Underrepresented national cuisines in the SFBA

Regional Dining Discussions SF Bay Area, NorCal, Tahoe
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Stockhome, in Petaluma, a Swedish venture from the owners of Plaj

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Riceful specializes in Okinawan onigiri, a heartier version of Japanese rice balls.

from Berkeleyside, fourth paragraph of linked article:

*During the soft opening, prices range from $5.50 for the classic Okinawa Onigiri (with Spam and fried egg) to $9.25 for the Unagi Onigiri (a seasonal item with grilled freshwater eel). All sandwiches — which are the size of a burger and are reminiscent of a fully-loaded musubi — come loaded with Spam and egg, but Chen said, based on customer feedback, they’ll consider new menu items, including vegetarian and even vegan fillings. During the soft opening period, Riceful will open at 11 a.m., but Tang said hours may fluctuate as the couple works out kinks in the operation. He also said based on feedback so far, they may drop prices slightly, although they’ll generally hover around $6-7, as many ingredients are imported from Japan. Expect a grand opening in about a week.

Riceful, 2435 Durant Ave. (near Telegraph),
Berkeley

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Authentic or not, Amawele (along with most of the other Rincon Center restaurants) has been renovated out of existence. So scratch that one.

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I think it was “South” at 330 Townsend St.

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Closures:

  • Booniepepper Islander Grill (Guam)
  • Bissap Baobab (Senegal)
  • Belga (Belgium)
  • Amawele’s South African Kitchen
  • Sweet Fingers (Jamaica)
  • Smoke’s Poutinerie (Canada)
  • Scotch Bonnet Food Truck (Jamaica)
  • Kaya (jamaica)
  • Jayakarta (Indonesia)

Soon to be closing:

  • Borobudur (Indonesia)
  • Specialty Foods (Caribbean & African groceries)

Additions

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Aw, too bad about Borobudur. I went there a few months ago and the food was pretty good.

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They were by far better of the two Indonesian closures!

The large number or closures my script picked up led me to do some manual yelp searches for new and missed places:

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I checked the website because I thought I saw somewhere that BB was remaining open. The website says they have moved next door to their Little Baobob, 3388 19th St./SF

Anybody have in-person confirmation that BB is still alive?

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There is also BurtoNZ, the New Zealand meatpie and pastry bakery up in Windsor, Sonoma County. Last two times we have stopped by, someone has driven in (one came from Sacramento, the other from the Sierra foothills) to pick up NZ food products they can’t find over here.

Apparently the owners of BurtoNZ help out their fellow ex-pats by doing some custom grocery ordering!

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A few more:

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I don’t have in-person confirmation, but some background on the closure of BB indicates it won’t be opening again. Also, according to Justin Phillips at the SF Chronicle, BB got sold to the owner of El Porteno (the Peruvian Chinese place in Excelsior, not the empanada business)

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Thanks for sharing! I passed by this place a few weeks ago, did a double take on the Guam sign and snapped a picture. But kinda forgot about it later. This used to be the longstanding popular pupusa place converted into a vegetarian Chinese/ pupusa place. I just look at the menu and it looks like they still have Chinese vegetarian dishes. Seems like they added the chicken kelaguan and the grilled chicken thighs to the menu as their Guam specialty.

image
image3264×2448 2.26 MB

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Ukrainian- Californian. The chef used to run the Borsch Mobile.
http://www.atiggys.com/menu/

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Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Russia food at Nursel in San Carlos
https://www.yelp.com/biz/nursel-san-carlos-2

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Hi, new to the forum. Though we moved here some time ago, it recently dawned on my family and me that we’re really missing out by not seeking out high quality examples of the many international cuisines available in the SFBA. We’re excited to have found this forum and great threads like this one along with others like “Regional Chinese roundup 3.0”…but we’ve noted that many of the posts are pre-covid…so just wondering if anyone is aware of other posts about this in HO or in other forums that include more recent information (I looked back one year before writing this)?

No particular budget parameters - from trucks to higher end places, just looking for tasty and authentic.

Thanks a lot.

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jahhh, you might want to specify what regions you’re most interested in - maybe list them in order of preference. For example, it’s not high on my list when folks are posting about SJose/area or Peninsula, as I live in Alameda County.

Despite being retired, we just do not get to those two aforementioned areas very much at all, whereas Spouse and I do get out to Contra Costa, Napa, and Monterey on a regular basis. Sonoma is our fav area but it’s so big we divide it up into four distinct areas, because due to traffic you simply cannot zig-zag easily from one end to the other and back again without running into serious slowdowns.

It is very true traffic on this board has slowed considerably post-pandemic. We eat out very often, but I just don’t seem to have time to post reviews the way I used to. Once in a great while I update Yelp but I admit I seldom post here any longer; don’t spend a lot of time here any more. I did post fairly recently on Kenzo Napa, one of the rare times I’ve taken photos. I prefer writing to photos.

“Authentic” is a loaded word because I can say as a Sansei married to a HK-born Chinese/Portuguese, there’s a lot of actual “authentic” food 99.9% of Americans would not eat. Hence restaurant menus that limit themselves to what actually sells, and is usually modified to what their customers want. Are you looking for housemade noodles, for example, or did you want Filipino dinuguan?

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If very short “reviews” would be great from many more people as it helps to better find good and avoid bad restaurants. It doesn’t even have to have pics just high level feedback on the quality of the food and service

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Jeanne - I live on the Peninsula, so I’d be open to going anywhere around the Bay; we go further out (wine country or Monterey) a little less often, but we’ll still get there now and then, so it’s be great to hear about places folks are excited about wherever they may be.

By “authentic”, we’re simply hoping to find food that’s reasonably close to how it’s prepared in the home country (admitting that we will probably challenged with some things like extreme heat), and hoping to avoid some of the less desirable modifications to those cuisines that have been mentioned in some of this forum’s threads, e.g. lots of extra sugar.

I agree with honkman that even just a couple of sentences is fine if we get to learn about places people love.

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jahhh, as I don’t get to the Peninsula very often - our only friends there are enjoying their first two years of retirement by traveling around the world like mad! - I’ll have to collate my reviews over the last 18 months and post something in January. We prefer to spend our retirement locally, so we do 3-5 day trips in a semi-regular circuit around Northern CA.

I’m trying to expand it into other NorCA cities (like Sacramento, SF itself, Paso Robles, et. al.) but it’s hard for us to get out more than once every 4-6 weeks. We were in Monterey over Thanksgiving and are heading out to Napa this week so I will have relatively recent updates on those to include.

I’m sure others on the board will be happy to post other places for you to try as well. We used to get out to the Peninsula more often but the pandemic pretty much stopped that entirely, and we’ve just never picked it up again with all that’s happening locally in the EBay.

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Anything specific cuisine you want to eat? There are a lot of good examples of international cuisines, in the Peninsula and in the Bay Area.