Luke at the end of this first installment of the series:
…
The truth is that every Bay Area food city worth its salt is an immigrant food city at its heart: Richmond, Hayward, Fremont, Millbrae, Daly City, Santa Clara. All my favorites. All mostly overlooked in conversations about great Bay Area dining destinations. Every last one of them a treasure trove of immigrant mom-and-pops—Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Mexican, Salvadoran, Samoan and so much more. San Jose might be the greatest and most varied among these hubs, but it isn’t unique.
The truth is that the past, present and future of what’s best about eating in the Bay Area isn’t fine dining or California cuisine. It’s all of these immigrant food communities. That’s the legacy that needs to be preserved. That’s what makes San Jose such a special place.
…
·
We’ll be posting a new essay, feature, or guide every day for the next two weeks—about the city’s amazing Vietnamese, Mexican, and Ethiopian restaurants and more. I am SO excited for you to see the lineup of writers who contributed.
Not really sure if this is the right place for this, but I’ll put it here fir now…
This is Part 3 of 8 parts -
KQED’s San Jose: The Bay Area’s Great Immigrant Food City is a series of stories exploring San Jose’s wonderfully diverse immigrant food scene. A new installment will post each weekday from Oct. 20–29.
with photos by Andrea Lo who worked with Luke Tsai when he was at the East Bay Express and has contributed to National Geographic and the Chinatown Pretty project
https://www.instagram.com/chinatownpretty/
https://www.chinatownpretty.com/book
There’s a GO thread if you want to put it there: 2021 Grocery Outlet [California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, other Western States] - #87 by brisket44.
Arizmendi Bakery in Emeryville at about 7:20 am on a rainy Friday morning. I ordered the Egg in a Hole ($4) and a day-old pizza ($10.50). There was no line. The Egg in a Hole was made fresh, took about 5 minutes to bake and came out hot from the oven. There are three wooden benches and two small tables outside next to the bakery. The Egg in a Hole had crusty cheese on the outside with sliced potato and leek on top with soft, dense sourdough innards to the bun. Delicious. The day-old pizza was chilled with cheese, potato and leek on a sourdough crust wrapped in cellophane.
Arizmendi Bakery
4301 San Pablo Avenue (at 43rd Street)
Emeryville, California 94608
tel: (510) 547-0550
email arizmendieville@gmail.com
Yes, I thought about that too, thanks 
A few days late on this, but the first mention I’ve seen of Chef Geoffrey Deetz since he closed his closed his well-regarded Vietnamese restaurant Temple Club on International Blvd. in East Oakland over 2 years ago.
excerpt:
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Le Colonial in San Francisco will host a New Moon Chef Tasting Dinner from Executive Chef Geoffrey Deetz on Tuesday, October 19 with service from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m. This four-course meal priced at $55.00 per person with an additional $45.00 per person wine pairing is inspired by the New Moon when families in Vietnam gather outside to enjoy the cooler fall weather. Chef Deetz’s experience in Vietnam afforded him the opportunity to appreciate the food and fun that the Vietnamese have during this time of year.
…
Thanks to zippo1 for posting this - good to hear Chef Deetz is still around. We loved Temple Bar; only place one could get really excellent Vietnamese cuisine without going down to San Jose area.
All the other Vietnamese restaurants use way too much sugar. He told us that has become the style in Asia as the Big Food Corporations move in and take over the grocery store shelves.
I truly hope he will someday reopen in the EBay or NBay. He’s too good a chef to lose the way we’ve lost so many others - Brandon Sharp, Robin Low, Sophina Uong et. al.
The Día de los Muertos Festival will take place on Oct. 31 throughout the Fruitvale district. Fruitvale Restaurant Week specials will run from Oct. 24–31. Details here.
https://diaoakland.com/experience/eat/
https://diaoakland.com/?ltclid=77d11583-837a-4d21-90d6-8c9422880804
Soul Slice
5849 San Pablo Ave (at 59th Street), Oakland
3-9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday
Closed Sunday and Monday
from Berkeleyside -
There are also a decent number of salads and sides, all of which are very good (especially the grit sticks! Gotta love grits you can eat with your hands). But if you’re going to Soul Slice, you should really get a slice, you know? Lewis told Nosh that the restaurant will start lunch hours in September, and is planning a happy hour deal with a pizza and pint for $15. Reservations are recommended for a seat in the dining room, and takeout or delivery are options, too.
Los Angeles Times
Good Catch Plant-Based Fish Cakes Thai Style
Base ingredient(s): Good Catch’s six-plant protein blend
Appearance: Your average fish cake but with a green tint.
Texture: Clumps of protein are mashed together like a fish cake with a nice, crisp exterior.
Taste: I would actually seek these out, and possibly serve them at a dinner party. The cakes were flavored as advertised — with a strong hit of lemongrass and lime juice, garlic and chile.
How close it is to the real thing: 10 out of 10. I can’t remember the last time — or if I’ve ever — eaten a real Thai-style fish cake, but I’d like to think all versions taste similar to this one.
LA Times digital subscription deal, $1 for 6 months, when that is up you can try to argue with them and maybe get a deal for about $4/month or see what happens when you sign up for the $1 deal with a different email address. They have a good food section.
Here’s a link to part 4 of the KQED Arts series on food in San Jose. Luke and his team are knocking on the door of a James Beard award with this effort:
In spite of the looming changes, many of the shops in San Jose’s Japantown seem frozen in time. Shuei-Do Manju, a tiny storefront on Jackson Street, sells nearly a thousand pieces of mochi and other traditional sweets every day. Open since 1953, the shop gives off an old-fashioned candy store vibe. Youth sports trophies and a Kristi Yamaguchi cereal box are proudly displayed behind the counter, which features a glass case with round mochi, wafer-like monaka and pastel cubes of chi chi dango arrayed in lacquer trays.
Part 5 of the series KQED’s San Jose: The Bay Area’s Great Immigrant Food City
Former Oakland resident John Birdsall writes in the NY Times:
Birdsall:
…
It contains three types of wheat (all grown in southern Arizona), including White Sonora, which Mr. Guerra has helped revive.
Bringing that heirloom variety back into use was purposeful. Because although Mr. Guerra still uses the vocabulary and traditions of French and Italian bread baking, he has managed something radical. Baking exclusively with grains grown in southern Arizona, Mr. Guerra has traced wheat to its deepest roots in North America: the stretch of the Sonoran Desert that includes Tucson and that dips below the U.S.-Mexico border to the fields where Spanish missionaries are believed to have introduced the grain in the mid-1600s.
…
An alternative for cities like Baltimore where their local newspapers have been gutted by hedge funds. and as happened to the East Bay Times and the Mercury News in California.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/10/26/baltimore-banner-kimi-yoshino-bainum/
Luke Tsai will be on the radio program KQED Forum 88.5 FM at about 9:40 am today, Oct 27, with host Alexis Madrigal talking about the San Jose food scene. The audio of the show will be available online soon. The show usually takes calls.
RIP Comedian Mort Sahl passed away yesterday at age 94 in Mill Valley CA. He first broke through in late 1953 at Enrico Banducci’s hungry i which I think was then located in the basement of the Sentinel Building (sometimes called the Coppola Building) at the corner of Kearney and Columbus in SF. Favorable publicity from columnist Herb Caen helped increase attendance at the shows. The Purple Onion club was across the street and I’ve always wondered if the title of this website is a contraction of hungry i + Purple Onion.
In 1960 he co-hosted the Academy Awards show and was on the cover of Time Magazine. He continued to perform online until last year from the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley and was close friends with Robin Williams.
One of his jokes went something like this: “… being courageous means going to a restaurant that hasn’t been reviewed yet…”
“I don’t tell jokes, I give little lectures,” Sahl would tell his audiences. He’d generally conclude his shows by asking, “Are there any groups I haven’t offended?”
Part 6 of the series KQED’s San Jose: The Bay Area’s Great Immigrant Food City
Luke on KQED radio on Forum on October 27, about 20 minutes
Part 7 of 8 of the series KQED’s San Jose: The Bay Area’s Great Immigrant Food City
Luke -
San Jose, Day 7: In one of the finest pieces of tofu writing I’ve read in a long time,
argues that San Jose is THE tofu capital of America (emphasis added) —largely thanks to city’s wealth of Vietnamese tofu delis.
“Americans want tofu to be sturdy, whereas the tofu that you buy at an Asian tofu shop … tends to be more tender because we love that tenderness.”
Andrea Nguyen
The last part, Part 8 of 8.
KQED’s San Jose: The Bay Area’s Great Immigrant Food City is a series of stories exploring San Jose’s wonderfully diverse immigrant food scene. A new installment will post each weekday from Oct. 20–29.
Half the writers for this series hadn’t even written a food story before, and look at the brilliant work they produced! Which is just to say, there isn’t, like, some prerequisite or secret club you have to be a part of. My email is in my bio.
West African shrimp suya at Sobre Mesa
Kampot fried chicken at Nyum Bai
Quesabirria at El Garage
Listen online for 49 minutes to Ruth Reichl, Soleil Ho, Mas & Nikiko Masumoto and others or listen tonight on KQED FM radio 88.5 at 7 pm.
7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
The Splendid Table
Passing the Torch
Best-selling author and restaurant critic Ruth Reichl ( Save Me the Plums ) talks with Soleil Ho, the new restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle , about stepping into big shoes. Peach farmers Mas and Nikiko Masumoto ( The Perfect Peach , Changing Season )talk about what it is like for them to pass the farm from father to daughter. Bricia Lopez ( Oaxaca ) tells us about taking over the family restaurant when her parents returned to Mexico. To end the episode, Ed Levine ( Serious Eater ) and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt ( The Food Lab ) talk about the places their collaboration on the cult website Serious Eats has taken them.
Show Segments
- 00:00 - Show Introduction, Mas & Nikiko Masumoto
- 17:27 - Ruth Reichl & Soleil Ho
- 33:36 - Bricia Lopez
- 42:50 - Ed Levine & Kenji Lopez-Alt
- 53:33 - Show Credits
First aired on September 20, 2021
Restrictions will be reevaluated on Nov. 22.
