It’s just one example of how the Bay Area has been a breeding ground for new interpretations of birria. KQED food editor Luke Tsai, who was one of the first to write about El Garage, says this byproduct has a lot to do with birria’s multicultural appeal. “There are so many folks from different cultures … who are going and having quesabirria, and I think a lot of people just thought: Hey, this is a cool thing. What if I applied this to the stew in my culture?”
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Trang (left) and Tuan Nguyen, owners of Oakland Vietnamese restaurant Pho Vy, started serving quesabirria-inspired tacos. Their bo kho tacos, right, use bo kho, a fragrant stewed beef. Photos by Francesca Tamse / Special to The Chronicle
Top photo: A collage combines images of gold chains at the Antioch Flea Market with tacos from Pho Vy, a Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland that serves quesabirria-inspired tacos. Above, taco grid top row, from left: La Vaca Birria in S.F., La Grana Fish in Oakland, El Halal Amigos in San Jose. Middle row, from left: Taco Addiction in Napa, El Garage in Richmond, Tacos El Ultimo Baile in Oakland. Bottom row, from left: Tacos El Patron in S.F., Baysian (pop-up) in San Leandro, Pho Vy in Oakland.
excerpt
… Layonna’s most popular items are its gluten-free vegan fried chicken, and its gluten-free vegan chicken legs, Wong said. The most recent addition to their list of offerings is a vegan version of that Hawiian-cooking standby, Spam. “It is really good,” Wong said. “Close to 99% real Spam.”
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Large fire at Taylor Farms food processing in Salinas -
from Wikipedia -
Who is the owner of Taylor Farms?
CEO Bruce Taylor
Founded by former Fresh Express (now with Chiquita) founder and CEO Bruce Taylor in 1995 with the goal of becoming “America’s Favorite Salad Maker,” Taylor Farms currently ranks as the world’s largest processor of fresh-cut vegetables.
Thanks for posting this. Not only are we frequent buyers of TF salads, we are driving down on 101 to Carmel Valley tomorrow for the weekend. Hopefully the fire will be out by then. Sad.
The brainchild of San Francisco architect Hallie Chen, Mouth2Mouth has some of the same hip, arty, off-kilter aesthetic of the dearly departed food magazine Lucky Peach —but without the whiff of toxic masculinity that contributed to that publication’s eventual undoing. Chen was an obsessive Lucky Peach reader back in the day, and says she was missing that kind of literary, intensely personal storytelling—the kind of food writing where the food was “almost peripheral.”
“I think of food as a place—it’s this intersection of people and material and memory and space. … It’s more of an art project than a food thing,” Chen says of the zine.
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Melanie Wong recommends the Persian food available at Rumi Kitchen located at the Valero Gas Station, 3810 Broadway, Oakland, near the Kaiser Medical Center.
Melanie on Instagram:
… We tried the chubby Manti overstuffed with ground beef and napped with yellow lentils and thick yogurt with a dusting of dried mint. A nice change from tomato-sauced versions. Tender and not slimy stewed okra blended with potato wedges were infused with coriander and cumin. This was accompanied by mint chatni, salad and spiced yogurt. Fruit custard was very stiff yet packed with fresh strawberries and blueberries. …
Mantu
A beef dumpling dish filled with ground beef, onion, and cilantro. Topped with lentil sauce, and yogurt. A must try!
Rumi Kitchen is a family owned business, and our dishes are all recipes passed down from family generations. Our food is mainly Persian dishes, and we also have a bakery with all home-baked pastries. We also serve Mediterranean and Middle Eastern dishes. We’ve had experience in the food industry for a long time, and had other restaurants and businesses. Our current kitchen has just started, and we hope to get more support by each passing day.
In an interview, Ms. Dicko-Everett recalled the variety of smoked meats from so many other Oakland pits, including Willie Flintroy’s famous restaurant Flint’s, where her mother worked for a few years, and the businesses that lined Seventh Street: Burk’s Seafood & Barbeque, Crissie’s Barbeque Pit, Earle’s Famous Bar-B-Que, Fields Bar None Bar-B-Q and Singer’s Bar-B-Q.
excerpt:
… Inspiration for Tacos Sinceros’ unique dishes comes from travel and observation, but also memories and obsessions — a childhood favorite dish of braised pork with fish sauce caramel and coconut soda, a liberal application of chili oil, “from my adoration for Szechuan restaurants.” At a recent TACOmacase gig, Justice served burrata with carrot-cardamom labne, thai basil and pickled carrots, black pepper “beef fry” with mizuna and butter tortillas, and Chinese cauliflower tostadas with calamansi kosho and fried beans. The combinations are as daring as they are effortless.
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On KQED radio, 88.5 FM, tomorrow April 20 at 9:30 am -
Guests:
Luke Tsai, food editor, KQED
Sarah Kirnon, chef-owner, Miss Ollie’s - an Afro-Caribbean restaurant in Oakland
excerpt: Reached by phone while on vacation in Barbados, Kirnon says one of the lessons she took away from the pandemic is that the sit-down restaurant model in the U.S. is fundamentally broken. She now wants to shift toward “micro spaces” that offer a more sustainable business model. The new takeout spot won’t have dine-in service at all, though it will set up some tables outside on weekends. It’ll open at 11am each morning and close whenever everything sells out. And the menu will be simple and concise—just a daily special plus one or two additional staples. The idea is for customers to be able to swing by on a certain day of the week for saltfish and ackee, and a different day if they want to snag a bucket of fried chicken.
excerpt:
Ballesteros of Marley’s Treats says one of her foundational food memories is of eating ube halaya—a sweet jam—spread on toast. “It’s what my grandma gave me for breakfast,” she says. Now, Ballesteros says, her ube-flavored treats are by far the most popular items at the Hayward bakery and its affiliated food truck, which combined sell everything from ube flan cheesecake to ube “flandesal” (an ube-filled version of the sweet roll known as pandesal) to spicy ube ice cream—all on offer at Saturday’s Yum Yams event.
Yum Yams takes place at Kapwa Gardens (967 Mission St., San Francisco) on Saturday, April 23, from noon–5 pm. Tickets are $5, which include a $4 voucher that can be used at any vendor. Buying tickets in advance is highly recommended as the event is expected to sell out.
Ube cupcakes, “flandesals” and ube flan cheesecakes—all from Hayward-based Marley’s Treats, where the ube desserts are by far the most popular items. (Marley’s Treats)
"For customers who do want more of the intimate, communal experience that Miss Ollie’s used to provide in Old Oakland, Kirnon plans on hosting a chef’s table once a month. For that one night only, the restaurant will open for in-person dining, and Kirnon will put together a tasting menu of, as she puts it, all the “weird Caribbean food” that she was never able to offer on a regular basis—dishes like the sea urchin and Dungeness crab porridge she used to serve when Miss Ollie’s first opened. "
Yay - Miss Ollie’s is one of my favorite restaurants, so glad she isn’t going away, this sounds great.
Here’s a link to the 27-minute audio of this morning’s KQED FM radio broadcast on the Golden Age of Oakland Restaurants with food writer Luke Tsai and chef Sarah Kirnon of Miss Ollie’s. Tanya Holland of Brown Sugar Kitchen called in at the 13:37 mark.
