KQED’s Eating Taiwanese in the Bay
is a series of stories exploring Taiwanese food culture in all of its glorious, delicious complexity. New installments to the series will run daily from May 19–28.
If you ask a Taiwanese American about the Bay Area’s Taiwanese food scene, chances are they’ll complain about how hard it is to find stinky tofu or savory soy milk or a decent bowl of beef noodle soup. And it’s true: This isn’t exactly the San Gabriel Valley. But it s also true that anyone who knocks the Bay Area s Taiwanese food community probably hasn’t spent a lot of time in suburban enclaves like Fremont and Cupertino, where there’s big enough of a Taiwanese market that even niche restaurants specializing in sweet potato congee or Taiwanese breakfast sandwiches can survive and thrive. They also probably haven’t paid attention to the new wave of pop-ups that are bringing Taiwanese food into the mainstream in Oakland and San Francisco.
Skip to main content It s not just a beer can : Bay Area Black-owned breweries pay tribute to civil rights icons
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Milton Bowens was sound asleep when he was gruffly awoken at 4 a.m. by the buzz of an incoming call. When he answered the phone the voice of Kevin Johnson, former NBA star and past mayor of Sacramento, was on the other line with a request.
“He was like, ‘Who was the first Black brewer in America?’ and I said, ‘Well, I don t know exactly … but I know the beer was called the Peoples Beer,’” Bowens said. “Kevin was like, ‘Dude … you gotta do a painting on that,’ and I was like, ‘Uh … OK,’” Bowens chuckled as he recalled the conversation that took place in 2020.