. We loved it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Changsha Rice Noodles is one of those spots where you order via QR code, and the service is brusque and impersonal if not actively unfriendly. But the food itself is \u003cem>full\u003c/em> of soul. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Changsha Rice Noodles is one of those spots where you order via QR code, and the service is brusque and impersonal if not actively unfriendly. But the food itself is \u003cem>full\u003c/em> of soul. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And based on the jam-packed dining room we encountered, it’s clear they’ve struck on a winning combination. Even well past 10 p.m., the restaurant felt every bit as busy and rambunctious as any of the other Asian hangout spots in Cupertino Village. There were families with kids out past their bedtime. Lovey-dovey Gen Z couples doing that cutesy thing you see young couples do in Asia, sitting next to each other on the same side of the table even though they’re only a party of two. As far as we could tell, everyone was Chinese.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And based on the jam-packed dining room we encountered, it’s clear they’ve struck on a winning combination. Even well past 10 p.m., the restaurant felt every bit as busy and rambunctious as any of the other Asian hangout spots in Cupertino Village. There were families with kids out past their bedtime. Lovey-dovey Gen Z couples doing that cutesy thing you see young couples do in Asia, sitting next to each other on the same side of the table even though they’re only a party of two. As far as we could tell, everyone was Chinese.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Of course, everyone had ordered the duck. And, just like us, they all cleaned their plates.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/changshamifen/\">\u003cem>Changsha Rice Noodles\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Monday to Saturday 11 a.m.–2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.–midnight, and Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4:30–9 p.m. at 10911 N. Wolfe Rd. Ste. B (in the Cupertino Village shopping plaza).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/changshamifen/\">\u003cem>Changsha Rice Noodles\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Monday to Saturday 11 a.m.–2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.–midnight, and Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4:30–9 p.m. at 10911 N. Wolfe Rd. Ste. B (in the Cupertino Village shopping plaza).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Chinese roast duck and rice noodles.\" class=\"wp-image-13991073\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/Noodles1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">At Changshan Rice Noodles, the star of the menu is the Cantonese-style roast duck. The Cupertino restaurant is open until midnight most nights. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’ve ever wondered where all the young Asian Americans in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/cupertino\">Cupertino\u003c/a> hang out late at night, all you need to do is visit the Cupertino Village shopping plaza. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At around 9:15 on a recent Friday night, the entire plaza was positively swarming with Asian teens and twentysomethings. On one side of the parking lot, a swanky hip-hop dance studio and a Mandarin-friendly board game club hosting a Dungeons & Dragons night each attracted their own particular flavor of Asian youth culture. On the other side was one of the longest lines that I’ve \u003cem>ever\u003c/em> seen queued up outside a boba shop. (The new Charlie’s Tea was running a buy-one-get-one special for its grand opening, it turns out.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We’d come in search of a late-night Chinese feast, but what we found wasn’t just one solitary restaurant that happened to stay open late. Instead, the whole shopping center buzzed with youthful energy and excitement. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Our intended destination, Changsha Rice Noodles, aka \u003ca href=\"https://changsha-mifen.com/\">Changsha Mifen\u003c/a> (长沙米粉) — or “Jade Tea BBQ,” according to the restaurant’s only sign in English — stays open until midnight most nights, tucked away on the far end of the busy plaza. It’s part of a crop of newer, semi-mysterious Chinese restaurants in the South Bay that always seem to be in the middle of a rebrand. In Changsha’s case, it seems the folks who run Jade Tea Garden, the Cantonese banquet hall on the other side of the building, decided last fall to try their hand at Hunan-style street noodles. The two restaurants share a big kitchen in the middle — hence the confusing signage and hodgepodge menu combining two regional cuisines that don’t normally have much to do with each other. Certainly it’s the only place I know of that specializes in Hunan rice noodles \u003cem>and \u003c/em>Cantonese barbecue. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2.jpg\" alt='Illustration: Exterior of a restaurant lit up at night. The sign reads \"Jade Tea BBQ.\"' class=\"wp-image-13991072\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/noodles2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Also known as “Jade Tea BBQ,” the restaurant is located in the Cupertino Village shopping plaza — a hugely popular late-night hangout spot for young Asian Americans. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>My suggestion? They may want to consider renaming the restaurant “Jade Duck House,” because the duck is the one must-order dish — the thing that stands out as soon as you walk in the door. In back, dozens of the birds dangled from metal hooks, some already roasted to a gorgeously well-burnished golden brown. Many more hung in various stages of an air-drying process calibrated to yield the crispiest possible skin. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During our visit, Changsha was running an incredible special — $15 for half a “Guangzhou roast duck” (discounted from $22). This was some of the tastiest Cantonese-style roast duck I’ve had anywhere in the United States. The skin was outrageously crispy without being greasy; the layer of flavorful fat had rendered down to soft, melty nubs. The meat itself? Impossibly tender and juicy. On the plate, a nice little “jus” of sweet soy sauce mixed with the duck’s fatty drippings made for a heavenly dipping sauce.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The duck is so good, all you really need to add is a bowl of white rice to assemble a satisfying meal. But the restaurant’s other specialty — rice noodles prepared in the style associated with Changsha, Hunan’s capital city — is also worth trying. These come in a variety of both soupy and dry versions. We thoroughly enjoyed the restaurant’s solid, flavorful take on beef noodle soup, which came topped with mustard greens and a scattering of raw chopped garlic. A dry version topped with scrambled eggs, pickled mustard stems and chopped chilies had its own homey, rustic kind of charm. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In both dishes, the rice noodles themselves were the most memorable component: round and white like spaghetti and cooked just shy of soggy, but with a pleasant, chewy bite in the center. They were very, very slurpable.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Really, though, everything we ordered was incredibly tasty — the bright and vinegary cucumber salad; the big, fleshy grilled oysters; the fried black stinky tofu, which had a delightfully squishy texture that helped soak up all the juices from the accompanying mala sauce. If there’s any running theme to the menu, it’s that the kitchen uses a metric ton of raw garlic, chopping it up small or into big chunks, tossing it willy-nilly, it feels like, into almost every dish. We loved it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Changsha Rice Noodles is one of those spots where you order via QR code, and the service is brusque and impersonal if not actively unfriendly. But the food itself is \u003cem>full\u003c/em> of soul. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And based on the jam-packed dining room we encountered, it’s clear they’ve struck on a winning combination. Even well past 10 p.m., the restaurant felt every bit as busy and rambunctious as any of the other Asian hangout spots in Cupertino Village. There were families with kids out past their bedtime. Lovey-dovey Gen Z couples doing that cutesy thing you see young couples do in Asia, sitting next to each other on the same side of the table even though they’re only a party of two. As far as we could tell, everyone was Chinese.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Of course, everyone had ordered the duck. And, just like us, they all cleaned their plates.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/changshamifen/\">\u003cem>Changsha Rice Noodles\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Monday to Saturday 11 a.m.–2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.–midnight, and Sunday 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 4:30–9 p.m. at 10911 N. Wolfe Rd. Ste. B (in the Cupertino Village shopping plaza).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "sunnyvale-indian-ice-cream-pints-of-joy-late-night",
"title": "The Exuberant Joy of an Indian Ice Cream Shop at 11 PM",
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"content": "\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eagerly eating many varieties of ice cream.\" class=\"wp-image-13990722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Pints of Joy is known for its wide selection of Indian-inspired ice cream flavors. The original Sunnyvale location stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The line outside the Indian \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/ice-cream\">ice cream\u003c/a> shop is, in a word, outrageous. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sandwiched between a dental office and an injection clinic in an anonymous Sunnyvale plaza, \u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/\">Pints of Joy\u003c/a> doesn’t, at first glance, \u003cem>look\u003c/em> like it’d be the site of an exuberant after-hours party. And yet: There are at least 15 or 20 customers ahead of us in line when we pull up to the scoop shop at a quarter past 10 on a recent Friday night — and easily another 30 ice cream eaters seated inside, or at the handful of tables on the string light–bedecked courtyard, or just sprawled out on the decorative planter boxes in front. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Almost everyone appears to be South Asian. And because a good chunk of the crowd has come in big, boisterous groups of five or six, the place pulses with the electricity of happy late-night conversation. At one outdoor table, a multigenerational family — Boomer grandparents, Gen X kids, Gen Z grandkids — teases each other over waffle cones. Inside, a table of eight bespectacled men in their 20s gesticulate vigorously with their hands, in the thick of some lively discussion. (Speaking as two glasses-wearing Asians, we never felt more at home among our people than at this Sunnyvale ice cream shop.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove.jpg\" alt='Illustration: An ice cream shop lit up at night, with a long line of customers waiting outside. The sign reads, \"Pints of Joy.\"' class=\"wp-image-13990725\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Shortly before closing on a Friday night, the line outside the shop still stretched 15 or 20 people deep. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The reason for Pints of Joy’s popularity isn’t \u003cem>just\u003c/em> the convenience of being an ice cream parlor that stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends. What sets the shop apart is its lineup of Indian-inspired flavors — a breathtaking array even among the Bay Area’s small handful of other \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/139737/a-bay-area-creamery-gives-kamala-harris-its-highest-honor-an-ice-cream-flavor\">new-school South Asian ice cream\u003c/a> brands. There are flavors named after traditional, spice-laden Indian desserts like ras malai, falooda and malai kulfi. There are tropical fruits I love (mango! jackfruit!) and others I’d never heard of, like chikoo — a grainy, vaguely pear-like fruit that folks in India sometimes \u003ca href=\"https://www.whetstonemagazine.com/journal/in-india-the-chikoo-fruit-spreads-its-sweet-legacy\">add to milkshakes or turn into dehydrated chips\u003c/a>. One flavor, the \u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/collections/order-ahead/products/meetha-paan\">meetha paan\u003c/a>, even features fresh betel leaves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All told, there were nearly 30 flavors to choose from, all intriguing. For probably a third of them, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the ice cream might taste like. On a busy night like this one, when it wasn’t possible for us to take our time sampling three or four different flavors before making up our minds, the shop’s four-scoop flight ($14.99), served on a handsome wooden tray, is a nice option — especially if you’re sharing with a couple of friends. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We wound up picking more or less at random, but all of the flavors we chose were a hit. The gulab jamun flavor is a fun, inspired twist on the syrup-soaked “Indian donuts,” with chunks of the sweet dough balls mixed into the ice cream itself. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, our scooper’s top recommendation is the Biscoff cookie flavor, which features crumbled bits of the crisp, caramelly cookies (a \u003ca href=\"https://www.thestatesman.com/inspiration-hub/biscoff-in-india-the-biscuit-that-lost-its-bite-1503544174.html\">popular treat in India\u003c/a>, it turns out). This winds up being our favorite; it’s extravagantly delicious, like a bolder, more texturally interesting cookies and cream.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In addition to the audaciousness of the flavors, the other distinguishing feature of the ice cream at Pints of Joy is that it doesn’t have any eggs in it, so the scoops aren’t as dense or creamy as the ones at some of my favorite high-end creameries, like Bi-Rite or Lush Gelato. The texture is lighter here; the ice cream melts a little bit faster. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The bonus is that the eggless approach makes for flavors that are more vivid and refreshing, perfect for the shop’s dazzling palette of tropical fruits. So, for the third scoop in our flight, I loved the intense, honeyed sweetness of the Alphonso mango ice cream, made with the pulp from real Indian mangoes, aka the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13990218/indian-mango-party-san-francisco-mission\">king of fruits\u003c/a>.” And the most provocative flavor of the night was the custard apple, aka sitaphal, which includes strands of the fruit’s creamy, delicate flesh. The flavor lies somewhere between a banana and a less pungent durian. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For Indian sweets lovers who want their frozen confections to taste \u003cem>even more \u003c/em>Indian, Pints of Joy also offers a selection of ice cream desserts modeled closely after traditional Indian sweets. The maximalist gajar halwa sundae comes dusted with almonds and crushed pistachios and has a layer of sticky-sweet carrot gelatin (the “gajar halwa”) on the bottom of the bowl. The mango mastani, meanwhile, is like if you took a mango lassi and added a scoop of mango ice cream, and also scattered a handful of Tutti-Frutti candy and nuts on top. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Suffice it to say, we’re on a bit of a sugar high by the end of the night. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>All around us, though, the party rages on. Even as late as 10:45 p.m., we see children, maybe 8 or 9 years old, out past their bedtime, getting in line with their parents. The very last customer is a young South Asian woman in pajamas who sneaks in the door right as the store is closing up shop and walks out a few minutes later holding two pints in a plastic bag. She’s on the phone, probably letting friends or family know that her late-night mission was a success. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By this point, it’s well past 11 o’clock, and Pints of Joy has technically closed. But even halfway across the parking lot, we still hear the echoes of everyone’s happy chatter.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pintsofjoyicecream/\">\u003cem>Pints of Joy\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday noon to 10 p.m. at 717 E. El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. The shop also has locations in \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/pages/fremont\">\u003cem>Fremont\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/pages/best-ice-cream-parlour-in-palo-alto\">\u003cem>Palo Alto\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> (at Rick’s Ice Cream).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eagerly eating many varieties of ice cream.\" class=\"wp-image-13990722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Pints of Joy is known for its wide selection of Indian-inspired ice cream flavors. The original Sunnyvale location stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Sandwiched between a dental office and an injection clinic in an anonymous Sunnyvale plaza, \u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/\">Pints of Joy\u003c/a> doesn’t, at first glance, \u003cem>look\u003c/em> like it’d be the site of an exuberant after-hours party. And yet: There are at least 15 or 20 customers ahead of us in line when we pull up to the scoop shop at a quarter past 10 on a recent Friday night — and easily another 30 ice cream eaters seated inside, or at the handful of tables on the string light–bedecked courtyard, or just sprawled out on the decorative planter boxes in front. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Sandwiched between a dental office and an injection clinic in an anonymous Sunnyvale plaza, \u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/\">Pints of Joy\u003c/a> doesn’t, at first glance, \u003cem>look\u003c/em> like it’d be the site of an exuberant after-hours party. And yet: There are at least 15 or 20 customers ahead of us in line when we pull up to the scoop shop at a quarter past 10 on a recent Friday night — and easily another 30 ice cream eaters seated inside, or at the handful of tables on the string light–bedecked courtyard, or just sprawled out on the decorative planter boxes in front. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Almost everyone appears to be South Asian. And because a good chunk of the crowd has come in big, boisterous groups of five or six, the place pulses with the electricity of happy late-night conversation. At one outdoor table, a multigenerational family — Boomer grandparents, Gen X kids, Gen Z grandkids — teases each other over waffle cones. Inside, a table of eight bespectacled men in their 20s gesticulate vigorously with their hands, in the thick of some lively discussion. (Speaking as two glasses-wearing Asians, we never felt more at home among our people than at this Sunnyvale ice cream shop.)\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Almost everyone appears to be South Asian. And because a good chunk of the crowd has come in big, boisterous groups of five or six, the place pulses with the electricity of happy late-night conversation. At one outdoor table, a multigenerational family — Boomer grandparents, Gen X kids, Gen Z grandkids — teases each other over waffle cones. Inside, a table of eight bespectacled men in their 20s gesticulate vigorously with their hands, in the thick of some lively discussion. (Speaking as two glasses-wearing Asians, we never felt more at home among our people than at this Sunnyvale ice cream shop.)\u003c/p>\n"
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"srcset": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-600x600.jpg 600w",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: An ice cream shop lit up at night, with a long line of customers waiting outside. The sign reads, "Pints of Joy."\" class=\"wp-image-13990725\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Shortly before closing on a Friday night, the line outside the shop still stretched 15 or 20 people deep.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: An ice cream shop lit up at night, with a long line of customers waiting outside. The sign reads, "Pints of Joy."\" class=\"wp-image-13990725\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Shortly before closing on a Friday night, the line outside the shop still stretched 15 or 20 people deep.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The reason for Pints of Joy’s popularity isn’t \u003cem>just\u003c/em> the convenience of being an ice cream parlor that stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends. What sets the shop apart is its lineup of Indian-inspired flavors — a breathtaking array even among the Bay Area’s small handful of other \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/139737/a-bay-area-creamery-gives-kamala-harris-its-highest-honor-an-ice-cream-flavor\">new-school South Asian ice cream\u003c/a> brands. There are flavors named after traditional, spice-laden Indian desserts like ras malai, falooda and malai kulfi. There are tropical fruits I love (mango! jackfruit!) and others I’d never heard of, like chikoo — a grainy, vaguely pear-like fruit that folks in India sometimes \u003ca href=\"https://www.whetstonemagazine.com/journal/in-india-the-chikoo-fruit-spreads-its-sweet-legacy\">add to milkshakes or turn into dehydrated chips\u003c/a>. One flavor, the \u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/collections/order-ahead/products/meetha-paan\">meetha paan\u003c/a>, even features fresh betel leaves. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The reason for Pints of Joy’s popularity isn’t \u003cem>just\u003c/em> the convenience of being an ice cream parlor that stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends. What sets the shop apart is its lineup of Indian-inspired flavors — a breathtaking array even among the Bay Area’s small handful of other \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/139737/a-bay-area-creamery-gives-kamala-harris-its-highest-honor-an-ice-cream-flavor\">new-school South Asian ice cream\u003c/a> brands. There are flavors named after traditional, spice-laden Indian desserts like ras malai, falooda and malai kulfi. There are tropical fruits I love (mango! jackfruit!) and others I’d never heard of, like chikoo — a grainy, vaguely pear-like fruit that folks in India sometimes \u003ca href=\"https://www.whetstonemagazine.com/journal/in-india-the-chikoo-fruit-spreads-its-sweet-legacy\">add to milkshakes or turn into dehydrated chips\u003c/a>. One flavor, the \u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/collections/order-ahead/products/meetha-paan\">meetha paan\u003c/a>, even features fresh betel leaves. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>All told, there were nearly 30 flavors to choose from, all intriguing. For probably a third of them, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the ice cream might taste like. On a busy night like this one, when it wasn’t possible for us to take our time sampling three or four different flavors before making up our minds, the shop’s four-scoop flight ($14.99), served on a handsome wooden tray, is a nice option — especially if you’re sharing with a couple of friends. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>All told, there were nearly 30 flavors to choose from, all intriguing. For probably a third of them, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the ice cream might taste like. On a busy night like this one, when it wasn’t possible for us to take our time sampling three or four different flavors before making up our minds, the shop’s four-scoop flight ($14.99), served on a handsome wooden tray, is a nice option — especially if you’re sharing with a couple of friends. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We wound up picking more or less at random, but all of the flavors we chose were a hit. The gulab jamun flavor is a fun, inspired twist on the syrup-soaked “Indian donuts,” with chunks of the sweet dough balls mixed into the ice cream itself. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We wound up picking more or less at random, but all of the flavors we chose were a hit. The gulab jamun flavor is a fun, inspired twist on the syrup-soaked “Indian donuts,” with chunks of the sweet dough balls mixed into the ice cream itself. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, our scooper’s top recommendation is the Biscoff cookie flavor, which features crumbled bits of the crisp, caramelly cookies (a \u003ca href=\"https://www.thestatesman.com/inspiration-hub/biscoff-in-india-the-biscuit-that-lost-its-bite-1503544174.html\">popular treat in India\u003c/a>, it turns out). This winds up being our favorite; it’s extravagantly delicious, like a bolder, more texturally interesting cookies and cream.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, our scooper’s top recommendation is the Biscoff cookie flavor, which features crumbled bits of the crisp, caramelly cookies (a \u003ca href=\"https://www.thestatesman.com/inspiration-hub/biscoff-in-india-the-biscuit-that-lost-its-bite-1503544174.html\">popular treat in India\u003c/a>, it turns out). This winds up being our favorite; it’s extravagantly delicious, like a bolder, more texturally interesting cookies and cream.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In addition to the audaciousness of the flavors, the other distinguishing feature of the ice cream at Pints of Joy is that it doesn’t have any eggs in it, so the scoops aren’t as dense or creamy as the ones at some of my favorite high-end creameries, like Bi-Rite or Lush Gelato. The texture is lighter here; the ice cream melts a little bit faster. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In addition to the audaciousness of the flavors, the other distinguishing feature of the ice cream at Pints of Joy is that it doesn’t have any eggs in it, so the scoops aren’t as dense or creamy as the ones at some of my favorite high-end creameries, like Bi-Rite or Lush Gelato. The texture is lighter here; the ice cream melts a little bit faster. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The bonus is that the eggless approach makes for flavors that are more vivid and refreshing, perfect for the shop’s dazzling palette of tropical fruits. So, for the third scoop in our flight, I loved the intense, honeyed sweetness of the Alphonso mango ice cream, made with the pulp from real Indian mangoes, aka the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13990218/indian-mango-party-san-francisco-mission\">king of fruits\u003c/a>.” And the most provocative flavor of the night was the custard apple, aka sitaphal, which includes strands of the fruit’s creamy, delicate flesh. The flavor lies somewhere between a banana and a less pungent durian. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The bonus is that the eggless approach makes for flavors that are more vivid and refreshing, perfect for the shop’s dazzling palette of tropical fruits. So, for the third scoop in our flight, I loved the intense, honeyed sweetness of the Alphonso mango ice cream, made with the pulp from real Indian mangoes, aka the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13990218/indian-mango-party-san-francisco-mission\">king of fruits\u003c/a>.” And the most provocative flavor of the night was the custard apple, aka sitaphal, which includes strands of the fruit’s creamy, delicate flesh. The flavor lies somewhere between a banana and a less pungent durian. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>For Indian sweets lovers who want their frozen confections to taste \u003cem>even more \u003c/em>Indian, Pints of Joy also offers a selection of ice cream desserts modeled closely after traditional Indian sweets. The maximalist gajar halwa sundae comes dusted with almonds and crushed pistachios and has a layer of sticky-sweet carrot gelatin (the “gajar halwa”) on the bottom of the bowl. The mango mastani, meanwhile, is like if you took a mango lassi and added a scoop of mango ice cream, and also scattered a handful of Tutti-Frutti candy and nuts on top. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>For Indian sweets lovers who want their frozen confections to taste \u003cem>even more \u003c/em>Indian, Pints of Joy also offers a selection of ice cream desserts modeled closely after traditional Indian sweets. The maximalist gajar halwa sundae comes dusted with almonds and crushed pistachios and has a layer of sticky-sweet carrot gelatin (the “gajar halwa”) on the bottom of the bowl. The mango mastani, meanwhile, is like if you took a mango lassi and added a scoop of mango ice cream, and also scattered a handful of Tutti-Frutti candy and nuts on top. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Suffice it to say, we’re on a bit of a sugar high by the end of the night. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Suffice it to say, we’re on a bit of a sugar high by the end of the night. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>All around us, though, the party rages on. Even as late as 10:45 p.m., we see children, maybe 8 or 9 years old, out past their bedtime, getting in line with their parents. The very last customer is a young South Asian woman in pajamas who sneaks in the door right as the store is closing up shop and walks out a few minutes later holding two pints in a plastic bag. She’s on the phone, probably letting friends or family know that her late-night mission was a success. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>All around us, though, the party rages on. Even as late as 10:45 p.m., we see children, maybe 8 or 9 years old, out past their bedtime, getting in line with their parents. The very last customer is a young South Asian woman in pajamas who sneaks in the door right as the store is closing up shop and walks out a few minutes later holding two pints in a plastic bag. She’s on the phone, probably letting friends or family know that her late-night mission was a success. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>By this point, it’s well past 11 o’clock, and Pints of Joy has technically closed. But even halfway across the parking lot, we still hear the echoes of everyone’s happy chatter.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>By this point, it’s well past 11 o’clock, and Pints of Joy has technically closed. But even halfway across the parking lot, we still hear the echoes of everyone’s happy chatter.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pintsofjoyicecream/\">\u003cem>Pints of Joy\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday noon to 10 p.m. at 717 E. El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. The shop also has locations in \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/pages/fremont\">\u003cem>Fremont\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/pages/best-ice-cream-parlour-in-palo-alto\">\u003cem>Palo Alto\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> (at Rick’s Ice Cream).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pintsofjoyicecream/\">\u003cem>Pints of Joy\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday noon to 10 p.m. at 717 E. El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. The shop also has locations in \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/pages/fremont\">\u003cem>Fremont\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/pages/best-ice-cream-parlour-in-palo-alto\">\u003cem>Palo Alto\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> (at Rick’s Ice Cream).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "Pints of Joy is Sunnyvale’s sweetest late-night party.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men eagerly eating many varieties of ice cream.\" class=\"wp-image-13990722\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Pints of Joy is known for its wide selection of Indian-inspired ice cream flavors. The original Sunnyvale location stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The line outside the Indian \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/ice-cream\">ice cream\u003c/a> shop is, in a word, outrageous. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sandwiched between a dental office and an injection clinic in an anonymous Sunnyvale plaza, \u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/\">Pints of Joy\u003c/a> doesn’t, at first glance, \u003cem>look\u003c/em> like it’d be the site of an exuberant after-hours party. And yet: There are at least 15 or 20 customers ahead of us in line when we pull up to the scoop shop at a quarter past 10 on a recent Friday night — and easily another 30 ice cream eaters seated inside, or at the handful of tables on the string light–bedecked courtyard, or just sprawled out on the decorative planter boxes in front. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Almost everyone appears to be South Asian. And because a good chunk of the crowd has come in big, boisterous groups of five or six, the place pulses with the electricity of happy late-night conversation. At one outdoor table, a multigenerational family — Boomer grandparents, Gen X kids, Gen Z grandkids — teases each other over waffle cones. Inside, a table of eight bespectacled men in their 20s gesticulate vigorously with their hands, in the thick of some lively discussion. (Speaking as two glasses-wearing Asians, we never felt more at home among our people than at this Sunnyvale ice cream shop.)\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove.jpg\" alt='Illustration: An ice cream shop lit up at night, with a long line of customers waiting outside. The sign reads, \"Pints of Joy.\"' class=\"wp-image-13990725\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/06/PintsOfLove-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Shortly before closing on a Friday night, the line outside the shop still stretched 15 or 20 people deep. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The reason for Pints of Joy’s popularity isn’t \u003cem>just\u003c/em> the convenience of being an ice cream parlor that stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends. What sets the shop apart is its lineup of Indian-inspired flavors — a breathtaking array even among the Bay Area’s small handful of other \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/139737/a-bay-area-creamery-gives-kamala-harris-its-highest-honor-an-ice-cream-flavor\">new-school South Asian ice cream\u003c/a> brands. There are flavors named after traditional, spice-laden Indian desserts like ras malai, falooda and malai kulfi. There are tropical fruits I love (mango! jackfruit!) and others I’d never heard of, like chikoo — a grainy, vaguely pear-like fruit that folks in India sometimes \u003ca href=\"https://www.whetstonemagazine.com/journal/in-india-the-chikoo-fruit-spreads-its-sweet-legacy\">add to milkshakes or turn into dehydrated chips\u003c/a>. One flavor, the \u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/collections/order-ahead/products/meetha-paan\">meetha paan\u003c/a>, even features fresh betel leaves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All told, there were nearly 30 flavors to choose from, all intriguing. For probably a third of them, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the ice cream might taste like. On a busy night like this one, when it wasn’t possible for us to take our time sampling three or four different flavors before making up our minds, the shop’s four-scoop flight ($14.99), served on a handsome wooden tray, is a nice option — especially if you’re sharing with a couple of friends. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We wound up picking more or less at random, but all of the flavors we chose were a hit. The gulab jamun flavor is a fun, inspired twist on the syrup-soaked “Indian donuts,” with chunks of the sweet dough balls mixed into the ice cream itself. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, our scooper’s top recommendation is the Biscoff cookie flavor, which features crumbled bits of the crisp, caramelly cookies (a \u003ca href=\"https://www.thestatesman.com/inspiration-hub/biscoff-in-india-the-biscuit-that-lost-its-bite-1503544174.html\">popular treat in India\u003c/a>, it turns out). This winds up being our favorite; it’s extravagantly delicious, like a bolder, more texturally interesting cookies and cream.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In addition to the audaciousness of the flavors, the other distinguishing feature of the ice cream at Pints of Joy is that it doesn’t have any eggs in it, so the scoops aren’t as dense or creamy as the ones at some of my favorite high-end creameries, like Bi-Rite or Lush Gelato. The texture is lighter here; the ice cream melts a little bit faster. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The bonus is that the eggless approach makes for flavors that are more vivid and refreshing, perfect for the shop’s dazzling palette of tropical fruits. So, for the third scoop in our flight, I loved the intense, honeyed sweetness of the Alphonso mango ice cream, made with the pulp from real Indian mangoes, aka the “\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13990218/indian-mango-party-san-francisco-mission\">king of fruits\u003c/a>.” And the most provocative flavor of the night was the custard apple, aka sitaphal, which includes strands of the fruit’s creamy, delicate flesh. The flavor lies somewhere between a banana and a less pungent durian. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For Indian sweets lovers who want their frozen confections to taste \u003cem>even more \u003c/em>Indian, Pints of Joy also offers a selection of ice cream desserts modeled closely after traditional Indian sweets. The maximalist gajar halwa sundae comes dusted with almonds and crushed pistachios and has a layer of sticky-sweet carrot gelatin (the “gajar halwa”) on the bottom of the bowl. The mango mastani, meanwhile, is like if you took a mango lassi and added a scoop of mango ice cream, and also scattered a handful of Tutti-Frutti candy and nuts on top. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Suffice it to say, we’re on a bit of a sugar high by the end of the night. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>All around us, though, the party rages on. Even as late as 10:45 p.m., we see children, maybe 8 or 9 years old, out past their bedtime, getting in line with their parents. The very last customer is a young South Asian woman in pajamas who sneaks in the door right as the store is closing up shop and walks out a few minutes later holding two pints in a plastic bag. She’s on the phone, probably letting friends or family know that her late-night mission was a success. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By this point, it’s well past 11 o’clock, and Pints of Joy has technically closed. But even halfway across the parking lot, we still hear the echoes of everyone’s happy chatter.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/pintsofjoyicecream/\">\u003cem>Pints of Joy\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. and Sunday noon to 10 p.m. at 717 E. El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. The shop also has locations in \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/pages/fremont\">\u003cem>Fremont\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://pintsofjoy.com/pages/best-ice-cream-parlour-in-palo-alto\">\u003cem>Palo Alto\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> (at Rick’s Ice Cream).\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "This Late-Night Filipino Diner in Downtown Oakland Is Hidden in Plain Sight",
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"headTitle": "This Late-Night Filipino Diner in Downtown Oakland Is Hidden in Plain Sight | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devouring a shrimp lumpia while seating a diner counter. There's a huge spread of Filipino food in front of him.\" class=\"wp-image-13990278\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In downtown Oakland, Tita Becca’s serves some of the tastiest homestyle Filipino food in the Bay Area — until as late as 2 a.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tita+Becca's/@37.8050666,-122.269489,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x808f810010cb4c49:0x6216a723cfa2d8bc!8m2!3d37.8050666!4d-122.269489!16s%2Fg%2F11nc868hz3!18m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUyNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D\">Tita Becca’s\u003c/a> is the kind of restaurant that almost doesn’t seem real. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What do you \u003cem>mean\u003c/em> there’s an old-fashioned \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/filipino\">Filipino\u003c/a> diner right smack in the middle of downtown Oakland where you can sit on a ’50s-style bar stool eating some of the most delicious pork sisig and kare-kare you’ve ever tasted — as late as 2 o’clock in the morning, no less? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Even as we savored each bite, it felt like some kind of fever dream. At the time of our visit, a couple weeks ago, the restaurant had no \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/tita-beccas-oakland\">Yelp reviews\u003c/a> and barely any \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/titabeccas/\">social media presence\u003c/a>. The lone “Tita Becca’s” sign painted on the wall outside gave no indication of what kind of food we might find inside (though a Pinoy would have recognized the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Philippines\">bright yellow sun\u003c/a> in the logo). The only reason we’d heard of the place at all was because of a kind reader who emailed us a glowing report.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When we pulled up to the restaurant at a little before 10 p.m. on a recent Friday, an older Filipino dude in a Warriors jersey and flip-flops was posted up outside, nursing the last few sips of a bottle of beer. Inside, the dining room was set up like the kind of old-timey diner you might see painted on a picture postcard: the long counter, the vintage stools, the nostalgic red and turquoise color scheme. The restaurant was almost entirely empty — just one young Filipino guy sitting at the counter, ladling pork sinigang over a bowl of white rice. The R&B playlist blaring from the speakers consisted almost entirely of sultry Mariah Carey jams. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already, the place passed the vibe check. A perfect hundred out of a hundred points.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What you might expect to find at a restaurant that looks like this are three-egg omelettes and big stacks of pancakes with a pile of hash browns on the side. (We found out later that until late last year, the space had been home to a more classic American greasy spoon called Leo’s Diner.) Instead, Tita Becca’s serves a full — and surprisingly extensive — menu of homestyle Filipino dishes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a low-slung diner lit up at night. The sign painted on the wall reads "Tita Becca's," with a yellow sun logo above.\" class=\"wp-image-13990281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The restaurant is set up like a classic all-American diner — except that all of the food is Filipino. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Chatting with the staff a bit, we learned that the restaurant is a family enterprise through and through. Mark, a gregarious middle-aged Filipino American with a wispy beard, is the main owner and public face of the business. His adult son was working up front, behind the counter, taking orders. And though she only popped her head out of the kitchen once or twice, we could see that Mark’s mother, \u003cem>the\u003c/em> Tita Becca herself, was the real heart and soul of the restaurant — the one whose recipes made us start to feel homesick and nostalgic for her food even before we’d finished eating.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>To put it plainly: Everything was mind-blowingly delicious. We started with an order of shrimp lumpia — whole large shrimp, their tails still attached, encased by the wrapper and deep fried until they were super-crunchy and almost too hot to eat. These were deeply satisfying, with or without the obligatory sweet chili dipping sauce. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the Pampanga-style pork sisig was a revelation of textures and flavors. There was the crispiness of fried pork skin, along with the soft fat and the meaty, gelatinous bits. There was the heat of the chiles, the crisp tanginess of red onions and also an earthy undercurrent from the bits of chicken liver that they’d mixed into the sauce. Most of all, there was this wonderful brightness, from calamansi and lemon juice, that cut into the richness of the dish. Ladling the sisig over rice, we were able to keep eating it and eating it without ever getting tired of the taste.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Later, the owner confided that this wasn’t even the full version of the dish. They’d run out of the pig’s head meats — the ears, cheeks and so forth — that usually go into it, so they made a cobbled-together version using chopped up lechon.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If we’d known that ahead of time, we probably wouldn’t have also ordered the lechon kawali, the beloved Filipino dish of fried skin-on pork belly. We didn’t exactly have anything to complain about, though — it was one of the moistest and most jigglingly tender versions we’ve had in the Bay, with some of the crunchiest skin. The fatty pork was especially nice with either of the vinegar dips the shop offers, one spiked with chiles and the other with both chiles and chopped tomatoes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And perhaps everyone knows by now that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13956683/late-night-filipino-food-24-hour-cafe-colma-lucky-chances\">I can’t ever \u003cem>not \u003c/em>order oxtail kare-kare\u003c/a> if I see it on a menu. The peanut sauce in Tita Becca’s version was rich and velvety; the eggplant, bok choy and string beans were all cooked to exactly the right texture. And while the oxtails were small, there were \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em> of them — the meat was so tender, and it was so very satisfying to suck on the bones.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Most impressive of all? Tita Becca’s makes its own bagoong (fermented shrimp paste), the salty-funky condiment traditionally served with kare-kare, in house, so that it was less aggressively salty than the jarred kind, with the same pungent umami punch. We kept stirring it in, and the dish kept tasting better and better. We could’ve eaten infinite amounts of rice.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the end, our only regret was that we only had the stomach space to try four dishes — that we’d missed out on the other homey stews like the sinigang and the Bicol Express. How could any of it not have been delicious? Someone’s mom was cooking for us back there, probably the best home cook we knew in our circle of friends. That was the feeling we got, anyway.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By the time we finished our meal, only a few more customers had straggled in through the door. A millennial Filipina who sat at the restaurant’s one larger table and ordered a family-style meal for her group of non-Filipino friends. A couple of takeout customers bringing food over to the queer bar next door. It really felt like we had stumbled on a secret hiding in plain sight. And after we walked out at the end of the night, I started to worry, sincerely, that maybe we’d dreamed the whole thing. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/titabeccas/\">\u003cem>Tita Becca’s\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Tuesday to Thursday 5–9 p.m., Friday 5 p.m.–2 a.m., Saturday noon–2 a.m. and Sunday noon to 6 p.m. at 400 15th St. in Oakland.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devouring a shrimp lumpia while seating a diner counter. There's a huge spread of Filipino food in front of him.\" class=\"wp-image-13990278\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In downtown Oakland, Tita Becca’s serves some of the tastiest homestyle Filipino food in the Bay Area — until as late as 2 a.m. on weekends.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tita+Becca's/@37.8050666,-122.269489,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x808f810010cb4c49:0x6216a723cfa2d8bc!8m2!3d37.8050666!4d-122.269489!16s%2Fg%2F11nc868hz3!18m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUyNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D\">Tita Becca’s\u003c/a> is the kind of restaurant that almost doesn’t seem real. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tita+Becca's/@37.8050666,-122.269489,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x808f810010cb4c49:0x6216a723cfa2d8bc!8m2!3d37.8050666!4d-122.269489!16s%2Fg%2F11nc868hz3!18m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUyNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D\">Tita Becca’s\u003c/a> is the kind of restaurant that almost doesn’t seem real. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>What do you \u003cem>mean\u003c/em> there’s an old-fashioned \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/filipino\">Filipino\u003c/a> diner right smack in the middle of downtown Oakland where you can sit on a ’50s-style bar stool eating some of the most delicious pork sisig and kare-kare you’ve ever tasted — as late as 2 o’clock in the morning, no less? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>What do you \u003cem>mean\u003c/em> there’s an old-fashioned \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/filipino\">Filipino\u003c/a> diner right smack in the middle of downtown Oakland where you can sit on a ’50s-style bar stool eating some of the most delicious pork sisig and kare-kare you’ve ever tasted — as late as 2 o’clock in the morning, no less? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Even as we savored each bite, it felt like some kind of fever dream. At the time of our visit, a couple weeks ago, the restaurant had no \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/tita-beccas-oakland\">Yelp reviews\u003c/a> and barely any \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/titabeccas/\">social media presence\u003c/a>. The lone “Tita Becca’s” sign painted on the wall outside gave no indication of what kind of food we might find inside (though a Pinoy would have recognized the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Philippines\">bright yellow sun\u003c/a> in the logo). The only reason we’d heard of the place at all was because of a kind reader who emailed us a glowing report.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Even as we savored each bite, it felt like some kind of fever dream. At the time of our visit, a couple weeks ago, the restaurant had no \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/tita-beccas-oakland\">Yelp reviews\u003c/a> and barely any \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/titabeccas/\">social media presence\u003c/a>. The lone “Tita Becca’s” sign painted on the wall outside gave no indication of what kind of food we might find inside (though a Pinoy would have recognized the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Philippines\">bright yellow sun\u003c/a> in the logo). The only reason we’d heard of the place at all was because of a kind reader who emailed us a glowing report.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>When we pulled up to the restaurant at a little before 10 p.m. on a recent Friday, an older Filipino dude in a Warriors jersey and flip-flops was posted up outside, nursing the last few sips of a bottle of beer. Inside, the dining room was set up like the kind of old-timey diner you might see painted on a picture postcard: the long counter, the vintage stools, the nostalgic red and turquoise color scheme. The restaurant was almost entirely empty — just one young Filipino guy sitting at the counter, ladling pork sinigang over a bowl of white rice. The R&B playlist blaring from the speakers consisted almost entirely of sultry Mariah Carey jams. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>When we pulled up to the restaurant at a little before 10 p.m. on a recent Friday, an older Filipino dude in a Warriors jersey and flip-flops was posted up outside, nursing the last few sips of a bottle of beer. Inside, the dining room was set up like the kind of old-timey diner you might see painted on a picture postcard: the long counter, the vintage stools, the nostalgic red and turquoise color scheme. The restaurant was almost entirely empty — just one young Filipino guy sitting at the counter, ladling pork sinigang over a bowl of white rice. The R&B playlist blaring from the speakers consisted almost entirely of sultry Mariah Carey jams. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Already, the place passed the vibe check. A perfect hundred out of a hundred points.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Already, the place passed the vibe check. A perfect hundred out of a hundred points.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>What you might expect to find at a restaurant that looks like this are three-egg omelettes and big stacks of pancakes with a pile of hash browns on the side. (We found out later that until late last year, the space had been home to a more classic American greasy spoon called Leo’s Diner.) Instead, Tita Becca’s serves a full — and surprisingly extensive — menu of homestyle Filipino dishes.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>What you might expect to find at a restaurant that looks like this are three-egg omelettes and big stacks of pancakes with a pile of hash browns on the side. (We found out later that until late last year, the space had been home to a more classic American greasy spoon called Leo’s Diner.) Instead, Tita Becca’s serves a full — and surprisingly extensive — menu of homestyle Filipino dishes.\u003c/p>\n"
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"srcset": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-600x600.jpg 600w",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a low-slung diner lit up at night. The sign painted on the wall reads "Tita Becca's," with a yellow sun logo above.\" class=\"wp-image-13990281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The restaurant is set up like a classic all-American diner — except that all of the food is Filipino.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a low-slung diner lit up at night. The sign painted on the wall reads "Tita Becca's," with a yellow sun logo above.\" class=\"wp-image-13990281\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The restaurant is set up like a classic all-American diner — except that all of the food is Filipino.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Chatting with the staff a bit, we learned that the restaurant is a family enterprise through and through. Mark, a gregarious middle-aged Filipino American with a wispy beard, is the main owner and public face of the business. His adult son was working up front, behind the counter, taking orders. And though she only popped her head out of the kitchen once or twice, we could see that Mark’s mother, \u003cem>the\u003c/em> Tita Becca herself, was the real heart and soul of the restaurant — the one whose recipes made us start to feel homesick and nostalgic for her food even before we’d finished eating.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Chatting with the staff a bit, we learned that the restaurant is a family enterprise through and through. Mark, a gregarious middle-aged Filipino American with a wispy beard, is the main owner and public face of the business. His adult son was working up front, behind the counter, taking orders. And though she only popped her head out of the kitchen once or twice, we could see that Mark’s mother, \u003cem>the\u003c/em> Tita Becca herself, was the real heart and soul of the restaurant — the one whose recipes made us start to feel homesick and nostalgic for her food even before we’d finished eating.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>To put it plainly: Everything was mind-blowingly delicious. We started with an order of shrimp lumpia — whole large shrimp, their tails still attached, encased by the wrapper and deep fried until they were super-crunchy and almost too hot to eat. These were deeply satisfying, with or without the obligatory sweet chili dipping sauce. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>To put it plainly: Everything was mind-blowingly delicious. We started with an order of shrimp lumpia — whole large shrimp, their tails still attached, encased by the wrapper and deep fried until they were super-crunchy and almost too hot to eat. These were deeply satisfying, with or without the obligatory sweet chili dipping sauce. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the Pampanga-style pork sisig was a revelation of textures and flavors. There was the crispiness of fried pork skin, along with the soft fat and the meaty, gelatinous bits. There was the heat of the chiles, the crisp tanginess of red onions and also an earthy undercurrent from the bits of chicken liver that they’d mixed into the sauce. Most of all, there was this wonderful brightness, from calamansi and lemon juice, that cut into the richness of the dish. Ladling the sisig over rice, we were able to keep eating it and eating it without ever getting tired of the taste.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the Pampanga-style pork sisig was a revelation of textures and flavors. There was the crispiness of fried pork skin, along with the soft fat and the meaty, gelatinous bits. There was the heat of the chiles, the crisp tanginess of red onions and also an earthy undercurrent from the bits of chicken liver that they’d mixed into the sauce. Most of all, there was this wonderful brightness, from calamansi and lemon juice, that cut into the richness of the dish. Ladling the sisig over rice, we were able to keep eating it and eating it without ever getting tired of the taste.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Later, the owner confided that this wasn’t even the full version of the dish. They’d run out of the pig’s head meats — the ears, cheeks and so forth — that usually go into it, so they made a cobbled-together version using chopped up lechon.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Later, the owner confided that this wasn’t even the full version of the dish. They’d run out of the pig’s head meats — the ears, cheeks and so forth — that usually go into it, so they made a cobbled-together version using chopped up lechon.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If we’d known that ahead of time, we probably wouldn’t have also ordered the lechon kawali, the beloved Filipino dish of fried skin-on pork belly. We didn’t exactly have anything to complain about, though — it was one of the moistest and most jigglingly tender versions we’ve had in the Bay, with some of the crunchiest skin. The fatty pork was especially nice with either of the vinegar dips the shop offers, one spiked with chiles and the other with both chiles and chopped tomatoes. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If we’d known that ahead of time, we probably wouldn’t have also ordered the lechon kawali, the beloved Filipino dish of fried skin-on pork belly. We didn’t exactly have anything to complain about, though — it was one of the moistest and most jigglingly tender versions we’ve had in the Bay, with some of the crunchiest skin. The fatty pork was especially nice with either of the vinegar dips the shop offers, one spiked with chiles and the other with both chiles and chopped tomatoes. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And perhaps everyone knows by now that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13956683/late-night-filipino-food-24-hour-cafe-colma-lucky-chances\">I can’t ever \u003cem>not \u003c/em>order oxtail kare-kare\u003c/a> if I see it on a menu. The peanut sauce in Tita Becca’s version was rich and velvety; the eggplant, bok choy and string beans were all cooked to exactly the right texture. And while the oxtails were small, there were \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em> of them — the meat was so tender, and it was so very satisfying to suck on the bones.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And perhaps everyone knows by now that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13956683/late-night-filipino-food-24-hour-cafe-colma-lucky-chances\">I can’t ever \u003cem>not \u003c/em>order oxtail kare-kare\u003c/a> if I see it on a menu. The peanut sauce in Tita Becca’s version was rich and velvety; the eggplant, bok choy and string beans were all cooked to exactly the right texture. And while the oxtails were small, there were \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em> of them — the meat was so tender, and it was so very satisfying to suck on the bones.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Most impressive of all? Tita Becca’s makes its own bagoong (fermented shrimp paste), the salty-funky condiment traditionally served with kare-kare, in house, so that it was less aggressively salty than the jarred kind, with the same pungent umami punch. We kept stirring it in, and the dish kept tasting better and better. We could’ve eaten infinite amounts of rice.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Most impressive of all? Tita Becca’s makes its own bagoong (fermented shrimp paste), the salty-funky condiment traditionally served with kare-kare, in house, so that it was less aggressively salty than the jarred kind, with the same pungent umami punch. We kept stirring it in, and the dish kept tasting better and better. We could’ve eaten infinite amounts of rice.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In the end, our only regret was that we only had the stomach space to try four dishes — that we’d missed out on the other homey stews like the sinigang and the Bicol Express. How could any of it not have been delicious? Someone’s mom was cooking for us back there, probably the best home cook we knew in our circle of friends. That was the feeling we got, anyway.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In the end, our only regret was that we only had the stomach space to try four dishes — that we’d missed out on the other homey stews like the sinigang and the Bicol Express. How could any of it not have been delicious? Someone’s mom was cooking for us back there, probably the best home cook we knew in our circle of friends. That was the feeling we got, anyway.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>By the time we finished our meal, only a few more customers had straggled in through the door. A millennial Filipina who sat at the restaurant’s one larger table and ordered a family-style meal for her group of non-Filipino friends. A couple of takeout customers bringing food over to the queer bar next door. It really felt like we had stumbled on a secret hiding in plain sight. And after we walked out at the end of the night, I started to worry, sincerely, that maybe we’d dreamed the whole thing. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>By the time we finished our meal, only a few more customers had straggled in through the door. A millennial Filipina who sat at the restaurant’s one larger table and ordered a family-style meal for her group of non-Filipino friends. A couple of takeout customers bringing food over to the queer bar next door. It really felt like we had stumbled on a secret hiding in plain sight. And after we walked out at the end of the night, I started to worry, sincerely, that maybe we’d dreamed the whole thing. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/titabeccas/\">\u003cem>Tita Becca’s\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Tuesday to Thursday 5–9 p.m., Friday 5 p.m.–2 a.m., Saturday noon–2 a.m. and Sunday noon to 6 p.m. at 400 15th St. in Oakland.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/titabeccas/\">\u003cem>Tita Becca’s\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Tuesday to Thursday 5–9 p.m., Friday 5 p.m.–2 a.m., Saturday noon–2 a.m. and Sunday noon to 6 p.m. at 400 15th St. in Oakland.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Man devouring a shrimp lumpia while seating a diner counter. There's a huge spread of Filipino food in front of him.\" class=\"wp-image-13990278\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">In downtown Oakland, Tita Becca’s serves some of the tastiest homestyle Filipino food in the Bay Area — until as late as 2 a.m. on weekends. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003cem>The Midnight Diners\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003cem>Thien Pham\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>. 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/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.google.com/maps/place/Tita+Becca's/@37.8050666,-122.269489,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x808f810010cb4c49:0x6216a723cfa2d8bc!8m2!3d37.8050666!4d-122.269489!16s%2Fg%2F11nc868hz3!18m1!1e1?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUyNi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D\">Tita Becca’s\u003c/a> is the kind of restaurant that almost doesn’t seem real. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What do you \u003cem>mean\u003c/em> there’s an old-fashioned \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/filipino\">Filipino\u003c/a> diner right smack in the middle of downtown Oakland where you can sit on a ’50s-style bar stool eating some of the most delicious pork sisig and kare-kare you’ve ever tasted — as late as 2 o’clock in the morning, no less? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Even as we savored each bite, it felt like some kind of fever dream. At the time of our visit, a couple weeks ago, the restaurant had no \u003ca href=\"https://www.yelp.com/biz/tita-beccas-oakland\">Yelp reviews\u003c/a> and barely any \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/titabeccas/\">social media presence\u003c/a>. The lone “Tita Becca’s” sign painted on the wall outside gave no indication of what kind of food we might find inside (though a Pinoy would have recognized the \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Philippines\">bright yellow sun\u003c/a> in the logo). The only reason we’d heard of the place at all was because of a kind reader who emailed us a glowing report.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When we pulled up to the restaurant at a little before 10 p.m. on a recent Friday, an older Filipino dude in a Warriors jersey and flip-flops was posted up outside, nursing the last few sips of a bottle of beer. Inside, the dining room was set up like the kind of old-timey diner you might see painted on a picture postcard: the long counter, the vintage stools, the nostalgic red and turquoise color scheme. The restaurant was almost entirely empty — just one young Filipino guy sitting at the counter, ladling pork sinigang over a bowl of white rice. The R&B playlist blaring from the speakers consisted almost entirely of sultry Mariah Carey jams. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Already, the place passed the vibe check. A perfect hundred out of a hundred points.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What you might expect to find at a restaurant that looks like this are three-egg omelettes and big stacks of pancakes with a pile of hash browns on the side. (We found out later that until late last year, the space had been home to a more classic American greasy spoon called Leo’s Diner.) Instead, Tita Becca’s serves a full — and surprisingly extensive — menu of homestyle Filipino dishes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a low-slung diner lit up at night. The sign painted on the wall reads "Tita Becca's," with a yellow sun logo above.\" class=\"wp-image-13990281\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/TitaBeccas1-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The restaurant is set up like a classic all-American diner — except that all of the food is Filipino. (Thien Pham)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Chatting with the staff a bit, we learned that the restaurant is a family enterprise through and through. Mark, a gregarious middle-aged Filipino American with a wispy beard, is the main owner and public face of the business. His adult son was working up front, behind the counter, taking orders. And though she only popped her head out of the kitchen once or twice, we could see that Mark’s mother, \u003cem>the\u003c/em> Tita Becca herself, was the real heart and soul of the restaurant — the one whose recipes made us start to feel homesick and nostalgic for her food even before we’d finished eating.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>To put it plainly: Everything was mind-blowingly delicious. We started with an order of shrimp lumpia — whole large shrimp, their tails still attached, encased by the wrapper and deep fried until they were super-crunchy and almost too hot to eat. These were deeply satisfying, with or without the obligatory sweet chili dipping sauce. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the Pampanga-style pork sisig was a revelation of textures and flavors. There was the crispiness of fried pork skin, along with the soft fat and the meaty, gelatinous bits. There was the heat of the chiles, the crisp tanginess of red onions and also an earthy undercurrent from the bits of chicken liver that they’d mixed into the sauce. Most of all, there was this wonderful brightness, from calamansi and lemon juice, that cut into the richness of the dish. Ladling the sisig over rice, we were able to keep eating it and eating it without ever getting tired of the taste.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Later, the owner confided that this wasn’t even the full version of the dish. They’d run out of the pig’s head meats — the ears, cheeks and so forth — that usually go into it, so they made a cobbled-together version using chopped up lechon.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If we’d known that ahead of time, we probably wouldn’t have also ordered the lechon kawali, the beloved Filipino dish of fried skin-on pork belly. We didn’t exactly have anything to complain about, though — it was one of the moistest and most jigglingly tender versions we’ve had in the Bay, with some of the crunchiest skin. The fatty pork was especially nice with either of the vinegar dips the shop offers, one spiked with chiles and the other with both chiles and chopped tomatoes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And perhaps everyone knows by now that \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13956683/late-night-filipino-food-24-hour-cafe-colma-lucky-chances\">I can’t ever \u003cem>not \u003c/em>order oxtail kare-kare\u003c/a> if I see it on a menu. The peanut sauce in Tita Becca’s version was rich and velvety; the eggplant, bok choy and string beans were all cooked to exactly the right texture. And while the oxtails were small, there were \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em> of them — the meat was so tender, and it was so very satisfying to suck on the bones.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Most impressive of all? Tita Becca’s makes its own bagoong (fermented shrimp paste), the salty-funky condiment traditionally served with kare-kare, in house, so that it was less aggressively salty than the jarred kind, with the same pungent umami punch. We kept stirring it in, and the dish kept tasting better and better. We could’ve eaten infinite amounts of rice.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the end, our only regret was that we only had the stomach space to try four dishes — that we’d missed out on the other homey stews like the sinigang and the Bicol Express. How could any of it not have been delicious? Someone’s mom was cooking for us back there, probably the best home cook we knew in our circle of friends. That was the feeling we got, anyway.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By the time we finished our meal, only a few more customers had straggled in through the door. A millennial Filipina who sat at the restaurant’s one larger table and ordered a family-style meal for her group of non-Filipino friends. A couple of takeout customers bringing food over to the queer bar next door. It really felt like we had stumbled on a secret hiding in plain sight. And after we walked out at the end of the night, I started to worry, sincerely, that maybe we’d dreamed the whole thing. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003chr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\">\n\n\n\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/titabeccas/\">\u003cem>Tita Becca’s\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> is open Tuesday to Thursday 5–9 p.m., Friday 5 p.m.–2 a.m., Saturday noon–2 a.m. and Sunday noon to 6 p.m. at 400 15th St. in Oakland.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "junes-pizza-west-oakland-late-night-margherita-pepperoni-slices",
"title": "June’s Pizza Is Oakland’s Favorite Late-Night Slice Shop",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13989677\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13989677\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring pizza. There's a pile of basil leaves on the pan.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">June’s Pizza sells margherita slices — and sometimes pepperoni slices — from 9 p.m. to midnight, or until it sells out. \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>When we pull up to the unmarked \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/west-oakland\">West Oakland\u003c/a> warehouse at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, there’s already a long line out the door. It’s a big, semi-industrial building — all exposed pipes and corrugated metal. The only signage to indicate that this is a place of business is an old, spray-painted wood board propped up on the ground: “June’s Pizza,” it reads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>June’s has emerged, somewhat unexpectedly, as one of the most celebrated pizza restaurants in the Bay Area on the back of its wood-fired, decadently cheese-strewn margherita pies. The pizzeria got plenty of acclaim during its renegade, early-COVID-era days as an unpermitted (and eventually \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/Oakland-s-pandemic-pizza-sensation-June-s-has-16513631.php\">shut down\u003c/a>) shipping container pop-up. Last year, after its brick-and-mortar opened on Mandela Parkway, \u003ci>Esquire \u003c/i>even named it one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a69501755/best-new-restaurants-america-2025/\">best new restaurants\u003c/a> in the entire country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the reason we decided to make this pilgrimage now is because we heard — also somewhat unexpectedly — that the place has become one of the East Bay’s most popular late-night restaurants. Unexpected in the sense that June’s really only sells one thing between the hours of 9 p.m. and midnight: margherita pizza by the slice. That’s it. Nothing else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Would that be enough to hold our wandering eyes? We had been a bit skeptical. But by the time we finish our meal, we’re hard-pressed to think of anything \u003ci>more \u003c/i>perfect to eat at the end of a long night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>June’s has become something of a destination restaurant for out-of-town visitors. But during its late-night hours, the place feels more like a locals’ hangout. Maybe a DJ is spinning records, or maybe the restaurant’s hosting a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DL6tw4mOljf/\">listening party for a new rap album\u003c/a>. But the overall vibe is akin to a big, convivial house party hosted in someone’s high-ceilinged living room. On the night of our visit, the crowd feels quintessentially Oakland — racially diverse, skewing toward twenty- and thirtysomething artistic types. At the table next to ours, a group of chic Asian Americans in designer eyeglasses chatters happily over their marg slices and a bottle of red wine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13989679\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13989679\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: the exterior of a warehouse-like restaurant, where several customers wait in line. On the ground, a handwritten sign reads, "June's Pizza."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The buzzy West Oakland restaurant is located in an unmarked warehouse on a semi-industrial stretch of Mandela Parkway. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>June’s is proof that giving the customer \u003ci>fewer \u003c/i>choices is sometimes the smartest move. Even during non-late-night hours, the restaurant only ever sells three types of pizza: margherita, pepperoni and a limited quantity of whatever seasonal special they’ve come up with that week (say, fingerling potatoes, green garlic and ham). There are no salads, no cute little appetizers, no bread sticks, no desserts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And after 9 p.m., when June’s starts serving slices, the menu winnows down even further. Most nights, they only offer the margherita, which could scarcely be simpler — just cheese and tomato sauce with a stack of super-fresh basil leaves on the side, so you can top each slice as you please. The kitchen’s signature move is sprinkling the bejesus out of every pizza with a flurry of grated parmesan, covering the whole surface with a feathery umami dust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first bite is blistering hot, super crispy at the thin tip, and soft and melty on top. We love the interplay between the bright red sauce, salty cheese and well-blistered crust. The dough has just a hint of sourdough tang, and it puffs up and gets chewier and more flavorful as we get closer to the crust, offering different textures from bite to bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13988856,arts_13959808,arts_13987415']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>We fold our slices in half, New York–style, and dip the crusts in the restaurant’s housemade sauces — an earthy roasted garlic number and a tangy, “limited edition” wakame Caesar dressing that has a strong anchovy umami punch. (That one is so good, I bring the leftovers home to make a helluva delicious salad the next day.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One slice in, we understand perfectly now why June’s doesn’t offer a bunch of different pizzas, because this is a taste that we would never get tired of — one we could come back to week after week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tonight is our lucky night, though, because the restaurant is also selling pepperoni slices, which aren’t always available. These have an entirely different vibe, despite being built on the same base as the margherita — the pizza is much richer and more intensely flavored, and has a surprisingly spicy kick from the small, dense rounds of pepperoni.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the success of June’s is a testament to the power of doing one thing really, really well. The lack of bells and whistles also helps keep the after-hours menu relatively affordable. Slices are $5 ($6 for pepperoni), and they’re big. Most diners won’t wind up eating more than two or three in one sitting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only danger? Not long after we arrive, we overhear the chef telling a customer that they only have three balls of raw dough left. By a little after 10 o’clock, there are maybe three pizzas’ worth of slices left, and it seems quite likely that they’re going to sell out before the hour is out. So as we head out into the night, we make plans to come back soon for another late-night pizza session — but maybe not \u003ci>too \u003c/i>late, to be safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/junes_pizza/\">June’s Pizza\u003c/a> is open 4 p.m.–midnight daily at 2408 Mandela Pkwy. in Oakland. The restaurant serves slices only starting at 9 p.m. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13989677\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13989677\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring pizza. There's a pile of basil leaves on the pan.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">June’s Pizza sells margherita slices — and sometimes pepperoni slices — from 9 p.m. to midnight, or until it sells out. \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>When we pull up to the unmarked \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/west-oakland\">West Oakland\u003c/a> warehouse at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night, there’s already a long line out the door. It’s a big, semi-industrial building — all exposed pipes and corrugated metal. The only signage to indicate that this is a place of business is an old, spray-painted wood board propped up on the ground: “June’s Pizza,” it reads.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>June’s has emerged, somewhat unexpectedly, as one of the most celebrated pizza restaurants in the Bay Area on the back of its wood-fired, decadently cheese-strewn margherita pies. The pizzeria got plenty of acclaim during its renegade, early-COVID-era days as an unpermitted (and eventually \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/Oakland-s-pandemic-pizza-sensation-June-s-has-16513631.php\">shut down\u003c/a>) shipping container pop-up. Last year, after its brick-and-mortar opened on Mandela Parkway, \u003ci>Esquire \u003c/i>even named it one of the \u003ca href=\"https://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/a69501755/best-new-restaurants-america-2025/\">best new restaurants\u003c/a> in the entire country.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the reason we decided to make this pilgrimage now is because we heard — also somewhat unexpectedly — that the place has become one of the East Bay’s most popular late-night restaurants. Unexpected in the sense that June’s really only sells one thing between the hours of 9 p.m. and midnight: margherita pizza by the slice. That’s it. Nothing else.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Would that be enough to hold our wandering eyes? We had been a bit skeptical. But by the time we finish our meal, we’re hard-pressed to think of anything \u003ci>more \u003c/i>perfect to eat at the end of a long night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>June’s has become something of a destination restaurant for out-of-town visitors. But during its late-night hours, the place feels more like a locals’ hangout. Maybe a DJ is spinning records, or maybe the restaurant’s hosting a \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DL6tw4mOljf/\">listening party for a new rap album\u003c/a>. But the overall vibe is akin to a big, convivial house party hosted in someone’s high-ceilinged living room. On the night of our visit, the crowd feels quintessentially Oakland — racially diverse, skewing toward twenty- and thirtysomething artistic types. At the table next to ours, a group of chic Asian Americans in designer eyeglasses chatters happily over their marg slices and a bottle of red wine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13989679\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13989679\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: the exterior of a warehouse-like restaurant, where several customers wait in line. On the ground, a handwritten sign reads, "June's Pizza."\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/05/junes-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The buzzy West Oakland restaurant is located in an unmarked warehouse on a semi-industrial stretch of Mandela Parkway. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>June’s is proof that giving the customer \u003ci>fewer \u003c/i>choices is sometimes the smartest move. Even during non-late-night hours, the restaurant only ever sells three types of pizza: margherita, pepperoni and a limited quantity of whatever seasonal special they’ve come up with that week (say, fingerling potatoes, green garlic and ham). There are no salads, no cute little appetizers, no bread sticks, no desserts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And after 9 p.m., when June’s starts serving slices, the menu winnows down even further. Most nights, they only offer the margherita, which could scarcely be simpler — just cheese and tomato sauce with a stack of super-fresh basil leaves on the side, so you can top each slice as you please. The kitchen’s signature move is sprinkling the bejesus out of every pizza with a flurry of grated parmesan, covering the whole surface with a feathery umami dust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The first bite is blistering hot, super crispy at the thin tip, and soft and melty on top. We love the interplay between the bright red sauce, salty cheese and well-blistered crust. The dough has just a hint of sourdough tang, and it puffs up and gets chewier and more flavorful as we get closer to the crust, offering different textures from bite to bite.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>We fold our slices in half, New York–style, and dip the crusts in the restaurant’s housemade sauces — an earthy roasted garlic number and a tangy, “limited edition” wakame Caesar dressing that has a strong anchovy umami punch. (That one is so good, I bring the leftovers home to make a helluva delicious salad the next day.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One slice in, we understand perfectly now why June’s doesn’t offer a bunch of different pizzas, because this is a taste that we would never get tired of — one we could come back to week after week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tonight is our lucky night, though, because the restaurant is also selling pepperoni slices, which aren’t always available. These have an entirely different vibe, despite being built on the same base as the margherita — the pizza is much richer and more intensely flavored, and has a surprisingly spicy kick from the small, dense rounds of pepperoni.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the success of June’s is a testament to the power of doing one thing really, really well. The lack of bells and whistles also helps keep the after-hours menu relatively affordable. Slices are $5 ($6 for pepperoni), and they’re big. Most diners won’t wind up eating more than two or three in one sitting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The only danger? Not long after we arrive, we overhear the chef telling a customer that they only have three balls of raw dough left. By a little after 10 o’clock, there are maybe three pizzas’ worth of slices left, and it seems quite likely that they’re going to sell out before the hour is out. So as we head out into the night, we make plans to come back soon for another late-night pizza session — but maybe not \u003ci>too \u003c/i>late, to be safe.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/junes_pizza/\">June’s Pizza\u003c/a> is open 4 p.m.–midnight daily at 2408 Mandela Pkwy. in Oakland. The restaurant serves slices only starting at 9 p.m. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "el-tucan-baja-fish-tacos-san-rafael-marin-county-tijuana-late-night",
"title": "This North Bay Taqueria Is Your New Destination for Late-Night Fried Fish Tacos",
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"headTitle": "This North Bay Taqueria Is Your New Destination for Late-Night Fried Fish Tacos | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988853\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988853\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring a large amount of tacos while seated at a picnic table. In back, string lights and heat lamps are visible.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">El Tucán’s new location in San Rafael has an outdoor patio that looks out over the waterfront and a new menu addition: Baja-style fried fish and fried shrimp tacos. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best tacos I’ve ever eaten in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/marin-county\">Marin County\u003c/a> are tucked away in the warren of warehouses and car dealerships that populate the eastern end of San Rafael. We pulled into the neighborhood at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night because we’d heard that one of our favorite taquerias, El Tucán, had finally opened its long-awaited location here — an outpost the owners had initially planned to debut \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13903359/el-tucan-tijuana-tacos-quesabirria-san-rafael\">all the way back in 2021\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tucantacosandbeer/\">El Tucán Tacos & Beer\u003c/a> is meant to be a swankier, sit-down version of the original taqueria in Richmond. Importantly for our purposes, it stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Technically speaking, both the Richmond taqueria and the even newer El Tucán location \u003ca href=\"https://www.tacoseltucan.com/sf-info.html\">in San Francisco\u003c/a> are more prototypical late-night spots, slinging tacos until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Here in the North Bay, however, the new El Tucán is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13953224/best-late-night-prime-rib-marin-petes-881-club-poker-room\">one of the very few places in town\u003c/a> that stays open late at all. In this particular semi-industrial corner of San Rafael, it was the only restaurant of any kind, open or closed, we saw for blocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As regulars at the original El Tucán, we came with the expectation that we’d be eating some of the tastiest carne asada in the Bay. What we didn’t expect was that the new restaurant would \u003ci>also \u003c/i>fry up the best Baja fish tacos we’ve eaten in a long, long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant is bigger and fancier than it looks from the outside, with a long, gleamingly back-lit bar; trendy wicker light fixtures; and multiple flat-screen TVs for sports-watching. Along one wall there’s one of those cursive neon signs: “You are the salsa to my tacos.” On another, a colorful, very geometric mural of the restaurant’s namesake toucan. Not for nothing in Marin County, every other customer on this busy Friday night appeared to be Latino — a mix of twentysomethings sipping on gaudy, fluorescent-hued margaritas and older gentlemen in work boots. (El Tucán is located in San Rafael’s Canal District, where a dense cluster of apartment complexes houses the bulk of Marin County’s working class Latino population.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988852\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988852\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a boxy, fairly nondescript-looking restaurant lit up at night. The neon sign reads, "El Tucán Tacos & Beer," with a drawing of a toucan as its logo.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marin County doesn’t have a lot of notable late-night dining options, but El Tucán is open until 11 p.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The nicest part of the restaurant is the big, expansive deck in the back, adorned with string lights and a flotilla of heat lamps, that faces out toward the San Rafael Creek waterfront. We parked ourselves at one of the sturdy wooden picnic tables and proceeded to order about twice as many tacos as we had any business eating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>El Tucán’s claim to fame is that it was one of the first taquerias to bring \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/12/5/20994943/tacos-el-tucan-tijuana-carne-asada-quesatacos-richmond\">Tijuana-style tacos\u003c/a> to the Bay Area, with its emphasis on meats grilled over fire (instead of on a flat-top), supple handmade tortillas, and the dollop of guacamole that comes on every taco by default. Arguably, the restaurant’s calling card is its quesatacos, which come laced with a thin layer of extremely crispy cheese. What experience has taught me, though, is that those cheesy tacos are too heavy for me to eat more than two or three in one sitting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So for our first meal in San Rafael, we instead started with a round of the standard (cheeseless) asada tacos, which were as phenomenal as we remembered; the steak was chopped finer, and came out so much juicier and more tender, than at your typical taco shop. Topped with a tangle of grilled onions and that big scoop of guacamole, the taco felt luxurious to eat, like a full meal in and of itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13988444,arts_13953224,arts_13963832']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Diners who want to splurge a bit can try one of the premium ($9) specialty tacos, like the arrachera (skirt steak) taco, which puts an entire mini steak on top of a tortilla. We loved how pleasantly chewy and crisp-edged the steak was — though we probably would have been even happier trading it for two more asada tacos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The real highlight of the restaurant, however, was another exemplar of Baja California cuisine: Baja-style fried fish tacos and shrimp tacos, which are only available at the San Rafael location.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of my controversial food opinions is that Baja fish tacos are the \u003ci>only\u003c/i> good fish tacos — you can keep your fussy little grilled fish tacos. But I also rarely order them in the Bay Area. There are so few places here that do them well (hello, \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/cholita-linda-to-bring-fish-tacos-and-eclectic-latin-to-temescal-1/\">Cholita Linda\u003c/a>!), and you wind up paying twice as much for a taco that’s only half as good as what you can get at, say, any random spot in San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m happy to report, then, that the fish tacos at El Tucán are spectacular. They’re pricey, yes, at $8 a pop. But they’re also \u003ci>huge\u003c/i>, with one plump, impeccably fried fillet that’s moist and tender, with an airy-light batter. There’s also limey chipotle crema and a tangle of delicately sliced cabbage and pickled onions. Taken all together, it makes for a flawlessly balanced bite. The Baja shrimp taco, which combines all of the same components with a pile of batter-fried shrimp, is just as good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like every other trend-hopping taqueria in the Bay, El Tucán has jumped on the \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/11/21/20937687/el-garage-quesabirria-birria-taco-richmond-instagram\">quesabirria hype train\u003c/a>, with an assortment of birria-centric menu items that run the gamut from standard quesabirria tacos and consomé-dipped “red tacos” to super-sized birria “pizza.” We tried one of the red tacos with adobada (Tijuana-style al pastor) and found it tasty enough, if a little too heavy and cheesy for how stuffed we already felt at that stage in the meal. What we did enjoy, however, is El Tucán’s take on birria ramen — a rather elegant, stewy version, served with sliced avocado on top. It had a homey warmth to it that was especially nice on a chilly night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, there was a part of us that still preferred the old El Tucán in Richmond, where you stand in line, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, grab a plastic stool on the patio and wolf your food down in the semi-darkness. Certainly, it’s more chaotic, with a certain kind of romance. But if you’ve come with a group of friends and want to kick it for a while, that big deck overlooking the boats on the water is tough to beat. Especially with ice-cold Pacifica on draft and a couple of fish tacos in your belly.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr />\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tucantacosandbeer/\">\u003ci>El Tucán Tacos & Beer\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. at 15 Harbor St. in San Rafael.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988853\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988853\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring a large amount of tacos while seated at a picnic table. In back, string lights and heat lamps are visible.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/el-tucan-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">El Tucán’s new location in San Rafael has an outdoor patio that looks out over the waterfront and a new menu addition: Baja-style fried fish and fried shrimp tacos. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The best tacos I’ve ever eaten in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/marin-county\">Marin County\u003c/a> are tucked away in the warren of warehouses and car dealerships that populate the eastern end of San Rafael. We pulled into the neighborhood at a little past 9 o’clock on a recent Friday night because we’d heard that one of our favorite taquerias, El Tucán, had finally opened its long-awaited location here — an outpost the owners had initially planned to debut \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13903359/el-tucan-tijuana-tacos-quesabirria-san-rafael\">all the way back in 2021\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tucantacosandbeer/\">El Tucán Tacos & Beer\u003c/a> is meant to be a swankier, sit-down version of the original taqueria in Richmond. Importantly for our purposes, it stays open until 11 p.m. on weekends.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Technically speaking, both the Richmond taqueria and the even newer El Tucán location \u003ca href=\"https://www.tacoseltucan.com/sf-info.html\">in San Francisco\u003c/a> are more prototypical late-night spots, slinging tacos until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Here in the North Bay, however, the new El Tucán is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13953224/best-late-night-prime-rib-marin-petes-881-club-poker-room\">one of the very few places in town\u003c/a> that stays open late at all. In this particular semi-industrial corner of San Rafael, it was the only restaurant of any kind, open or closed, we saw for blocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As regulars at the original El Tucán, we came with the expectation that we’d be eating some of the tastiest carne asada in the Bay. What we didn’t expect was that the new restaurant would \u003ci>also \u003c/i>fry up the best Baja fish tacos we’ve eaten in a long, long time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The restaurant is bigger and fancier than it looks from the outside, with a long, gleamingly back-lit bar; trendy wicker light fixtures; and multiple flat-screen TVs for sports-watching. Along one wall there’s one of those cursive neon signs: “You are the salsa to my tacos.” On another, a colorful, very geometric mural of the restaurant’s namesake toucan. Not for nothing in Marin County, every other customer on this busy Friday night appeared to be Latino — a mix of twentysomethings sipping on gaudy, fluorescent-hued margaritas and older gentlemen in work boots. (El Tucán is located in San Rafael’s Canal District, where a dense cluster of apartment complexes houses the bulk of Marin County’s working class Latino population.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988852\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988852\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: a boxy, fairly nondescript-looking restaurant lit up at night. The neon sign reads, "El Tucán Tacos & Beer," with a drawing of a toucan as its logo.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/eltucan2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Marin County doesn’t have a lot of notable late-night dining options, but El Tucán is open until 11 p.m. on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The nicest part of the restaurant is the big, expansive deck in the back, adorned with string lights and a flotilla of heat lamps, that faces out toward the San Rafael Creek waterfront. We parked ourselves at one of the sturdy wooden picnic tables and proceeded to order about twice as many tacos as we had any business eating.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>El Tucán’s claim to fame is that it was one of the first taquerias to bring \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/12/5/20994943/tacos-el-tucan-tijuana-carne-asada-quesatacos-richmond\">Tijuana-style tacos\u003c/a> to the Bay Area, with its emphasis on meats grilled over fire (instead of on a flat-top), supple handmade tortillas, and the dollop of guacamole that comes on every taco by default. Arguably, the restaurant’s calling card is its quesatacos, which come laced with a thin layer of extremely crispy cheese. What experience has taught me, though, is that those cheesy tacos are too heavy for me to eat more than two or three in one sitting.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So for our first meal in San Rafael, we instead started with a round of the standard (cheeseless) asada tacos, which were as phenomenal as we remembered; the steak was chopped finer, and came out so much juicier and more tender, than at your typical taco shop. Topped with a tangle of grilled onions and that big scoop of guacamole, the taco felt luxurious to eat, like a full meal in and of itself.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Diners who want to splurge a bit can try one of the premium ($9) specialty tacos, like the arrachera (skirt steak) taco, which puts an entire mini steak on top of a tortilla. We loved how pleasantly chewy and crisp-edged the steak was — though we probably would have been even happier trading it for two more asada tacos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The real highlight of the restaurant, however, was another exemplar of Baja California cuisine: Baja-style fried fish tacos and shrimp tacos, which are only available at the San Rafael location.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of my controversial food opinions is that Baja fish tacos are the \u003ci>only\u003c/i> good fish tacos — you can keep your fussy little grilled fish tacos. But I also rarely order them in the Bay Area. There are so few places here that do them well (hello, \u003ca href=\"https://eastbayexpress.com/cholita-linda-to-bring-fish-tacos-and-eclectic-latin-to-temescal-1/\">Cholita Linda\u003c/a>!), and you wind up paying twice as much for a taco that’s only half as good as what you can get at, say, any random spot in San Diego.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m happy to report, then, that the fish tacos at El Tucán are spectacular. They’re pricey, yes, at $8 a pop. But they’re also \u003ci>huge\u003c/i>, with one plump, impeccably fried fillet that’s moist and tender, with an airy-light batter. There’s also limey chipotle crema and a tangle of delicately sliced cabbage and pickled onions. Taken all together, it makes for a flawlessly balanced bite. The Baja shrimp taco, which combines all of the same components with a pile of batter-fried shrimp, is just as good.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like every other trend-hopping taqueria in the Bay, El Tucán has jumped on the \u003ca href=\"https://sf.eater.com/2019/11/21/20937687/el-garage-quesabirria-birria-taco-richmond-instagram\">quesabirria hype train\u003c/a>, with an assortment of birria-centric menu items that run the gamut from standard quesabirria tacos and consomé-dipped “red tacos” to super-sized birria “pizza.” We tried one of the red tacos with adobada (Tijuana-style al pastor) and found it tasty enough, if a little too heavy and cheesy for how stuffed we already felt at that stage in the meal. What we did enjoy, however, is El Tucán’s take on birria ramen — a rather elegant, stewy version, served with sliced avocado on top. It had a homey warmth to it that was especially nice on a chilly night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, there was a part of us that still preferred the old El Tucán in Richmond, where you stand in line, shoulder to shoulder with strangers, grab a plastic stool on the patio and wolf your food down in the semi-darkness. Certainly, it’s more chaotic, with a certain kind of romance. But if you’ve come with a group of friends and want to kick it for a while, that big deck overlooking the boats on the water is tough to beat. Especially with ice-cold Pacifica on draft and a couple of fish tacos in your belly.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr />\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/tucantacosandbeer/\">\u003ci>El Tucán Tacos & Beer\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Sunday and Tuesday through Thursday 11 a.m.–9 p.m., and Friday and Saturday 11 a.m.–11 p.m. at 15 Harbor St. in San Rafael.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Santa Clara’s Tastiest Charcoal-Grilled Korean Barbecue Spot Stays Open Until Midnight",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988447\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Korean barbecue while a server attends to the grill.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Santa Clara’s Korean Spring BBQ, the late-night special is a massive $200 barbecue feast. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I love the moment you first step into a proper \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/korean-food\">Korean\u003c/a> barbecue restaurant: The sweet, smoky smell of charred meat instantly seeps into your clothing. The industrial-size hood vents whir and hum, working overtime. And when the server hustles over to your table to line the edge of the grill with aluminum foil, then lowers a tray of red-hot charcoal into the pit? That’s when you know it’s \u003ci>really\u003c/i> on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such are the charms of Korean Spring BBQ, one of the Bay Area’s last remaining Korean barbecue restaurants where the meat is still grilled over wood charcoal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Located in a busy plaza in Santa Clara’s sprawling, informal Koreatown, Korean Spring doesn’t have the slick branding and Insta-optimized aesthetics of some of the newer high-end KBBQ hotspots and trendy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13965215/all-you-can-eat-wagyu-beef-hot-pot-shabu-shabu-mikiya-santa-clara\">AYCE wagyu purveyors\u003c/a>. Instead, the place has more of an old-school, mom-and-pop vibe. The dining room is all utilitarian metallic surfaces, with minimal decor, and the people who come here seem like they come purely for the love of the meat — and for the clean, smoky char you can never quite get with a gas grill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of particular interest to us? The restaurant stays open until midnight six nights a week, and starting at 9 p.m., they serve a $200 “Midnight Menu” combo set that comes with four different cuts of USDA Prime beef, beef bone soup, a salad and a few other side dishes, plus your choice of soju, beer or soda. It’s a lavish barbecue feast for three or four meat lovers to share — and, as we soon learned, altogether too much food for two greedy midnight diners. Not that we went down without a fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988449\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988449\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: facade of Korean Spring BBQ restaurant, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the busy Kiely Plaza, the restaurant is open until midnight six nights a week. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At half past nine on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was about half full with parties of four or five — all Asians in their twenties and thirties, chatting happily in Mandarin and Korean. This is the kind of Korean barbecue joint where the staff grills the meat for you at the table, not one of those cook-it-yourself setups. Our friendly attendant got to work as soon as we placed our order, deftly flipping the meat on the hot grill and, in some cases, using scissors to cut it down into progressively smaller pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, even experienced Korean barbecue enthusiasts tend to stick with a handful of greatest hits — your ribeye bulgogi, pork belly and L.A. galbi. One nice thing about Korean Spring’s Midnight Menu is that it introduces a number of lesser-known but equally delicious cuts. We started with thinly sliced beef tongue, which was rich and earthy with a fun, snappy texture. Then came the outside skirt, one of our favorites, sliced about as thick as you would cut a steak for stir-fry and astonishingly tender; the flavor was deeply, deeply beefy. The rib finger — the meat between the rib bones, apparently — was the most steak-like of the cuts, with the same satisfying chew and juicy richness you might expect from a nicely grilled ribeye. And the thinly sliced brisket point had a lovely streak of fat in each piece that rendered out while the edges of the meat got nice and crispy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Notably, none of these cuts are marinated, so what you taste is the pure flavor of the Prime-grade beef, with its rich marbling, enhanced by the smoke and char from the charcoal grill. The set comes with a variety of dipping options: doenjang (fermented soybean paste), wasabi, some kind of purple sea salt and, by far our favorite, a slurry of salt, pepper and sesame oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also couldn’t resist ordering the marinated galbi, or short rib, as a $60 add-on. Here, they cut the well-marbled meat off the bone and grill it like thin strips of steak. We weren’t prepared for how soft and buttery this would be, the fatty parts literally melting away in our mouths. Afterwards, our friendly grill guy cut off the bits of meat and cartilage still attached to the bone and grilled those separately for another taste and texture — those crunchy-chewy bits of connective tissue were some of our favorite bites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13988027,arts_13973430,arts_13961328']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the non-barbecue side dishes that come with the set all felt incredibly thoughtful, like they’d been carefully calibrated to balance out our meal. I would never think to order something called “tofu salad w/ almond” at a Korean barbecue restaurant, but this was fantastic — salad greens topped with very soft tofu and sliced almonds, then dressed with a sweet doenjang-based dressing. Every time I felt like all of the meat was getting too rich and heavy, I’d take a bite of salad, and then I’d be ready to keep going. A bowl of cloudy beef bone soup, garnished with green onions and served unseasoned, with salt on the side, served a similar palate-refreshing purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the classic steamed egg, or gyeran-jjim, was one of the best versions I’ve had — immaculately fluffy and light. Too often this dish deflates into a sad pancake as soon as you cut into it, but Korean Spring’s held its shape, and its delectable texture, over the course of the meal. The only side we weren’t a fan of was the cheese fondue; dipping our barbecue in melted cheese was a fun novelty, but not something we wanted to do more than once or twice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken all together, this was more or less our platonic ideal of a Korean barbecue meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Note that Korean Spring isn’t one of those ssam specialists where they give you a half-dozen exotic lettuces to use to wrap your meats. Here, they only offered regular green lettuce — and we had to ask for it. The banchan selection is also pretty limited. Apart from the more substantial side dishes mentioned above, you really only get kimchi, a stack of marinated perilla leaves and a “salad” of pickled onions and jalapeños. But all of it is excellent. In particular, the kimchi is the kind made with whole napa cabbage, cut into bright, crunchy slivers. And I loved wrapping the beef inside the pickled perilla leaves, whose musky tang provided a nice counterpoint to the rich meat. Another essential for any KBBQ connoisseur: slices of raw garlic and jalapeños, refilled quickly and plentifully whenever we asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At $200 before any add-ons, the meal is a bit of a splurge even split between the three or four diners it’s intended to feed. But it’s a worthy splurge if you find yourself in a carnivorous mood and want to treat yourself late at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We dipped and double-dipped our meat in doenjang and sesame oil, wrapped it in lettuce accented with slivers of sharp, pungent garlic. We sipped our broth and then piled more meat on top of rice, reveling in the uniquely Korean pleasures of mixing and matching every bite, and then we went home with a ridiculous amount of leftovers. It was a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Korean Spring BBQ is open Monday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5 p.m.–midnight, and Saturday to Sunday 11 a.m.–midnight at 1062 Kiely Blvd. in Santa Clara. The “Midnight Menu” is available after 9 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988447\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988447\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: Two men devouring Korean barbecue while a server attends to the grill.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">At Santa Clara’s Korean Spring BBQ, the late-night special is a massive $200 barbecue feast. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene. \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I love the moment you first step into a proper \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/korean-food\">Korean\u003c/a> barbecue restaurant: The sweet, smoky smell of charred meat instantly seeps into your clothing. The industrial-size hood vents whir and hum, working overtime. And when the server hustles over to your table to line the edge of the grill with aluminum foil, then lowers a tray of red-hot charcoal into the pit? That’s when you know it’s \u003ci>really\u003c/i> on.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Such are the charms of Korean Spring BBQ, one of the Bay Area’s last remaining Korean barbecue restaurants where the meat is still grilled over wood charcoal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Located in a busy plaza in Santa Clara’s sprawling, informal Koreatown, Korean Spring doesn’t have the slick branding and Insta-optimized aesthetics of some of the newer high-end KBBQ hotspots and trendy \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13965215/all-you-can-eat-wagyu-beef-hot-pot-shabu-shabu-mikiya-santa-clara\">AYCE wagyu purveyors\u003c/a>. Instead, the place has more of an old-school, mom-and-pop vibe. The dining room is all utilitarian metallic surfaces, with minimal decor, and the people who come here seem like they come purely for the love of the meat — and for the clean, smoky char you can never quite get with a gas grill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Of particular interest to us? The restaurant stays open until midnight six nights a week, and starting at 9 p.m., they serve a $200 “Midnight Menu” combo set that comes with four different cuts of USDA Prime beef, beef bone soup, a salad and a few other side dishes, plus your choice of soju, beer or soda. It’s a lavish barbecue feast for three or four meat lovers to share — and, as we soon learned, altogether too much food for two greedy midnight diners. Not that we went down without a fight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13988449\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13988449\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: facade of Korean Spring BBQ restaurant, lit up at night.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/04/KoreanSpring2-600x600.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located in the busy Kiely Plaza, the restaurant is open until midnight six nights a week. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>At half past nine on a recent Friday night, the restaurant was about half full with parties of four or five — all Asians in their twenties and thirties, chatting happily in Mandarin and Korean. This is the kind of Korean barbecue joint where the staff grills the meat for you at the table, not one of those cook-it-yourself setups. Our friendly attendant got to work as soon as we placed our order, deftly flipping the meat on the hot grill and, in some cases, using scissors to cut it down into progressively smaller pieces.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here in the Bay Area, even experienced Korean barbecue enthusiasts tend to stick with a handful of greatest hits — your ribeye bulgogi, pork belly and L.A. galbi. One nice thing about Korean Spring’s Midnight Menu is that it introduces a number of lesser-known but equally delicious cuts. We started with thinly sliced beef tongue, which was rich and earthy with a fun, snappy texture. Then came the outside skirt, one of our favorites, sliced about as thick as you would cut a steak for stir-fry and astonishingly tender; the flavor was deeply, deeply beefy. The rib finger — the meat between the rib bones, apparently — was the most steak-like of the cuts, with the same satisfying chew and juicy richness you might expect from a nicely grilled ribeye. And the thinly sliced brisket point had a lovely streak of fat in each piece that rendered out while the edges of the meat got nice and crispy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Notably, none of these cuts are marinated, so what you taste is the pure flavor of the Prime-grade beef, with its rich marbling, enhanced by the smoke and char from the charcoal grill. The set comes with a variety of dipping options: doenjang (fermented soybean paste), wasabi, some kind of purple sea salt and, by far our favorite, a slurry of salt, pepper and sesame oil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We also couldn’t resist ordering the marinated galbi, or short rib, as a $60 add-on. Here, they cut the well-marbled meat off the bone and grill it like thin strips of steak. We weren’t prepared for how soft and buttery this would be, the fatty parts literally melting away in our mouths. Afterwards, our friendly grill guy cut off the bits of meat and cartilage still attached to the bone and grilled those separately for another taste and texture — those crunchy-chewy bits of connective tissue were some of our favorite bites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>Meanwhile, the non-barbecue side dishes that come with the set all felt incredibly thoughtful, like they’d been carefully calibrated to balance out our meal. I would never think to order something called “tofu salad w/ almond” at a Korean barbecue restaurant, but this was fantastic — salad greens topped with very soft tofu and sliced almonds, then dressed with a sweet doenjang-based dressing. Every time I felt like all of the meat was getting too rich and heavy, I’d take a bite of salad, and then I’d be ready to keep going. A bowl of cloudy beef bone soup, garnished with green onions and served unseasoned, with salt on the side, served a similar palate-refreshing purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the classic steamed egg, or gyeran-jjim, was one of the best versions I’ve had — immaculately fluffy and light. Too often this dish deflates into a sad pancake as soon as you cut into it, but Korean Spring’s held its shape, and its delectable texture, over the course of the meal. The only side we weren’t a fan of was the cheese fondue; dipping our barbecue in melted cheese was a fun novelty, but not something we wanted to do more than once or twice.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Taken all together, this was more or less our platonic ideal of a Korean barbecue meal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Note that Korean Spring isn’t one of those ssam specialists where they give you a half-dozen exotic lettuces to use to wrap your meats. Here, they only offered regular green lettuce — and we had to ask for it. The banchan selection is also pretty limited. Apart from the more substantial side dishes mentioned above, you really only get kimchi, a stack of marinated perilla leaves and a “salad” of pickled onions and jalapeños. But all of it is excellent. In particular, the kimchi is the kind made with whole napa cabbage, cut into bright, crunchy slivers. And I loved wrapping the beef inside the pickled perilla leaves, whose musky tang provided a nice counterpoint to the rich meat. Another essential for any KBBQ connoisseur: slices of raw garlic and jalapeños, refilled quickly and plentifully whenever we asked.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At $200 before any add-ons, the meal is a bit of a splurge even split between the three or four diners it’s intended to feed. But it’s a worthy splurge if you find yourself in a carnivorous mood and want to treat yourself late at night.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We dipped and double-dipped our meat in doenjang and sesame oil, wrapped it in lettuce accented with slivers of sharp, pungent garlic. We sipped our broth and then piled more meat on top of rice, reveling in the uniquely Korean pleasures of mixing and matching every bite, and then we went home with a ridiculous amount of leftovers. It was a good night.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>Korean Spring BBQ is open Monday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5–9 p.m., Tuesday to Friday 11 a.m.–2 p.m. and 5 p.m.–midnight, and Saturday to Sunday 11 a.m.–midnight at 1062 Kiely Blvd. in Santa Clara. The “Midnight Menu” is available after 9 p.m.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987423\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987423\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men devouring oxtails and a whole fried fish.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The patio at Oakland’s 9jaGrills is like a permanent backyard party — one with delicious Nigerian oxtails and jollof rice. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/9jagrills/\">9jaGrills\u003c/a>, a newish Nigerian spot near \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/oakland\">Oakland’s\u003c/a> Jack London waterfront, the main dining room follows the standard blueprint for today’s shiny, Instagram-optimized restaurants: the lush faux greenery wall, the neon-lit catchphrase (“Food 🔥, Drinks & Vibes”) in glowing pink cursive. The space is tidy, bright and perfectly pleasant — but, at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, it was also totally empty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, a couple dozen people had crowded out on the small tented patio in back, which was a distinct ecosystem unto itself: a haze of hookah smoke, disco lights, cheap furniture and mystery drinks in red plastic cups. On the big-screen TV, two \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/wannixhandi/?hl=en\">identical twin DJs\u003c/a> from Nigeria spun Afrobeats on stage in Lagos. Everyone else on the patio appeared to be West African, and apart from one table of middle-aged gentlemen dipping fufu into a big bowl of stew, no one else seemed to have come for the food at this hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was more of a backyard party vibe. A kick back with a couple of cold \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/trophylagernigeria/?hl=en\">Trophy Lagers\u003c/a> vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that we were going to let that deter us from our mission. We had made the trip because we had a wicked craving for oxtails, and we’d heard on good authority that this food-truck-turned-brick-and-mortar-lounge was \u003ci>the \u003c/i>spot in Oakland for Nigerian-style oxtails and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13960580/jollof-festival-oakland-west-african-food-competition-nigerian-sierra-leone\">jollof rice\u003c/a> — and maybe the only spot where you can reliably score those dishes until midnight on the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since July of last year, 9jaGrills has one of the broader menus I’ve seen among the East Bay’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13896069/jolly-jolly-nigerian-restaurant-west-oakland-jollof-rice-indomie\">Nigerian restaurants\u003c/a>, running the gamut from classics like pepper soup and suya meat skewers to lesser-known (at least in the U.S.) favorites like stir-fried Indomie instant noodles and a whole stewed goat’s head. The menu is divided up into grilled dishes, jollof rice plates, whole fried fish, and soups and stews meant to be scooped up with “swallows” (i.e. assorted starchy, dough-like rounds). Factor in the large variety of swallows and optional side sauces on offer, and just figuring out what to order might be a little bit intimidating to newcomers to West African cuisine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987424\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987424\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills.jpg\" alt='Illustration: exterior of a Nigerian restaurant at nighttime. The awning reads, \"www.9jagrills.com\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located near the Jack London waterfront, 9jaGrills is open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What I can tell you for certain is that the plate of oxtails and jollof rice is a crowd pleaser. The rice alone was amazing: tomato-tinted and steaming hot, with a luxurious oiliness and a smoky, savory depth of flavor I couldn’t get enough of. It’s jollof so good you’d make a special trip just to eat it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the oxtails were slow-cooked in a dark, well-spiced gravy until they’d achieved just the right level of tenderness. When we sucked on each bone, all of the gelatinous skin and fat came clean off, and the prickle of chili heat in the sauce was incredibly addicting. These are oxtails so tasty that if you don’t watch your dining partner like a hawk, he’ll polish off the last several bones before you have a chance to protest. As a self-proclaimed \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13936332/tchaka-haitian-restaurant-oakland\">scholar of oxtails\u003c/a>, I couldn’t find a single flaw. On the side were some of the best fried plantains I’ve encountered in a long time — crisp and slightly charred on the outside, with an oozy sweetness that helped balance out all of the other heavier, more intense flavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">[aside postID='arts_13986949,arts_13982096,arts_13983249']\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The oxtail dish by itself satisfied our hunger, but of course we didn’t stop there. We also ordered the whole fried pompano — a flat fish, vaguely flounder-like in appearance, with delicate flesh and a rich, earthy taste. It was incredibly satisfying picking that fish clean — dunking strips of it into the bright, searingly hot housemade pepper sauce, and dipping the eye sockets (don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it) into a tub of suya spice mix. The plate came with a heaping portion of the same excellent jollof and fried plantains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, we dug into the fragrant, spicy, palm oil–based stew known as ayamase, which 9jaGrills’ friendly owner had tried to steer us away from, warning us that it came with a kind of “local” Nigerian rice that Americans don’t tend to like, and asking, with some concern, whether we’d eaten Nigerian food before. With that kind of introduction, of course we had to order it, and it may have been the most memorable dish of the night. Ayamase consists mostly of beef offal: the liver, the intestines and especially the skin, cooked until it’s so tender and slippery that it practically melts in your mouth. The stew was studded with flat, toothsome locust beans and a hard-boiled egg — all delicious when mashed into the sauce, then ladled over the nutty whole-grain ofada rice, which was perfect for soaking up the stew’s oily richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crouched over our feast in the semi-darkness of 9jaGrills’ backyard patio, we shoveled rice into our mouths like we hadn’t eaten for days, and held the oxtail bones in our hands, inspecting each one to make sure we’d picked it clean. Then, utterly stuffed and hyped up on Naija beats, we stumbled back into the bright lights of the restaurant proper, like we’d just woken up from the most beautiful dream.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/9jagrills/\">\u003ci>9jaGrills\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday to Thursday noon–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday noon–midnight, and Sunday 2–10 p.m. at 303 Broadway in Oakland.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987423\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987423\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2.jpg\" alt=\"Illustration: two men devouring oxtails and a whole fried fish.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills2-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The patio at Oakland’s 9jaGrills is like a permanent backyard party — one with delicious Nigerian oxtails and jollof rice. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/the-midnight-diners\">\u003ci>The Midnight Diners\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is a regular collaboration between KQED food editor Luke Tsai and graphic novelist \u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/thiendog/?hl=en\">\u003ci>Thien Pham\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci>. Follow them each week as they explore the hot pot restaurants, taco carts and 24-hour casino buffets that make up the Bay Area’s after-hours dining scene.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/9jagrills/\">9jaGrills\u003c/a>, a newish Nigerian spot near \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/tag/oakland\">Oakland’s\u003c/a> Jack London waterfront, the main dining room follows the standard blueprint for today’s shiny, Instagram-optimized restaurants: the lush faux greenery wall, the neon-lit catchphrase (“Food 🔥, Drinks & Vibes”) in glowing pink cursive. The space is tidy, bright and perfectly pleasant — but, at 10 o’clock on a recent Friday night, it was also totally empty.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, a couple dozen people had crowded out on the small tented patio in back, which was a distinct ecosystem unto itself: a haze of hookah smoke, disco lights, cheap furniture and mystery drinks in red plastic cups. On the big-screen TV, two \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/wannixhandi/?hl=en\">identical twin DJs\u003c/a> from Nigeria spun Afrobeats on stage in Lagos. Everyone else on the patio appeared to be West African, and apart from one table of middle-aged gentlemen dipping fufu into a big bowl of stew, no one else seemed to have come for the food at this hour.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was more of a backyard party vibe. A kick back with a couple of cold \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/trophylagernigeria/?hl=en\">Trophy Lagers\u003c/a> vibe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not that we were going to let that deter us from our mission. We had made the trip because we had a wicked craving for oxtails, and we’d heard on good authority that this food-truck-turned-brick-and-mortar-lounge was \u003ci>the \u003c/i>spot in Oakland for Nigerian-style oxtails and \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13960580/jollof-festival-oakland-west-african-food-competition-nigerian-sierra-leone\">jollof rice\u003c/a> — and maybe the only spot where you can reliably score those dishes until midnight on the weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Open since July of last year, 9jaGrills has one of the broader menus I’ve seen among the East Bay’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13896069/jolly-jolly-nigerian-restaurant-west-oakland-jollof-rice-indomie\">Nigerian restaurants\u003c/a>, running the gamut from classics like pepper soup and suya meat skewers to lesser-known (at least in the U.S.) favorites like stir-fried Indomie instant noodles and a whole stewed goat’s head. The menu is divided up into grilled dishes, jollof rice plates, whole fried fish, and soups and stews meant to be scooped up with “swallows” (i.e. assorted starchy, dough-like rounds). Factor in the large variety of swallows and optional side sauces on offer, and just figuring out what to order might be a little bit intimidating to newcomers to West African cuisine.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_13987424\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13987424\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills.jpg\" alt='Illustration: exterior of a Nigerian restaurant at nighttime. The awning reads, \"www.9jagrills.com\"' width=\"1920\" height=\"1920\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-160x160.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-768x768.jpg 768w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/03/9jagrills-1536x1536.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Located near the Jack London waterfront, 9jaGrills is open until midnight on weekends. \u003ccite>(Thien Pham)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>What I can tell you for certain is that the plate of oxtails and jollof rice is a crowd pleaser. The rice alone was amazing: tomato-tinted and steaming hot, with a luxurious oiliness and a smoky, savory depth of flavor I couldn’t get enough of. It’s jollof so good you’d make a special trip just to eat it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the oxtails were slow-cooked in a dark, well-spiced gravy until they’d achieved just the right level of tenderness. When we sucked on each bone, all of the gelatinous skin and fat came clean off, and the prickle of chili heat in the sauce was incredibly addicting. These are oxtails so tasty that if you don’t watch your dining partner like a hawk, he’ll polish off the last several bones before you have a chance to protest. As a self-proclaimed \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13936332/tchaka-haitian-restaurant-oakland\">scholar of oxtails\u003c/a>, I couldn’t find a single flaw. On the side were some of the best fried plantains I’ve encountered in a long time — crisp and slightly charred on the outside, with an oozy sweetness that helped balance out all of the other heavier, more intense flavors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cspan style=\"color: #2b2b2b;font-weight: 400\">\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/span>\u003c/span>The oxtail dish by itself satisfied our hunger, but of course we didn’t stop there. We also ordered the whole fried pompano — a flat fish, vaguely flounder-like in appearance, with delicate flesh and a rich, earthy taste. It was incredibly satisfying picking that fish clean — dunking strips of it into the bright, searingly hot housemade pepper sauce, and dipping the eye sockets (don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it) into a tub of suya spice mix. The plate came with a heaping portion of the same excellent jollof and fried plantains.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Finally, we dug into the fragrant, spicy, palm oil–based stew known as ayamase, which 9jaGrills’ friendly owner had tried to steer us away from, warning us that it came with a kind of “local” Nigerian rice that Americans don’t tend to like, and asking, with some concern, whether we’d eaten Nigerian food before. With that kind of introduction, of course we had to order it, and it may have been the most memorable dish of the night. Ayamase consists mostly of beef offal: the liver, the intestines and especially the skin, cooked until it’s so tender and slippery that it practically melts in your mouth. The stew was studded with flat, toothsome locust beans and a hard-boiled egg — all delicious when mashed into the sauce, then ladled over the nutty whole-grain ofada rice, which was perfect for soaking up the stew’s oily richness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Crouched over our feast in the semi-darkness of 9jaGrills’ backyard patio, we shoveled rice into our mouths like we hadn’t eaten for days, and held the oxtail bones in our hands, inspecting each one to make sure we’d picked it clean. Then, utterly stuffed and hyped up on Naija beats, we stumbled back into the bright lights of the restaurant proper, like we’d just woken up from the most beautiful dream.\u003c/p>\n\u003chr>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/9jagrills/\">\u003ci>9jaGrills\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003ci> is open Wednesday to Thursday noon–9 p.m., Friday to Saturday noon–midnight, and Sunday 2–10 p.m. at 303 Broadway in Oakland.\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"possible": {
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"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"radiolab": {
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"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"soldout": {
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"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
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"info": "",
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"tech-nation": {
"id": "tech-nation",
"title": "Tech Nation Radio Podcast",
"info": "Tech Nation is a weekly public radio program, hosted by Dr. Moira Gunn. Founded in 1993, it has grown from a simple interview show to a multi-faceted production, featuring conversations with noted technology and science leaders, and a weekly science and technology-related commentary.",
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"ted-radio-hour": {
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"title": "TED Radio Hour",
"info": "The TED Radio Hour is a journey through fascinating ideas, astonishing inventions, fresh approaches to old problems, and new ways to think and create.",
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